full assurance. If the Spirit of God does but give us a good degree of grace, and enlighten our minds to understand the Scriptures, and so to know the nature of true grace, we may then perceive that we have grace; and the more grace we have, the more perceptible will it be, and its difference from all counterfeits will be the more plain. And if a believer may know and be certain that he has grace without the immediate witness of the Spirit, then such a witness is altogether needless, and would be of no advantage; and therefore there is no such thing as the immediate witness of the Spirit in this affair." Religion Delineated, Discourse I. sect. 5.)

(True

The Roman Catholic position on the subject of assurance, having become fixed long since, does not need to be defined in this connection.

As in the previous period, Lutheran and Calvinistic theologians have been in general averse to all theories of perfectionism. Among Methodists, Christian perfection has always had the place of an acknowledged doctrine, though claiming very different degrees of practical interest and advocacy from different representatives. In the present, while it is advocated by not a few after the manner of John Wesley, many in effect set it forth as rather a possible ideal to be progressively approached, than as the goal lying immediately before every well-instructed Christian, the prize of a present faith and consecration.

Christian perfection in the Wesleyan sense implies freedom from inbred sin, the complete dominance of love over the voluntary exercises, and such a service of God as is competent to powers which indeed have been given a right direction, but which fail of that ideal measure which they would have had if man had not sinned. It is not, therefore, Adamic or angelic perfection. It does not imply objective faultlessness, since it does not secure from mistakes in judgment and consequent mistakes in action. It carries with itself immunity neither from temptation nor from

apostasy. It is simply loving God with all the heart, freedom in underlying appetencies and in conscious activities from anything contrary to love.

The Oberlin theology, quite as distinctly as the Wesleyan, declares for the attainability of Christian perfection, or entire sanctification, in this life. But the difference in the general standpoint of the two involves quite a material difference in conception. The Oberlin scheme confines moral character to choice. It denies the Wesleyan and

the common theory of an inbred sin still abiding in the regenerate. The choice of a man, as it represents, is either entirely sinful or entirely holy. Regeneration, as being a change of choice, is a change from the wholly sinful to the entirely holy. "It implies," says Dr. Finney, "an entire present change of moral character, that is, a change from entire sinfulness to entire holiness." All that can be added to regeneration, therefore, is fixity in the holy choice. Accordingly Dr. Finney gives this definition: "Entire sanctification, as I understand the term, is identical with entire and continued obedience to the law of God." Such obedience, he urges very emphatically, is attainable in this life. (Lectures on Systematic Theology.) In the Oberlin, as in the Wesleyan scheme, the standard is taken from the possibilities of a recovered being, and not from those of the unfallen.

CHAPTER V.

THE CHURCH AND THE SACRAMENTS.

SECTION I.THE CHURCH.

THE more liberal of the views respecting the Church which had a place among Protestants in the preceding period have advanced to a general ascendency. Religious tolerance has become an accepted maxim. The possibility of salvation outside of the visible Church is in general unquestioned. The form of government is largely regarded as a matter of option, or at any rate as lying outside the essence of Christianity. The claim indeed of special divine right for certain forms of church government cannot be said to be obsolete. Even in recent times a voice has occasionally been raised in behalf of the theory that the New Testament authoritatively prescribes the Congregational polity, or the Presbyterian polity. However, in the main, neither Congregationalists nor Presbyterians lay much stress upon this point of view, and they are far from making it an adequate ground for challenging the proper Christian character of communions differently constituted. This procedure is left, for the most part, to the High Church party among Episcopalians. Advanced Ritualists in recent times have been very pronounced in the view that those outside the lines of apostolic succession, outside the Roman, the Greek, and the Anglican communions, must be consigned to the uncovenanted mercies of God, as being wholly destitute of Church offices. On the other hand, the Broad Church, as represented by Whately, Stanley, and

others, repudiates apostolical succession as an essential of a Christian church.

As respects the relation of Church and State, the theory which favors their mutual independence has no doubt made somewhat of an advance in Protestant countries which still have a national establishment. The American model may be credited with a measure of influence. The teaching of Thomas Arnold and Rothe, that the best order of things involves the complete identity of Church and State, is quite outside the current of practical concern, it being recognized that we have no reason to look for conditions in which such identity would not be a calamity to both civil and ecclesiastical interests.

In the Roman Catholic Church the period has witnessed the signal event of the final overthrow of Gallicanism, and the formal establishment of the Ultramontane theory. By the decisions of the Vatican Council of 1869-70 the Pope is raised to the character of an absolute and infallible monarch, without peer, rival, or associate in authority, to whom the council stands only in an advisory relation, having no power to amend his decrees, or even to convene for advisory purposes except as summoned by his mandate. A more explicit assertion of unqualified sovereignty than the following could not well be imagined: "If any shall say that the Roman pontiff has the office merely of inspection or direction, and not full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the universal Church, not only in things which belong to faith and morals, but also in those which relate to the discipline and government of the Church spread throughout the world, or assert that he possesses merely the principal part, and not all the fulness of this supreme power, . . . let him be anathema."

The Vatican decree of papal infallibility is as follows: Faithfully adhering to the tradition received from the beginning of the Christian faith, for the glory of God our Saviour, the exaltation of the Catholic religion, and the

salvation of Christian people, the sacred council approving, we teach and define that it is a dogma divinely revealed, that the Roman pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in discharge of the office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith or morals; and therefore such definitions of the Roman pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and not from the conIsent of the Church."

The statement that infallibility covers matters of faith and morals, gives it a wellnigh universal breadth. If the Pope is pleased to regard any matter of science or history as vitally related to faith or morals, then it falls at once within the scope of his infallibility. Instead of resorting to the tedious processes of reasoning, examination, and investigation, we have only to listen to the oracular voice which comes from the chair of Peter. So obvious is this inference that it was openly proclaimed by a distinguished prelate shortly after the Vatican council had issued its decrees. Cardinal Manning maintained that infallibility extends to all that is opposed to revelation, to all that is scandalous or offensive to pious cars, to all matters which bear upon the proper custody of Catholic belief. "It extends," he said, "to certain truths of natural science, as, for example, the existence of substance; and to truths of the natural reason, such as that the soul is immaterial; that it is the form of the body'; and the like. It extends also to certain truths of the supernatural order, which are not revealed; as the authenticity of certain texts or versions of the Holy Scripture. There are truths of mere human history, which therefore are not revealed, without which the deposit of the faith cannot be taught or guarded in its integrity. For in