this remarkable "state book," is acknowledged to be in man, is the righteousness of his own works and of his own merits. And these things, moreover, which the Scriptures so emphatically denounce as "filthy rags" or as so many abominations in the sight of the Lord, are, according to these reformers, the only proper evidences of actual holiness, and "doth show a special demonstration" of the truth and purity of that mere act or bare office which they denominate Christian faith. The latter, alone, they say only accounts us to be accepted in the Beloved, while the former alone, they add, really and actually makes us holy !

ARCHBISHOP USHER.

As the radical and distinguishing doctrine, therefore, of the first reformers respected the distinctive manner in which the justice of Jesus Christ is imputed to man, so has it ever formed the characteristic heresy of Protestantism, amidst all the varieties and discrepancies of its belief. The whole structure, in fine, of its teaching on the merits of the atonement is founded on a species of imputation which its advocates universally affirm to be based on, what they term, a judicial and external process or sentence of the law. "This," says Archbishop Usher, "is imputative righteousness as it is in the articles of the Church of England." And whatever difference of opinion may exist between the various sects of the reformation on other points, in this they are unanimously agreed, that it constitutes the "6 great protestant and gospel doc

trine" of imputation.

"This great benefit," Archbishop Usher further states, "is applied unto us and apprehended by us, on our part by faith alone," by faith considered also as an empty hand," "being only (or merely) the instrument to convey it" (i. e. the justice of Jesus Christ) "unto the soul."That we are healed by it, in the same manner, as the Israelites were by simply looking upon, or by "gazing at"

* See his Discourses on Justification, in which the above is frequently expressed.

(in the words of Bishop Mede) "nothing else but only the brazen serpent."

This Protestant mode of accounting to us the righteousness of Jesus Christ, he, also, states is in direct opposition to "the folly of Popish Doctors, who persuade the multitude to rest in a blind faith which they call implicit and folded up; telling them that it is enough for them to believe as the church believes, though they know not who the Church is; whereas the Scripture teacheth us that faith comes by hearing; that is, by hearing the blessed promise of gracet offered to the people."‡

Again, he says, in the same work, that this mode of imputing to us the righteousness of Christ is merely "to quit and to discharge from guilt and punishment, and so it is a judicial sentence opposed to condemnation, and merely accounts or considers the law to be satisfied;" in contradistinction from the infusiom of a perfect righteousness into our natures; (since "that comes," he adds, “under the head of sanctification ;") and that the special kind of righteousness which is imputed to the man in this manner, "is carefully to be distinguished from" a distinct principle or "power purging the corruption of Isin which follows after."

As an illustration of the kind of righteousness which the Catholic faith imputes to man, in contradistinction from Protestant tenets on this point, we will here relate an anecdote concerning Archbishop Usher, applicable to the subject at issue between the two creeds:

Being wrecked on a desolate part of the Irish coast, he applied to a clergyman for relief; and stated, without mentioning his name or rank, his own sacred

His language is as follows: "For as the Israelites, by the same eyes by which they looked upon the brazen serpent, saw other things; but were not healed by looking upon any thing else but only the brazen serpent; so though by the same faith whereby I cleave to Christ for remission of sins, I believe every truth revealed; yet I am not justified by believing any truth but the promise of grace in the Gospel."

+ But the Archbishop has omitted to mention that while "the Scripture teacheth us that faith comes by hearing," it likewise cautions us to "take heed how we hear" the blessed promise of grace offered to the people, lest we receive the grace of God in vain. * See Usher's "Body of Divinity," pp. 194, 198.

profession. The clergyman rudely questioned it, and told him, peevishly, that he doubted whether he knew the number of the commandments.' 'Indeed I do,' replied the Archbishop mildly- there are eleven.' Eleven,' said the clergyman; tell me the eleventh, and I will assist you.' 'Obey the eleventh,' said the Archbishop, and you certainly will' A new commandment I give unto you that ye love one another.'

Now this principle of Christian love or charity, referred to in the above-named new commandment, is the special and only kind of righteousness or obedience which can justify us in the sight of God; in contradistinction from that law which came according to the letter of the ten commandinents, and by which the whole race of man is condemned and no one justified. For as the letter of these precepts killeth, so, on the other hand, their spirit giveth life in our resurrection from the dead, in Him who was delivered and put to death for our offences through the judgment of the law, but raised again, by the Almighty Spirit of God himself without the law, for our justification unto life eternal.

In relation to this Protestant doctrine of imputing to us the justice of Christ, which began with the patriarch of the so-called reformation, Archbishop Usher says, it "condemns the proud opinion of Papists, who seek justification, (as he ignorantly affirms,) by their own works, and righteousness inherent in themselves." The Cath

* Butler's Book of the Church, p. 254.

+ This gross ignorance of the Catholic doctrine is the more remarkable, seeing that it appears in one of whom it is said that he devoted a period of eighteen years of daily study to the Fathers, beginning with those of the first century, and continuing his task until he had read the works of all, in their chronological order. In relation to his own doctrine of faith to the exclusion of good works, in contradistinction, as he tells us, to "the proud opinion of Papists," it cannot be denied that it is marked throughout with the same unintelligible distinctions which characterize every Protestant exposition of the same that we have ever met with. Indeed, we may truly say of the Archbishop what Mr. Hallam says of the first so-called Apostle of the Reformation, that, "I have found it impossible to reconcile, or to understand, his tenets concerning faith and works; and can only perceive, that if there be any reservation in favor of the latter, not merely sophistical, of which I am hardly well convinced, it consists in distinctions too subtle for the people to apprehend." (Hallam's Introduction to the Literature

olic faith, on the contrary, most explicitly acknowledges no other merits whatever, than those which flow from the Cross of Calvary. And while it rejects the Protestant or legal imputation of the same, as a mere fiction of the imagination, it expressly teaches that the righteousness of Christ is both imputed and infused, as well for our justice as for our holiness, and that the reformed doctrine of sanctification by our own righteousness and works is in itself an unqualified denial of the sanctifying merits of the atonement. Which religion then most magnifies the imputed merits of Jesus Christ? The Catholic, which teaches their communication to man by an infusion through the justifying and sanctifying Spirit of God? or the Protestant, which admits their application only by an imputative sentence of the law?

But this doctrine of legal imputation, which Archbishop Usher maintains to be the fundamental principle of the articles of the English Church, is by no means peculiar to that body. On the contrary, all the Protestant sects,

of Europe, p. 510.) Here we may further remark, that notwithstanding many divines in the English establishment disclaim the peculiar doctrines of Luther on faith and works, still the latter is really more consistent in his error than the former. For, in the first place, as Luther clearly saw that his interpretation of St. Paul could not be reconciled with the teaching of St. James, he boldly pronounced the writing of the latter to be a spurious document, or, in his own words, "an epistle of straw ;" and, in the next place, as his exposition of St. Paul differed so widely from that of St. Jerome, he says, that Jerome, far from being rightly canonized, must, but for some special grace, have been damned for his interpretation of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans." (Ibid. p. 510.)

But this teaching respecting the merit of good works was by no means confined to Luther or the continental reformers, for it seems also to have been a fundamental article in the creed of Tindal, one of the early fathers of the English Church, whom we have before noticed, and of whom Fox says, "he is yet called the Apostle of England," as the former is termed the Patriarch of the Reformation in general. Hume, speaking of the same, has the following: 'Tindal, Joye, Constantine, and others, even in Henry's reign, asserted, in conformity to the Lutherans, and other Protestants, that salvation was obtained by faith alone; and that the most infallible road to perdition ( Sacrilegium est et impietas velle placere Deo per opera et non per solam fidem'-Luther adversus regem,) was a reliance on good works; by which terms they understood as well the moral duties, as the ceremonial and monastic observances." (History of England, vol. 4, p. 418.)

without distinction, expressly maintain that the righteousness of Jesus Christ is accounted to us in the same legal way as the sin of Adam is imputed,-i. e., according to the old law of works. The Westminster Confession expressly imputes it to our persons in contradistinction from faith itself; and the same, also, accords with the teaching of the great majority of divines in the English establishment. Indeed, as the whole system of the reformed faith is founded upon the doctrine of a legal imputation, there is no possible way of explaining it otherwise than in consistency with its leading hypothesis.*

* The distinguishing error, in fact, of the Protestant religion on this article of the Christian faith will be found, as we have before remarked, to consist in its use of the scriptural words " impute" and "justify" in a legal or judicial sense. As this is expressly maintained by all the writers whom we have cited on the subject in the Church of England, so it does not seem to be confined to any school of Protestant divines in particular. The manner of illustrating the doctrine by a comparison with the process of a civil court of law, is common with the most distinguished theologians among them who have written on the subject. Hooker, and Andrews, and Usher, and other eminent authorities of the high church party in the English establishment, are all staunch advocates of this legal system. It being evident, therefore, that no one could, with consistency, continue a member of the establishment to which the above-named writers belonged, and, at the same time, reject the anti-Roman tenets which they claim as its professed creed, we take the liberty of quoting from our "Remarks on the Oxford Theology," the following extract on this subject:

"But if man would have us to understand the justification of a sinner according to its signification in a mere human tribunal, and in the way in which he justifies his fellow-man in his own courts of law, then do we maintain it to be directly at variance with the sense in which God has revealed it in His Holy Word. Now it is and ever has been a fundamental principle in the laws of civilized man, in all ages and nations, that the accused is presumed in the eye of the law to be innocent until he is actually proved to be guilty. When a man, therefore, justifies his fellow-creature from an alleged crime, he merely acquits him of that particular charge; and by such a justification the accused, notwithstanding the sentence of the law, is left just where he was before his accusation,that is, innocent, or not guilty in the eye of the law of the specific offence of which he was accused. In his trial, the court proceeds upon the fallibility of the charge for which he is arraigned; and when he is said to be justified according to the sentence of the law, the meaning is only that he is justified from the charges preferred against him, which have been declared, according to the law, to be unfounded; and he is, therefore, pronounced to be undeserving of punishment. His justification by the sentence of the law, is not