I NOW proceed to show that though we are justified, as St. Paul says, by faith, and, as our Articles and Homilies say, by faith only, nevertheless we are justified, as St. James says, by works; and to show in what sense this latter doctrine is true, and that, not only in the case of works of righteousness, but also of ritual services, such as Baptism, as St. Paul and St. Peter teach. Of course I do not forget St. Paul’s declaration that “a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the Law,” but he does not thereby assert that justification is independent of the deeds of the Gospel, as a few remarks will suffice to show.
Now, I say at first sight it is no contradiction of St. Paul to assert that we are justified by faith with evangelical works, unless St. James contradicts him also. Those who object to the doctrine of justification through good works, must first object to St James’s Epistle, which they sometimes have done; on the other hand, the temper of Christian reverence which will lead the disciple of St. Paul to submit to St. James, is also a spirit of charity towards those who speak with St. James, from a fear lest in condemning them it should resist an Apostle. With those then who judge severely of the maintainers of justification by works, I would expostulate thus:—Why be so bent upon forcing two inspired teachers into a real and formal discordance of doctrine? If you could prove ever so cogently that when St. Paul said, “deeds of the Law,” he meant to include Christian works, you would not have advanced one step towards interpreting St. James, or impairing his authority; you would have only plunged into a more serious perplexity. Difficult if it be to account for St. Paul insisting on faith, and St. James at a later date insisting on works, surely it is a greater difficulty when it is insisted on that St. Paul excludes the very works which St. James includes. Is our Gospel like the pretended revelation of the Arabian impostor, a variable rule, the latter portion contradicting the former? Let men speak out then: what is their latent theory, which is sufficient to reconcile their minds to this primâ facie difficulty, and inspirits them, under cover of a presumed contrariety in Scripture, to move forward against Catholic and Apostolic truth?
I believe the latent view to be this: that the Scripture question was settled once for all three centuries since, when the words of both the Holy Apostles were harmonized and merged in the formula of “justification by faith only;” which henceforth, in spite of the supposed liberty of private judgment, is practically a dogma to Protestants, as the canons of the Tridentine Council are binding on the faith of Roman Catholics; and further, that because our Articles and Homilies contain the phrase “by faith only,” therefore they must mean by that phrase all that the Protestant schools have meant by it. But surely, while we accept fully this form of speech, as has been done in the foregoing Lectures, we may reasonably maintain that an assent to the doctrine that faith alone justifies, does not at all preclude the doctrine of works justifying also. If indeed I said that works justify in the same sense as faith only justifies, this would be a contradiction in terms; but faith only may justify in one sense, good works in another,—and this is all that I here maintain. After all, does not Christ only justify? How is it that the doctrine of faith justifying does not interfere with our Lord’s being the sole justifier? It will of course be replied that our Lord is the meritorious cause, and faith the means; that faith justifies in a different and subordinate sense. As then Christ alone justifies, in the sense in which He justifies, yet faith also justifies us in its own sense, so works, whether moral or ritual, may justify us in their own respective senses, though in the sense in which faith justifies, it only justifies. The only question is what is that sense in which works justify, so as not to interfere with faith only justifying? It may indeed turn out on inquiry, that the sense alleged will not hold, either as being unscriptural or for any other reason; but, whether so or not, at any rate the apparent inconsistency of language should not startle men; nor should they so promptly condemn those who, though they do not use their language, use St. James’s. Indeed, is not this argument, as has been suggested already, the very weapon of the Arians in their warfare against the Son of God? They said, Christ is not God, because the Father is called the “Only God.”
2.
I might seem just now to grant that St. Paul’s words, at first sight, countenanced the extreme Protestant view of them; but this was not at all my meaning. The truth is, we put a particular sense upon those words, from having heard it again and again assigned to them, and thus every other interpretation comes to seem unnatural. The state of the case is as follows:—The Jews sought to be justified by works done in their own unaided strength, by the Law of Nature, as it was set before them in the Mosaic Covenant; and the Apostle shows them a more excellent way. He proposes to them the Law of Faith, and says that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the Law; moreover, that in thus teaching, so far from making the Law void through faith, He establishes it. He means then to speak to the Jews as follows:—“Throw yourselves on God’s mercy, surrender yourselves to Him; the Law in which you pride yourselves, holy as it is in itself, has been to you but an occasion of sin. You are in bondage; you have no real sanctity, no high aims, no inward growth, no power of pleasing God. Instead of having done anything good, you have everything to be forgiven. You must begin over again; you must begin in a new way, by faith; faith only, nothing short of faith, can help you on to a justifying obedience. But faith is fully equal to enabling you to fulfil the Law. Far then from invalidating the Law by the doctrine of faith, I establish it.” Now I do not ask whether there is no other possible interpretation of his words besides this (though I do think this the only natural one), but whether, at least, it is not natural, whatever becomes of others; and then, whether it is not perfectly consistent with St. James’s doctrine. It concerns those who are dissatisfied with it to assign one equally unexceptionable in itself, equally consistent with the rest of Scripture.