lation to the motive which prompts it, it may be good or bad. If done to be seen of men, it is offensive in the sight of God. If done from natural benevolence, it is an act of ordinary morality. If done to a disciple in the name of a disciple, it is an act of Christian virtue. The works of the children of God, therefore, although stained by sin, are truly and properly good, because, (1.) They are, as to their nature or the thing done, commanded by God. (2.) Because, as to the motive, they are the fruits, not merely of right moral feeling, but of religious feeling, t. e., of love to God ; and (3.) Because they are performed with the purpose of complying with his will, of honouring Christ and of promoting the interests of his kingdom.
It follows from the fundamental principle of Protestantism, that the Scriptures are the only rule of faith and practice, that no work can be regarded as good or obligatory on the conscience which the Scriptures do not enjoin. Of course it is not meant that the Bible commands in detail everything which the people of God are bound to do, but it prescribes the principles by which their conduct is to be regulated, and specifies the kind of acts which those principles require or forbid. It is enough that the Scrip- tures require children to obey their parents, citizens the magis- trate, and believers to hear the Church, without enjoining every act which these injunctions render obligatory. In giving these general commands, the Bible gives all necessary limitations, so that neither parents, magistrates, nor Church can claim any au- thority not granted to them by God, nor impose anything on the conscience which He does not command. As some churches have enjoined a multitude of doctrines as articles of faith, which are not taught in Scripture, so they have enjoined a multitude of acts, which the Bible neither directly, nor by just or necessary infer- ence requires. They have thus imposed upon those who recognize their authority as infallible in teaching, a yoke of bondage which no one is able to bear. After the example of the ancient Phari- sees, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, and claim divine authority for human institutions. From this bond- age it was one great design of the Reformation to free the peo- ple of God. This deliverance was effected by proclaiming the principle that nothing is sin but what the Bible forbids, and noth- ing is morally obligatory but what the Bible enjoins.
Such, however, is the disposition, on the one hand, to usurp authority, and, on the other, to yield to it, that it is only by the constant assertion and vindication of this principle, that the lib- erty wherewith Christ has made us free can be preserved.
238 part in. Ch. xvm. — sanctification.
§ 5. Necessity of Grood Works.
On this subject there has never been any real difference of opinion among Protestants, although there was in the early Lutheran Church some misunderstanding. First. It was univer- sally admitted that good works are not necessary to our justifica- tion; that they are consequences and indirectly the fruits of justification, and, therefore, cannot be its ground. Secondly, it was also agreed that faith, by which the sinner is justified, is not as a work, the reason why God pronounces the sinner just. It is the act by which the sinner receives and rests upon the right- eousness of Christ, the imputation of which renders him righteous in the sight of God. Thirdly, faith does not justify because it includes, or is the root or principle of good works ; not as " fides obsequiosa." Fourthly, it was agreed that it is only a living faith, i. 0., a faith which works by love and purifies the heart, that unites the soul to Christ and secures our reconciliation with God. Fifthly, it was universally admitted that an immoral life is inconsistent with a state of grace ; that those who wilfully con- tinue in the practice of sin shall not inherit the kingdom of God. The Protestants while rejecting the Romish doctrine of subject- ive justification, strenuously insisted that no man is delivered from the guilt of sin who is not delivered from its reigning power ; that sanctification is inseparable from justification, and that the one is just as essential as the other.
The controversy on this subject was due mainly to a misun- derstanding, but in a measure also to a real difference of opinion as to the office of the law under the Gospel. Melancthon taught that repentance was the effect of the law and anterior to faith, and used forms of expression which were thought to imply that good works, or sanctification, although not the ground of justifi- cation, were nevertheless a " causa sine qua non " of our accept- ance with God. To this Luther objected, as true sanctification is the consequence, and in no sense the condition of the sinner's justification. We are not justified because we are holy ; but being justified, we are rendered holy. Agricola (born in Eisle- ben, 1492, died 1566), a pupil of Luther, and greatly influential as a preacher, took extreme ground against Melancthon. He not only held that repentance was not due to the operation of the law, and was the fruit of faith, but also that the law should not be taught under the Gospel, and that good works are not neces- sary to salvation. The believer is entirely free from the law ;