But I must end a train of thought, which, left to itself would run on into a whole work. And in doing so I make one remark, which is perhaps the great moral of the history of Protestantism. Luther found in the Church great corruptions countenanced by its highest authorities; he felt them; but instead of meeting them with divine weapons, he used one of his own. He adopted a doctrine original, specious, fascinating, persuasive, powerful against Rome, and wonderfully adapted, as if prophetically, to the times which were to follow. He found Christians in bondage to their works and observances; he released them by his doctrine of faith; and he left them in bondage to their feelings. He weaned them from seeking assurance of salvation in standing ordinances, by teaching that a personal knowledge of it was promised to every one who believed. For outward signs of grace he substituted inward; for reverence towards the Church contemplation of self. And thus, whereas he himself held the proper efficacy of the Sacraments, he has led others to disbelieve it; whereas he preached against reliance on oneself, he introduced it in a more subtle shape; whereas he professed to make the written word all in all, he sacrificed it in its length and breadth, to the doctrine which he had wrested from a few texts. This is what comes of fighting God's battles in our own way, of extending truths beyond their measure, of anxiety after a teaching more compact, clear, and spiritual, than

the Creed of the Apostles. Thus the Jews were more careful of their Law than God who gave it; thus Saul saved the cattle he was bid destroy," to sacrifice to the Lord:" thus Sennacherib charged Hezekiah with " taking away the altars and high places" of his God; thus Judas was concerned at the waste of the ointment which might have been given to the poor. In these cases bad men professed to be more zealous for God's honour, more devotional, or more charitable than the servants of God; and in the same sense Protestants would be more spiritual. Let us be sure things are going wrong with us, when we see duties more clearly, and do them more entirely than they are set before us in revelation.

APPENDIX.

On the formal cause of Justification.

THE formal cause of a thing is generally explained to be that which constitutes it what it is; thus the soul may be said to be that which changes the dust of the earth into an organized and living body; or, again, heat may be considered the cause of a hot substance being hot, or that in which its state as hot, consists. Comparing the formal cause to other so-called causes or antecedents, it is the last in the series by which a thing is brought to be, or the ultimate state of the process which intervenes between the will of the originator and its performance; at least this will convey a notion of what is meant, sufficient for the matter in hand. Thus according to the Council of Trent, justification, the work of God, is brought into effect through a succession of the following causes: the God of mercy the efficient cause, Christ offered on the Cross the meritorious, Baptism the instrumental, and the principle of renewal in righteousness thereby communicated the formal; upon which immediately follows justification. Or again, Faith is considered successively as a disposing cause, the instrumental, or the formal cause of justification, by various parties, thus being brought nearer and nearer to that of which it is the cause, till it (as it were) falls into and coincides with it. Hence the form is that, between which and the thing in question nothing can be interposed

in our ideas; and accordingly it is sometimes really distinct from it, sometimes not. Thus, to take one of the instances given, if the renovation in righteousness which follows Baptism, or the justitia Dei qua nos justos facit, as the Council speaks, be considered as a principle, as I have expressed it, it is the formal cause of our renewed state itself as well as of justification; and is or is not really distinct from that renewed state, according as we believe it to be a mere abstraction of the mind contemplating it, or a definite divine gift residing in the soul. Again: heat, the formal cause of a hot iron, is really distinct from and antecedent to its being hot, according as we view caloric as an idea or a substance. When the formal cause is considered as a mere abstraction of the mind, then it nearly coincides with the logical differentia, proprium, or inseparable accident. Thus whiteness is at once the form and the accident of a white wall; and animality is the form and the generic difference of man distinguished from a vegetable.

The ordinary meaning of the word form serves to illustrate this scientific use of it. What discriminates a body from every thing else is its shape; which is the developement of that of which it is composed, into and unto a certain determinate lineament and structure. The Form then is such a disposition or result constituting a thing to be what it is. For instance, the matter of a science is its objective truth, its form that truth when it has become subjective, or knowledge, which is a sort of determinate embodying of what was till then unappropriated.

2. This being the meaning of this term employed, it is plain that to determine what is the formal cause of our justification is as important an undertaking as any one in the controversy, whatever difficulties may attend it, whatever chance of verbal disputes, (as there is almost the certainty,) and whatever danger, in consequence, of persons finding

themselves on contrary sides, who are in reality like-minded. The question, What it is in us upon which justification comes, or in which it consists, may be thrown into the following more practical shape: What is it which God will look on the last day and accept us in? what will be the immediate antecedent in our souls before the words "Come, ye blessed." Supposing a religious man, unversed in controversy, to be asked this question, the answer would at once rise on the tongue, which is suggested by the passage of Scripture referred to, viz. the recognition of our good works on the part of God: "Come, ye blessed, for I was an hungred," &c. Next on consideration he might correct his answer so far as to say that since works are not good except done in a certain way and persevered in to the end, it is not the mere having done certain works, but the presence of a renewed state of mind developing itself in works, which is that upon which acceptance or justification comes. Further; after a little more thought, recollecting the parable of the Pharisee and Publican, he might add, that of course he did not mean to say that our works or our inward state was such as to be able in itself to stand the scrutiny of a just and Holy God, but that whatever was accepted of ours must be accepted for the sake of Christ's merits and under the covenant of mercy. Lastly, recollecting the language of Hezekiah and Nehemiah, and St. Paul's, about" the rich storing up for themselves a good foundation," and about his own "good fight," and St. Luke's, that Zacharias and his wife were "righteous before God," and Zacharias's prophecy about Gospel" holiness and righteousness before Him," and St. Paul's appeal to his conscience, he would add further, by way of caution, that Christ's merits did not supersede the necessity of our doing our part.

2. Here suppose two disputants to interpose, they would