Again, the orthodox believer, as knowing that at any moment he may be called on to thwart and oppose his prevailing inclination under a sense of duty, even in the moments of greatest relaxation preserves his feelings and affections in a real, however latent, subordination to his conscience, and thus preserves his conscience itself in subordination to God. This is that virtue of watchfulness, held in so peculiar value by all who really embrace Catholic doctrine. There is probably no grace, which in its highest earthly perfection is so distinguishingly characteristic of the saintly mind, and which in its various degrees may be taken as so fair a measure of the degree of our Christian advancement; for none other is called into such habitual, such unceasing practice. The consciousness too of its growth within us, is the most comfortable assurance we can possibly have in regard to our future prospects. This grace can have no place whatever under the Gospel, according to any consistent form of Lutheranism. Its very existence implies that we have long realised a most serious danger of our falling from God; the very consciousness of our justification, upon the Lutheran theory, implies that we have held from the very beginning of our Christian course, as a matter of divine faith, that there is no such danger. To contend with vigour at special seasons against evil inclinations, with the hope of increasing our heavenly reward, this Dr. O'Brien's principles will fully sanction; but to watch at all seasons against the danger of falling away, is a virtue which can be practised by none, except by those who from their heart repudiate the heresy of personal assurance.

5. In proceeding to the practical inferences which follow from this theory, to the consideration of the moral effects produced by Lutheran doctrine as actually witnessed, it is necessary to guard at the outset against two opposite misapprehensions. On the one side it has been supposed, that those who gladly acknowledge the very great piety and seriousness of character, which have been frequently seen in 'Evangelicals,' confess thereby that there is nothing very deeply pernicious in Lutheran either event fitted for some station in the world that we are hereafter to inhabit, for the society with which we shall dwell for ever?" p. 231.

doctrine; on the other hand it has been thought, that this whole method of judging doctrines by reference to their practical effects, implies that one sits in judgment, as if from some vantage ground, on one's fellow-men, and professes to dispense praise and blame to each according to his several deserts. The following extracts from the British Critic will, I trust, sufficiently clear up the latter misapprehension; and they will include also some incidental allusion to the former.

'In our own age and country it is perhaps hardly too much to say, that the greater part of high-minded and sensitive, if at the same time strictly conscientious, men, will hardly find their rest in any existing school of opinion, or religious system, or accurately expressed theory. Our supposed learner then will be even compelled to the conclusion, that he can regard no single channel as the one appointed medium, through which God shall convey light to his soul; he must look for that light as transmitted to him partly from one quarter, partly from another, refracted, as it were, in its course by the various exhibitions of morality which surround him on all sides. And yet in how different a spirit will his search be carried on, from that eclectic method, which is to religion in general what Protestantism is to Christianity in particular! For let us compare, in imagination, the process adopted by disciples of these respective systems. The one makes the reasoning faculty the single arbiter to which all the remaining powers of the mind must be content to minister, the other makes conscience such. The one regards his fellow-men as witnesses to be called into court, and questioned at his own bidding; the other thinks of them as his teachers, and in some sense his superiors; as commissioned by God, each after his measure, to build him up in the entire truth.'"

·

But what then? because we cannot have all, shall we have nothing? . . . Because [our] Church does not teach with distinctness and authority, shall we take refuge in that strange modern doctrine of private judgment on the text of Scripture'? Surely it would be as unwise as it is undutiful to do so. True the Holy Ghost speaks not to us now articulately through the Church to which we belong, but does He not speak to us through the holy men around us, whom he inhabits? True, there is much profession

u On Goode,' p. 42.

without reality, much self-deceit, much inconsistency; still has not our Lord Himself said, 'by their fruits ye shall know them,' and may not the inquirer, who is really in earnest, find on all sides proofs of holiness not to be mistaken; self-denial, purity, humility, zeal? Let this then be our protection against idiosyncrasy, selfcomplacency, or a low and disproportionate standard; let us, under circumstances, make to ourselves in heart a Catholic Church; let us cling anxiously to the marks of the Holy Ghost wherever we can find them. True it is that we shall find among religious men much essential difference of statement, much estrangement and mutual suspicion; but the more gratifying will prove the task of tracing, as best we may, the principle of goodness in its different stages, through all this variety of external dress.

This then is the point to which for some time past our argument has been tending; the only way,' says Mr. Newman, 'in which the members of our Church, so widely differing at this time, can be brought together in one, is by a turning of heart to one another :

till we try to love each other, and what is holy in each other, and wish to be all one, and mourn that we are not so, and pray that we may be so, I do not see what good can come of argument.' No mathematical axiom is more certain than this moral one, that where the fruits of holiness shew themselves, there is the Holy Ghost, and there is really [so far as it goes] true doctrine; for the doctrine which supports men's spiritual life, the principle on which they live, may very easily be true, while the language in which they have learnt to clothe it, may be almost to any extent erroneous and dangerous. We do not wish to extenuate the evil arising from profession of false doctrines; it must to a certain extent, in some more, in others less, vitiate the principle itself within them and of this we are well-convinced, that in proportion as we correct, enlarge, strengthen our own moral feelings by this affectionate throwing of ourselves on the thought and example of holy men, and in proportion as our obedience keeps pace with our convictions, we shall learn to appreciate the [superiority even in kind of the] holiness which has ever on the whole accompanied the profession and explicit belief of Catholic doctrine; we shall fall back upon Catholic tradition as feeling it the correlative of our nature; and shall be rescued from the delusive and heretical sophisms of the Protestant schools.' x

us.

In the present profoundly disturbed and unsettled state of theological sentiment, no one who has not the happiness of resting with secure and undoubting confidence in some safe harbour, will allow himself wilfully to shut his eyes to any exhibition of virtue and self-denial, from whatever quarter it may present itself; by so doing, he incurs serious danger of losing hold of that thread which can alone guide him safely through the bewildering labyrinth of opinion which surrounds But in proportion as he learns the opposite habit, as he familiarizes himself with the reverent observation of religiousness and conscientiousness in all their different shapes, he will go on more and more to discern the lineaments of the full Catholic character. He need not look beyond our own Church to find models of that character, which will still further assist him in the study; and the contemplation of them will enable him to appreciate still more adequately the same features of mind, as witnessed in their highest earthly perfection by the Saints of the Church. He will more and more understand that that character is, even in its early rudiments, one, distinct, unmistakeable; as truly and pointedly differing from the Christian character conceived by religious Protestants, as that in turn differs from the Socinian or Mahometan.

Having so far guarded myself against misconception, I will relieve my own feelings by saying plainly, as I have said in print more than once before, that though I feel bound at all fitting occasions and in all fitting ways to protest heart and soul against the Evangelical' system, I fully recognise many who have at various times professed that system, as so exceedingly my own superiors that the very notion of even a comparison is most painful. Who indeed can so much as mention the names of Cecil, or Scott, or Martyn, without adding from his heart expressions of honour and reverence? but I allude not only to such unusual specimens as these, but to great numbers of admirable men, who, especially at the latter end of the last century and the beginning of this, followed in their train. Earnest persons naturally, nay, rightly, embrace that form of opinions which they find in

their own time to be coexistent with earnestness; and in proportion as the voice of their conscience is brought into distinctness, in the most heretical propositions they will see and realise great and Christian truths.' They learn to say that we are justified by faith without inherent righteousness; they mean only that holy men rest their hopes of salvation, in no way on the thought of such inherent righteousness, but solely and indivisibly on the merits of their Lord. They learn to say that the justified have assurance of salvation; they mean only to express, as Catholics would express, their humble yet hearty confidence, that He who has begun a good work in them will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ,' provided only that they remain (as, by His help, they fully purpose to remain) faithful to His grace, watchful against the approach of sin, diligent in the practice of virtue. Thus their conscience, and religious instinct, and holy obedience, neutralize their heretical creed and the evil which accrues to them from that creed is of a negative not a positive nature. Still very serious evil there most certainly is; for, unless a Christian has either himself intellectually embraced the whole Catholic doctrine, or else lives under a system which is informed and animated by that doctrine, he cannot enjoy the benefit of those various methods of religious culture and discipline, which are indispensably necessary for the formation, even in its very elements, of the true Catholic character. Nay, even so much of excellence and devotedness as I have fully acknowledged to exist in many Evangelicals,' will perhaps rarely be found, unless in cases where God by painful visitations, mercifully, however imperfectly, supplies the absence of those salutary correctives furnished by the Church. Have not all the great lights of 'Evangelicalism,' been sorely oppressed either by sorrow, or bodily pain, or contempt and persecution? or if by none of these, then by such hardships as necessarily attend the missionary life? a life which, though its original choice was voluntary and most highly admirable and honourable, yet when chosen hardly admits of retreat, and furnishes one continued discipline to the Christian who has had grace to follow so high a calling.

'On Heurtley's Four Sermons,' p. 446.

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