tend our comments, or increase our list of examples. Our main design, however, in citing opinions from Protestant divines on their vaunted doctrine of imputation, is to furnish the reader with some of the highest and best authorities in the English Church, on this grand and cardinal article of the Protestant Reformation.

With these views, therefore, we now close our citations from English divines, of other days, on this hinge or turning point of the Controversy. The selection which we have made will not be denied, we think, to be from among the highest and best authorities in their Church. We purpose, however, to notice also the peculiar reasonings of the Oxford Divines on this same vaunted doctrine of Protestant imputation.

We cannot, however, dismiss the subject without remarking, that we are aware it will be said by some, that the doctrine of a forensic or legal imputation is not the doctrine of the English Church, notwithstanding the undeniable fact of its zealous inculcation by many of her most distinguished divines. The determination of this question we submit to the judgment of our readers, by our appeal, as well to the authorities we have adduced on the subject, as to the general and acknowledged character and spirit of Protestant interpretation, respecting the tradition of our most holy faith.

We wish it, however, to be borne in mind, that our object was not to show that the doctrine in question was peculiar to the English Church; but, inasmuch as her Articles of Confession are so entirely wanting in instruction on many points of her belief, and, more especially,

tween his temporal humiliation under the law, and his unearthly and exalted condition in glory.

To those who have duly attended to this article of Christian belief it will not appear so strange, as it does to others, that the Church of Rome, while in her Liturgy she commemorates the separation of the species which was once made on the wood of the Cross according to the law, she also manifests, in the same rite, the unity of their substance, by her present discipline of giving it to the laity in one kind only, instead of two. Thus showing, before the consecration or change of the elements, the one sense in which the offering is representative, and, afterwards, the other, when the Victim himself is present in his human substance, whole, undivided, and entire, whether in the one kind or in the other.

on the manner in which the merits of the Atonement are applied to us, it was necessary, for this end, to have recourse to particular statements and expositions on the subject, by such of her divines as are most generally acknowledged to be of the highest authority, as rulers and doctors.

With regard to the other sects of Protestantism, the standards or confessions of the most prominent among them, are all very explicit on this principle of a legal imputation, in contradistinction from the characteristic or distinguishing principle of imputation, as set forth in the decisions and catechism of the Council of Trent. The former, in fact, constitutes the fundamental error of the reformed doctrine, or, in other words, the leading feature of the Protestant or anti-Catholic systems of faith and theological precept. We would, also, remind our readers, that the writers whom we have cited as supporting this doctrine, however they may differ from some of their brethren on other points, nevertheless preserve on this cardinal feature of the Protestant reform, amidst all its other variations of belief, a unanimity of sentiment and language too palpable to be mistaken or denied. In fact, the principle of Catholic imputation to us of the merits of Christ is so adverse to the Protestant theory, on this article, that there is not, we are free to say, an advocate of the latter, who can, consistently, support its necessary or logical consequences, without a concurrent and explicit abjuration of the former. And we confidently affirm, moreover, that there is not a single Protestant writer whatever to be met with, whether in or out of the establishment of the English Church, who does not in reality adhere, at least, to the main features of the imputative doctrine, as held and defined by the authorities we have adduced.

OXFORD DIVINES.

Even the Oxford Divines, who profess a decided difference of views on some points respecting the matter in question, as held by the writers we have referred to, nevertheless agree with them, on others, in such a manner

as virtually to deny the truth of Catholic imputation, and impugn its definitions by the Tridentine Council. Bishop Andrews, in particular, is called by them "one of our wisest doctors and rulers," and Dr. Pusey, by maintaining the same distinctions between justification and sanctification, in effect abjures the Catholic application of the atoning sacrifice, and, with the former, virtually adopts the self-same error of accounted righteousness. Between the two distinctive systems of the Protestant and the Catholic imputation of the justice of our divine Redeemer, there is, in fact, no possible medium whatever. If, on the one hand, we admit a single point belonging to the former, we of necessity admit the whole; and if, on the other, we set aside a part of the latter, by a substitution of our own self-interpretations, in so doing, we equally frustrate or annul the whole. Precisely on the same principle of Catholic interpretation, are we taught, that "whosoever shall keep the whole law, but offend in one point, is become guilty of all."* For if we attempt to keep the royal and universal law of Christian faith, according to the Scripture and Apostolic tradition, and yet maintain a breach of catholic unity, by an imputation of justice, on the one hand, by the law of Moses, and of holiness, on the other, by the law of Christ, or support an imputation to man of a justice without, by the former, and of a holiness within, by the latter-or in whatsoever manner we may otherwise ingeniously attempt to make a severance in the only one authorized rule of spiritual and Christian imputation; in one and all of these various and sectarian methods of interpretation and illogical reasoning, we evidently abuse the doctrine of our salvation by grace, and, by destroying the unity of Christian faith, we necessarily perpetuate those evils of schism which have so long, and so unhappily, marked the profession of the Christian. name. However strongly, therefore, we may profess to repudiate some of the absurdities of Protestant imputation, as represented by the authorities we have adduced, and retain others which may not, at first, appear so obviously glaring, it is evident, that by so doing, we both sanction the principle itself, as well as all the fatal consequences necessarily connected with its adoption.

* James ii. 10.

DR. PUSEY.

In illustration of the above views, we have only to advert to the peculiar sentiments inculcated on this topic in the writings of the Oxford divines. Dr. Pusey, for instance, in his letter to the Bishop of Oxford,* says, that "The Anglican doctrine, (on this point,) or that which we conceive to have been the teaching of the majority of our Church," "differs from the Roman, in that it excludes sanctification from having any place in our justification."

Dr. Pusey, therefore, in this essential point of Protestant imputation, agrees with all the divines we have quoted. Every one of these, it will be remembered, refers our sanctification to the influence or operation of our own works, and makes it consist in a personal holiness of our own, while they maintain that we are merely accounted, but not actually made just, by a supposed sentence of the law. Dr. Pusey, however, admits that we are made just by an inward righteousness, and not simply accounted so by such an imaginary act of the law.

It is, notwithstanding, manifest that his denial and exclusion of sanctification from this work, is a virtual, if not a direct contradiction to the former tenet, and entirely invalidates its acknowledgment. How man can be justified, without being at the same time sanctified, is an enigma which it is not possible to explain, except by the fiction of a legal imputation. And how Dr. Pusey can admit that the "principle" and "gift" of justice is infused in us for our justification, and, at the same time, deny it to be a principle and gift of holiness also, is utterly inconceivable; or with what consistency he can deny the identity of the principle, is equally unaccountable. The diversity of the two operations of justifying and sanctifying is sufficiently manifest in their distinct modes of action or influence, but constitutes no reason for denying the identity of the substance upon which

* The work alluded to is entitled "A Letter to the Rt. Rev. Father in God, Richard Ld. Bishop of Oxford, on the tendency to Romanism imputed to doctrines held of old, as now, in the English

Church."

they are both founded, and in which they both consist, and by which, also, they both act, and derive their power.

It is also objected to, by some of the Oxford divines, that the Church of Rome makes the infused righteousness, by which we are justified, to consist simply in a mere quality of the mind. This, however, is altogether a mistake. On the contrary, she accounts it both as a substance and a quality inherent in the renewed man, through the gift of the Spirit, and the merits of Jesus Christ. We are, therefore, constrained to say, that on this point of the Oxford theology, there is a confusion and an ambiguity of statement which renders it difficult for us to decipher its meaning. For, notwithstanding the alleged objection, it is said in Tract No. 71, that, with the Church of Rome, "It is de fide that man is justified by inherent righteousness;" but that "it is not de fide that justifying righteousness is a habit or quality." The fact is that it is de fide, not to account it as a mere quality, but as a supernatural gift or principle, in necessary connection with spiritual qualities or properties which cannot be separated from their divine substance. One thing, however, is certain, in respect to Oxford divinity, that it expressly "excludes sanctification from having any place in our justification ;" and this, their fundamental position, forms, as we have already shown, the very essence of the judicial system of imputation, and the identical source of the various contradictions we have had occasion to notice.

MR. NEWMAN.

Mr. Newman maintains the same distinction with Dr. Pusey. In his Lectures on Justification, he says, "This is really and truly our justification, not faith, not holiness, not a mere imputation, but the very presence of Christ ;' not renovation, not obedience, not any thing cognizable by man, but a certain divine gift in which all these qualities are included.Ӡ