“I can’t believe I understand you,” said Charles: “you say that to have faith is to seize Christ’s merits; and that we have them, if we will but seize them. But surely not every one who seizes them gains them; because dissolute men, who never have a dream of thorough repentance or real hatred of sin, would gladly seize and appropriate them, if they might do so. They would like to get to heaven for nothing. Faith, then, must be some particular kind of apprehension; what kind?—good works cannot be mistaken, but an ‘apprehension’ may. What, then, is a true apprehension? what is faith?”

“What need, my dear friend,” answered Freeborn, “of knowing metaphysically what true faith is, if we have it and enjoy it? I do not know what bread is, but I eat it; do I wait till a chemist analyses it? No; I eat it, and I feel the good effects afterwards. And so let us be content to know, not what faith is, but what it does, and enjoy our blessedness in possessing it.”

“I really don’t want to introduce metaphysics,” said Charles, “but I will adopt your own image. Suppose I suspected the bread before me to have arsenic in it, or merely to be unwholesome, would it be wonderful if I tried to ascertain how the fact stood?”

“Did you do so this morning at breakfast?” asked Freeborn.

“I did not suspect my bread,” answered Charles.

“Then why suspect faith?” asked Freeborn.

“Because it is, so to say, a new substance”—Freeborn sighed—“because I am not used to it, nay, because I suspect it. I must say suspect it; because, though I don’t know much about the matter, I know perfectly well, from what has taken place in my father’s parish, what excesses this doctrine may lead to, unless it is guarded. You say that it is a doctrine for the poor; now they are very likely to mistake one thing for another; so indeed is every one. If, then, we are told, that we have but to apprehend Christ’s merits, and need not trouble ourselves about any thing else; that justification has taken place, and works will follow; that all is done, and that salvation is complete, while we do but continue to have faith; I think we ought to be pretty sure that we have faith, real faith, a real apprehension, before we shut up our books and make holiday.”

Freeborn was secretly annoyed that he had got into an argument, or pained, as he would express it, at the pride of Charles’s natural man, or the blindness of his carnal reason; but there was no help for it, he must give him an answer.

“There are, I know, many kinds of faith,” he said; “and of course you must be on your guard against mistaking false faith for true faith. Many persons, as you most truly say, make this mistake; and most important is it—all important I should say—to go right. First, it is evident that it is not mere belief in facts, in the being of a God, or in the historical event that Christ has come and gone. Nor is it the submission of the reason to mysteries; nor, again, is it that sort of trust which is required for exercising the gift of miracles. Nor is it knowledge and acceptance of the contents of the Bible. I say, it is not knowledge, it is not assent of the intellect, it is not historical faith, it is not dead faith: true justifying faith is none of these—it is seated in the heart and affections.” He paused, then added: “Now, I suppose, for practical purposes, I have described pretty well what justifying faith is.”

Charles hesitated: “By describing what it is not you mean,” said he; “justifying faith, then, is, I suppose, living faith.”

“Not so fast,” answered Freeborn.

“Why,” said Charles, “if it’s not dead faith, it’s living faith.”

“It’s neither dead faith nor living,” said Freeborn, “but faith, simple faith, which justifies. Luther was displeased with Melancthon for saying that living and operative faith justified. I have studied the question very carefully.”

“Then do you tell me,” said Charles, “what faith is, since I do not explain it correctly. For instance, if you said (what you don’t say), that faith was submission of the reason to mysteries, or acceptance of Scripture as an historical document, I should know perfectly well what you meant; that is information: but when you say, that faith which justifies is an apprehension of Christ, that it is not living faith, or fruitful faith, or operative, but a something which in fact and actually is distinct from these, I confess I feel perplexed.”

Freeborn wished to be out of the argument. “Oh,” he said, “if you really once experienced the power of faith—how it changes the heart, enlightens the eyes, gives a new spiritual taste, a new sense to the soul; if you once knew what it was to be blind, and then to see, you would not ask for definitions. Strangers need verbal descriptions, the heirs of the kingdom enjoy. Oh, if you could but be persuaded to put off high imaginations, to strip yourself of your proud self, and to experience in yourself the wonderful change, you would live in praise and thanksgiving, instead of argument and criticism.”

Charles was touched by his warmth; “But,” he said, “we ought to act by reason; and I don’t see that I have more, or so much, reason to listen to you, as to listen to the Roman Catholic, who tells me I cannot possibly have that certainty of faith before believing, which on believing will be divinely given me”.

“Surely,” said Freeborn, with a grave face, “you would not compare the spiritual Christian, such as Luther, holding his cardinal doctrine about justification, to any such formal, legal, superstitious devotee as Popery can make, with its carnal rites and quack remedies, which never really cleanse the soul or reconcile it to God?”

“I don’t like you to talk so,” said Reding; “I know very little about the real nature of Popery, but when I was a boy I was once, by chance, in a Roman Catholic chapel; and I really never saw such devotion in my life—the people all on their knees, and most earnestly attentive to what was going on. I did not understand what that was; but I am sure, had you been there, you never would have called their religion, be it right or wrong, an outward form or carnal ordinance.”

Freeborn said it deeply pained him to hear such sentiments, and to find that Charles was so tainted with the errors of the day, and he began, not with much tact, to talk of the Papal Antichrist, and would have got off to prophecy, had Charles said a word to afford fuel for discussion. As he kept silence, Freeborn’s zeal burnt out, and there was a break in the conversation.

After a time, Reding ventured to begin again.

“If I understand you,” he said, “faith carries its own evidence with it. Just as I eat my bread at breakfast without hesitation about its wholesomeness, so, when I have really faith, I know it beyond mistake, and need not look out for tests of it.”

“Precisely so,” said Freeborn; “you begin to see what I mean; you grow. The soul is enlightened to see that it has real faith.”

“But how,” asked Charles, “are we to rescue those from their dangerous mistake who think they have faith, while they have not? Is there no way in which they can find out that they are under a delusion?”

“It is not wonderful,” said Freeborn, “though there be no way. There are many self-deceivers in the world. Some men are self-righteous, trust in their works, and think they are safe when they are in a state of perdition; no formal rules can be given by which their reason might for certain detect their mistake. And so of false faith.”

“Well, it does seem to me wonderful,” said Charles, “that there is no natural and obvious warning provided against this delusion; wonderful that false faith should be so exactly like true faith that there is nothing to determine their differences from each other. Effects imply causes; if one apprehension of Christ leads to good works, and another does not, there must be something in the one which is not in the other. What is a false apprehension of Christ wanting in which a true apprehension has? The word apprehension is so vague; it conveys no definite idea to me, yet justification depends on it. Is a false apprehension, for instance, wanting in repentance and amendment?”

“No, no,” said Freeborn; “true faith is complete without conversion; conversion follows; but faith is the root.”

“Is it the love of God which distinguishes true faith from false?”

“Love?” answered Freeborn; “you should read what Luther says in his celebrated comment on the Galatians. He calls such a doctrine ‘pestilens figmentum,’ ‘diaboli portentum’; and cries out against the Papists, ‘Fereant sophistæ cum suâ maledictâ glossâ!’”

“Then it differs from false faith in nothing.”

“Not so,” said Freeborn; “it differs from it in its fruits: ‘By their fruits ye shall know them’.”

“This is coming round to the same point again,” said Charles; “fruits come after; but a man, it seems, is to take comfort in his justification before fruits come, before he knows that his faith will produce them.”

“Good works are the necessary fruits of faith,” said Freeborn; “so says the Article.”

Charles made no answer, but said to himself, “My good friend here certainly has not the clearest of heads”; then aloud, “Well, I despair of getting at the bottom of the subject”.

“Of course,” answered Freeborn, with an air of superiority, though in a mild tone, “it is a very simple principle, ‘Fides justificat ante et sine charitate’; but it requires a Divine light to embrace it.”

They walked awhile in silence; then, as the day was now closing in, they turned homewards, and parted company when they came to the Clarendon.