194 PART in. Ch. XVIL — JUSTIFICATION.
the Spirit of life ; and for his care, guidance, and intercession. He must look to Him continually ; and continually exercise faith in Him as an ever present Saviour in order to live. According to the other schemes, Christ has merely made the salvation of all men possible. There his work ended. According to Romanists, He has made it possible that God should give sanctifying grace in baptism ; according to the Remonstrants, He has rendered it pos- sible for Him to give sufficient grace to all men whereby to sanc- tify and save themselves. We are well aware that this is theory ; that the true people of God, whether Romanists or Remonstrants, do not look on Christ thus as a Saviour afar off. They doubtless have the same exercises towards Him that their fellow believers have ; nevertheless, such is the theory. The theory places a great gulf between the soul and Christ.
Secondly, it hardly admits of question that the Protestant view conforms to the Scriptural mode of presenting the plan of salvation. Christ in the Bible is declared to be the head of his people, their representative ; they were in Him in such a sense that they died in Him ; they are raised with Him, and sit with Him in heavenly places. They were in Him as the race was in Adam, and as branches are in the vine. They individually receive the sprinkling of that blood which cleanses from all sin. They are constituted righteous by his obedience. As He was made sin for them, so are they made the righteousness of God in Him. He is not only an example of punishment as Grotius represents, a mere governmental device, but a sacrifice substituted for us, on whose head every believer must lay his hand and to whom he must transfer the burden of his sins.
Thirdly, what is included indeed in the above, but is so impor- tant and decisive as to require distinct and repeated mention ; all schemes, other than the Protestant, refer the proximate ground of our acceptance with God to our own subjective character. It is because of our own goodness that we are regarded and treated as righteous. Whereas conscience demands, the Scriptures reveal, and the believer instinctively seeks something better than that. His own goodness is badness. It cannot satisfy his own bleared vision; how then can it appear before the eyes of God? It matters not how the Romanist may exalt his " inward habits of grace f or how the Arminian may sublimate his evangelical obedience to perfection ; neither can satisfy either the conscience or God.
Fourthly, the Protestant doctrine is the only one on which the
§ li.] MODERN THEORIES. 195
soul can live. This has been urged before when speaking of the work of Christ. It is fair to appeal from theology to hymnology ; from the head to the heart ; from what man thinks to what God makes men feel. It is enough to say on this point, that Lutheran and Reformed Christians can find nowhere, out of the Bible, more clear, definite, soul-satisfying expression of their doctrinal views upon this subject, than are to be found in many of the hymns of the Latin and Arminian churches. As a single ex- ample may be cited the following stanzas from John Wesley's 1 Hymns and Spiritual Songs " : —
" Join, earth and heaven to bless The Lord our Righteousness. The mystery of redemption this, This the Saviour's strange design — Man's offence was counted his. Ours his righteousness divine.
" In Him complete we shine ; His death, his life, is mine; Fully am I justified, Free from sin, and more than free, Guiltless, since for me He died; Righteous, since He lived for me."
§ 11. Modem Views on Justification. Rationalistic Theories.
These cannot be given in detail. Certain classes of opinions can be referred to only in the briefest manner. The Rationalists were divided into two classes ; first, those who regarded the Scriptures as a supernatural revelation of natural religion, or of the truths of reason ; and secondly, those who denied the super- natural origin of the Scriptures altogether, assigning to them no higher authority than belongs to the writings of good and wise men.
The former class came to agree very nearly with the latter as to what the Bible actually teaches, or, at least, as to what is by us to be regarded and received as true. Those who admitted the divine origin of the Scriptures got rid of its distinctive doctrines by the adoption of a low theory of inspiration, and by the appli- cation of arbitrary principles of interpretation. Inspiration was, in the first instance, confined to the religious teachings of the Bible, then to the ideas or truths, but not to the form in which they were presented, nor to the arguments by which they were supported. The fact that Christ saves men in some way was ad- mitted, but not as a sacrifice nor as a ransom, nor by being a
196 PART IE. Ch. XVII. — JUSTIFICATION.
substitute for sinners. The miracles of Christ were acknowledged as historical facts, but they were explained as mere natural events distorted by the imaginations of spectators and historians. It was granted by some that Christ and the Apostles did teach the Church doctrines, but this, it was said, was done only by way of accommodation to ohe prejudices, superstitions, or modes of thought of the men of that generation. The first step in this process was the denial of all distinction between the prophetic, priestly, and kingly offices of Christ. In this way a wet sponge was passed over all the doctrines of redemption, and their out- lines obliterated. This unnatural process could not be long con- tinued, and, therefore, the majority of Rationalists soon threw off all regard to the normal authority of the Bible, and avowed their faith in nothing which did not commend itself to their own un- derstanding as true, and for that reason alone.
As to the doctrine of justification, the whole tendency of the efforts during this period was, as Baur correctly says,1 to make the reconciliation of man to God the work of the man himself. " A man was entitled to regard himself as reconciled with God as soon as he determined to repent and to reform." God was re- garded as a father. A father is displeased with a son only so long as he is disobedient. The only end of any chastisement he may inflict, is the reformation of his child. If that be accom- plished, all necessity and all propriety of punishment cease. Wegscheider, a representative of this class of theologians, says,2 " Quicunque e vita turpi, qua poenas sibi contraxit, ad virtutem emerserit, is eadem proportione, qua jam in virtutis studio pro- gressus fuerit, in gratiam cum Deo reversus, ab eodem praemiis dignus judicabitur."
Philosophical Theories.
The philosophical theories on this subject were as different as the systems on which they were founded. Some of these systems were theistic, others pantheistic, and others monistic, i. e., founded on the oneness of God and man, without denying the distinct personality of either.
The influence of Kant's philosophy upon theology, for a time at least, was very great, and in some aspects salutary. As he exalted the power of the pure reason, making it give law to the outward, subordinating, as his disciples say, the objective to the
1 Die Christliche Lehre von der Versdhnung, in. i. Tubingen, 1830, p. 565. 3 Institutiones Theologies, m. ii. § 140, 5th edit. Halle, 1826, p. 438.