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it before we have it, nor act it when we have it." The worthy Bishop shows, that this was the doctrine of the Primitive Church, by quotations from St. Augustine, Maxentius, Fulgentius, the Second Council of Orange, and from the African Council.

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The Homilies speak decidedly the same language, "Of ourselves we be crab-trees that can bring forth no apples. We be of ourselves of such earth as can but bring forth weeds, nettles, brambles, briers, cockle, and darnel. Our fruits be declared in the fifth chapter of Galatians (19, 21). We have neither faith, charity, hope, patience, nor any thing that is good in us; and therefore these virtues be called there the fruits of the Holy Ghost; not the fruits of man. Hitherto we have heard what we are of ourselves, very sinful, wretched and damnable. Again, we have heard how that of ourselves, and by ourselves, we are not able either to think a good thought, or work a good deed: so that we can find in ourselves no hope of salvation; but rather whatsoever maketh for our destruction."-Homily on the Misery of Man, second part. 199

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ARTICLE XI.—OF THE JUSTIFICATION OF MAN, SILTA

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"We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works, or deservings: wherefore, that we are justified by Faith only is a most wholesome” doctrine, and very full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification." she and asw wor formodela biros 2: Jon1.mid ai jos130

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J Exposition of the 10th Article. So me eban

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If man as a sinner is dead in trespasses and sins, as his restoration to the image of his Maker can only be oby preventing grace, his pardon and acceptance can only be through the Redemption that is in Christ; whom God hath set forth as a Propitiation through faith in his blood. The Article declares that we are accounted righteous only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We may take notice by the way, how our being justified is here expressed by our being accounted righteous, and not by our being made righteous. For it is not by the inhesion of Grace in us, but by the imputation of Righteousness to us that we are justified; as it is not by the imputation of Righteousness to us, but by the inhesion of Grace in us that we are sanctified. Thus we find the Apostle speaking of the justification of Abraham, saying Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Rom. iv. 8. And again, But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. v. 5. And if faith is accounted for righteousness we must needs be accounted righteous by faith, and so we be justified by faith that is accounted for righteousness to us, not by Grace as a principle of righteousness in us. Which also further appears, in that Justification, is here stated to be of the ungodly, Who jüstifieth the ungodly. For so long as a man is ungodly, he cannot be said to be justified by any inward and inherent, but only by an outward and imputed righteousness; so that justification is properly opposed to accusation. I How was Christ made sin for us? Not by our sins inherent in him, that is horrid Blasphemy; but by our sins imputed to him, that is true Divinity. And as he was made sin for us, not by the inhesion of our sins in him,

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but by the imputation of our sins to him, so are we made the righteousness of God in him by the imputation of his righteousness to us, not by the inhesion of his righteousness in us. He was accounted as a sinner, and therefore punished for us; we are accounted as righteous, and there. fore glorified in him. Our sins were laid upon him, and therefore he died for us in time; his righteousness is laid upon us, and therefore we shall live with him to eternity."*

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The Apostle tells us that it is of Faith that it might be by Grace, and opposes the law of Faith to the law of Works. In our Sanctification faith and works are so conjoined, that the one is the cause, the other the effect; the one the good tree, the other the good fruit which it produces. But in Justification, faith and works stand in opposition to each other. Justification by Faith, being Justification by Grace, is subversive of Justification by Works; and Justification by Works, destructive of Justi fication by Grace. The existence of the one is so incompatible with the existence of the other, that to attempt to reconcile them, is an attempt to reconcile a contra diction in terms. "If it be of Grace it is no more of Works," &c. It is strange that so sensible and pious a writer as Bishop Burnet, should, in his Exposition of this Article have represented the Faith by which we are justi fied, as the complex of Christianity, in opposition to the Law which stands generally as the complex of the whole Mosaical dispensation. So that the faith of Christ is equivalent to this, the Gospel of Christ, because Christianity is a federal religion, founded, on God's part, on

• Exposition of the 11th Article, by Bishop Beveridge.

the promises that he has made to us, and on the rules he has set us; and, on our part, on our believing that revelation, our trusting to those promises, and our setting ourselves to follow those rules." According to this doc. trine, we are justified partly by faith and partly by works. This is explaining an Article, by flying in the face of it, and of the most pointed declarations of St. Paul upon which it rests. This misrepresentation is the more remarkable, as in the explanation of the terms of the Article, his Lordship observes that, "By good works, therefore, are meant acts of true holiness, and of sincere obedience to the laws of the Gospel." Let us then take the Article according to his own comment. "We are ac counted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and not for our acts of true holiness, and of sincere obedience to the laws of the Gospel." The Article, therefore, according to his own explanation, declares, in direct opposition to his own doctrine, that we are not justified by faith as the complex of Christianity, but by faith as it embraces the merits of Christ. This excellent man, for such we truly believe him to have been, through the whole of the Eleventh Article, is perpetually staggering between the faith of the Gospel, (as it is accurately expressed by his own Church,) and a modern scheme of Divinity, equally hostile to the doctrine of Scripture and of the Church of England. How much better does he write when he afterwards ob serves, "That the Reformers began as they ought to bave done, at the laying down this as the foundation of all Christianity and of all our hopes, that we were recon. ciled to God merely through his mercy, by the Re demption purchased by Jesus Christ, and that a firm believing the Gospel, and claiming to the death of Christ as

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the great Propitiation for our sins, according to the terms on which it is offered in the Gospel, was that which united us to Christ, that gave us an interest in his death, and thus justified us." He immediately adds, "If in the management of this controversy, there was not so critical a judgment made of the scope of several passages of St. Paul's Epistles; and if the dispute became afterwards too abstracted and metaphysical, that was the effect of the infelicity of that time, and was the natural consequence of much disputing. Therefore, though we do not now stand to all the arguments, and to all the citations and illustrations," &c." And therefore the approbation given here to the Homily is only, an approbation of the doctrine asserted and proved in it: which ought not to be carried to every particular of the proofs or explanations that are in it." This is a pretty modest apology for departing from the doctrine of the Reformers in general, and of the Fathers of his own Church in particular, who were at least at as much pains to enter, and fully as capable of entering, into the Apostle's reasoning, as any of the later Divines, who have attempted to establish a less Evangelical Theology. Hooker, who, perhaps, has seldom been equalled, and never in modern times excelled, has, in his discourse on Justification, with a lucidity and compre hension of thought, peculiar almost to himself, so forcibly stated the Justification taught in the Gospel, that he who comes from reading and studying his luminous interpretation, to read and to study the Bishop's dark and perplexed Exposition, will find himself in the condition of a man who has exchanged the meridian blaze of the sun, for the twilight of a grated dungeon., Something of the same feeling will also accompany the reader, who lays down the Homily on the subject, and takes up the Expo

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