I HAVE hitherto been employed upon a view of justification which happens to be very extensively professed in our Church at this day, either systematically or not; and has great influence, as a system, in consequence of the many religious men who hold it without system. I cannot for an instant believe that so many would adhere to it, if they understood what it really means when brought out as distinct from other views on the subject, and made consistent with itself. They profess it, because it is what is put into their hands, and they graft it upon a temper of mind in many cases far higher and holier than it.
Now I come to consider the opposite scheme of doctrine, which is not unsound or dangerous in itself, but in a certain degree incomplete,—truth, but not the whole truth; viz., that justification consists in love, or sanctity, or obedience, or “renewal of the Holy Ghost.” 1 In describing it then, I am describing not a perversion, but what Saints and Martyrs have in substance held in every age, though not apart from other truths which serve to repress those tendencies to error, which it, in common with every other separate portion of the Scripture creed, contains, not in itself, but when exclusively cherished by the human mind. But in the Roman schools, it has often been thus detached and isolated 2; to use the technical language which even the Council of Trent has adopted, spiritual renewal is said to be the “unica formalis causa,” the one and only true description of justification; and this seems to be the critical difference between those schools and such divines, whether of the Ancient Church or our own, as seem most nearly to agree with them.—Now, however, to describe it in itself, that is, so far as it may be considered as common to the Fathers, the Romanists, and (to say the very least) the greater number of our own writers.
2.
It is affirmed then, that since man fell, he has lain under one great need, in which all other needs are included, in supplying which all blessings are secured; and which, in proportion as he has understood his real state, he has ever desired, ever struggled after, in vain. He is by nature born in sin, and consequently the child of wrath; and he needs a new birth unto righteousness, that he may become the child of God. He needs a destruction of the old Adam, of the body of original death, and thereby a restoration to the light of God’s countenance. What has made him hateful to Infinite Purity, what exposes him to death eternal, is disobedience; take away that disobedience, and you take away his guilt, peril, misery, all that needs taking away; and in proportion as you rid him of the one, you rid him of the other. This then is really our one burden; not merely a sense of guilt, or guilt itself, but that which is the cause both of guilt and the sense of guilt. Man did not become guilty except by becoming sinful; he does not become innocent except by becoming holy. God cannot, from His very nature, look with pleasure and favour upon an unholy creature, or justify or count righteous one who is not righteous. Cleanness of heart and spirit, obedience by word and deed, this alone in us can be acceptable to God; that is, this alone can constitute our justification. And as certain is it, we cannot acquire it for ourselves; but, if it is to be ours, it must come from God only. The one thing we need is the ability to please God, or to be righteous; and it is God’s gift. As His gift, good men have at all times sought it; as His gift, it was promised under the Law; and as His gift, it is possessed by the regenerate under the Gospel.
Till the Gospel came, with its manifold gifts of grace, there was a contrariety and enmity between the Divine Law and the heart of man: they confronted each other, the one all light, the other all corruption. They ran parallel to each other, not converging; the Law detecting, condemning, terrifying, not influencing except for the worse; the human heart secretly acquiescing, but not loving, not obeying. In consequence we were unable to please God by what we did, that is, we were unrighteous; for by righteousness is meant obedience such as to be acceptable. We needed then a justification, or making righteous; and this might be vouchsafed to us in two ways, either by our Maker’s dispensing with that exact obedience which the Law required, or by His enabling us to fulfil it. In either, but in no other conceivable way, could our moral state, which by nature is displeasing, become pleasing to God, our unrighteousness become righteousness. Now, according to the doctrine I am engaged in expounding, the remedy lies in the latter alternative only; not in lowering the Law, much less in abolishing it, but in bringing up our hearts to it; in preserving, in raising its standard, and in refashioning them, and so (as it were) attuning them to its high harmonies. As regards the past indeed, since it cannot literally be undone, a dispensation or pardon is all that can be given us; but for the present and future, if a gift is to be vouchsafed us, and we may anticipate what it should be, this is what we have to pray for,—not to have the Holy Law taken away, not to be merely accounted to do what we do not do, not a nominal change, a nominal righteousness 3, an external blessing, but one penetrating inwards into our heart and spirit, joints and marrow, pervading us with a real efficacy, and wrapping us round in its fulness; not a change merely in God’s dealings towards us, like the pale and wan sunshine of a winter’s day, but (if we may seek it) the possession of Himself, of His substantial grace to touch and heal the root of the evil, the fountain of our misery, our bitter heart and its inbred corruption. As we can conceive God blessing nothing but what is holy, so all our notions of blessing centre in holiness as a necessary foundation. Holiness is the thing, the internal state, because of which blessing comes. He may bless, He may curse, according to His mercy or our deserts; but if He blesses, surely it is by making holy; if He counts righteous, it is by making righteous; if He justifies, it is by renewing; if He reconciles us to Himself, it is not by annihilating the Law, but by creating in us new wills and new powers for the observance of it 4.