6 they have guarded their language considerably, and expressed themselves in a way which could not be positively laid hold of, yet which would embody the seeds of all their errors. But Mr Ward has manfully spoken out, though he still, like all his sect, has not the honesty to come voluntarily out from a church which he so fiercely condemns. He thus speaks of justification by faith, the extreme sinfulness of that most hateful heresy." 'Justification by faith is the masterpiece of Satan's craft.'+ Were a religious heathen. really to accept the doctrine which Lutheran language expresses, so far from making any advance, he would sustain a heavy loss, in exchanging fundamental truth for fundamental error." It is worse than atheism itself. It is the hateful and fearful type of Antichrist.'§ 'No consecutive thinker could adopt the doctrine without being prepared to plunge theoretically at least into the lowest depth of depravity.'|| The reader of these extracts can have no difficulty at all in discovering the resemblance between the Romish and the Oxford sect. Not only are there features in common between the two, but there is scarcely a feature in which they are dissimilar. They are absolutely identical. And nothing can more truly prove the identity than their common condemnation of the free grace of God. The foundations of both churches are thus manifestly one. God's free love in justifying the sinner freely upon believing, is the object of derision and denunciation to both. Neither of them can tolerate it. Nay, the Puseyite seems to cherish deeper and deadlier hatred to it than the Papist. We do not remember of meeting in Popish works such fierce reprobation of the truth, as in some of the above extracts. Certainly, the Council of Trent did not make use of such unmeasured language to express their condemnation. The apt scholar has already outstripped his lying teacher! The obedient daughter has already outrun her harlot mother! But there is another doctrine of the Reformation, near akin to the above, to which Popery was equally intolerant. Luther had strenuously set himself to maintain two points, as the very hinges of the Reformation. The first was, that a man is justified by faith alone; and the second was, that he is to know that he is justified. These two Luther kept resolutely together, as great Scriptural truths, and § Ibid. p. 305. + Ibid. p. 221. Ideal of a Christian Church, p. 44. Ibid. p. 304. Luther's doctrine that no man can be justified but through faith alone, and that a man must be assured that he is justified, was to Cajetan a doctrine quite new and erroneous.'-Sanders' Watchword of the Reformers, p. 20. Again, Luther in his correspondence with Cajetan, thus expresses himself, ut necesse sit, certa fide credere sese justificari et nullo modo dubitare quod gratiam consequatur.' as the only weapons by which he could wage effectual war with a church which owed her very existence to the doubtsome faith' which she inculcated. He saw that the same gospel which excluded boasting, excluded doubting also, and that the latter was as incompatible with it as was the former. He saw that the forgiveness which the gospel brings was a present certainty, something not merely known to God, but known to the individual also. He saw that if room for doubting were conceded, then into that space Popery could thrust all its self-righteous performances for the removal of such doubts; and that, therefore, the only thing that left Popery not one hand-breadth of ground to stand upon, was the assured knowledge of forgiveness which the Gospel brings to us when believed. If we are justified, and if we know that we are justified, then we need no doings or deservings, no pains, or penances, or mortification. All is done for us already that our troubled consciences demanded. Being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.'* In opposition to this the Council of Trent decreed thus,— If any one say that the man who is regenerated and justified through faith, is certain through faith to be numbered with the elect, let him be anathema.' In exact accordance with the Tridentine decree, the Tractarians tell us that a certainty of final acceptance is unattainable on earth. Thus they speak, whether in this world a man can have a full and positive assurance of final acceptance, is one of those subjects which God has not thought fit to give clear, if any, intimation, and which no Christian need trouble himself about.'+ No truly, he does not need to trouble himself about the certainty of salvation!!! Why not at once say, about salvation at all, for surely it amounts to the same thing? But why not trouble himself about this? Because if he did so it would be taking the trouble as well as the gain out of the church's hands. If he troubled himself about it, and found the blessed peace and security from which a cruel and covetous priesthood (who have their wealth by this craft, and whose object it is to feed his doubts and fears,) would debar him, then he would trouble himself no more about altars, and crosses, and rubrics, 'The religion of the Church of Rome leaves a man nothing but doubts respecting his salvation. It teaches that a Christian should believe, in general, the promises of God, while the application to himself of these promises, and the assurance of God's love, it calls presumption. This subject was one of the grand points of discussion between that Church and the Reformers. But how many Protestants have forsaken the ground which their predecessors occupied, and have gone over to that of their opponents The doctrine of the duty of our personal assurance of salvation, and the persuasion of our interest in Christ, is denied by many; and even doubts concerning this are converted into evidences of faith, although they are directly opposed to it. Doubts of a personal interest in Christ are evidences either of little faith or of no faith.'-Haldane on the Romans. Vol. ii. pp. 427, 428. + Plain Sermons, iii. p. 23. 1 and rosaries, and such like miserable fooleries, which Popery and Puseyism have devised for removing his doubts.* How close in this second part the resemblance of the two! Who can doubt their identity? Who can fail to see the doubtsome faith of Anti-christ as much at Oxford as at Rome? But we pass on to another feature of identity between the mother and the daughter,-their common dislike of the word of God. On this point it would seem as if Puseyism had borrowed both its ideas and its language from Popery. They give utterance to the same sentiments, and they clothe them in almost the same words, in speaking of Scripture and tradition. Rome tells us that the holy Seripture is insufficient, and the traditions must make it complete.' And what does Oxford tell us? Let us hear. The sacred volume was never intended and is not adapted to teach us our creed.'+ Scripture and tradition, taken together, are the joint rule of faith.'+ When the sense of Scripture, as interpreted by reason, is contrary to the sense given to it by catholic antiquity, we ought to side with the latter.'S Both the history of its composition, and its internal structure, are against its being a complete depository of the Divine will, unless the early church says that it is; now the early church does not tell us this. It does not seem to have considered that a complete code of morals, or of church government, or of rites, or of discipline; is in Scripture; and, therefore, so far the original improbability remains in force. Again, this antecedent improbability tells, even in the case of the doctrines of faith, as far as this, that it reconciles us to the necessity of gaining them indirectly from Scripture; for it is a near thing (if I may so speak) that they are in Scripture at all; the wonder is, that they are all there. Humanly judging, they would not be there but for God's interposition; and, therefore, since they are there by a sort of accident, it is not strange they shall be but latent there, and only indirectly producible thence.'|| Such is the way in which Tractarians undervalue Scripture and exalt tradition, making the latter far more indispensable than the former. A man might find his way to heaven without the Bible, but not without tradition! The one is but a feebly-burning taper, the other is a resplendent sun,—or rather the one is almost utter Yet it does seem strange to us, that an infallible church, within whose pale is such certain salvation, should yet be unable to give him any assurance of such salvation. Can anything be more inconsistent ? But the inconsistency is a gainful one, -it fills empty coffers, and affords room for a priesthood practising its fooleries, and that is the great ambition of the twin-sisters above referred to. Newman's History of the Ariaus, p. 56. § Keble's Sermon. Tract 78, p. 2. darkness till the other illumines it. The Bible is like the moon, which has no light in itself,-radiant only by the refulgence of the sun of tradition! And here we would append to these statements of our own, two extracts from one of the works which head this article, —a work written by a clergyman of the Church of England,-a work, plain, but sensible and Scriptural,-full of earnestness and sound judgment, in contending for the faith once delivered to the saints. "Admit, therefore, but this principle, that Scripture needs tradition to constitute the rule of faith, and you open the door to an endless train of errors and corruptions of the Word of God. I fully agree with the present and pious Bishop of Calcutta, that Tradition, asserted as a joint rule of faith, in the sense of controlling the meaning of Scripture, is the one false principle which lies at the foundation of all the unsound theology, both of Popery and Tractarianism. A distinction,' he adds, is, I find, attempted to be drawn between the Romanist doctrine of tradition and that of the Tractarians, but it seems to be quite unimportant. The Romanist turns his tradition co-ordinate with Scripture, the Tractarian subordinate; but they produce the same effects in practice. For, if every part of Scripture is to be interpreted authoritatively by the tradi tionary consent of the Fathers, the tradition, whatever name you give it, controls Scripture-is independent of Scripture-imposes a sense on Scripture. The Jews ask no more of us for their Oral law and their Cabala.' "The very same objections which the upholders of tradition bring against those who maintain the alone sufficiency of Scripture, may be brought forward against the system which makes Scripture and tradition the joint rule of faith, and asserts that the difficulties of Holy Scripture can only be explained by the help of the writings of the Fathers. The inspired Scriptures are written in languages no longer spoken, but so are the works of the early Fathers of the Church, to which such confident appeals are made, both by the Romish Church and by the Tractarian party in our own Church. But the Word of God is a single volume, concise, systematic, and infallible; the writings of the Fathers are diffuse, perplexing, contradictory, fallible, and so voluminous, that the perfect mastering of them would require the labour of a daily reading for many years, a labour which would, after all, ill repay the loss of time required." And again, identifying Puseyism with Popery, he thus speaks,— "A few years ago, the mere supposition that the wretched heresies of popery could ever prevail to any extent in this enlightened age and country, and above all, in our Scriptural church, was deemed too absurd to be entertained for a moment. Purgatory-prayers for the dead-the bodily presence of our Lord in the Eucharist-the invocation and worship of the Virgin Mary and the Saints-tradition and Scripture the joint rule of faith, all these were looked upon as the absurd and unscriptural errors of a by-gone age. Are they so regarded now?-are there not many in our own church who secretly, nay, openly, approve and defend these monstrous doctrines? What is the state of things among us at this very time? We cannot shut our eyes to downright facts. I know that we have been told over and over again, from time to time, after the publication of some of the most notorious of the Tracts for the Times,' and of other well-known articles written by the Tractarian leaders—that the eyes of good men were at length opened, and that we might look upon the Tractarian heresy as exploded. But what is the fact? While here and there a few mistaken men have recanted their errors, and come back to the plain path of spiritual truth which they had so rashly quitted, a large party continue to wander away after their blind guides in the same labyrinthine mazes; and their leaders, nothing daunted by constant refutation and exposure, so far from having been silenced, seem, in some instances, to have lost all care and caution to disown in any way their preferences to the worst errors and absurdities of the Church of Rome. We doubt whether Dr Wiseman, or Dr Murray, or any judicious priest of the Romish Church, would have ventured to put forth such a work as the Lives of the English Saints,' which is now in progress of publication, under the editorship of that well-known leader of the party, who in his prefaces has the hardihood to approve their sentiments as to faith and practice in the most unequivocal manner; and yet he still remains a clergyman of the Reformed Church of England, and the fellow of a college in our University of Oxford. "Brethren, a few more words, and I have done. We find members and clergymen of our own church asserting (as in the 78th number of the Oxford Tracts, at the second page) that Scripture and tradition taken together, are the joint rule of faith.' Again, in a well-known sermon, we are told that when the sense of Scripture, as interpreted by Scripture, is contrary to the sense given to it by Catholic antiquity, we ought to side with the latter. Again we read, we are deeply conscious that in lacking reunion with Rome, far from asserting a right, we forego a privilege. Rome has imperishable claims upon our gratitude, and, were it so ordered, upon our deference. She is our elder sister in the faith-nay, she is our mother, to whom, by the grace of God, we owe it that we are what we are.' "I need make no further comment on such extracts, except to ask you if there are no others besides the Scribes and Pharisees-no others besides the deluded Romanists, to whom Christ would have addressed His awful rebuke, 'ye have made the commandments of God of none effect by your tradition.' The next feature of identity which we find between the two sects of Rome and Oxford is the undue exaltation of forms. We do not at present speak of the sacraments; we allude more especially to the human ordinances which they have either derived from the distortion of Scripture, or fashioned altogether out of their own imagination, or raked up out of the mould and bones of patristic sepulchres. In these external forms the blinded Romanist takes refuge from the smitings of conscience, and the fear of the wrath to come. The multiplying of these seems to him what the multiplying of harbours of refuge along a rocky coast is to the sailor. He counts himself more and more secure in proportion to the number of those havens. A |