It is obviously with the intention of showing the vast superiority of Romish doctrine and discipline, in producing personal religion, and, on the other hand, the utter inefficiency of protestantism for the same end, that he has undertaken the present work. Here, then, we are at issue with him, and for this intelligible reason-because we, in common with protestants at large, believe the protestant system to be identical with the holy Scriptures, and therefore the only divine means of promoting such personal religion, as well as the exclusive security, for its ultimate attainment. No reasoning, consequently, which does not bring the 'ideal' of a church system, doctrine, and discipline, direct to the inspired text, can be of any avail in the discussion. Theorizing is vain; tradition, in the presence of written law, is equally so, and 'ideal churches' are worse than 'castles in the air, when we have the divine type as it has proceeded from the divine idea, which Mr. Ward must excuse us for still preferring before his own, or that of all the church builders who ever tried their hand at the same work. We give him full credit for sincerity; and as to earnestness, it borders on ferocity when the onslaught is against Lutheranism. Yet we hesitate not to avow our agreement with him, that the controversy he has moved involves the very essence of salvation and the immortal interests of mankind. If justification by faith be heresy, then we protestants are 'reprobates;' but if it be the very essence of Christ's gospel, the very purport of the 'joyful sound,' then Mr. Ward's abjuration of it is fatal to all his pretensions, and those of the ideal church' which he advocates. It is this very embodiment of the grace of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ, which we hold to be the exclusive instrument of producing and maintaining anything in us worthy of being called personal religion, and as the open assailant of that doctrine of Scripture, we cannot but view him as setting aside the only basis of a sinner's hope of pardon, and substituting in its place the sinner's own doings and merits, as the one ground of his hope of salvation.'

If we fix the attention of our readers almost exclusively upon this one part of the controversy, in the remainder of this article, they must understand that it is not for want of various other topics upon which we could comment, but simply because this one transcends every other in importance, and is made by Mr. Ward little less than the hinging point of the whole work. If he can overturn the Protestant doctrine of justification, he considers that the citadel is taken, and Romanism is triumphant. To this assault, therefore, he bends all his strength, and marshals all his arguments. At present we shall pass over the obvious unduti

fulness (if it is not too soft a term, but let it pass) of a person, a clergyman, who has solemnly pledged himself to the XI., XII., and XIII. Articles of the Church of England, undertaking to explode them, as no better than the doctrine of atheists and 'devils.'

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But to make our readers acquainted with the gentleman's mode and course of argumentation upon this solemn and important matter, we must waive, at present, everything relating to duty, consistency, conscience, and so forth, and come at once to his chef d'œuvre. The author's mode of preparing for the ment assumes the appearance of a very refined artifice, which we would not say was intended; it may be perfectly sincere. We could wish it had been consistent with his position. He labours to make a deep impression of his supreme anxiety for sanctity, love of truth, sincerity, and for all the graces of the inner man. In fact, for some time our sympathy was powerfully with him, and we were almost ready, from the tone of his piety, to yield ourselves to the development' of truth that might be coming. But when we arrived at the wily sophistry, the gross caricaturing, the self-sufficient reasoning against the plainest testimony of Scripture, we felt constrained to recall our sympathy. We found that we had mistaken his terms. By saintship, sanctity, and such like words, he means the ecclesiasticalthat is, the Romish holiness; we mean the Scriptural! Let us therefore forego, at present, the question of sanctity, and come calmly to the argument upon justification by faith.

He begins with Luther. But it would have been more honest, as well as more to the point, to have attacked the doctrine, as it is laid down in the articles of his own church; for these are virtually the truths at which he aims, and Luther's name is only selected for the sake of vilifying the doctrine by means of some of that great man's unguarded and crude opinions, which in his later years he corrected, and which modern Protestants have long since condemned, as neither parts of the doctrine in debate nor necessary deductions from it.

His first statement assumes part of the matter in debate, by identifying the two questions, By what feelings and acts shall I most please God, or, in other words, whereby am I justified?' This is an attempt to throw the two doctrines of sanctification and justification into one, which, though essentially Roman, is neither scriptural nor logical. The question that comes before this, is, can an unbelieving sinner please God at all? What do the Scriptures teach us as to the first duty of a sinner awakened to a sense of his guilt? Is it not to repent, and believe the gospel? This main question, however, Mr. Ward omits, in order to set men to the

work of obedience, under the direction of the church, however, in their natural strength. Let us hear his general description of what the gospel is principally intended to accomplish in sinners. It will elucidate his idea of justification as identical with the question, By what feelings and acts shall I most please God?' Thus he writes: Those doctrines and precepts of natural religion, to 'which I have adverted, receive unspeakable accessions of light, and sacredness by means of the gospel, insomuch that the latter ' has no more precious peculiarity than the natural dignity and eleva'tion which it gives to those doctrines and precepts. By the doctrines and precepts of natural religion, he means the sense of right and wrong, doing penance for evil deeds,' and 'the consciousness that it will be worse with him through all eternity in consequence of these last.' That a person who should have such a notion of the most precious peculiarity' of the gospel, should quarrel with the protestant doctrine of justification by faith in Jesus Christ is perfectly natural, and, as far as we can see, no discredit either to the doctrine or to Luther. If the gospel, seen through the spectacles of the church, comes after all to this, it is very near akin to nothing, for it only gives dignity and elevation to the doctrines and precepts of natural religion. We have heard of the Iliad in a nut-shell, but this is the gospel in a nut-shell; and it is yet a matter of doubt, or indeed scarcely of doubt, if, when it is cracked, any kernel be in it. This may be Mr. Ward's gospel-it may be the super-evangelism of the Romish church-it may be the gospel of tradition, or even the gospel of the ante-Nicene, or any other fathers-but most clearly it is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. We read that the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God'-that they are foolishness unto him'-that the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God'-that the gospel does not bring dignity and elevation to natural religion, but brings salvation'-that 'old things must pass away, and all things become new.' But Mr. Ward's gospel is a complement to the deficient light of naturehelp to the natural man struggling after holiness. As yet he has not shown us such a man. We should like to see him first, before we believe there is such a man. Thus, if we should credit Mr. Ward rather than St. Paul, we should say that the statement of the death and intercession of Christ is not to be made directly and at once to faith-that these are not the efficient cause of salvation, but merely the means of encouraging the natural man, struggling in the line of natural religion, and by its light-that is, its doctrines and precepts, after saintliness,-or, according to the question, which is made identical with that of justification, 'by what feelings and acts he may most please God.' So much

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for the Gospel according to Ward. It is somehow very different in its sound from the gospel according to Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John. However, this we are certified is the gospel of the true church,' by one of her dutiful sons. We hope we may here thank God that these latter gospels are not locked up in the Vatican, nor the key in Mr. Ward's pocket. And so we shall proceed. The author who announces the above statement as the most precious peculiarity of the gospel,' must allow us the liberty of comparing it with the only gospel with which we are acquainted. By the side of that gospel, we cannot hesitate to pronounce it as much at variance with the truth as the Koran of Mahomet, or the Shasters of India. The very foundations of Mr. Ward's gospel are antichristian, and he accordingly contradicts himself in almost every page. No man can have understood or believed the scriptural statements of the corruption of human nature, nor of the condemnation that has passed upon all men,' who assumes and asserts that natural men are struggling to be free from sin. The Scripture represents them as God's enemies, living in sin, and loving it-totally unwilling to come to Christ, that they may have life.

But, we forget, Scripture proofs are no arguments with Mr. Ward. The catholic church, whose interpreter he votes himself to be, has set Scripture aside, and endeavoured to bar all objection to her decisions by surrounding them with the awful claim of infallibility. So that we now fall into another controversy, which we must endeavour to settle with our author before we can proceed. He requires us to renounce our private judgment, and to forego appeals to Scripture, as a fundamental error of our hated protestantism. Let us hear him upon this matter:

'No man, (I would earnestly maintain,) however wise, however intellectually gifted, however religious, can really, even in a tolerable degree, understand the text of Scripture, so far as to obtain from it its very choicest and more valuable treasures; none can penetrate, and, as it were, become diffused throughout the recesses of God's word, so as to apprehend the whole counsel of God contained in it, unless it be the whole church, the temple of that Spirit who searcheth all things— yea, the deep things of God.'-p. 231.

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Albeit, the Apostle Paul makes each true believer to be the temple of that Spirit-2 Cor. vi. 14-18; 1 Cor. vi. 19; iii. 16, 17. If, therefore, the whole church' can apprehend the whole counsel of God,' because it is the temple of the Spirit, so can each individual believer, for precisely the same reason. But we doubt whether either the whole church, or any single believer, can apprehend the whole counsel of God.' Yet that is not what is contended for by Protestants, neither was it the proposition with

which Mr. Ward set out-that was, 'Whether any man can, 'even in a tolerable degree understand the text of Scripture, so as to obtain from it its very choicest and most valuable treasures.' This was the point to which Mr. Ward gave his most earnest negative. How materially is it altered in his conclusion! The whole church can, it seems, do much more than this. It can

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' apprehend the whole counsel of God,' because it is the temple of the Spirit, which searcheth all things,' &c. How the Spirit can make the whole church his temple, otherwise than by making each individual believer his temple, he does not explain. His theology does not aim to elucidate that. Neither does he condescend to explain how the universal church comes to a kind of knowledge which no individual contained within it can, in any sense, possess. An aggregate mass of minds may bring together a mass of knowledge, but then it must be, according to our philosophy, the mere sum of the portions possessed by the several individuals. But, according to Mr. Ward, the whole church possesses a knowledge of quite a different kind from that possessed by each or all the individuals composing the church. This is Romish legerdemain. Proved, it never has been, nor can it be.

But we recall attention to the entire passage. The anxious inquirer for the sense of the inspired oracles, if he will read Mr. Ward's famous statement again, might suppose that there was, at least, some hope arising that, by means of the whole church which is the temple of that Spirit which searcheth all things," he might even yet learn the whole counsel of God;' or, at least, that he might, 'in a tolerable degree, understand the text of Scripture, so as to obtain from it its very choicest and most ' valuable treasures.' Unhappy wight is he who thinks so. He is left in just as hopeless a position by his whole church' as by his own private judgment. Our author effectually removes even the prospect he had himself held out to us; for he says, 'The church has never thought of authoritatively determining 'the sense of any one text in Scripture, however sacred,'-p. 19. What, then, is the use of the church? First we are told, that no man, however religious, can understand the sense of Scripture; and then we are told, that only the whole church can apprehend the whole counsel of God;' and now we are pleasantly informed, that this church has not determined the sense of any one portion of Scripture. So that we are no better off, as to learning the whole counsel of God, with the church than without it-that is to say, we cannot learn the sense of Scripture at all. It is an utter impossibility, if Mr. Ward's principles are true. is as clear as noonday, that nobody knows the sense of Scripture -neither the whole church, nor any individual Christian. This

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