For purposes of comparison with what I have given as Melanchthon’s doctrine, I add the following considerations from Calvin. As was shown above (p. 102), they differ from Melanchthon in regard to their conception of faith, in that trust (fiducia), as the effect in the will which follows from faith, is distinguished from faith in the sense of a peculiar kind of knowledge. Calvin cannot hide from himself the fact, nevertheless, that the will, as obedience, participates in this steadfast heart-mirrored knowledge, this emotional conviction. But he regards faith essentially as a kind of conviction, because he puts great stress upon the clearness of the object to which faith turns. That he does not include trust in his definition of faith is to be accounted for, further, by the fact that he never loses sight of the above-noted manifestations of incipient faith—a faith which, like Melanchthon, he regards as saving faith, though it lacks the quality of steadfast trust. But the true and full faith, which applies the promise of grace to itself, and in the feeling of the Divine sweetness realises the irrefragibility of this application, brings in its train the trust and fearless conviction that we may appear before God’s face with inward peace. Calvin argues further, that he who has once reached this stage is not, indeed, safe from fluctuations in his certainty of salvation, but will not lose the trust through which that certainty can be reached again. But he knows, too, an incipient faith, not as yet combined with trust, which yet embraces the reconciliation through which access to God is won. Faith, at its first stage, has this in common with perfect assurance of faith, that it keeps steadily turned to a God of grace; but it is inferior to the higher stage in this, that the vision of God it gives is clear, indeed, but remote. While a sense of the Divine sweetness alternates with a confusing impression due to the consciousness of guilt—in other words, the individual appropriation of grace is as yet imperfect. For it is just from this fusion of faith and grace that there springs that trust which constitutes the fides specialis. Now Calvin does not need, as does Melanchthon, expressly to insist that we ought to advance from the earlier stage to full believing trust. He can wait for this development patiently, for he knows that saving faith from the very outset engrafts the believer into the community of Christ, and that by this means Divine election guarantees progress to a complete faith. For the rest, he acknowledges no less than Melanchthon that the consciousness of good works done by the believer serves to support and to confirm faith, because in these fruits of our calling appear evidences of Divine favour (iii. 14, 18, 19).

In the main point, therefore, both are agreed. The subjective function which answers to justification is faith as trust in God’s individual pardon, a trust which arises solely from the clear presentation of the universal promise of grace along with the sureties for it which Christ has given, and which is necessarily accompanied by that joyful sense of harmony with God and with oneself which stands opposed to the pain of the sense of guilt. Moreover, both equally declare that this function of faith, in the case of many who are to be regarded as justified, is subject to a development indicated by the fact that trust and the feeling of inward peace do not continuously accompany the intentional turning of the will to God as the Promiser of grace, but may be either interrupted or altogether restrained by doubt of His grace. This stage in the development of faith can only be overcome by a deepened attention to God’s gracious promise. Now whether, with Calvin, one waits quietly for this advance in those who are elect and belong to the community of Christ, or, with Melanchthon, simply insists that the advance shall be made, in either case the courage to venture on full trust in God springs from the believer seeing in his ability to perform good works an evidence of God’s special pardon which will overthrow his doubts. This is to assert a closer relation between that exercise of the moral goodwill towards men which is essential in Christianity and the religious function of justifying faith, than we find expressed in the general Evangelical doctrine that the renovation or regeneration of the will always goes along with justification. Indeed, only on this assumption can the consciousness of actions which spring from a renewed will serve as a proof of his justification to one who cannot gain assurance of it in feeling by the direct path of accepting the impression of the promise of grace.

But in order to understand the meaning and the importance of the assurance of faith contended for by Protestantism, we must compare its antithesis, the Tridentine dogma. Our polemic, as commenced by Chemnitz, interprets the decree of the Sixth Session, the 9th chapter of which bears the title contra inanem haereticorum fiduciam, as though the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church altogether vetoed the characteristic of certitudo gratiae, and in its place prescribed doubt of one’s salvation as an essential mark of faith. But if this were so, we should yet have to confess that in reality such a characterisation of the Catholic Church does not hold good generally. For uncertainty about salvation cannot help one to a Christian character, while it is beyond question that examples of such a character have appeared in the Roman Catholic Church. Besides, personal assurance of salvation is indispensable in order that the Roman form of the Church should be put forward by its champions as the only authentic form. Now it is certainly a fact that the principle of the necessary uncertainty of salvation had been employed against the Reformers before the Council of Trent;⁶ but alongside of it we find the opposite position maintained, not only by Contarini (p. 144), but also by Gropper.⁷ Even Thomas Aquinas, in his own way, may be cited as a witness for the certainty of salvation enjoyed by one who exercises faith, hope, and love. Faith, as a definite kind of reflective knowledge of the articles of the creed, is certain of their truth, and therefore certain of the omnipotence and compassion of God on which hope, at its first stage, rests and bases the struggle to reach eternal blessedness. The hope of the individual, however, when properly complete, becomes certainty of this goal, if faith be informed by love to God. Now, although hope is an affair of the will, and in this respect subject to uncertainty, yet as an effect of faith it partakes in the certainty of the latter, inasmuch as its aim is the goal of blessedness. This goal, however, is made so sure by the Divine power and compassion, that those who fail to reach blessedness do so from their own will and not from any lack in the Divine compassion.⁸ But the controversy carried on in Reformation times does not circle round this representation of the matter. The denial and the assertion that assurance of salvation accompanies faith are in keeping rather with the twofold conception of justificatio which pervades the Christianity of the Middle Ages. The doctrine which attaches justificatio to faith and works issues in the conclusion that faith does not give assurance of salvation, but that assurance, never more than approximate, can be reached by the exercise of moral action, especially action prescribed by the ceremonial law. On the other hand, absorption in the exclusive value of Divine grace is possible only in the form of trust in God; trust, however, includes certainty of its object and satisfaction in it. The connection between them, therefore, appears most clearly in the exposition of Bernard (vol. i. p. 113). Even at the Council of Trent this conception was so energetically championed by Ambrosius Catharinus (Archbishop of Minori, in the Kingdom of Naples), that even there no proper and complete decision of the question, in the comprehensive sense in which it was raised, was reached at all. For the chapter of the decree of the Sixth Session which is directed against the Evangelicals does not exhaust the subject, and does not allow us to draw any inference as to what assurance of salvation counts for in the Christian life of the Roman communion. This chapter was also defended by Catharinus against Dominicus a Soto.⁹ Now it is usual, in consequence of the representations of Chemnitz and Bellarmine, to suppose that the Catholic doctrine altogether excludes assurance of salvation from justifying faith. But it must be noted that Bellarmine assumes quite a different status controversiae from that maintained by Chemnitz, and this merely in order to be able to contradict Chemnitz. The Evangelical position is that if the believer, who, as seriously changed in mind and regenerate, stands at the beginning of his renewed life, lays hold of the promise of grace, he can and must be assured of forgiveness.¹⁰ With this, now, Bellarmine declares himself in agreement. He asserts, however, that the controversy concerns, not this faith conditioned by change of mind, but faith absolutely. Moreover, while he does not deny that assurance is an essential mark of fiducia, he yet makes the controversy circle round certitudo fidei, which, as distinguished from fiducia, is nothing but fides in intellectu. But to this last the Evangelicals themselves have no wish to ascribe any subjective assurance of salvation, simply because with them it does not reckon as justifying faith at all. Thus Bellarmine’s controversial discussion is aimless.

As follows from what has been shown, the chapter cited from the Tridentine Decree, if read attentively, by no means betrays an intention altogether to deny the assurance of faith. For we must remember that the Catholics, in their dispute with the Evangelicals, took for granted that the Divine promise of grace, revealed as it is only in connection with the Church system, does not exist for heretics and schismatics, and that the believing trust of the Evangelicals is without an object. For this reason alone is it regarded as mere subjective imagination.¹¹ Further, it is denied that justification takes place only when the assurance of faith is not interrupted by doubt at all, or that only he is justified who possesses assurance of faith, or that assurance is so essential to complete justification that without it there remains merely doubt of the Divine promise. But all this does not at all touch the Evangelical doctrine, which regards justification as real in many cases where for the moment there exists no specific assurance, and admits that assurance can be disturbed by doubt. Finally, it is a perfectly straightforward principle to hold that a pious man who does not doubt the compassion of God may yet, in view of his weakness, be in anxiety about his salvation; but the reason adduced, that we cannot know our standing in grace by an infallible assurance of faith, loses its point against the Evangelical doctrine, when we consider that it would imply thinking away the object of faith, namely, the promise, and regarding the subjective assurance of grace as its own sufficient ground. The two Canons, 13 and 14, which deal with the same subject, are not inconsistent with the interpretation just given; and while, at the same time, the possibility of assurance of eternal election, save when given by special Divine revelation, is denied, yet this declares invalid merely one particular form of assurance—not assurance in general. Yet again, the repudiation of assurance of election does not touch the Calvinistic doctrine, for the latter maintains that it is through Christ that we ought to become assured of our election, consequently through the medium of justification.

Both of the opposed views upon this question having been current before the Council of Trent, they could not but maintain themselves after it as well. And in fact the Romish Church succeeded in deriving thence the advantage, partly of affording satisfaction to different kinds of men, partly of controlling them so as to suit its purpose. For the sake of persons of energetic character, the possibility of assurance must be admitted for purely general reasons, and everyone who takes a leading position in the Church accepts it without asking many questions. On the other hand, for the sake of the discipline of the great mass, it is expedient to foster the feeling of uncertainty about one’s salvation, in order to intensify the people’s zeal for the works which the Church prescribes. So that this Church fares best by using a double measure and a double weight. The Evangelical principle, however, not only strikes Catholic opponents as strange; it seems no longer in any degree to command real confidence among ourselves, whether in theory or in practice. The fact is, very good Evangelical Christians would acknowledge as an expression of their own sentiments the opinion of Möhler, that we ought to embrace assurance of our own salvation, if we have it at all, very timidly and modestly.¹² But, on the other hand, we decisively reject Möhler’s view, that on Protestant principles we ought simply to ask everyone what he thinks of his own state, and that his answer would compel us to regard him as a saint, since the teaching of our symbols refuses to attach any weight to the doubt which others might feel of his reply. This misconception, which regards the Evangelical Christian as a wax figure, on which every single dogma is to be tried and proved, is one for which, unfortunately, the older theologians are to blame, for they represent religious feelings and emotions in a mechanical form as objects of empirical study by the understanding. But if anyone thought it his duty “on Protestant principles” to ask me whether I felt assured of my salvation, I should reply that that did not in the least concern him, for it is a matter between me and God. And so I perfectly understand Möhler’s protestation that he would feel exceedingly uncomfortable in the neighbourhood of a man who declared himself unconditionally assured of his salvation, and that he could hardly escape the feeling of there being something diabolical in such a case. For such a man would be anything but a true Evangelical, were he to assert his assurance of salvation apart from the condition of seria contritio. But I should also have the feeling expressed by Möhler in the vicinity of people who indicated, even though it were indirectly by the exclusion of other Christians from the fellowship of salvation, that they themselves in their own way were quite certain of being saved.

Both Evangelical Confessions, in their practical treatment of the subject of personal assurance, follow the models which, as has been shown (§ 19), are set before them in Melanchthon on the one side and Calvin on the other. They assert in common that the Divine promise, as the object of faith, is at the same time the ground of the assurance which either is, or ought to be, combined with faith. They acknowledge that it is through the promise that the witness of God’s Spirit leading to personal assurance exercises its power. But since in the promise, as historically given, no individual recipient is named, they look to faith to make special application and appropriation of the Divine intention. Even the Calvinists determine the idea of faith chiefly by the idea of fiducia, as the opposite of dubitatio; but as a distinction must be drawn in real life between weak and strong faith, they differentiate from trust, as the general notion, a higher stage of itself, which carries with it certitudo, which is the assurance and seal. Further, the Divine promise is regarded by Lutherans as universalis, as referring to all individuals, by Calvinists as indefinita. Therefore the Lutherans make its appropriation the subject of a categorical imperative, compared with which all other arguments count merely as persuasives. The Calvinists, on the contrary, calling to their aid the assumption of the eternal election of individuals, treat the problem with the instruments of theoretical reflection. The Lutheran, therefore, who keeps before him the universal promise of grace in the Divine word, has to make the practical experiment of subsuming himself by faith under this universal rule; then the witness of the Holy Spirit, which operates through God’s universal word of promise, extends itself likewise to him; for the individual is determined in and with the universal. On the other hand, the Calvinist knows the promise to be valid for those who believe; through self-observation, therefore, he makes sure that he believes, and infers accordingly that he personally may feel assured of the promise of grace. The witness of the Holy Spirit operates in this form likewise, for upon it faith relies when reporting to itself on its relation to Divine grace. This theoretical method of obtaining a basis for assurance through a regular logical inference (syllogismus practicus) is a peculiarity of Reformed theology. But even the Lutheran “ascetics” were unable to refrain from employing this method. For when they attempt to help trembling faith to the right path, Arndt, Scriver, and Fresenius of necessity draw attention to the hidden traces of faith which indicate that the individual concerned ought to apply the promise to his own case; and Ph. D. Burk, in his Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und ihrer Versicherung, combines Lutheran and Reformed forms of statement without seeming to be surprised at the formal syllogistic method noted above. These writers chiefly urge that we should give heed to the comfortable invitations of Scripture, but the didactic style which they follow leads them also incidentally to adopt the syllogistic method. Both methods therefore take for granted that the witness of the Divine Spirit is immanent in the conviction of the human mind. Bellarmine (cap. 8), it is true, is willing to grant that this conviction is divinely grounded only provided that not merely the major premise is given in the Divine word, but that the minor premise too—that I have faith—is certified by Divine revelation, and not based on human experience. But it is easy to repel this sophistical suggestion if we remember that the reception of Divine revelation is always humanly conditioned. This means that there does exist a possibility of delusion in this sphere; but in regard to personal assurance, what is in question is not infallibility or the impossibility of error—for in no relation can this be claimed by any human mind—but the possibility of sufficient certainty subject to the conditions under which the human spirit becomes conscious of its relation to God. Precisely in accordance with the meaning we ascribe to the Holy Spirit, therefore, moral certainty and Divine certainty come to coincide. For the Spirit means anything but an inexorable mechanism, running athwart the laws of the human mind, but rather a principle which leaves these laws in full validity.

Nevertheless the discussion of this earlier stage of faith, at which assurance of salvation and the feeling of comfort are absent, is carried out both by systematic theologians and “ascetic” writers with a certain want of lucidity. They firmly maintain that saving faith, in the full sense, is fiducia cum certitudine salutis, and that it includes the feeling of comfort and of satisfaction with God and with oneself. Now, if justification is granted to weak and uncertain faith also, it must be possible to bring the latter under the conception of fiducia. And this is what they try to do; for otherwise such faith, as being fides informis, would not avail to justify. But how can we recognise weak faith as trust if the certainty of salvation given by feeling is not present at all? Now I find that the older theologians quite failed to make this difficulty clear to their own minds; only in Maccovius have I met with any attempt to solve it.¹³ That attempt issues in his making a distinction between the general feeling of self which is inseparable from every vital act, and the feeling of this self-feeling which he regards as the higher and clearer stage. But as he entirely fails to inquire into the conditions under which this distinction emerges, no complete and clear insight into the matter is attained.

It would not be in accordance with ecclesiastical Protestantism to remove the treatment of these experiences from the province of the preaching of the Word, which is the general promise of grace. But à propos of Gerhard’s discussion of this point (vol. i. p. 354), it has been already shown that, from the standpoint of the preacher, the personal application of justification seems to be possible merely, but not necessary. And that is inevitable; for the general truth of the forgiveness of sins leaves its actual compass still undetermined, and therefore that compass cannot form a sufficient ground of assurance in the case of those whose actual assurance depends on further special conditions. Hence arises the right claimed by Pietism to stimulate in a different way the assurance of salvation given in the consciousness of justification. But in Pietistic circles those special conditions are imposed on every individual, and their validity is made independent of those general principles which were previously regarded as decisive. Though their interest in justification is not wholly given up, and though sanctification in the sense of formal self-abnegation or the struggle after good action is not pressed into the foreground,¹⁴ yet the consciousness of justification, or assurance, is made to depend upon an acute experience of conversion. Here what happened in the case of A. H. Francke is typical. Once he becomes convinced that he has no standing in living faith, he goes astray, in his hypochondriacal struggle to secure it, from what of faith he formerly possessed; doubts God, yet continues in prayer to the God Whom he no longer believes, and is finally surprised by the return of conviction with a full measure of assurance, and dates from that moment his being pardoned by God and the forgiveness of his sins.¹⁵ The antecedents of this consummation may vary in different cases, but in every instance the Halle Pietism, in the conversion which it demands, insists on a similar experience of the intense consciousness that my sins are forgiven, and on the commencement of a concomitant feeling of joy, which puts an end to any unhappiness that may have gone before. Alexander Schweizer (vol. i. p. 558) has thrown this demand into dogmatic form; and in Pietistic biographies similar experiences are described. Nevertheless we have no right to deduce a general rule from these cases, since we cannot conceal from ourselves the fact that the Reformers and the divines who follow them do not insist on any such element when thinking of personal assurance. For those who experience the kind of conversion which leads to this consciousness of forgiveness relate it only in the loosest possible way to the general credentials of salvation. They are forced to admit that any such conversion is preceded by the preaching of the Gospel, but the latter they regard as only its occasion, or as a source of information regarding the matters involved. But they exclude from the province of preaching the act of grace in which God operates on one who is being converted, and oppose it to preaching regarded as a purely theoretical means of grace. Spener, indeed, still holds firmly by Luther’s principle that the individual’s experiences all point back to his baptism, and are to be explained as the consequences, or the renewal, of baptismal grace. Francke, in reviewing his conversion, ignores this view altogether. Pietism, so far as it holds at all to the fundamental significance of forgiveness, totally ignores the fact that the community of believers, which every new convert finds previously existing, and in which conversion only gives him a firmer footing, is based upon the forgiveness of sin. A converted man is not, by his special experience, isolated from or opposed to this body; rather it awakens within him that common sentiment which holds to the Word of God and the sacrament of baptism as the distinguishing features of the community of believers. Instead of this, Pietism recommends its devotees to hold by the society which, by its special attainments in piety, proves itself to be the true community. On this point, therefore, as in their whole teaching, the Church and Pietism are utterly opposed in the way they guide men to assurance. The Church asserts merely the possibility, not the unfailing actuality, of personal assurance; Pietism asserts only exceptional instances of conversion, which indicate no general rule, for the simple reason that in principle they bear no relation to the Evangelical conception of the Church. What would be the result if we were to adopt simultaneously the point of view of both?

Löhe, in a short brochure,¹⁶ has described the epoch of “Revival” as past. He testifies that Pietistic excitations of feeling are regarded—even by those who have striven to gain assurance through them, and, through the change that came over their impressions, have attained it—as youthful experiences whose return is not to be looked for in maturer years. He sees in Pietism of this kind a Pharisaic and self-willed mysticism, and finds in it the characteristics of an enervated age, which knows no joy but that of feeling, and understands no greatness but that of the labours accomplished by institutions and societies, etc. He denies that the approval of the Apostles or the Reformers can be claimed for so sentimental and Roman Catholic a method; he even doubts whether feeling should be given a normative place alongside of knowing and willing. I am not called upon to discuss this verdict upon modern Pietism; I prefer to leave it to others, who are more nearly concerned, to settle the disputed question whether the “Revival” was the product of an enervated generation, or a fresh return of springtime for the spirit of man. Only it appears to me that in the question before us Löhe has shaken himself clear of the Pietistic solution without getting rid of the Pietistic problem. For he considers it justifiable to address to individuals the question whether they are born again, whether they are children of God, whether they are assured in faith of their salvation. That is the view of the matter, indeed, which Möhler holds to be specifically Evangelical, but which took practical shape for the first time in the different phases of Pietism. Löhe, it is true, rests with only one foot upon Pietism, the other he places on the soil of doctrinaire Lutheranism, by giving the advice that awakened souls, who long for assurance, should accept with blind trust the immutable promises of the Word of God. This, he considers, was the meaning of the fact that in the age of the Reformation, alongside of knowledge and will, not feeling but memory was regarded as a principal function of the mind. For the memory ought to keep in active operation bright and clear texts of Scripture, so as to awaken believing confidence; in a case of necessity, however, all doubts are to be beaten down by the believing confidence of the pastor.

But is memory, then, the power which fills up the gap between intellectual knowledge of the general truth of God’s grace, and the personal satisfaction and pacification of the conscience? And how long will the authoritative assurances of a believing pastor retain their power? Can his words really produce more than that transient impression which Pietists gain anyhow by their tempestuous prayers for assurance? Does the continuance of the frame of feeling desired really depend more on the imperious words of another than on the syllogismus practicus, or on the straining of the fancy to lay hold of the general promises of grace? Feeling, as a matter of fact, is unaffected by the will, by logical reasoning, by the action of the fancy or the memory. But we are told that feeling ought not to enter here at all; feeling—that discovery of post-Reformation times, that standard of an enervated generation, pretending to a scientific character which faith simply contradicts when it fills us with its proper power! But unfortunately a pastor, even though he be as masterful in his ways as Löhe, must accommodate himself to the way of thinking of those on whom he wishes to work; he has no right to carry men away by claims so grotesque; for the impression which may be thus momentarily produced does not last, and the outcome of this method probably is to compromise Christianity. Now feeling is simply that function of mind in which the Ego is present to itself; and reconciliation with God must imply a modification of the feeling of self, if the assurance thereof is to occupy the mind at every moment and become a motive impelling the will. But now, according to the Lutheran view, the course of events depends on the following syllogism. The major premise—namely, the truth of the universal promise of grace—is presupposed as a judgment of theoretical cognition; the minor premise—that we are trusting firmly enough in the grace of God—is to be produced by putting a strain upon the will: and from these there is to follow, as a perpetual gain for the feeling of self, the conclusion that we are assured of justification. This exercise in reasoning, embracing all the three basal functions of mind, is not rendered any easier by the attempt which is made to explain the conclusion by comparing it to the success of moral effort. For even if the latter ought to be interpreted as an effect of grace, yet it is not sufficiently akin to trust in justification through Christ to give us any light upon assurance, when assurance does not arise directly of itself. Either that, or we run the risk of exchanging for justification a form of self-righteousness.

§ 24. When Luther set up his view of justification by faith in opposition to the Catholic sacrament of penance (vol. i. p. 159), he not only bound up the conception of justification with the value of the Church for the individual believer, but with equal distinctness secured it against the predominantly legal practice of the Catholic system. The predominant importance of the law in the sacrament of penance depends on the fact that from the penitent’s confession the priest has to ascertain his definite sinfulness, in order to gauge absolution and penalties accordingly. If, therefore, the priest’s method is conscientious, he will hold the penitent firmly to contritio, or the terrors of the law. Against this Luther maintained in his earliest reforming period that the only genuine repentance is that which springs from faith, and that the penitent ought not to be detained under fears inspired by the law, but should be encouraged to cherish that believing conviction which appropriates forgiveness from the absolution of the Church (vol. i. p. 163). This is the sense of the new meaning given to the sacrament of penance in the Augsburg Confession, Art. xii., and in the Apology, Art. v. Since the poenitentia of those who commit sins after baptism is meant to produce contritio and fides, Melanchthon in the Apology regards the subsequent absolution as sacramentum poenitentiae in respect of those actions which confession brings to light (v. 41, vi. 13). Nevertheless, in contradistinction to the Catholic practice, what is here aimed at is to confirm the penitent’s faith. Now, in the Apology the Gospel, quod arguit peccata (ii. 62, v. 29), is repeatedly described as the motive to contritio, but alongside of it the same function is ascribed to the law (v. 53), so that the two parts of ecclesiastical poenitentia are connected with the two heterogeneous and graded parts of Divine revelation. This view which, though only obscurely, lies at the basis of the 12th Article of the Confessio Augustana, approximates to the Catholic representation of the matter in a way that is not altogether favourable to the Evangelical character of the counsel intended. For one who stands in need of special forgiveness for sins committed, really affirms the continuity of his believing status in the Church when, from the Gospel of forgiveness, he accepts the truth of his guilt. Were he to betake himself exclusively to the law for this purpose, he would land himself in serious uncertainty. For in the last resort this path will conduct him to the genuine repentance which is essential, only when by faith he sees in the Lawgiver the God of his salvation. Here, therefore, within the narrow province of the quasi sacramental system of penance, we find the influence of that innovation of which Melanchthon gave an exposition in the Visitationsbuch (vol. i. p. 200) in order to make the universal dispensation of justification intelligible to the laity. The doctrine of justification, as exhibited also by Luther in the same sense,¹⁷ narrows the problem to the case of individuals as such, and weakens its direct reference to life within the Church. The Church remains in the background as the teacher of law and Gospel (vol. i. p. 189).

What disposed Luther to make this violent change in his teaching was the fact that he leaves the believer’s standing as a Christian exposed to those agitations of feeling which he had experienced as a monk, owing to his erroneous attitude to the law. Not finding in the prophets of Zwickau the same terrors of hell for sin, he thinks that he ought to conclude that they are untrustworthy. Melanchthon, too, is the first to insist on these most torturing feelings as an element in poenitentia in the narrower sense;¹⁸ they were next prescribed by both Reformers as a precondition of justificatio in general. The orthodox theologians perpetuate this view. By combining the narrower conception of poenitentia, as equivalent to contritio, with justificatio, they finally come to discard the positive and comprehensive conception of poenitentia, with which Luther had opened his Theses of 1517, though it still receives recognition in the Apology (iii. 229). In all these respects Calvin (vol. i. pp. 204, 214) keeps to Luther’s original positions. Justifying faith, as presupposing the regenerate status and poenitentia—which last covers the whole of life—and conditioned by the corporate existence of the community of which Christ is the Head, he represents as consisting in the imputation of Christ’s righteousness; he makes room for the terrors of conscience only so far as to say that many experience them as preparatory to obedience, while he admits mortal terrors to be a precondition of conversion only in the case of those who have formerly been alienated by the devil from the fear of God. Among the Lutherans Spener was the first to maintain a similar moderate view of the matter.¹⁹

The doctrine which Melanchthon made authoritative for the Lutherans had for a long time no pernicious effects. In practice it was counterbalanced by the survival of Luther’s idea that baptism guarantees our standing in grace, and especially the forgiveness of sins. A. H. Francke, and besides him the Gotha Pietists in their Confession of 1693, was the first to insist on contrition, or the pain which accompanies the sweeping away of inherited lust, as a precondition of living faith; and they appeal to the Apology of the Augsburg Confession. But meantime the mysticism adopted by Joh. Arndt and Jodocus van Lodensteyn had led to a still more incisive precondition being prescribed than that expressed in the “conflict of penitence” (Busskampf). Formal self-denial, insistence on the hatefulness and loathsomeness of all sin whatsoever, is brought by them to such a pitch as to make man contrast himself in his creaturely nothingness with God, the only Lord and the only Existent One, in order that his heart may open to the grace which compensates him for the surrender of his own will by making him one with God. But this is to demand far more than pain excited by the feeling of one’s own guilt. And while Luther may have inferred from his own experience that terrors of conscience arise spontaneously at the remembrance of the law, yet when the practice of monkish self-humiliation is revived, meditation upon sin in general and insistence on the nothingness of the creature become tasks which induce a constant tendency to morbid fancies. The Pietistic conflict of penitence points us also to the same methods. The uselessness of these methods, however, is plain from the fact that they really render uncertain the attainment of joyous trust in God as the mark of being pardoned, and that if it is attained at all, it is not continuous.²⁰ Besides, the Pietistic or mystical directions are always so stated as though the Christian existed only for contemplation, and as though work, which interrupts his meditations, were worth nothing. But this is a denial of the principle of the Reformation, that justification in actual fact becomes matter of experience through the discharge of moral tasks, while these are to be discharged in the labours of one’s vocation. And Heinrich von Bogatsky tells us in his biography that for the half of his lifetime all his pious exercises yielded him no lasting peace; not till he undertook the work of devotional writing did he attain to what he had been seeking.²¹

Spener repudiated both the conflict of penitence and the testing of justification by feeling; and taught instead that we have to assure ourselves of the vitality of our faith and the certainty of our justification through the practice and the consciousness of moral action.²² This argument had already been put forward by Melanchthon and Calvin (p. 144); it came to possess a peculiar importance in Calvinism, which teaches that good works are to be regarded as evidence of perseverantia gratiae. This view, moreover, not merely is inculcated in the Heidelberg Catechism (Qu. 86), but also explains the efforts made by the strict Calvinists to attain extreme precision in conduct.²³ But the principle is likewise recognised in the Formula of Concord (iv. 15), and reiterated by Lutheran theologians, such as Quenstedt. Nevertheless this test of the justified status, when put into practice, turns out to be unreliable. The extreme precision of the Reformed leaves an impression as though the thought of justification had been swallowed up in attention to the trivialities of life. But Spener (vol. i. 360) lets us see that partly he was reduced to uncertainty when he asked himself what actions the glory of God calls on us to perform or to omit, and partly came to take an indulgent view of his sins. At bottom, too, the argument which concludes from good works to the truth of the consciousness of justification by faith is very suspicious. We ought, we are told, to look away from the good works which we perform as regenerate, since they are always imperfect, and turn in faith to the perfection of Christ as the ground of our standing before God. And if, though we thus turn, we become the prey of uncertainty, we ought again to reflect that we still have good works, and have in them an evidence of our standing in grace. If this be so, it seems as though we might spare ourselves this roundabout route, and simply hold to the last-mentioned consideration. The mistake in the argument lies in this, that the category of good works cannot be applied here, for when we are sitting in judgment on ourselves, the real question always is whether our lifework is manifested in the individual visible actions which we have before us (vol. ii. 292). But we cannot set up this achievement alongside of justifying faith, or in opposition to it; on the contrary, that faith is an element in the true conception of a man’s lifework. We cannot, however, discuss at present how this comes to be so.

On the other hand, insistence on a “conflict of penitence,” under the conditions laid down by Luther and Melanchthon—conditions which Spener himself refused to acknowledge as a rule for all—is, to begin with, inconsistent with that idea of education through Church fellowship to which all the other principles of the Reformers point. Feelings of pain at one’s own sin, which are compared to the terrors of death and hell, thereby fall under the category of emotions which belong to the domain of the purely natural life. Natural feelings of pleasure and pain, as an original endowment of man, are the immediate impulses of his activities, but at the same time obstacles to the regular and continuous movement and direction of his will. Now all education consists in setting limits to natural and aimless emotions by exciting feelings of moral pleasure and pain, and in making possible the consecutive direction of the will to the good. This set of feelings is different from the other, for they are acquired and orderly. They are at the same time necessarily more peaceful, for they are modified by accompanying reflection. Now, if the transition from repentance to the assurance of pardon forms a self-consistent process, it must belong to the realm of education, and therefore cannot be experienced in those shifting feelings which, by the very strength demanded of them, would prove that the person concerned was destitute of all education. The moral pain of repentance cannot therefore consist in terrors comparable to the natural fear of death or the thought of hell. Such an hypothesis, besides, is rendered impossible by the mere fact that the laetitia spiritualis—which is an expression, in the religious feeling of self which God’s grace has restored, of the reception of forgiveness—is shown by the epithet spiritualis to be moral pleasure. Or are we to suppose that this contrast between the moral pleasure which forms part of faith and the merely natural emotion which characterises repentance, is really a true one? That supposition would simply imply that we surrrendered the self-consistency of the process. If the prescription of poenitentia is taken literally, we cannot escape this danger. The demand for a “conflict of penitence,” in the sense of an excitation of natural emotions of anxiety and despair, simply suggests an aimless attitude of mind, in which one only removes oneself further from the possible peace offered by grace. And it is the same with the exaggerated insistence on the duty of our regarding ourselves in our creaturely nothingness as utterly unworthy before God. But just as laetitia spiritualis does not mean an emotion of the highest intensity, similarly the disapproval of oneself involved in repentance does not entail stormy sensations. Otherwise we are in danger of falling into the mistake of introducing storm and stress into our feeling of laetitia also, and so forfeiting that self-purification which yet ought to be attained if poenitentia is in general a moral experience.

The same result follows when we consider that, according to Luther’s original position, repentance itself is an effect of faith, and when a penitent suffers from terrors of conscience he ought to have it made clear to him that he is really under the educative grace of God by which his faith is set free. And if what calls forth these experiences is his comparison of the sins he has committed with the Divine law, yet this points back to faith in the Lawgiver as the Benefactor and the Author of man’s salvation. For if this thought be absent, if the Lawgiver be regarded as indifferent or as an object of mistrust, then there results no repentance at all. But he who is advised to go to the Gospel for the knowledge and condemnation of his sins, is from the outset supposed to be the subject of specific faith. Now this principle of the Reformers has hitherto been made use of as meaning that God’s promise of forgiveness is intended to be our ground of knowledge in estimating our own sin. When looked at more closely, this conception requires to be drawn out into the further thought that the sight of Christ in His perfecting on the Cross both elicits from us condemnation of our sins, and makes God’s grace to sinners certain. Such a conception has a deeper bearing on repentance than the law has, for it offers us the ideal of the God-pleasing life exhibited by Christ as the standard by comparing ourselves with which we come to know and repent of our sins. For that model of what life should be embraces, in the unity of an ordered whole, all those relationships which are set forth separately in the law. And this, the model of our own faith and effort, excites our condemnation of those instances of unfaithfulness of which we have been guilty, in the same degree as, by its moral perfection and beauty, it impresses on us the revelation of God for our salvation as the supreme motive of our faith in Him. For part of the meaning of repentance is that the sense of our own moral dignity, too, should be a motive to condemnation of our sin. This fact is ignored when the demand is made that we should learn our sin from the law, and estimate it by the standard of the law; but it is acknowledged when we draw our knowledge of our sin from a comparison of it with the ideal. For by recognising a model we do homage to our own ideal, and that, too, from the standpoint of our own honour and dignity.

I shall recapitulate the results attained up to this point, in order to determine accurately the question still awaiting solution. Justification is God’s forgiveness or pardon, reconciliation with Him, adoption into the position of children; and, in God’s revelation of grace through Christ, it operates as the imputation of Christ’s righteousness in such a way that the position, given to Him and maintained by Him, as Son of God and original object of God’s love, is also imputed to those sinners who belong to the community of Christ by faith, and thus they are accorded the accessus ad patrem. Trust in God’s grace, which includes emotional, i.e. personal, conviction of what is thus connected with grace, and which takes the place of the mistrust involved in the feeling of guilt, is possible to every individual, provided that by this faith he ingrafts himself into the community of Christ, which presents to all its members, under the conditions described, the promise of forgiveness as the proximate reason of its own existence, and offers it to them for their salvation. Since forgiveness through Christ is the fundamental form in which each one receives the guarantee of his salvation, so likewise the continuance of the consciousness of sin and of the need of forgiveness, and therefore, too, repentance for our recurring offences, are called for by the very fact that in Him Who brings us the revelation of grace we recognise the moral ideal—but in such a way that our education in the Church as a rule excludes that passionate and acute form of conversion which occurs in special cases. What we still need to discover is how the general truth of the promise of grace, for which each individual has the testimony of the community, is to become a personal conviction in every believer. The conditions of this have not yet been found. For as trust, in regard to justification, may change from stronger to weaker, a weaker trust is evidence of a lack of personal conviction which cannot be supplied by an intellectual acknowledgment of the general truth, cannot be confirmed by passionate and morbid effort, but is rather rendered impossible by the heightening of the feeling of guilt present in the “conflict of penitence,” and in any case cannot be gained through feelings which are isolated and liable to change. All these methods assume that we are to receive assurance passively as an operation of God or through the influences of the Holy Spirit, perhaps even in a fashion definitely marked off from the normal context of mental life, or, in other words, through inspiration. But every point which we have hitherto been able to establish has gone to signalise the spiritual activities of the sinner. He exercises faith, he accounts himself a member of the community of Christ, he feels trust towards God, and no longer mistrust; in recognising his ideal he condemns his sin, he seeks personal conviction of his salvation, in order that amid all other changes of his action and feeling he may hold fast to the accessus ad patrem. How are these two aspects to be reconciled with one another?

§ 25. If justification by faith is the basal conception of Evangelical Christianity, it is impossible that it can express the relation of men to God and Christ without at the same time including a peculiar attitude of the believer to the world founded upon that relation (p. 29). This fact is recognised by Paul when, in Rom. v. 1—5, viii. 32—39, he describes the application of justification (vol. ii. pp. 343, 349, 353). It creates in man a peculiar feeling of self which evidences itself in his hope of permanent acknowledgment by God and in patience under suffering, and which is charged with a power superior to all the forces and dispensations of this world. But the world is likewise the correlative of patience and hope. For sufferings arise out of the believer’s position in the world, and his acknowledgment by God—which is the final verdict on him—is always conceived, on the Old Testament model, as installing him in his right relation to the world. This aspect of the matter was not forgotten by the Reformers. Only, the two classical expositions of this subject are not given in connection with the statements of Paul. On the contrary, in his de libertate Christiana Luther uses Rev. v. 10 as the text of his argument that those who are righteous by faith are made kings and priests—priests, through the opening of the accessus ad patrem and the right of prayer to God; kings, through their trust in God Who governs all things for the best, and will help the believer to surmount all obstacles (vol. i. p. 181). This line of thought, it is true, though without its leading terms, finds the clearest echo in the Confessio Augustana, xx. 24, 25 (vol. p. i. 184). On the other hand, Melanchthon, in the Apology of the C. A., relates justification to the fact that it renders possible the fulfilment of the Commandments of the first Table of the Decalogue, which are beyond the ability of the natural man.

This doctrine, which pervades the whole of the Apology, stands in a peculiar connection with the other parts of the system. It does not recur in any other of Melanchthon’s theological writings, and it had no influence on his successors. It is all the more fitting, therefore, to attempt to elucidate its meaning. A new interpretation is put upon the first three Commandments—according to the Lutheran enumeration—when their content is reduced to true reverence, love, invocation, trust in God under all sufferings, patience and endurance in them;²⁴ though certainly the First Commandment must be explained in this sense. Nevertheless, Melanchthon’s interpretation agrees with Luther’s Larger Catechism; for he, at least in his exposition of the First Commandment, has interwoven statements which approximate to Melanchthon’s view (Pars i. 64, 70). On the other hand, the place of the Christian virtues just enumerated is, under the head of Christian Perfection, described by Melanchthon in the C. A. xxvii. 49, 50. Now, in the latter’s position noted above, it is observable, first of all, that he draws a distinction of worth between the content of the first and the content of the second Table of the Decalogue. The first transcends reason, the second corresponds with reason. The Commandments contained in the latter, therefore, as embodiments of iustitia civilis, it is possible for the natural man to fulfil, at least relatively; the former are beyond him. The natural man cannot exercise reverence or trust in God, not to speak of the further obligations of patience, for as a sinner he is altogether sine metu dei, sine fiducia erga deum. These characteristics had first of all been enumerated under the head of original sin in the 2nd Art. of the C. A., before concupiscentia in the Latin text, after it in the German. In the 1st Art. of the Apology Melanchthon had endeavoured to refute the objection raised in the Confutatio pontificia, that none save actual sins are to be understood under concupiscentia. We may pass over this aspect of the matter just now. Nevertheless the article of the Augsburg Confession itself, for all its dependence on Augustine, exhibits a change in the conception of sin which is all the more worthy of remark that it is not adopted in the later theology of the Lutherans.

In regarding inherited sin as equivalent to concupiscentia, Augustine conceived the basal relationship of men to God, which sin has overthrown, as being constituted by the law, and the field of unlimited desires as being the domain of moral action which God’s law is to regulate. On the other hand, Luther does not consider the relation of the first man to God as ordered by the law; for him it consists in the reciprocation of Divine goodness and human gratitude. And therefore he finds the chief evil of original sin in the perversion of man’s original reverence for God into its opposite.²⁵ He reproaches the Scholastics for neglecting this feature, but he might have passed the same censure on Augustine also. In his treatment of this point Luther is epochmaking, for he distinguishes between the irreligious and the immoral aspect of sin, and subordinates the latter to the former. It is possible for him to do so, because, when explaining the perfection of the first man, he lays more stress upon his free and spiritual religion than upon all his other sapientia et iustitia. With this agrees, finally, that articulated conception of Christian perfection to which Melanchthon gives most felicitous expression in the Augsburg Confession. For if the end contemplated is the restoration of original perfection through Christ, the religious aspect of things takes precedence of the moral. Moreover, though the Reformers allow that it is possible for the sinner to attain a certain measure of iustitia civilis, namely, the fulfilment of the Commandments of the second Table, yet grace is needed to produce reverence and trust towards God in sinners who have hitherto lived in indifference or mistrust towards Him. For these virtues, looked at in the light of their state as sinners, are supra rationem. The opposition held to exist between this fulfilment of the first Table of the law and the antecedent perversion of man’s relation to God through sin, serves to explain the Lutheran interpretation of poenitentia. The latter experience, as set forth in the Augsburg Confession and the Apology, is meant as a substitute for the Catholic sacrament of penance, and receives that title even in the Apology (v. 41) as well as in the Loci of 1535. Now it is striking that in the Confession (xii.), and in the Apology (v. 28, 45), good works, as fructus poenitentiae, are distinguished from its two elements, contritio and fides. Though in the passage cited from the Apology Melanchthon makes no objection to their being regarded as a third element in poenitentia, he nevertheless conserves their character as fructus poenitentiae. For the former view is admissible, provided that poenitentia is interpreted in the comprehensive sense which it has in Luther’s first thesis, a sense deliberately adopted by Calvin. On the other hand, we have poenitentia used again (vol. ii. 45) in a sense limited in the narrowest way to the terrores, and therefore equivalent to contritio. But the very limitation of poenitentia to contritio and fides—a sense which it received in later Lutheranism, as being incumbent on saints and backsliders alike, as both the beginning of justification and a daily duty—possesses a practicable meaning only when sin is regarded primarily as a defect in reverence or trust in God, and only in the second place as an offence against the moral law. Save on this presupposition, the doctrine is unintelligible.

But what relation has the idea of justification or forgiveness to the capacity of rendering to God reverence, love, and trust; of interpreting all worldly dispensations in this spirit, and of bearing sufferings patiently as Divine means of education? The difference between the Evangelical and the Catholic view was reduced above (p. 36) to this, that the latter is designed to explain the moral capacity of the justified sinner, the former to explain his religious character. Now the outcome of Melanchthon’s statement in the Apology is that forgiveness renders possible obedience to the commandments of the first Table.²⁶ This may be proved by combining the following propositions from the Apology:—ii. 34: “Humanus animus sine spiritu sancto aut securus contemnit iudicium dei (sine metu), aut in poena fugit et odit iudicantem deum (sine fiducia).” 36. “Impossibile est diligere deum nisi prius fide apprehendatur remissio peccatorum. Non enim potest cor, vere sentiens deum irasci, diligere deum, nisi ostendatur placatus.” 44. “Promissio nobis affert gratis reconciliationem propter Christum, quae accipitur sola fide.” 45. “Haec igitur fides specialis iustificat nos, regenerat nos, et affert spiritum sanctum, ut deinde legem dei facere possimus, videlicet diligere deum, vere timere deum, vere statuere, quod deus exaudiat, obedire deo in omnibus afflictionibus, mortificat concupiscentiam,” etc. In this argument it is to be noticed, first, that Melanchthon illustrates the operation of forgiveness or the process of justification exclusively by bringing out the aspects of the correlative faith; and further, that he uses regenerare as interchangeable with iustificare. This is the case also in ii. 72, 78, 118, with this additional difficulty, that even iustum efficere is employed as equivalent to the other two terms.

Wherever the formula, that faith justifies, occurs in the Apology, it is added that such language is not to be taken literally. Properly speaking, justification is bestowed by God for Christ’s sake; faith merely accepts it. But clear as the latter statement seems, it introduces a difficulty into the argument when a formula not meant to be taken literally is used alongside of the true description. Might this formula not have been avoided by the exercise of a little care, especially when it was so liable to be misconstrued by opponents? And yet it is indispensable, for the operation of God, which is called justification, works a change in the person concerned. That this change has taken place, that the Divine cause has produced its effect, has its evidence only in the faith excited by God’s pardon, and in those various relationships which faith embraces. Here we have the inevitable psychological character of this conception (p. 21) from which no explanation of the matter can escape. For however earnestly we may strive to bring out man’s passivity in this respect, yet we can never get over the fact that he receives and apprehends the unconditioned operation of God. And that means that he is spiritually active, whether as experiencing lively joy at the thought of pardon, or as listening to such a statement as, “Thy sins are forgiven thee.” These possibilities, however, do not enter into Melanchthon’s view, in so far as he includes obedience to the Commandments of the first Table under the faith which is the correlative of our being declared righteous. A man does not experience the fact of his justification so much in a contemplative act which presents to his mind justification or Divine pardon in an isolated way, but rather in trust in God, which embraces likewise the believer’s situation in the world. He has a right to feel this trust, and is led to exercise it, just because he acknowledges Christ as the Reconciler of the community which He founded, of which he deliberately reckons himself a member. As it is most simply expressed in the C. A. xx. 24, faith verifies the forgiveness of God experimentally when it reaches out to grasp God’s care and providence over the whole of life, and relies thereon even under those sufferings involved in the believer’s situation in the world. For in his changing aspects as sinner and believer, man is not only face to face with God; he is also in relationship to the world. This is indisputable so long as he remains in a state of sin; but neither can it be denied or thought away even in the believer as justified, unless we are to land ourselves in a fatal obscurity. The sinner who, by his former mistrust of God, shows himself to be dependent on the world, can be proved to have undergone a change through his trust in God’s forgiveness, only if with that trust there is combined a new lordship over the world due to confidence in God’s all-embracing care. Thus, too, this exercise of faith in providence and of patience under divinely-ordained sufferings is the form in which the believer attains assurance of the salvation guaranteed to him through Christ alone. For since the dominion over the world, exercised through faith in the Reconciler, brings with it its corresponding feeling of pleasure, the laetitia spiritualis contains in itself the conditions of its continuity and inward equipoise. Apart from these functions of trust and patience, we can find no place for assurance of our justification by faith. Auditory hallucinations conveying anything of the kind have nothing to do with the case.

There are theologians who meet an explanation such as this with a charge of Pelagianism. They are of opinion that if the conception of grace be the principle which is determinative for the data of the Christian life, man must be thought of as occupying a purely passive attitude towards it. Every interpretation of Divine grace which moves within the limits of the subjective functions determined and set in motion by it, they regard as a negation of Divine grace altogether. For they detect the errors of Pelagius wherever the human subject is represented as possessed of self-dependence. Unfortunately, they themselves alone are guilty of these errors, for they forbid us to combine in thought the grace of God and the self-dependence of the human spirit. The Pelagian conception of human freedom is that which makes it the sufficient ground of religion and morality in such a way as to abstract the subject from his connection with the religious and moral community. But in the view given above there is this reservation, that the justification of the individual takes place only within the community of believers, which, as bearer of the promise of grace, proves itself an educative influence on those who are to belong to it (p. 109), and so this doctrine is not Pelagian. If, on the other hand, it is asserted that the human spirit does not consist merely in feeling, knowing, and willing, but exists behind all these as a definite kind of being and life—in other words, as a kind of substance (Natur)²⁷—that this dark background is acted on by grace in a purely passive way, and that this relationship must first be ascertained before its consequences can be observed in spiritual actions—then this mystical psychology is simply useless, whether for theoretical or practical purposes. This kind of mysticism takes upon itself to explain intelligible processes by unintelligible formulae; it is a fruitless juggling with words. It is utterly alien to Melanchthon’s style of thought, or rather, the charge of Pelagianism strikes also at the Apology of the Augsburg Confession.

Lastly, the fact that in the document just mentioned the expressions iustificare, iustum efficere, regenerare are used as equivalents in describing the connection, explained above, between justification and the functions of religious freedom, does not imply a relapse into Catholic methods of thought. The Formula of Concord, iii. Epit. 7, 8, Sol. decl. 17, 18, provided against regenerare in the Apology being understood in any other sense than as absolvere a peccatis. But this does not explain how Melanchthon not only comes to use as equivalents those expressions which elsewhere he differentiates, but also gives the same meaning to iustum efficere. He does not understand this latter phrase in the Catholic sense of caritas infusa; and anyone who charged him with doing so would do him as grave an injustice as Fricke²⁸ does to me when, in spite of my express repudiation of this Catholic conception, he represents it as my view. By speaking of iustificatio as iustum efficere, Melanchthon can only mean to remove the impression, which might be created by the imputatio iustitiae, that by the latter is meant the predication of an imaginary attribute. But the real change in the sinner is proved by the fact that he is impelled, by the forgiveness of his sins, by the Divine decision that for Christ’s sake he is deo acceptus (p. 73) to exercise that reverent trust in God which is the characteristic activity of the new life. This change at the same time depends on the Holy Spirit, yet not in such wise that His working is mechanical like that of a supernatural physical force, but in such a way that His action on the individual can be shown to exist only when the individual is a member of the community of believers. The Holy Spirit necessarily coincides with this relationship. Melanchthon’s usage was not repeated by himself, for he did not again state the direct practical relation of justification to the religious functions. In reasserting the rights of this important doctrine, I reserve the question whether the conception of regeneratio, which it involves, demands or permits a more extended use.

Reverent trust in God’s protection and providence in every situation in life, the invocation of God in prayer, and patience under the sufferings which He ordains, constitute, according to the teaching of Luther and Melanchthon in the two documents under discussion, the content of the religious freedom over the world in which the believer experiences his justification; they constitute the activity which is called forth by the pardoning grace of God, when it moves one who was formerly a sinner to lay aside the mistrust of God which goes along with the unrelieved sense of guilt. This religious change, which establishes the believer’s independence of the world, in addition makes it possible for him to attain to moral independence of character. The corresponding element in Catholicism is not to be sought under the heading of faith. For faith, in the Catholic sense, means knowledge accepted on God’s authority, and, as related to justification (iustum efficere), consists essentially in active love of one’s neighbour. Through the exercise of this love, moreover, hope comes to its proper perfection; and hope, as directed to eternal blessedness, embraces also the other evidences of God’s compassion furnished by the believer’s situation in the world (p. 37). But according to the delineation of hope given by Thomas Aquinas, it is subjected to a peculiar limitation, due to the sense attached to timor filialis. On this point the teaching of Thomas is as follows (Pars ii. 2, qu. 19). Fear has for its direct object some evil which is to be avoided. Now God is not an evil, and therefore cannot be feared directly; but He can be feared in so far as some evil impends which comes from Him or is in contrast to Him. And this is either punishment or guilt. Punishment, as the deprivation of a particular good, is an evil, though in the light of the final end it is in itself good; guilt is essentially evil, for it is incompatible with a proper relation to the good final end. One fears punishment as inflicted by God; one fears guilt as contrasted with God. Fear of punishment is slavish; fear of guilt is childlike, for a child fears to wrong his father. A mixture of the two kinds is timor initialis, as it occurs at the beginning of the Christian life. Slavish fear is bad, so far as its aversion to punishment rests upon the lust of the world: it is essentially good when what is feared in punishment is its coming from God, and proof is thus given that love to God is bound up with it. But this does not annul the generic difference between slavish and childlike fear. This is shown by the fact that both may be regarded as the beginning of wisdom. Slavish fear, however, turns human life away from sin out of a regard for the punishment of sin; childlike fear governs life directly by the Divine motives of reverence for God, surrender to Him, and shame of abandoning Him. Childlike fear, therefore, is a gift of the Holy Ghost, and identical with being poor in spirit; inasmuch as one who surrenders himself to God seeks no glory for himself and sets no value on external goods.

The last-named characteristic indicates that childlike fear of God is meant to be regarded as the principle, not only of action, but of our estimate of self and our view of the world. This aspect betrays its similarity to the freedom of the Christian. But at the same time the opposition between the two standpoints comes out clearly. For the Catholic mode of feeling looks exclusively to the ever-threatening possibility of offending against God: that of the Reformers looks to the divinely-guaranteed certainty that guilt has been blotted out, and the recurring sense of guilt deprived of its power to separate us from God. I do not say that Christian liberty, in Luther’s view, implies the certainty in advance that all offences which we may conceivably commit are forgiven; but while the liberty of the children of God does not express any such prospect, it is just as little a prey to the fear of new offences. But though Christian liberty be maintained as a standpoint both possible and necessary, this does not make it impossible that any man’s poenitentia may long enough be attuned to the tone of timor filialis, and that while life lasts this tone may enter momentarily into the feeling of reconciliation. But the liberty of the children of God implies that the standpoint of childlike fear is not the highest possible goal, but at best enters into experience as a transitional stage. In the education of children one must on occasion take measures to prevent certain bad habits or faults of disposition from breaking out: to this end, the children’s attention must be so directed that they come to be on their guard against such offences, and therefore, when temptation arises, remember the possibility of their committing them. But education would defeat its own object if it were to aim at producing, as the dominant tone of children’s minds, a terror of disobeying the commands of their elders. Such children would never attain independence of character: according to their temperament, either this kind of education would render them timid and useless in life, or their anxious attitude of mind would swing round into shameless immorality. The superiority of Christian freedom, however, may be seen from the fact that no rounded religious view of the world is compatible with childlike fear, in the sense in which Catholicism makes the latter a pervasive characteristic of the Christian life. For one who has always to be on his guard lest in one of the multifarious situations of life he should transgress against the highest end, and so against the moral order, cannot take a survey of his own attitude towards the world, nor estimate it as a whole in relation to himself, as it is necessary and possible to do when, on the basis of reconciliation, one feels unconstrained trust in God. Lastly, in childlike fear we have a positive expression of that uncertainty about one’s own salvation which is prevalently recommended in Catholicism.

Catholicism, however, furnishes yet another counterpart to the religious freedom which springs from justification by faith. This is the freedom of familiar intercourse with God, Who reveals His love in Christ, and it is accorded to perfect Christians, to monks and nuns, as the crown of their sanctification.²⁹ This freedom consists in the contemplative exercise of responsive love, which arises from compassion infused into the soul at the sight of God humbling Himself out of love. Such freedom, however, implies for its exercise a footing of equality with God as thus contemplated. Christ, the Bridegroom, is divested of all the qualities of loftiness and sublimity, and all considerations of reverence are laid aside, in order that the believer may exchange with God in this form all the delights of sensuously - coloured tenderness. Such freedom, which strives after mystical union and distinctionless identity with God, becomes the basis of an assurance of salvation which leaves timor filialis far behind it; but, as being a deliberate straining of feeling, is only too quickly dispelled by the sense of desolation, desertion, and dryness of soul. In two respects such freedom of intercourse with God is differently constituted from that which arises from justification by faith. The latter is experienced by the Evangelical Christian when by his trust in God he incorporates himself into the community of believers, and makes its public standing in the pardoning grace of God his own. The monk, on the other hand, gains the right to the freedom of intercourse described above when he has climbed the heights of active sanctification, or, in other words, when he has marked himself off from others. Besides, the Evangelical Christian is called on to exercise the freedom arising from justification amid the trials and hardships of life; the monk has no occasion for anything of the kind, for he has withdrawn himself from them. Is it permissible to regard these two forms of piety as equivalent?

§ 26. It has been already shown (vol. i. p. 348) that the connection between justification and the religious functions of the new life, which Melanchthon expounds in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, and which is an answer to the question about the nature of personal assurance, does not recur in the Reformer’s later writings. The same thing happens here as with Luther’s attachment to justification of positive world-dominating freedom. In all his later writings he limits the freedom which flows from justification to its negative sense of freedom from the law and from sin. In the same way, hardly anywhere save in Luther’s Catechisms is the individual’s experience of forgiveness made dependent on his connection with the Church. The most practical ideas of the Reformation, therefore, disappeared from later Lutheran theology. And this defect made its appearance even in the writings of the Reformers themselves, until the mischief was brought to an acute stage by Johann Gerhard’s making faith in God’s providence a part of Natural Theology. The fidelity of this orthodox divine to the Augsburg Confession is such that he declares possible to the natural, that is, sinful man, that very trust in God which the chief standard of the Church expressly denies to him! Nevertheless, ascetic writers continue to take the same estimate of these religious functions, though they are influenced by different motives—Arndt, for instance, by the example of Christ, Scriver by our Divine sonship. By Stephan Praetorius alone is the joy of the Christian’s view of life and personal attitude directly deduced from justification. Founding on the view of the Apostle Paul, the Reformed divine Peter Dumoulin the younger³⁰ develops the connection which Melanchthon had indicated. He starts from the fact that reconciliation through the merits of Christ has won peace with God for all those who turn to Christ with true faith. In reconciliation they have received the forgiveness of sins and the rights of the children of God, and thereby are filled with joy. Even though they need to pray for forgiveness daily, yet that does not disturb their peace with God, for He to whom they pray is their Father. As sin, however, laid the foundation not only of enmity between man and God, but likewise of discord both between man and the world and between man and himself; so the peace with God which is gained through reconciliation brings in its train, first of all, man’s peace with himself, then peace with the creatures and with other men. The latter appears in his readiness to forgive; the former, in his enjoyment of every temporal blessing as evidence of the goodness of a reconciled God. Thus we make experimental proof of the fatherly care of God throughout the whole of life; welfare and calamity are felt to be equally good as dispensations of His goodness; for, as Paul says, all things are ordered for our good, and sufferings when endured in this spirit heighten our love to God. In order to maintain peace with God, service to Him, or prayer, is needed. Prayer, issuing as it does from the assurance that we are reconciled to God through Christ, and manifesting as it does our subjection to God, is at the same time an exercise of the freedom to approach God which we have gained through Christ. When by it we seek to preserve the peace of God throughout all the wants and needs of life, it produces faith, love, hope, patience. The chief use of prayer, however, is to praise God for His benefits in general, and for the manifestation of His saving compassion in particular; and in this we have the beginning of eternal life. Peace with God is founded, through Christ’s work, in the love of God. Now, as this love calls forth our responsive love, this attitude of our will continually strengthens the believing trust which embraces the peace won for us by Christ. That trust is supported by hope, exercises itself in a good conscience, and finally attests its genuineness by the practice of good works.

In the meantime, however, the idea of justification had, in tradition, lost its practical theological aspect and become unintelligible. Consequently, among both Lutherans and Calvinists the mediaeval methods of communing with the Saviour as with a Bridegroom, of formal self-denial, and of mysticism, were, for the purposes of edification, brought into operation again. Johann Arndt revived this method, and at the same time found in the example of Christ a prefiguration of the active religious virtues of Lutheran Protestantism. In this we may detect a mixture of views, uninfluenced by Luther’s decision against mysticism. Already at the beginning of the seventeenth century there is to be found in general the commencement of that falsification of the history of the Reformation which was due to the inferences drawn from Luther’s commendation of the Theologia Germanica, and his approval of Tauler. From his acting so people thought they could prove that Luther had really led mysticism to victory,³¹ but they failed to observe that subsequent to 1518 we have declarations of an opposite character by Luther on the subject of mysticism (p. 99). Later, the hostile attitude adopted by the Catholic authorities towards the Quietists misled people into supposing that, as Zinzendorf says (vol. i. p. 595), the Molinist doctrine of disinterested love to God is in exact agreement with the 20th Article of the Augsburg Confession. Gottfried Arnold and Tersteegen, too, lauded the Quietistic hermits and nuns of Spanish, Italian, and French blood as the spiritual kindred of the Lutheran Reformers. Alongside of this, it is true, in those hymns which came to be used in public worship, an emphasis not in the least corroborated by the public teaching of the Church continued to be laid on the providence of God. Even those hymn-writers who devote themselves chiefly to expressing the various aspects of the Church’s bridal love, and to sensuous contemplation of the wounds and blood of Christ after mediaeval models, are likewise capable of giving full expression to gratitude for Divine benefits. But no one of all these sacred poets asks himself the question, from what principle their trust and their submission to God, their thanksgiving and their avowals of patience, are to be deduced. For that very reason they are far from taking for granted, with Johann Gerhard, that they are merely giving expression to the rights of the natural man. But this of itself is sufficient proof of the fact that the practical gain involved in Luther’s view of the world and of life was not lost by the Church which bore his name. The same character pervades the Pietism which sprang up on the soil of Lutheranism. It is the most prominent feature of Francke’s life. Evidences of the providence of God constitute the chief theme of the autobiographies and diaries which make their appearance with Pietism, by Petersen, Canstein, Joh. Jak. Moser, Bogatsky, Jung-Stilling. Inter alia all kinds of trivialities find their way into their pages, and occasionally even selfishness, as when Petersen points out how God has visited his enemies with sudden death or other calamities. Even Edelmann, when he went over to Natural Religion, retained this style of thinking from his Pietistic days. Originally this sort of “conduct of life” was alien to the Pietism of the Reformed Church; its dominant note is awe rather than trust in God.³² Stilling therefore follows rather the path of Lutheran Pietism.

The hymns adopted by the Lutheran Church, which celebrate the Divine Providence, furnish the clearest proof of what, in this Church’s view, constitutes personal and social piety. I should become tedious, I fear, were I not to limit myself to the hymns of Paul Gerhardt in bringing out the characteristic features of these writers’ circle of thought. In a chronological series of hymns, covering what lies between birth and death, Gerhardt gives repeated expression to that special faith in Providence which brings every experience of joy and sorrow under the goodness of God. In this series there likewise appears a thankful acknowledgment of redemption through Christ, as one item among others. But this does not in the least mean that, apart from redemption, the poet is convinced of Divine Providence as an object of natural cognition, as was assumed by the theologians. On the contrary, every hymn of the kind is written from the standpoint of redemption through Christ as an incontestable presupposition—a fact which is sufficiently indicated even by such slight allusions as those contained in saying that “God is my God,” or that “I am His child.” The numerous imitations of the Psalms to be found among Gerhardt’s hymns hardly admitted of any other kind of character. But in two hymns it becomes palpably evident that for him fellowship with God through Christ is the true basis of his knowledge of God’s general Providence, and that reconciliation is the fountain of that religious sense of freedom in which the soul enjoys salvation. I refer to the hymn, Warum sollt’ ich mich denn grämen? hab’ ich doch Christum noch; wer will mir den nehmen? and the hymn drawn from Rom. viii. : Ist Gott für mich, so trete gleich alles wider mich. True, the scholastic conception of justification is not echoed by any of these hymns; and, indeed, I do not know how that conception would look in a poetical guise. But who can deny that these hymns form the classical expression of the practical faith which takes its stand upon justification and reconciliation through Christ?

In what may be said to consist the difference between the spiritual poems of Gellert and those of Paul Gerhardt? It would be a great mistake to regard the later poet merely as a representative of Rationalism. On the contrary, as regards dogma he is absolutely orthodox, and his hymns dedicated to the great Christian festivals express his agreement with the traditional views of Christ’s birth, death, resurrection, and exaltation to lordship over the world, with great warmth and indisputable sincerity. Now alongside of these hymns we find others which praise God as the Governor of the world and the gracious Ruler of human fortunes: they, too, commend themselves to us by their freshness of feeling and the earnestness of their trust in God. But Gellert’s Christianity issues from the school of dogmatic theology; and in the tradition of this school the truth of God’s government of the world and special Providence simply stands on the same level with the truth of His reconciliation through Christ in order to the forgiveness of sins. The one is an article of faith, and so is the other. But the truth of God’s Providence is not merely claimed by Dogmatics as a part of Revelation; it is also declared to be a product of natural cognition.³³ Now it would be inconsistent with the character of poetry if, in the hymns celebrating the Divine Providence and government of the world, we were given a reflective treatment of either source of knowledge; and this is the less to be expected, since even the series Ehre Gottes aus der Natur definitely follows the model of the Psalms. But the want of connection between these hymns and those which deal with the history of redemption is unmistakable; so much so, that if the latter are put aside, the poet who wrote the former might actually be a Deist. This impression, however, is due to the fact that Gellert’s hymns on the Providence of God lack that positive background of reconciliation from which Gerhardt draws his peace - pervaded view of the world. A second feature of the difference between the two is this, that Gellert’s mind is in process of transition from the dogmatic orthodoxy, in which he had been educated, to Rationalism; for to some extent he mixes up incentives to virtue with his treatment of God’s redeeming grace, and to some extent subordinates experiences of this Divine grace to these incentives.³⁴ It might be said, indeed, that the instances I have cited are not dogmatically erroneous, inasmuch as our assurance of forgiveness is to be trusted only provided we are at the same time devoting ourselves to moral activity; since, too, the elements of experience through which we become certain of Divine pardon through Christ belong to the active life. In general, indeed, it is clear that devotion and Dogmatics are guided by different interests. In devotion we look at ourselves altogether in the light of subjection to God; and every thought, be it never so limited, which is given to our personal activity, interrupts devotion. On the other hand, a hymn like the second quoted below is not a religious poem at all, for it depicts the independent moral activity of the saint. The fact that such moral reflections are thought identical with devotion betrays that intermingling of religion and morality which is characteristic of Rationalism. But this is still far beyond Gerhardt’s horizon.

This is not the place to revert to the rise of Rationalism (vol. i. p. 366), but I cannot refrain from observing that the position taken up by Gellert is not favourable to the hypothesis that Rationalism is simply an apostasy from dogmatic belief. For in his personal convictions Gellert combines elements which subsequently fell apart everywhere; and that he does not interpret the general providence of God in the light of

Is bliss then mine even here through faith prevailing ? Secure my crown ‘gainst every foe assailing ? One day shall I within these courts supernal, Gain life eternal ?

Yes, if I stray from virtue’s pathway never, Fight faith’s good fight, keep watch and pray for ever : Since Jesus lives, my victory stands assured, As now procured.”

On the other hand we read, p. 128—

“His peace alone is great, who aye God’s way pursueth, Vile passions yield before his zeal; He fights, he knows God’s prize which to the strife accrueth, Rejoices in his virtue leal.

Ever before his eyes and in his heart God reigneth, A daily suppliant at the throne; His faults he oft repents, his sins remission gaineth Through grace of Jesus Christ alone.”

reconciliation through Christ, is to be laid to the charge of orthodox Dogmatics. When the theology of the Aufklärung, however, renounced dogma in order to place the moral character of Christianity in an untroubled light, it yet kept its foot firmly planted upon faith in providence as the properly religious function. The emphasis with which this truth was brought to the front as the expression of religion is enough to refute the supposition that we have here at work the theoretical reflection which elsewhere dominates this movement. The faith in providence which Rationalism proclaimed before and after Kant, is a continuation of the subjective Christianity to which Luther originally gave expression.³⁵ It is true, indeed, that Rationalism makes an alteration in the form and contents of this function. For one thing, we have the erroneous belief that the love of God is a truth of Natural Religion (vol. i. p. 403), and thus the acknowledgment of God’s Providence is robbed of its connection of reconciliation through Christ. A further consequence of this is that surrender to God’s will takes on an altered tinge of sentiment. What intensity and courageousness of feeling are theirs who take for their own the declaration of Paul that nothing, neither life, nor death, things present nor things to come, can shake the believer, to whom everything belongs as his possession! The feeling which accompanies the Aufklärung faith in providence, on the other hand, is in many cases trivial, weak, sentimental. Lastly, from the reason indicated above, it follows that the Aufklärung became entangled afresh in the Old Testament dilemma between merit and felicity, and could only solve it by postulating compensations in the future life; while the Christian consciousness of reconciliation already transcends the antinomy of merit and happiness in every moment of the present life.

Unfortunately German theology, in its reaction from Rationalism, has almost entirely failed to appropriate, in a comprehensive and genuine way, that whole circle of thought which so unfolds into the doctrine of justification by faith, as to become the basis of religious independence of the world through trust in the Father of Jesus Christ. Schleiermacher limits himself to expressing in the conception of reconciliation—the second characteristic of Christ’s work, redemption being the first—the abrogation, for those who are redeemed, of the penal significance of evil (vol. i. p. 515). This is to do no more than add to the doctrine of the work of Christ a feature which older divines had appended as an incidental note to the doctrine of the punishment of sin. Nitzsch,³⁶ on the other hand, touches on the subject in its entire range; and it is all the more to be regretted that he has not developed it in detail from the subjective point of view, as might have been expected from the plan of his work. Recent theologians, so far as they have been guided by the form of Lutheran Dogmatics in the seventeenth century, were bound to miss the connection between justification by faith and the religious functions described above. Now we might expect that these functions would find their place in Ethics, especially when such theologians as Harless mean by Ethics an exposition of Christian self-knowledge and of our knowledge of subjective Christianity. But in the Christian Ethics of the writer named I have not found the least indication of how the believer knows himself to be a child of God, or what view of the world and estimate of self follow from justification and reconciliation. This topic appears to find a place neither in Dogmatics nor in Ethics; probably because it ought rightly to be discussed in both. This Martensen admits,³⁷ though strangely enough he makes it a consequence of the doctrine of election. He describes the elect as the real foci which reveal the Divine Providence, and in illustration of this view he quotes Rom. viii. 28-39. But he fails to trace prayer back to this connection, and he ignores the fact that it is the thought of their justification, not the thought of their election, which Paul makes the basis of the assurance which raises believers superior to all things. Ch. Fr. Schmid,³⁸ on the other hand, finds a place for the doctrine of Divine sonship in Christian Ethics. Here he brings in resignation, thankfulness, and trust in God, then prayer, and finally humility, as the functions of the Christian life, and lays down their scriptural basis. It is unessential for our purpose to ask whether the particular virtues of Christian self-preservation and self-culture ought rightly to be derived, as is done by Schmid, from those religious functions. But that he should have dealt with the subject as an ethical one, proves how well founded his reputation was as a Biblical theologian in the best sense. Hofmann, too, shows his independence of the forms of theological tradition by giving a place to the religious functions in his Schriftbeweis. In the 7th Division, 2nd Half, §§ 2–4 of that work, he describes the Christian’s attitude towards God as consisting in this, that he proves his freedom by his love and humility towards God, and proves his blessedness by his joy in God and thankfulness to Him; further, as concerns his own human nature, he proves his freedom by his hatred of sin and his faith in God, and he proves his blessedness by the pain he feels regarding death and by his hope toward God. This scheme is likewise applied to the Christian’s relation to the world, thus—humble love for the world and thankful joy in it are combined with hatred of sin and pain at it, and with faith and hope for the world. Finally, to these there is appended prayer, as the manifestation of this disposition in direct relation to God. In this scheme homeless religious functions find a resting-place. But they are bound up with things of an alien character, such as hatred of sin, and pain felt in view of death—which last, besides, is put forward as a proof of blessedness. On the other hand, we miss a statement of the truth that the Christian’s relation to the cross of suffering is the reverse of that of the natural man. Now what was wanted was that the scriptural proof for these statements of Hofmann should be drawn, fully and correctly, from the ideas of the apostles. But to this side of the matter Hofmann has failed to give an adequate representation.

In defining justification or reconciliation, and in fixing their relations, I have made use of materials drawn partly from the dogmatic theologians of the classical age, partly from the Reformers and the Lutheran symbols. It has been impossible to combine and arrange these materials without modifying particular aspects to which importance has always been attached from the very outset. Conceptions, which we find alongside of each other in the pages of the theologians without correlation, have at the same time either been reduced one to the other or sifted out altogether. But on the whole the doctrine of justification set forth in these three chapters stands in the line of direct continuity with the intention of the Reformers and the standards of the Lutheran Church. Especially is this the case as regards the practical aspect of justification, its significance as explaining the peculiar character of that view of the world and of life which we owe to the Reformation. On this point we get no help from the theology which is haunted by the prejudice that it must follow the symbolical books at every step. And yet it has shown itself, and that not merely in the present case, very indifferent to the standards of the Reformation.

Accordingly, 1. The problem of personal assurance is insoluble if it be conceived in a form which represents the subject as passive.

2. Personal assurance can be attained neither through the active “conflict of penitence” (Busskampf) nor by observation of the moral activity which accompanies it.

3. Personal assurance, springing from justification, is experienced in and through trust in God in all the situations of life, and especially in patience, by him who through his faith in Christ incorporates himself into the community of believers.

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← Chapter II. The General Relations of Justification · Contents · Chapter IV. The Doctrine of God →

Footnotes

1. Melanchthon, Loci theol. C. R. xxi. pp. 749—751: “Si fides non est fiducia intuens Christum et acquiescens propter Christum, certe non applicamus nobis eius beneficium. Necesse est igitur fide intelligi fiduciam applicantem nobis beneficium Christi… . Estque fides virtus apprehendens et applicans promissiones et quietans corda.” Apol. C. A. iii. 27: “Sola fides, quae intuetur in promissionem et sentit ideo certo statuendum esse, quod deus ignoscat, vincit terrores peccati et mortis.” 178: “Piae conscientiae vident in hac doctrina uberrimam consolationem sibi proponi, quod videlicet credere et certo statuere debent, quod propter Christum habent placatum patrem.” 180: “Si ideo sentire debent, se habere deum placatum, quia diligunt, quia legem faciunt, semper dubitare necesse est, utrum habeamus deum placatum … Quando igitur acquiescet, quando erit pacata conscientia?” ↩

2. Loci com. 59: “In hac promissione debent pavidae conscientiae quaerere reconciliationem et iustificationem; hac promissione debent se sustentare ac certo statuere, quod habent deum propitium propter Christum, propter suam promissionem.” 141: “Non est hominis, praesertim in terroribus peccati, sine certo verbo dei statuere de voluntate dei, quod irasci desinat.” ↩

3. Loci com. 229: “Haec fides, de qua loquimur, exsistit in poentitentia. Et inter bona opera, inter tentationes et pericula confirmari et crescere debet, ut subinde certius apud nos statuamus, quod deus propter Christum respiciat nos, ignoscat nobis, exaudiat nos. Haec non discuntur sine magnis et multis certaminibus. Quoties recurrit conscientia, quoties sollicitat ad desperationem, cum ostendit aut vetera peccata aut nova aut immunditiem naturae! Hoc chirographum non deletur sine magno agone, ubi testatur experientia, quam difficilis res sit fides.” ↩

4. Loci com. 155: “Ut baptismus, ut coena domini sunt signa, quae subinde admonent, erigunt et confirmant pavidas mentes, ut credant firmius, remitti peccata, ita scripta et picta est eadem promissio in bonis operibus, ut haec opera admoneant nos, ut firmius credamus. Et qui non bene faciunt, non excitant se ad credendum; sed pii gaudent habere signa et testimonia tantae promissionis.” ↩

5. Corp. Ref.* iv. p. 200: “Quanquam in renatis semper crescere debent timor dei, poenitentia et humilitas et aliae virtutes, cum renovatio sit imperfecta et haereat in eis ingens infirmitas, tamen docendum est, ut qui vere poenitent semper fide certissima statuant, se propter mediatorem Christum deo placere … Quoniam autem perfecta certitudo in hac imbecillitate non est, suntque multae infirmae et pavidae conscientiae, quae cum gravi saepe dubitatione luctantur, nemo est a gratia Christi propter eiusmodi infirmitatem excludendus. Sed convenit tales diligenter adhortari, ut iis dubitationibus promissiones Christi fortiter opponant et augeri sibi fidem sedulis precibus orent.” On this extract cf. the admirable treatise by Theod. Brieger, De formulae concordiae Ratisbonensis origine atque indole, 1870; also, by the same author, Cardinal Contarini’s Doctrine of Justification, in Stud. und Krit. 1872, H. 1. Contarini is the Romish theologian who, as the Articles of Regensburg show, was most successful in transporting himself exactly to the point of view and the terminology of the Reformation; thus he drew the most advanced inferences which could be reached, by one who remained Roman Catholic, from the experiences of grace enjoyed by a Bernard. But the Regensburg Formula shows clearly by the proposition: fides iustificans est illa fides, quae est efficax per caritatem,* that it was a compromise intended to be explained in either of two ways. For while the context of this proposition suggests a Protestant interpretation, yet this does not exclude the Catholic interpretation; for according to mediaeval ideas in this domain of thought, it is possible to alternate between the thought of “making righteous” (Gerechtmachung) through fides caritate formata, and the trustful apprehension of the Divine compassion. Now since Contarini, as Brieger proves, while expressing the latter experience in a form which comes near Reformed doctrine, understands iustificatio also in the real sense of making righteousness, he has not abandoned the platform of Catholic dogma. But thereby an obscure veil is drawn over his approximation to the Protestants which shows it to be less valuable than Brieger represents. For by ignoring the kindred-spirited predecessors of his hero, he is led to regard as Protestant in character a number of Contarini’s expressions which are also in agreement with Bernard and Thomas. ↩

6. E.g. by Berthold of Chiemsee; cf. Lämmer, Vortridentinische Theologie, p. 161. ↩

7. Enchiridion Coloniense (1538), fol. 170: “Ad iustificationem hominis omnino requiritur ut homo credat non tantum generaliter, quod propter Christum vere poenitentibus remittantur peccata, sed etiam, quod ipsimet homini credenti remissa sint propter Christum per fidem.” Cf. Brieger in Ersch and Gruber, Allg. Encyclopaedia, Erste Section xcii. p. 218 ff. ↩

8. Summa theol. ii. 2, qu. 18, art. 4. ↩

9. Cf. Sarpi, Histoire du Concile de Trente (trans. by Amelot), pp. 188—190; Gerhard, Confessio Catholica, pp. 1501—1513. ↩

10. Chemnitz, l.c., p. 140 (vol. i. p. 153); Bellarminus, de iustificatione, lib. iii. cap. 2. ↩

11. Trid., Sess. vi. Decr. de iustificatione, cap. 9. ↩

12. Symbolik, p. 195: “Certainly, the Spirit witnesses to our spirit that we are the children of God; but this witness is of so gentle a nature, and requires such tender nurture, that the believer, feeling as he does his own unworthiness, draws near to it only timidly, and hardly dares to receive it into his consciousness. It is a holy joy, which hides its face in its own presence, and would remain a secret from itself… . Moreover, the same holds true in many other instances of the spiritual life. Innocence which becomes conscious of itself is usually lost in the very act, and reflection on the question whether a deed which one is on the point of doing is pure, not infrequently makes it impure. The life of the true saints unfolds itself quiet and still; they do not call themselves blessed on that account, but leave that to God.” ↩

13. Loci communes, p. 689: “Fidei sensus non est fides; hoc est, actus ille reflexivus in ipsam fidem, quo credo me credere, non est ipsa fides, sed potius sensus quidam fidei.” P. 716: “Quemadmodum dum homo deliquium animi patitur, aut in ecstasin rapitur, sensu omnino non privatur (ubi enim vita est animalis, ibi sensus est, sed hoc tantum incommodi patitur, quod non sentit se sentire), ita etiam fit, dum homo fidelis tentationibus sic abripitur, ut extra se positus videatur. Non desinit quidem ille vita spirituali vivere, et sensu, qui cum vita hac indivulso nexu coniunctus est, praeditus esse, sed hoc mali patitur, quod non sentit se sentire.” ↩

14. As by Jodocus van Lodensteyn, Geschichte des Pietismus, i. p. 158. ↩

15. Op. cit., ii. p. 250. ↩

16. On the Divine Word as the Light which leads to Peace, 5th ed., 1869. ↩

17. E.g. Commentarius in ep. ad Galatas (1535), ed. Erl. tom. i. p. 186. ↩

18. Apol. C. A. v. 46: “Mortificatio (=contritio) significat veros terrores, sicut sunt morientium, quos sustinere natura non posset, nisi erigeretur fide. ↩

19. Geschichte des Pietismus, ii. p. 113. ↩

20. Semler, Lebensbeschreibung, i. p. 48 ff.; Ph. D. Burk, Die Rechtfertigung, i. p. 152 ff. ; Albert Knapp, Lebensbild, pp. 133, 140, 166, 179. ↩

21. Geschichte des Pietismus, ii. p. 538. Knapp, too, testifies to the same thing in his own way, op. cit., p. 166. His ceaseless conflicts in prayer had brought him only an insignificant gain, when one afternoon it seemed as though a gentle voice were urging him to work. At the end of an hour of quiet study his heart overflowed with the blessed peace of God, so that with triumphant adoration he gives vent to his wonder in the question: How is it possible, my God, that Thou givest to me such heavenly peace in the midst of this dry work? Thence he draws the doctrine that the prayers even of an awakened man are evil and vain without work, thorough fidelity to his vocation, and honest industry. ↩

22. Consilia latina, i. p. 32: “Ad sensum fidei internum provocare, res ambigua est. Quoties enim eo destituentur, qui fide valent maxime, et in ipsa sua imbecillitate, cum se tentati fide vacuos vociferentur, robore coelesti conservantur, ut etiam vincant. Si iam ex sensu iudicium, desperabunt aut desperare iubebuntur ac morti adiudicabuntur, qui vivebant ac vivere debebant … Cum ergo a priori, ut loquuntur, ea dicernere nequeamus, a posteriori cognitio nostra capienda est, videlicet a fructibus arboris indoles agnoscenda.” Cf. Geschichte des Pietismus, ii. p. 97 ff. ↩

23. Geschichte des Pietismus, i. p. 112. ↩

24. Apol. C. A. ii. 8: “Decalogus requirit non solum externa opera civilia, quae ratio utcunque efficere potest, sed etiam requirit alia longe supra rationem posita, scilicet vere timere deum, vere diligere deum, vere invocare deum, vere statuere, quod deus exaudiat, et exspectare auxilium dei in morte, in omnibus afflictionibus, denique requirit obedientiam erga deum in morte et omnibus afflictionibus, ne has fugiamus aut aversemur, cum deus imponit.” 18. “Ratio nihil facit, nisi quaedam civilia opera, interim neque timet deum neque credit se deo curae esse” (the same expression as in C. A. xx. 24, 25). ↩

25. Enarrationes in Genesin. Opp. exeg. lat. Erl. i. p. 133: “Deus Adae verbum, cultum et religionem dedit nudissimam, purissimam et simplicissimam. Non enim praecipit mactationem taurorum, non fumum thuris, non vota, non ieiunia, non alias afflictiones corporis: hoc tantum vult, ut laudet deum, ut gratias ei agat, ut laetetur in domino, et ei in hoc obediat, ne ex vetita arbore comedat. Huius cultus reliquias habemus per Christum restitutas … quod nos quoque laudamus et gratias ei agimus de omni benedictione spirituali et corporali.” 142: “Sophistae cum de peccato originis loquuntur, tantum de misera et foeda libidine seu concupiscentia loquuntur. Sed p. o. est vere totus lapsus naturae humanae, quod est intellectus obscuratus, ut non amplius agnoscamus deum et voluntatem eius, ut non animadvertamus opera dei; deinde quod etiam voluntas mire est depravata, ut non fidamus misericordiae dei et non metuamus deum; sed securi, omisso verbo et voluntate dei, sequimur concupiscentiam et impetus carnis.” Cf. pp. 77, 78, 82 on the content of the image of God. ↩

26. One statement seems inconsistent with this. We read, iii. 228: “Ideo iustificamur, ut iusti bene operari et obedire legi incipiamus. Ideo regeneramur et spiritum sanctum accipimus, ut nova vita habeat nova opera, novos affectus, timorem, dilectionem dei, odium concupiscentiae,” etc. 229: “Haec fides, de qua loquimur, exsistit in poenitentia. Et inter bona opera, inter tentationes et pericula confirmari et crescere debet, ut subinde certius apud nos statuamus, quod deus propter Christum respiciat nos, ignoscat nobis, exaudiat nos.” Yet, as the second statement, agreeing with the first, shows, even in this connection Melanchthon means merely the Commandments of the first Table as the aim and end of iustificatio or regeneratio. The nova opera are only to be understood as instances of that trust in God and patience which are opposed by the tentationes. Through the overcoming of tentationes, by means of such religious actions, faith is represented as growing stronger even in its direct relation to the forgiveness of sins. ↩

27. Cf. Theologie und Metaphysik, p. 42; 2nd ed., p. 45. ↩

28. Metaphysik und Dogmatik, p. 7. Cf. the first edition of this volume (Germ.), p. 531. ↩

29. See Geschichte des Pietismus, vol. i. p. 46 ff., for the features of this style of piety as described by St. Bernard (vol. i. p. 116). ↩

30. Canon of Canterbury, died 1684. Traité de la paix de l’âme et du contentement de l’esprit, Amsterdam, 1675. Of the five books of this work, the first, de la paix avec dieu, has to do with our subject. The contents of the others are ethical. A reprint of this treatise appeared in Paris in 1840. ↩

31. On the other side, it is still instructive to read Gottl. Wernsdorf, Aufrichtige und in Gottes Wort gegründete Meinung von der mystischen Theologie, Wittenberg, 1729. Cf. Geschichte des Pietismus, vol. ii. ↩

32. Cf. Geschichte des Pietismus, vol. i. p. 309. ↩

33. Baier, i. 5. 3: “Dari providentiam divinam, praeterquam quod ex lumine naturae constat, ex scriptura clarissimum est.” ↩

34. In his collected works (1775), vol. ii. pp. 199, 200, the following strophes are to be found in the beautiful Passion - hymn, Lord strengthen me, Thy Passion to remember:— “Eternal Joy! For us Thou wast reviled, Even me Thy precious blood hath reconciled, Thou on the Cross, for me a free oblation, Earn’dst my salvation. ↩

35. Cf. J. F. W. Jerusalem, “Fortgesetzte Betrachtungen über die vornehmsten Wahrheiten der Religion,” Posthumous Works, Pt. I. 1792. Heinr. Sander, “Ueber die Vorsehung,” three Parts (2nd ed. of Parts I. and II.), 1784, 1785. Especially Wegscheider, Institutiones theologicae, ii. 5. 107. ↩

36. System der Christlichen Lehre (6th ed.), § 144: “Faith in the name of the Lord, as the precondition of all acceptance with God and all blessedness, always includes the adoration of the God of grace and truth, and in every case consists in an abandonment by self-feeling of the feeling of one’s own power and worth and right, and in recourse instead to the ever attested mediatorship of God, and is not merely related to our original trust in God’s invisible action, but produces from itself, even in the presence of calamity and the trials of need and death, all trust and fidelity and comfort.” ↩

37. Christliche Dogmatik, p. 427. ↩

38. Christliche Sittenlehre, p. 638 ff. ↩