ALL FAITH THE GIFT OF GOD.
REAL FAITH ENTIRE.

TWO SERMONS,

BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,

THE TWENTY-THIRD AND TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAYS
AFTER TRINITY, 1855.

REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D.
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF HEBREW, AND CANON OF CHRIST CHUKCH.

SECOND EDITION.

SOLD BY
JOHN HENRY PARKER, OXFORD,
AND 377, STBAND, LONDON;
J. F. RIVINGTON, WATERLOO PLACE.
MDCCCLVI.

ALL FAITH THE GIFT OF GOD.
REAL FAITH ENTIRE.

TWO SERMONS,

PREACHED

BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,

THE TWENTY-THIRD AND TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAYS
AFTER TRINITY, 1855.

BY THE
REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D.
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF HEBREW, AND CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH.

SECOND EDITION.

SOLD BY
JOHN HENRY PARKER, OXFORD,
AND 377, STRAND, LONDON I
J. F. RIVINGTON, WATERLOO PLACE.
MDCCCLVI.

BRISTOL :
PRINTED AT THE 5. MICHAEL'S HILI. PRINTING-PRESS.

CONTENTS.

SKKMON I.

Not justifying faith onlj-, but every beginning of
or tendency to faith, the gift of God . . 1
Order of God's Grace towards one wholly a stranger
to Grace .... ib.
Condition of the baptized . . .2
Faith, being the gift of God, strengthened or re
covered by the Grace of God . . 4
Correspondence between human and Divine faith . 5
They differ, in that Divine Faith is inwrought by God 6
Angels and men cleave to God by the Grace of God 7
All, even the beginnings of Grace, in us, from God,
but with our own consent, . . .8
Scripture proof. Eph. ii. 5. Phil. i. 20. . . ib.
1 Cor. vii. 25. 1 Pet. ii. 10. Rom. xi. 30. 31. ix. 16.
1 Cor. xv. 10. . .9
1 Cor. iv. 7. . . . . .10
2 Cor. iii. 5. Phil. ii. 13. . . .11
Is. lxv. 7. . . .12
S. John. vi. 44. . . .13
Summary in the second Council of Orange . 14
Art. x. on Free will . . . .15
Revelation not addressed to reason only . .16
Reason before, and after the Fall . . ib.
The Fall corrupted both body and soul of man . 17
Spiritual sins blind more fatally than even carnal . ib.

iv CONTENTS. PAGE
Temptations of high intellect . . .18
Attitude of natural intellect towards God . 19
Unsanctified intellect in most special antagonism to
God . • • -21
Intellect, like all other gifts, perfected through trial 23
Unenlightened intellect is blind in Divine things . 24
The creature knows God, only through Revelation
of God . . • • -25
Man can only receive the Revelation of God through
the Grace of God . . . . ib.
S. Matt. xi. 25. Is. vi. 9. 10. . . . 26
Natural wisdom, the way to understand natural
things ; Grace, the way to receive Divine . 27
The intellect, held captive by the will ; freed, not in
itself, but by setting free the will . . ib.
1 Cor. i. 19. sqq. . . . .28
Hostility to belief, changed in form, unchanged in
substance . . . . .30
Deepest grounds of Faith often difficult to produce . 31
Intuitive . . . . .32
Might and serenity of Faith . . . ib.
Certain knowledge of Faith . . .33
What injures Grace, injures Faith . . ib.
Trials of Faith to the young . . .34
Faith deepens with deepening Grace . . 35

SERMON II.
The whole perfection of the rational creation, An
gelic and human, is in conformity with God, in
wrought by God . . . .37
Both, created to reflect manifoldly the Perfections
of God, and to be perfected, above their natural
state, in Him . . . . ib.
Man, in every power of his mind, formed in the Image
of God . . . . . 38

CONTENTS. V
Traces of this even in his fallen state and his very
sins . . . . .40
The restoration of man consists in the restoration of
this entire conformity through entire Faith . 41
Faith in God or man perfect or none . . 44
Faith in God, over and above, one virtue, tending
towards One Object and One End . . 45
Object of faith one, God ; subjects of faith manifold,
whatever God has revealed or sanctioned . 47
Faith in man, in itself, co-extensive with the Faith,
proposed to him by God . . .49
But involuntary ignorance does not vitiate faith ib.
Trials of faith, not to the simple, but to the subtle 50
Any deliberate rejection of Faith destroys the whole
habit of faith . . . . ib.
Analogy of moral habits . . . ib.
S. James i. 10. . . . .51
Rejection of Faith in one point, involves rejection
of all Faith, as Faith, because the Authority is
One . . . . .52
Whatever remains, is held as natural truth, not as
faith . . . . . ib.
Oneness of Faith illustrated, in that decay in faith
and practice always begins from one point . 53
Unbelief, whether practical or theoretic, always
spreads from that one point . . . 54
Contrast of unbelievers, who never had faith, and
those who have lost it . .55
Starting-points of unbelief often seemingly subor
dinate . . . . .57
Mostly not overt, nor fully conscious . . 58
Evil in faith and morals spreads, as separating the
soul from God . . • .59
All evil, in faith or practice, really contains with
in it other evil . . • . ib.
Heresy seems to degenerate, but in fact becomes
more consistent in untruth . . .60

vi CONTENTS. PAGE
Instances, Arius . . . . ib.
Nestorius . . . . ib.
Eutyches . . . .62
Pelagians . . . .65
Tendency of heresy illustrated the more, by par
tial good, sometimes, in their authors . ib.
Heresies arose even in opposing heresy and ended
in the heresies which they opposed . . 66
One principle of all heresy, to trust men's own
judgment as to God rather than God's Revela
tion . . . . . ib.
Declarations of Holy Scripture that Faith is One . 68
Man's province to surrender himself to faith . 70
No room for a priori reasonings, when there is certain
truth . . . . . ib.
A priori reasonings in matters of human knowledge
subservient to fact . . . .71
Yet well-nigh every heresy founded on a priori rea
sonings . . . . .72
Jews and Pagans who rejected the Gospel, rejected
it on a priori notions . . .73
Our temptation, not to reject Christ altogether, but
to believe on our own terms . . .74
Men now rebel against God's Will, while they ac
knowledge a presiding Mind . . .75
Distinctions between what we must believe and what
we need not believe in Holy Scripture, untenable . ib.
Existence of evil inexplicable here, both to religion
and irreligion . . . .76
If we do not understand the whole, it is childish to
claim to understand a part, which depends upon it 77
Instances in which we so act . . . ib.
All objections could be explained, if the Mystery
could be explained, upon which they depend, which
Mystery is still acknowledged to be inexplicable . 80
Instances . . . . . ib.
In natural truths too, we often know the fact better
than the hidden cause . . .82

CONTENTS. Vll
In natural truths, too, it is acknowledged that great
truths must be held, notwithstanding lesser difficul
ties; that what we know must not be abandoned
on the ground of what we do not know . ib.
So, by believing we see in part the reasonableness of
what we do not fully understand . . 83
Instanced in the Doctrine of the Trinity and the In
carnation . . . . . ib.
Hence we doubt not that the rest too can be explained 84
Meanwhile, our Lord is Light to us, not criticising,
but believing . . . .85
Difficulties as to the Faith disappear upon complete
submission to God . . . .86
Consider what God Is, what thou . . ib.
Our Lord teaches the soul, which fully commits itself
to Him . . . . .87
Note A. on Professor Jowett on the Doctrine of the
Atonement . . . .89
Note B. on Professor Powell on Miracles . . 93

ALL FAITH THE GIFT OF GOD.

1 Cor. iv. 7.

" What hast thou that thou didst not receive 9 now if
thou didst receive it why dost thou glory, as if thou
hadst not received it 9"
No one who believes the Gospel can doubt that
faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is a gift of God,
wrought in the soul by God the Holy Ghost. "aBy
grace ye are saved through faith, and this not of
yourselves;" faith too is not of yourselves; "it,"
faith too, " is the gift of God." And not that living
faith only, whereby a man cleaves to Christ in love,
but every beginning of, feeling after, drawing to
wards, tendency to faith, is equally the gift of God.
Yet, before entering either upon the proof or the
application of this truth to circumstances of our time,
some few points which bear upon it, ought to be
made clear. Since the Pelagian heresy sprung up,
it has been necessary to state the effects of grace in
all its operations on man's heart as a whole : how,
without any pre-existing deserts ( save evil ) on the
part of man, God arouses him, touches his heart,
enlightens his mind by the Holy Spirit, prepares and
disposes him to repent and believe in Christ Jesus ;
• Eph. ii. 5.
B

2 All faith the gift of God.
whereas man, throughout this whole course of God's
gracious drawing, has the power to receive, reject,
retain, part with, that inspiration of God, but has not
the power, of his own free-will without the grace of
God, to turn, or to desire to turn, to God. As Christ
died for all, so to all, who are born within the light
of the Gospel of Christ, the grace to turn and pre
pare themselves for faith, is vouchsafed by God, if
they will but receive and obey it ; but by nature we
have it not. In this way alone, by surveying the
action of the grace of God upon a soul which is hi
therto wholly a stranger to grace and turned away
from God, can we see or trace the full course of the
grace of God. This way of stating the truths of
grace has, after S. Augustine, been adopted in our
own Articles.
But in our own souls, practically, Divine grace
rarely operates altogether in this same order. For
we are never, except through our own fault, out of
Christ. God, for the most part, anticipates by His
Gift the trials of elder years. In infancy, we receive
the Sacrament of faith. Being then "made members
of Christ and children of God," we receive freely,
through God the Holy Ghost, the first principle of
that spiritual life which is afterwards to be developed.
In our childhood we, for the most part, without any
opposition of a contrary will in us, receive the faith
through the teaching of our parents, amid the opera
tion of God the Holy Ghost on our dispositions and
our young hearts. By the mercy and Providence of

All faith the gift of God. 3
God, we, for the most part, receive the faith, before
those faculties of the mind are developed, to which the
reception of the faith would be a trial. Even thus, we
may see how the reception of the faith depends upon
the right use of grace ; since the faith, communicated
in the very same way, takes more or less deep posses
sion of the soul, as the child is, in other respects, in
his childish duties, self-government, obedience, prayers,
more or less faithful to the grace of God. Some
childish unfaithfulness to grace has often laid the
foundation of the unbelief of maturer years.
The course of the Christian life, intended for us by
God, is continual developement of the grace which in
Baptism we received, in "charity out of a pure heart,
and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned."
Even if unhappily faith is obscured in any, through
the indulgence of habits, whether intellectual or sen
sual, contrary to faith ; if even, through marked re
sistance to grace or habitual neglect of it, love have
grown cold, and faith have become an inoperative,
historic faith, that faith, although at the time destitute
of grace, because the soul has parted from grace and
love, is still the residuum of past grace. The habit
of faith still abides, like a body not yet dissolved,
into which Christ may yet recall the soul by His life-
giving word, "Young man, I say unto thee arise."
But as is the original character of faith, such is the
way in which it is maintained. If man arrived at
faith through the mere use of his natural reason, ac
cepting or rejecting what is proposed for his belief
b2

4 All faith the gift of God.
according as the evidence is or is not adequate to
satisfy his natural reason, then undoubtedly it would be
through unaided exercise of that same natural reason,
that his faith must be maintained, strengthened, enlar
ged, defended ; or, if it have been unhappily shaken or
lost, then, by that same mere exercise of the under
standing must it be consolidated or recovered. If, on
the contrary, God works faith in the soul, not without
grounds which satisfy reason illumined by His Holy
Spirit, but Himself acting, not simply on the reason,
but on the will also and the affections, disposing, pre
paring, arousing, helping, illuminating, justifying,
sanctifying, the whole man, then faith, being the gift
of God by grace, must be retained in us through
grace ; then faith will grow with the growth and en
largement of grace ; or it will wane through whatsoever
lessens grace ; and if faith be impaired or destroyed,
it cannot be demonstrated into any one by mere force
of argument, nor can we recover it for ourselves by
mere diligent study of human proof, but it must be
regained by regaining the lost grace of God.
This question is plainly of great practical moment,
in days when both belief in a revelation as a whole
is assaulted on many sides, with little novelty but with
great confidence ; and those who cannot endure to
part with their whole faith are still manifoldly tempted
to sacrifice its integrity, in order to retain, as they
think, such residue of our inherited faith as seems to
them most defensible. Saving or justifying faith, all
allow, is the gift of God. Holy Scripture expressly

All faith the gift of God. 5
says it. But if faith as a whole is from God, so
are also the dispositions towards it.
If the beginning of our faith were from ourselves,
then the beginning of our salvation would be from
ourselves, not from God. If our belief were the sim
ple result of our own reasoning powers ; if it de
pended upon nothing more, than acquiescing in cer
tain things as true, which we could not help seeing
to be true, when they were set before us ; if the be
lief that God has revealed Himself to mankind and
has in that revelation taught the truths which He
has taught, depended upon nothing more than that
we could see clearly with our natural understanding
the process of proof upon which it rested, then our
faith would be a human not a Divine faith. Plainly,
there must be much correspondence between human
and Divine faith. They must have much in common,
both in their groundwork and in the process whereby
they are attained ; else they would not be designated
by one common name. Both human and Divine
faith are in things unseen, and of which the senses
have no certain cognizance ; else they would not be
faith. Both depend on the absolute credibility of
him in whom the faith is reposed ; both must be
proof against all lesser appearances, or surmises, or
suspicions, which the waywardness of man's own
heart, or the doubts of others, might suggest.
Both may be gained by different processes. Hu
man faith, as well as Divine, has its intuitive per
ceptions, by which it arrives as solidly at its conclu-

6 All faith the gift of God.
sions in some cases, as, in others, by long or laboured
conclusions. The perceptions of human faith are
quickened or dulled by the moral character ; the
finest perceptions of human faith are often such as
the soul can give least account of. In human faith
too, acute intellect will misjudge. Deep love, purity
of heart, simplicity of soul, guilelessness of mind, will
know where securely to rest its faith, while acuteness
of intellect will be at fault, quick in discerning single
points, sharp to discover a seeming defect, but not
penetrating enough to see the centre on which the
character really turns, or enlarged enough to com
prehend it as a whole.
Faith in Divine things or in persons sent from
God, may rest on direct sight of things invisible, as
in S. Paul, or on slow reasoning, as in Nicodemus, or
on simple apprehension, as in Nathanael. It may
come through the report of others, as among a por
tion of the Samaritans, or through some unseen at
tractive might, as in our Lord's words, heard with
the outward ears when, He was in the Flesh among
us, or borne in, at times, upon the inward ear now.
But in whatever wTay, direct or indirect, through
the affections or through the intellect, the soul ar
rives at faith, whether in God or man, Divine Faith
has this over and above, that in it there is an imme
diate action of God upon the soul. Faith, from first
to last, is the gift of God to the soul which will re
ceive it. God prepares the soul, with its will, not
without it, to receive the Faith. God stills the soul,

All faith the gift of God. 7
that it may listen to the Faith ; God flashes conviction
into the soul, that it may see the truth of the Faith ;
in those who through His Grace persevere to the end,
God seals up the Faith in the soul, that it may keep
the Faith which it has received, unchanged, undimi
nished, unadulterated, the source of life and love and
holiness, until faith is swallowed up in the blessed-
making sight of Him Whom, unseen, it believed.
God forecometh us in all things. As the beginning
of our being was from Him, so from Him also is our
re-creation in Christ. Our own free will, as we now,
since the fall, have it by nature, floats and sways be
tween good and evil, weak toward good, overmastered
by evil. If, unaided by Divine grace, we could make
it good, we could make ourselves, of ourselves, better
than God made us. We could bestow more upon
ourselves than Almighty God. So did not even the
good Angels ; so cannot any created thing. The good
Angels did not make their own wills good. God crea
ted them, as He did man, wholly good. God upheld
them, freely through His grace choosing Him. They
abode in the good will in which God had created
them, by abiding in Him ; their good will abode in
them, because through the grace wherewith He en
dowed them, they, upheld by Him, clave inseparably
to Him, and, by partaking of Him,were fixed in un
changeable bliss through His Unchangeableness.
In us, that will to cleave to Him in which He
created us, is, after the fall, through His grace re
created in us. He Who sets Himself before us as
the Object of our faith, gives us the will to believe

8 All faith the gift of God,
in Him, if we consent. With us it remains to receive
or to have ; with God, to give. God wills that we
should believe, but not without ourselves. He per
suades us, invites us, calls us, works in us, that we
should will to believe ; He, if we will, removes from
us all hindrances within us to belieye, attempers
every disposition to His truth and faith, subdues in
us, whatsoever erects itself or rebels against it. One
only thing He doth not ; He doth not force us.
God Himself says that the beginning of our faith, as
well as our complete faith, is from Himself. " Faith,"
/ the Apostle saith, "is the gift of God." " But * to you
n/ it is given," (i^apla-Ot}) given as a gift of grace, " in the
behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also
to suffer for His sake." S. Paul blends in one the be
ginning and the end of the Christian's life. To die for
Christ is the crowning act of the Christian's life ; suffer
ings for Christ are the highest gift of grace. What they
who suffered in His Name, spake in their hour of trial,
Christ saith, the Holy Ghost "spake h in them;" what
they endured, they endured through the power of
Christ. "Christ, the Guardian of their faith, fought and
conquered in those His servants. He approved them,
willing; He aided them, struggling ; He crowned them,
conquering ; rewarding in them with the recompense
of His Fatherly goodness and love what He Himself
wrought, and honouring what He Himself accomplish
ed in c them." Yet not less is it the gift of God, S.
Paul says, to believe on Christ than to suffer for Him.
a Phil, i. 29. b S. Matth. x. 19. 20.
c S. Cyprian Ep. 10. p. 21. Oxf. Trans. Ep. 76, 4. p. 307. This last was writ
ten in immediate expectation of his own martyrdom.

V

All faith the gift of God. 9
" I was d compassionated of the Lord to become
faithful." S. Paul was inspired to speak of his own
belief in Christ as being so wholly the grace of God
that he speaks of it in a passive form, " I was com
passionated by the Lord to be faithful," or a believer,
rjXe-rifj.evos vtto mpiov 7tktto? elvai. Whence "the compas
sionated " becomes even a title for those brought,
through the grace of God, into the faith of the Gos
pel. "Who e before were not compassionated, but
now have been compassionated " ; " now ye have
been compassionated through their unbelief" ; "that
through the compassion upon you they too may be
Compassionated." ol ovk rfKe7)fievoL vvv Be eXeyOevTes. fjXerjdrjTe
Tr} tovtwv aTreidelq, ra> vjxerkpm eXeei iva kclL avrol eXerj6S>ab.
With this coincides his other saying, " It f is not
of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of
God that sheweth mercy." " Not plainly," says S.
Bernard, "as though any could indeed will or indeed
run in vain, but that he who willeth and runneth,
should boast not in himself but in Him from Whom
he hath both to will and to run." Of himself S. Paul
says again, " By g the grace of God I am what I am."
He reserved no part to himself, as if this were his
own, not God's. All which is good in me, all which
I have or am of good, that 1 am, by the grace of
God. He speaks of his very " I," himself, not of any
gifts, graces, wisdom, knowledge of Divine things,
inspirations, labours, love, zeal ; not of any one thing
which God had given him, not of the aggregate of
d 1 Cor. vii. 25. e 1 Pet. ii. 10. Rom. xi. 30, 31.
' Rom. ix. 16. «1 Cor. xv. 10,

10 All faith the gift of God.
all God's gifts, but his very self, around whom all
these things hung, in whom they were, his very inward
self, had become what it was, by the grace of God.
The stream is not distinct from the fountain ; nor
the ray from the sun; nor is the ripened fruit of other
kind than the blossom ; nor is the perfection of grace
the gift of God and the beginning from nature.
Again, as silencing all boastfulness on the part of
those who counted themselves somewhat, S. Paul
appeals upbraidingly to their hearts ; "who h maketh
thee to differ from another ; and what hast thou that
thou didst not receive ; now if thou didst receive it,
why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received
it ? " If we had not received from God the grace
whereby the faint and inoperative velleity, which is
the highest attainment of the natural man, is changed
into resolute and effective will, then man might have
said, " the very foundation of all faith, our own will
to believe, we have altogether from ourselves, not
from God : we did not receive that upon which our
salvation turns." But now in no part of our life in
God, or, (which is the same) of the life of God in
our soul, is the root or first spring of our acts from
ourselves. We make and can make no one effort or
motion ; we can exercise no will or desire, without
the grace of God. This only have we, that we receive
and have what God giveth ; plainly we do not receive
or have without our will ; nor do we against or with
out our choice receive irresistibly our good will ; but

1 Cor. iv. 7.

All faith the gift of God. 11
the will to receive and have we receive of God. We
cannot will by a separate act of our own, without the
grace of God. " Not that1 we are sufficient of ourselves
to think," or account, "any thing as from ourselves."
Nor as though part were our's, part God's. The Apostle
denies that we may claim any thing, any one thing,
Xoyta-aa-ffal tl, to proceed from ourselves ; but all, even
although in ourselves, or with ourselves, from God.
"Itk is God which worketh in you both to will and
to do of His good pleasure." He produceth not our
will in us, as He produceth ourselves without ourselves ;
nor doth He work in us, as He worketh in the brute
creation. He willeth to do nothing in us without our
selves; we can do nothing good, not even will without
Him. But He willeth so to restore in us the harmony
with Himself, that whereas He reserveth to Himself
the prerogative of re-creating in us what is good, yet in
all the rest, He willeth that we should co-operate with
Him. He awakeneth, healeth, strengtheneth, uphold-
eth our will. " God," says S. Bernard, ' " worketh
in us these three things, to think, to will, to perform
what is good ; to think, without us ; to will, with us; to
perform, through us. From God then, doubtless, is
the beginning of our salvation, and not either through
us, nor with us. But consent and act, although not
from us, are not yet without us. We must beware
lest, when we feel these things done invisibly in us or
with us, we attribute them either to our will, which is
1 2 Cor. iii. 5 See S. Chrys. ad loo. k Phil. ii. 13.
1 degrat. et lib. arb. e. 14. n. 46, 7.

12 All faith the gift of God.
weak ; or to a necessity from God, which is none ; but
to the grace of God wherein He aboundeth. Grace
arouseth free will, when it soweth the thought ; healeth,
when it changeth the affection ; strengtheneth, when
it leadeth to act ; preserveth, lest it fail. But grace so
worketh with free will, that it forecometh only in
thought, in the rest accompanying ; to this end fore-
coming, that henceforth it may be co-operated with.
Yet so what was begun by grace alone is perfected
conjointly, so that in each advance they operate uni
tedly not severally, together not alternately. Grace
doth not act in part and free will in part ; but they
each by an undivided operation, accomplish the whole.
Free will doth all, and grace doth all ; yet as the
whole is in free will, so the whole is from Grace."
The whole preaching of the Gospel to us Gentiles
is summed up by the Prophet Isaiah, in words which
express that God laid Himself open, as it were, to the
inmost knowledge of those who knew not of Him so
much, as that they ought to seek Him, and who sought
Him not. Most literally God says in one pregnant
word of the sacred language, "I gave Myself to be
inwardly known m by those who asked not of Me ; I
gave Myself to be found of those who sought Me not."
All this agrees with the account which our Lord
m Is.lxv. 7. Ti'fliia as a reflective, expresses this, a-n signifies to "search
earnestly," ( as God, after the commandments of God, righteousness) search
below the surface ( the knowledge of the works of God, Ps. cii. 2.) out of His
word (Is. xxxiv. 16. ) enquire about things yet unrevealed (from God and
His Prophets ) Gen. xxv. 22. 1 Kings xxii. 5. 2 Kings xxii. 13. Jer. xxxvii.
7. Ez. xx. 3. and ( in the reflective ) of God's allowing Himself to be enquired
of. Ezek-xiv. 3. xx. 3. 31. i^fyavlis kywhtiriv Ixx.

All faith the gift of God. 13
Himself gives of the unbelief of such as, having seen
the miracle of the loaves, murmured against His teach
ing, " I am the Living Bread which came down from
Heaven." They had seen with their own eyes what
should have persuaded them, and they were not per
suaded. If miracles had been purposed by God to
extort belief, belief might have been wrung from them.
They had seen far more than those miracles of which
Nicodemus said, " Rabbi, we know that Thou art a
teacher sent from God, for no man can do the miracles
which Thou doest, except God were with him." For
two years and a half Jesus had gone up and down
among them, working those miracles which Isaiah had
foretold that the Christ would work, so that miracle
and prophecy already centered in Him. " They had
themselves eaten of the loaves and were filled." Yet
they believed not. They had a ready plea for them
selves, why they need not believe. They had a
contradiction on the surface to urge, between what
our Lord taught of Himself, and what they themselves
knew. "Is not this Jesus, the Son of Joseph, whose
father and mother we know ? How then doth this
man say, I came down from Heaven?" They knew
that He was from below. How then could He be
from above, and not only " be " but have "come down
from Heaven?" Acute answer of human intellect
and human ignorance! But why then did Nicodemus
so firmly believe? why did these disbelieve? " No man
cometh unto Me, unless the Father which hath sent
Me draw him." It is a mighty drawing of which our

14 All faith the gift of God.
Lord speaks, " a drawing which constrains nature, over
powers the dull heaviness of nature, is stronger to
draw than nature to resist ; yet a drawing by the in
ward force of Divine Love, "with the cords of a man,"
by the inward ray of the Divine illumining, revealing
to the soul the truth of the Divine words. For so
our Lord explains His own words, "it is written in the
Prophets, they shall be all taught of God."
By such authorities of Holy Scripture, the doctrines
of Semi-Pelagianism were crushed, which denied, in
fact, the preventing grace of God, conceding in dif
ferent ways that the grace of God followed upon the
endeavours of man, not that the effectual endeavours
of man were called into being by the grace of God.
It was then laid down in the Church, " If ° any one
saith that the beginning of faith and the very desire of
belief, whereby we believe in Him Who justifieth the
ungodly and arrive at the birth of Holy Baptism, doth
not, as well as the increase of faith, come to us by the
gift of grace, that is, by the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit, correcting our will from unbelief to faith, from
ungodliness to godliness, but is in us by nature, he is a
manifest adversary of the Apostolic doctrines, since
the blessed Paul teacheth, ' We p trust that He who has
begun a good work in you, will perform it unto the
Day of our Lord Jesus Christ.'
" If any says that mercy is bestowed by God upon us
* h\Kv<rri, ° Concil. Araus. ii. A. D. 529. cap. 5. 6. 7. Cone. v. 807. ed. Col.
p Phil. i. 6. The Council adds, Ib. 29. Eph. ii. 8. 9. and then subjoins, "For
they who say that the faith whereby we believe in God is of nature, lay down
that all they who are alien from the Church of Christ are in amanner faithful."

All faith the gift of God. 15
believing, willing, desiring, endeavouring, labouring
watching, studying, asking, seeking, without the grace
of God, and confesses not, that through the infusion and
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, it taketh place in us,
that we believe, will, or are able to do all these things as
we ought, and if he subjecteth the aid of grace to man's
humility or obedience, and doth not allow that our be
ing humble and obedient is the gift of grace itself, he
resisteth the Apostle, who saith, ' what hast thou
which thou hast not received ? ' ' By the grace of
God I am what I am.'
" If any affirm that, without the illumination and
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Who giveth to all
sweetness in assenting and believing the truth, we
can, by the force of nature, think as we ought, or
choose any good thing which appertaineth to the
Salvation of life eternal, or can assent to the saving
preaching, that is, the preaching of the Gospel, he
is deceived by a heretical spirit, not understanding
the words of God Who saith in the Gospel, ' without
Me, ye can do nothing,' and that of the Apostle, ' not
that we are sufficient of ourselves, to think any
thing as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God.' "
This is so plainly the teaching of our own Article
upon free will that it would seem almost superfluous
to insist upon it among ourselves, who mean, of
course, to accept and believe its teaching. And yet
if we turn, from what we profess and think we be
lieve, to maxims almost stereotyped among us, or to
consider things which are difficulties as to faith, it
would seem as if we believed nothing less.

16 All faith the gift of God.
Thus, it is almost a received formula on the evi
dences of the Gospel, that the province of reason is
antecedent to that of faith ; that we are on grounds
of reason to believe in Revelation, in other words, to
receive Faith, and then on the ground of Faith, to
receive its contents, which are not to be contrary to
Reason. True, as is urged, since reason is a gift of
God, it will not conflict with His other gift, Revela
tion or Faith. But then, what Reason ? Reason, such
as Adam had it, before the Fall, unwarped by preju
dices, unswayed by pride, undeafened by passions,
unallured by self-idolizing, unfettered by love of inde-
pendance, master of itself because subdued to God,
enlightened by God, a mirror of the Mind of God, re
flecting His Image and likeness after which it was
created ; a finite copy of the perfections of the Infi
nite ? Truly, no one would demur to the answer of such
an oracle as this. A work of God, which remained in
harmony with God, must be in harmony with every
other creation of God ; for both would be the finite
expressions of the one Archetype, the Mind of God.
But that poor blinded prisoner, majestic in its wreck,
bearing still the lineaments of its primaeval beauty
and giant might, yet doomed, until it be set free, to
grind in the mill of its prison-house and make sport
for the master to whom it is enslaved, this, which can
not guide itself, is no guide into the Mind of God.
More truly might that saying be reversed, and it
might be affirmed, that the province of reason is after
faith, not before. Reason, unaided, cannot even

All faith the gift of God. 17
penetrate into the sphere of the objects of Faith ; nor
can it, in any case, discern their substance or measure
them by earthly laws. But reason, healed, restored,
guided, enlightened, by the Spirit of God, has a power
of vision above nature, and can spiritually discern a
fitness, and correspondence, and harmony in the things
of God which, through faith, it has received and be
lieved. But to what end to measure by a crooked rule ?
The fall perverted the whole of man's nature ; not
his sensual appetite only, nor his will, nor his under
standing, but his whole being. In its outward act, it
was rebellion against God. In its motive, it was pride
and ambition ; "Ye shall be as gods." In its effects it
was a poison running through his whole physical na
ture, and rousing his passions into a phrenzied rebel
lion against himself. And henceforth sensual pleasure
stupifi.es his judgment ; passion disturbs it ; pride and
vain-glory distort it ; self-will blinds it. There is not
one way only to blindness of spirit. Every thing
blinds the mind of man, which is not according to
the Mind of God. It was then a poor and insuffi
cient plea, when it has been said in behalf of this or
that unbeliever, that he was, what is called "a moral
man." It was a short-sighted theory, which was an
xious to point out this or that flagrant moral defect
in the lives of unbelievers. The fallen spirits have
no sensual temptations. Our first parents' sin was
spiritual sin. Whatever may have been the inward
life of the Pharisees in our Lord's time, (and He
Who " resisteth the proud " often leaves them, so that
c

18 All faith the gift of God.
they fall into disgraceful sensual sin) on the whole,
they lived strict, obedient lives. " After the straitest
sect of our religion," says S. Paul, " I lived a Phari
see." Our Lord Himself contrasts their lives, at one
time with the Publican, at another with the Publi
cans and harlots « ; yet, on both occasions, only to
warn them, that the grosser sins of the Publicans
and harlots did not keep them so hopelessly alien
from the Kingdom of God, as the more subtle sins
held back the Pharisee. The love of the praise of
man made faith impossible. " How ' can ye believe
( 7rw? BvvaaOe u/iet? Tnarevaat,,) who receive glory one of
another, and seek not the glory which cometh of
God only ? " " They loved the praise of man, more
than the praise of God."
So far then, from a highly intellectual age being a
favorable atmosphere for the Gospel, intellect, like
every mere natural power, is, unless in so far as
Christ subdues it to Himself, in necessary antagonism
to the Gospel, both as a whole, and in its parts. The
special temptation of high intellect is, to think that,
because by its natural powers it understands natural
things and the visible creation, therefore it is quali
fied, more than others, to understand things above
nature, and the Mind of the Creator. And therefore
it will judge, what should be the evidence, the cha
racter, the extent, the contents, the effects of a Reve
lation from God ; what sort of miracles are to be
¦J S. Matt. xxi. 31, 32. ' S John v. 44.

All faith the gift of God. 19
expected and are conformable to reason and to the
Nature of God ; what should be the structure or
clearness of prophecy ; what doctrines are consistent
with the Nature of God ; what God could or could
not have taught ; whether He could have dispensed
with His own laws, or ordinary ways of working ;
what duties He could have imposed ; what He coidd
have praised ; Avhat rational beings, good or evil,
there can be, higher than man ; what the intercourse
or influence of such agents towards man could be;
whether a relation, which the natural intellect of
itself would reject, could come from God ; what
dealings with His creatures are consistent with love
or justice in God ; whether the Eternal Existence of
God, in Himself, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, is
true or self-contradictory ; whether the Unchangeable
God can hear prayer.
Natural intellect judges, for itself, all these and
many such questions, allowing freely to God what
ever does not interfere with itself, granting to God
that He is greater than itself, allowing its obligations
to Him, that He has made it, and set it in a course
wherein, without help from Him, it may attain, as it
thinks, to its ultimate perfection. It treats with Him
much as one might with a more powerful sovereign ;
it owns, in some sort, its dependance upon Him, yet
so as to maintain an independance of its own. It
will own what it cannot help, and will claim for itself
all which it is not forced to yield up. It selects from
the Attributes of God, what it wills to acknowledge ;
c2

20 All faith the gift of God.
and what it will not, it denies. Its own will is its
measure of Almighty God. And so it claims to
judge, to criticise, to condemn, in the Revelation of
God, whatever it assumes to be out of harmony with
the Mind of God, because its . own has nothing
akin to it. Its God then is, in truth, its own creation;
its Creator is the creature of its own mind. It in
vests Him with dignity, intelligence, benevolence,
marvellous powder, wisdom of contrivance, as a sort
of great Architect of the visible world. It will ac
knowledge gladly all which it likes, so that it is not
required to acknowledge any thing which it does not
like. But it has no idea of One Incomprehensible
Being, containing all things, but contained by none ;
the Rule of all things, but measured by nothing ; of
Whose very Being, in that He is a Spirit, man can
have no thought ; the Mysteries of Whose Nature
cannot contradict man's reason, because man has no
capacity by which to estimate them ; Y\Those "judg
ments are a great deep," in which human reason can
not wade ; Whose " Wisdom is unsearchable, and
His ways past finding out." It has no awe, no reve
rence, no subjection. It admires, not adores : it is
pleased with its own intelligence in admiring, and
worships itself and its own wisdom, instead of shrink
ing into its nothingness in the Presence of its God,
to hearken to what God will say to it. We think it
strange now, that, because this earth has its moon
rolling around it, and we see the sun and stars in
their seeming circuit, man should have thought that

A 11 faith the gift of God. 2 1
sun and stars also circled around this small earth, as
the centre of the Avhole visible creation. And men do
not think it strange, that man's reason should be the
centre, around which all things seen and unseen
should revolve ; so that from it, all things should be
beheld in their due harmony and relations ; all
should be understood by reference to it ; all should
be measured by it, the Infinite by the finite. And
well were it, were it only the Infinite ! But the very
ground of the ignorance is that, not contemplating,
not meditating, not adoring, not bowing down itself
and all its powers before its Maker, its Deity is a
mere inanimate abstraction, not He Who Alone Is,
and Who, in His Infinite Love and Goodness, made
us out of nothing, to have our being in Him.
Every gift of God is plainly good, if it be sancti
fied. Great intellect may greatly serve God, if it first
humble itself to obey Him. But pure intellect, unpe-
netrated by faith, is in more special antagonism to
God, than even intellect imbruted in sensual sins.
The sensual blind themselves ; they are bowred down
to earth, that they cannot see God. The ambitious
set up an idol in His stead, worship some shadow of
His Greatness, and forget Himself, or are their own
gods. To the covetous, mammon is their god ; to the
gluttonous, "their belly" the Apostle says, "is their
god." All these forget God ; their lives are one re
bellion against God. But it is not the rebellion of
direct defiance. Unsanctified intellect has this spe
cial evil, that it comes into direct conflict Avith the

22 All faith the gift of God.
Mind of God Himself. Its field is the all-but-infinite ;
space, time, mind, being, the laAvs whereby the Invi
sible worketh, the mirrors wherein (as far as may be
in the flesh) His Attributes are beheld, are its pro
vince and its home. It can, in thought, ascend
beyond time and space, and can conceive of laws
which would extend even into Infinity ° ; it transcends
and masters the knowledge of the finite, and so is
brought into contact Avith the Infinite God. Its very
track lies across the ways, the workings, the creative
power of God, as He ordereth all things in number,
weight and measure. It traces His laws and ac
knowledges the Law-giver ; it almost grasps the crea
tion in its thought, and reverences the Creator ; it
admires His Wisdom, and seems to be made a par
taker of that Wisdom, by understanding some portion
of it, and admiring it. It has stretched itself out to
the bounds of all created things, and searcheth out
all perfection. It has traversed, as it thinks, creation
after creation, and worlds beyond worlds. And now,
having traced the regularity and harmony of all God's
natural laAvs, and found no hindrance to its under
standing, will it oAvn that there is a supernatural sys
tem, to which all its natural wisdom is not even a
stepping-stone ; that all its natural knowledge cannot
decypher the very alphabet of the supernatural ; that
all its acuteness, inventiveness, powers of combina
tion, the electric dartings-forth of its thought, the
8 Price on the Infinitesimal Calculus. Vol. 1. p. 2. c 9. Principles of Geo
metry p. 260. sqq.

All faith the gift of God, 23
lightning rapidity of its conceptions, its piercing pene
trating keenness fail it here ; that it has, not to disco
ver, but to receive ; not to criticise, but to obey ; that
it must exchange its keen activity for passive acquies
cence, nature for Grace ; and that its first step towards
the Throne of God, is to humble itself at His footstool
and say, "Lord I am but dust and ashes, sinful and
blind through inherited sinfulness and my OAvn. En
lighten Thou me that I may see ; humble me that I
may receive ; enlarge me that I may comprehend
what here on Earth may be knoAvn of Thee, the In
comprehensible ; restrain me that I may not imagine
aught of Thee, save what Thou art, and hast revealed? "
Yet this is the trial of intellect. In one of the
many mansions of the house of the Great Father, it
has its own reAvard, if sanctified. He who "hath*
made all things for Himself," must have prepared for
those wonderful, transcending intellects, whose pierc
ing thoughts are more like intuition than reflection,
some separate lustre in that bright galaxy around
His Throne. But only if tried, perfected, sanctified.
All of man, passions, will, affections, imagination,
intellect, have to be tempered, purified, perfected,
through the fire of trial without, within by the fire
of the Spirit. Intellect, penetrated by the Spirit of
God, irradiated by His Light, kindled by the gloAv of
Divine love, reflects to after-ages the light which it
has caught, illumines mysteries, guards truth, unfolds
' Prov. xvi. 4.

24 All faith the gift of God.
our spiritual nature, orders the whole sum and rela
tions and proportions of Divine and human know
ledge. But intellect, unenlightened by Divine light
intuitive as it may be in human things, is blind in
Divine. It is not merely, as the acute mathematician
may not understand moral or physical science. The
knowledge which pure intellect lacks, is not outward
but inward ; not natural but supernatural. Man may
understand the things of man ; God only unfolds the
things of God ; through God only can we understand
the things of God. " No man," saith S. Paul "know-
eth the things of God, save the Spirit of God," as no
man knoAVS the inward thought of " man, save the
spirit of man which is in him." This Spirit Apostles
received, that through It they might know and de
clare the things of God ; through this Spirit Alone
can we understand those same truths, spoken to us in
words taught by that Same Spirit. For " the natural
man," S. Paul goes on, "receiveth," or containeth, "not
the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know
them, because they are spiritually discerned." S. Paul,
as S. James and S. Jude, knows but of those two
classes, " natural men," and natural wisdom, i. e. men
who have not the Spirit of God, and wisdom, which
is earthly, not of God ; and spiritual men, and spi
ritual Wisdom ; men who have not their souls only,
but have the Spirit of the Father and the Son dwell
ing in them, hallowing them, guiding them, teaching
them, enlightening them ; and "Wisdom which is from
above, and cometh down from the Father of lights."

All faith the gift of God. 25
It is part of the dependance in which God seeth it
to be good for the creature to abide, that the creature
should not know God, except through the Revelation
of God. Even Angelic Intelligences behold God, not
through their own created vision, but through the
light of Glory, which God imparts to them. "In"
and " through Thy light, we shall see light." Angels
too cannot, through their own created sight, penetrate
that light unapproachable, which by its very bright
ness shrouds from sight the Essence of God ; else it
were not " unapproachable " to created being. An
gels too are comprehended in those sayings, " No
u one hath seen God at any time ; the Only Begotten
Son which is in the Bosom of the Father, He hath
declared Him." " No v one knoweth the Son but the
Father, neither knoweth any one the Father save
the Son, and he to Avhomsoever the Son may reveal
Him." Angels too knew not, of themselves, the Mys
tery of the Incarnation and of man's redemption, but
longed to look closer into the depth of the Mysteries
of Divine Wisdom, and Love shewn and revealed to us.
God Alone can of Himself knoAv God ; God Alone
can comprehend God. Through the brightness of
the Divine Light in us, shall we, if, by His grace
we attain, behold, each in our measure and degree,
the Infinite, Incomprehensible, Essence of God.
But man has this further weakness through the
Fall, that not only can he not know the things of
» S. John i. 18. v S. Matth.xi. 27.

26 All faith the gift of God.
God, except by the Revelation of God, but that very
Revelation he cannot understand or receive by his
natural powers, without the Spirit of God. As the
Holy Angels cannot behold God, except through the
light of God, neither can man understand the Reve
lation of God, save through the Spirit of God. The
words of Divine Wisdom may sound over the outAvard
ear ; they do not penetrate the understanding, unless
God Himself awakes the ear within. So saith our
Blessed Lord Himself, " I thank Thee 0 Father,
Lord of Heaven and earth, that Thou hast hid these
things, [ the mysteries of the faith revealed in Christ
Jesus our Lord ] from the Avise and prudent [ in their
own eyes, and in knowledge of human things ] and
hast revealed them unto babes." The preaching was
for all ; the streams of Divine Knowledge and Good
ness flowed forth for all ; the rays of Divine Light
were shed abroad for all ; but the Light penetrated
not eyes, which prejudice, or pride, or self-will, had
blinded. The streams rested in the lowly vallies not
on the mountain sides.
And this their not-hearing and not-seeing is the
very result of thinking that they see and hear. If
they had a misgiving that they did not see, they
might yet learn of Him Who came to give them
light. God's word to the Prophet Isaiah lays great
emphasis on this their supposed sight and hearing.
" Hear ye, hearing," i. e. go on hearing, "and under
stand ye not ; and see ye, seeing, and perceive ye not."
It is pronounced upon them, as the sentence of God

All faith the gift of God. 27
doubtless on their previous impenitence and on their
refusal to hear God's previous calls. And so they
heard, they criticised, they contradicted ; and the
more they heard, the more they perverted ; and the
more confidently they insisted that they under
stood, the further they were from the grace of
God, which Avould have revealed to them the true
meaning of what they heard.
It has, doubtless, been startling in early years, that
minds so highly endowed with natural gifts of God,
creations of His Mind, formed in such perfection of
natural beauty, should have failed of the true faith,
or overtly rejected God's Revelation of Himself. It
would have been even perplexing, (as it must be dis
tressing) were acute reason the way to faith, or more
capable of appreciating it, or better qualified to detect
any flaw in it, or to criticise its substance, or to weigh
its evidence, or to unfold the meaning of the Scrip
tures in which it is deposited. The contrary is pro
claimed at the very threshold of the Gospel. Acute-
ness and power of combination, inventiveness and
grasp of intellect, are the fit framers and discoverers
and organizers of human science and human philoso
phy ; humility, simplicity, candour of soul, integrity
of the will, are the true, because the faithful,
recipients of Divine knowledge. The Gospel was
"hidden from the wise and prudent, and revealed
unto babes."
Man's intellect was held captive, enslaved by his
will ; and his will, by his passions and his pride ; God

28 All faith the gift of God.
set free the intellect, not by overpowering arguments
addressed to itself, but by bursting the bonds where
by it Avas held, and removing the scales whereby the
light which should enlighten it, was excluded. " I
will destroy," God saith, " the wisdom of the wise,"
of those Avho through their natural wisdom, thought
themselves, or were thought Avise in Divine things,
" and I Avill bring to nothing the understanding of
the prudent." Human acuteness is skilled as to human
ends ; it sees not one step towards the End of ends,
its life in God. " Where is the wise " in this world's
wisdom ? " Where is the scribe," with his human
knoAvledge of things Divine ? " Where the disputer
of this world," unequal alike to establish solidly
natural truth or to impugn Divine ? " Hath not God
made foolish the wisdom of this world ? " Working
deeds which man's wisdom holds impossible, teaching
truths which it regards as folly, yet by both working
what human philosophy had failed to effect ! " For
after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom
knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of
preaching to save them that believe." Man, through
human wisdom and human reasoning, failed even to
know God ; God substituted faith for reasoning,
seeming folly for assumed wisdom, and gave not
knowledge only, but salvation. On the one side
were arrayed human wisdom, human nobility, human
power ; on the other God arrayed " the foolish things
of the world," " the weak things of the world," "base
things of the Avorld, things despised." Through

All faith the gift of God. 29
" unlearned and ignorant men, " He imparted to
faith, what learning helped not, and ignorance hin
dered not, to receive. The world through its wisdom,
amid the wonders of the creation, knew not the
Majesty of the Creator ; God taught to fishermen
and tentmakers and publicans, the poor and the
ignorant and the despised Galileans, the humility of
the Incarnation, and the shame of the Cross. Such
as they were who called, such were mostly those who
were called, " not many wise men after the flesh, not
many mighty, not many noble : " but through these
God taught to man, man's own misery, and the
boundlessness of the Divine Mercy ; He taught him
humility through taking on Him the form of a ser
vant and the humiliation of the Cross ; but so
He opened his eyes to behold, as man might, the
Majesty of His Own Being and the depth of His
Wisdom, and the greatness of His Holiness, and the
Adorableness of His Love. He taught His own
Glory through humility which human reason could
not receive. He taught of that which is Highest in
Himself, through the lowest ; through the lowest
whom He taught, He taught whatever accounted it
self the highest ; of the lowest He made the highest.
The world despised, scoffed, reviled, hated, rejected,
persecuted, trampled under foot, and was con
quered. " The science of the fishermen overcame
the science of the Philosophers ;" and Philosophers
did service to God, having first bowed their necks
beneath the gentle, health-giving yoke of the Cru-

30 All faith the gift of God.
cified. The weak overcame the strong ; the un
learned taught the learned ; the foolish convinced
the wise ; for in outAvard form, it was the weakness
of God, and the foolishness of God ; but within were
the might of Faith, and the attractions of Divine
Love, and the Almightiness of Divine Grace.
As it was in the beginning, so it will be to the
end. The form of the warfare may differ, the secret
spring remains the same. Unbelief may become
courteous, smooth, easy, compromising. The soft
ness of the age may dislike the hardness even of
unbelief. It will leave the casket, while it steals
the jewel ; it Avill grant the shadow, so that it secure
the substance ; it will respect the " idea, " while it
abhors the reality ; it will do homage to a painted
lifeless semblance of truth, so that we will substitute
its phantom for the living " truth, as it is in Jesus."
But as faith is one, so unbelief is one. Mysteries
which the human mind cannot fathom ; absolute
submission to the will of God ; untampering accep
tance of all, the minutest truths of God ; unchange-
ableness of the Faith amid the changes and progress
of human science ; oneness of the Faith amid the
conflict of human opinions ; dealings of God, which
man must adore, not scrutinize ; treasures of Divine
grace in earthen vessels ; reasonings which themselves
spring from a hidden, illuminating, wisdom ; — the hu
man unsanctified intellect hates these with an un
varying, deadly hatred ; it will scoff at what it dares,
explain away, what the average reverence of the age

All faith the gift of God. 31
will not allow to be treated with scorn, but never
will it accept them, until itself be changed by the
All-poAverful Grace of God,
But our Lord still says to His own, " Greater is
He that is in you than he that is in the world." Faith,
being a Divine gift, is mightier than human reason.
You may often not yourselves be able to develope
in words the grounds or the strength of your con
victions. You may be tempted to be vexed or dis
quieted in yourselves, because words of God, which
stamp the faith upon your own souls, seem to another,
unconvincing ; or because truths, which to you are
as your own souls, and are imvrought into your very
souls and are a part of them, seem to others as "idle
tales and they believe them not." The grounds of
faith are often the more difficult to be produced in
detail, even because Faith is a Divine Gift. The
very deepest principles of Faith are often those which
can least be analyzed. Faith was anterior to reason
ing ; it is more comprehensive than reasoning ; it
outlives reasoning. It is a centre to which all
reasoning converges, which countless lines of reason
ing intersect ; but itself contains them all, and is
contained by none. The distinctive colours into
which faith's primal light can be resolved, may be
counted ; but its piercing light and kindling glow
are not in the resolved ray. Faith has a direct
power over the soul, and speaks to it, and is
heard by it, because it is from God. Words of
Scripture which express its truth touch a chord of

32 All faith the gift of God.
the soul which cannot but respond, because it has
been attuned to it by God. As Avhen our Divine
Lord was in the flesh, " the w very Brightness and
Majesty of the hidden Divinity, which shone through
His Human Countenance, drew at first sight" those
unto Himself, aaLlo had eyes to see it, and the
Apostles were converted and left their all, and fol
lowed Him without delay, though they had seen no
miracles nor any other token of Divine authority, so
noAv too, His words speak to the ear of those who
are His, with a Divine force, because they are the
living words of the Eternal Word.
The very presence of Faith is God's witness upon
earth. He Who " out of the mouths of babes and
sucklings perfected praise," and by " the weak things
of the world confounds the things that are mighty,"
even noAv overawes all but conceited unbelief, by
the simple conviction of faith. Its dogmatism chafes
the world, even because in the presence of its firm
rootedness, the world feels the more its own un-
stayedness. If, but for a moment, amid the parting
clouds of human opinions, theories, speculations,
guesses, reasonings, the soul's eye catch but one
glimpse of that deep azure sky of faith in its serenity,
it feels that it has seen something deeper, higher,
calmer, clearer, of more piercing beauty, than all
which sweeps over it and shrouds it at times from
sight. For where opinion vacillates, scepticism sus-
" S. Jerome on S. Matth. ix. 9. see Note F. on Tertullian p. 255. Oxf. Tr.

All faith the gift of God. 33
pects the truth, doubt misgives, reason argues, spe
culation clouds, imagination fails, there faith knows
AArhat it believes, more certainly than any object of
the senses ; as certainly, although not as vividly as
if God had quickened its eye to see what it shall see
hereafter. Faith knows more certainly than the
senses ; for the senses may deceive us, God cannot.
Faith knoAvs with absolute certainty ; for " faith," the
Holy Ghost saith, " is the substance of things hoped
for." Faith makes the objects of faith present to the
soul ; it gives them, through its certainty, a substance
and subsistence in the soul ; faith knoAvs by an
infused light that which naturally passes knowledge ;
faith has, enfolded in it as it were, the germs and
rudiments of things to come, in which it believes.
For "we know in Whom we have believed." " Andx
this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the
Only true God, and Jesus Christ, Whom Thou hast
sent." To the Christian, his home in heaven is as
certain as if he had seen it Avith his bodily eyes,
although eye hath not seen nor ear heard the nature
or the fulness of its joys. Faith " endureth/ as
seeing the Invisible."
But since faith is the gift of God through grace,
whatever injures grace, weakens faith. Faith may
five on for a time without love, and become what is
called an historic faith. But faith without love has
no root. For we are " rooted and grounded in love."
* S. John xvii. 3. * Heb. xi. 27.
D

34 All faith the gift of God,
It is the last judgment of God upon the soul which
will not live as it believes, that in the end it believes
as it lives. But, short of this abandonment of the
soul, whatsoever injures grace in the soul, injures
faith. Of direct sins against faith, I will speak, with
God's help, next Sunday. But, indirectly, every
wilful sin is, so far, a denial of faith, and weakens
faith. Intellectual, as well as moral, sins are, if
wilfully entertained, antagonists to faith. Faith is
based on humility, rooted in love, directed through
a holy will, fed by contemplation, quickened by de
votion, nurtured by study of the Avords of the Eter
nal Word, strengthened by spiritual growth, sees
through purity of soul, lives in action. So then, it
is Aveakened by the opposite of all these. Pride re
bels against it, impurity is dulled to it, indevotion
chills it, worldliness chokes it, negligence lets it slip,
an unholy will Avills that it should not be ; and all
in common loose the soul's hold of faith, because
they Aveaken grace, through which the soul has
power to hold it.
Many things Avill combine to wrest it from you,
my younger brethren. Through one thing only can
you hold it, the grace of God. New, though false,
lights dazzle at the outset of life ; novelty attracts ;
the old faith may be pictured to you as antiquated ;
a strict oneness of faith as illiberal ; the very Love
of God is set in array against the Revelation of God,
as though God could not mean what yet He has
said ; belief in God, as He has revealed Himself, may

All faith the gift of God. 35
be pictured to you as derogatory to God. "Go not
after them, nor follow them," is your Saviour's warn
ing as to those who shall come in His Name, and
whom He hath not sent. Old must the faith be,
since as soon as man needed redemption, the Re
deemer was promised, and the truths of the Gospel
lay implicitly involved in the revelation to Adam ;
and He Who eighteen hundred years ago, more fully
declared it as the power of God unto salvation,
changeth not. "One" must it be, for contradictories
cannot both be true, and He has said, there is " one
Faith," as there is " One God " and " One Lord."
Independant it must be of the progress of the
human mind, since Faith relates to eternal truths,
about Avhich human reason would, by itself, dimly
grope, the Being and the Ways of the Infinite,
which human reason cannot grasp, nor fathom, nor
survey, nor discover, nor re-order.
Yet faith, too has progress as Avell as grace ; but
as the reward of faith received, and grace Avell-used ;
faith for faith, and grace for grace. Simple faith
which believes that it may understand, understands
more and more by the help of God, because it believes.
It longs to discover no new truths, but to love more
deeply, and contemplate more truly, and cleave more
constantly, and be conformed more wholly, to Him
in Whom it has believed ; and as it meditates, the
fire kindles, and a ray from the Eternal Truth fills
it with brightness, and light from the Eternal Light
dissipates its remaining darkness, lays open what was
d2

36 All faith the gift of God.
hidden, makes plain what was doubtful, deepens
what was believed, draAvs the soul on to love more
deeply what, by the light of faith, it has seen, until
faith brings it to the Palace of the Eternal King,
where it beholds, face to Face, Him Whom it has
believed, dwells in Him, on Whom it has dwelt, is
joined for ever to Him, to Whom it here clave by
love, the Co-Eternal Trinity, One God, Blessed for
evermore.

REAL FAITH ENTIRE.

Rom. i. 4.
" By Whom ive have received Grace and Apostleship
for obedience to the faith among all nations for His
Name.
The whole relation of the creature to the Creator
in its perfected state, is and will be, that the creature,
knowing itself to be nothing but what it is by the
will of God, cleaves to Him, upheld by Him, and
finds its bliss in that inseparable union with Him.
God made all things to have their perfection in Him
self. Each thing was formed to represent, after its
kind, some perfection of God. Manifold in their
varieties, because each one can picture but some little
beauty or goodness of the All-Perfect and the Infi
nite, all created beings unite in one Centre and one
Principle of their being, in that all are from One,
all tend to One, to repose in His Perfection. Each
was in itself nothing. Not only was each, even the
most perfect, as darkness compared to the boundless
brightness of the Divine Light, but each retained its
perfection, only through the continual inworking of
the Creator. God formed each for its own special

38 Real faith entire.
end, its own special good, that it should find and
attain the special perfection of which it was capable,
by participation of His OAvn Goodness, in some like
ness to It. All rational creation Avas framed to find
its full perfection, not in that which is simply accor
ding to its nature, but in that which is above its own
nature, bestowed upon it by a supernatural participa
tion of the Divine Goodness.
Not this our rational creation only, but Angels
and Archangels, Cherubim and Seraphim, and each
Angelic order, Thrones, Dominions, Principalities,
and Powers, He formed very good, not to retain
what was good in them, apart from, and independant
of Himself, but by Himself to be maintained in it.
He formed us holy, good, righteous, Avise ; but to
remain such by an ever-present working of His
Spirit, illumined, sanctified, beatified by His Indwel
ling Presence, ever deriving anew from God the
goodness which He continually supplies.
To this condition God in His mercy wills to re
store us through faith. Man was formed, God tells
us, in the Image of God, after Their Likeness, " the
Likeness of the All-Holy Trinity. Every power and
faculty of the soul bore some trace of its likeness to
its Maker. They were shadowy representations of
some aspect of the Infinite Mind. In God all is One.
His Attributes are, even in thought, inseparable from
Himself. His Power, His Will, His Goodness, His
a Gen i. 28.

Real faith entire. 39
Greatness, His Wisdom, His Blessedness, are Himself.
For He is One simple Essence. The Very Persons
of the All-Holy Trinity, in that mode of Existence
which belongs to God, in-exist in One another, in
perfect Oneness.
In this Image and Likeness of the All-Perfect God,
man was made, his various powers shadoAving Attri
butes of God, AAdiich, although inseparable from God,
we, as finite, can only conceive of, ( as far as we can
conceive of them ) when set before us apart. But so,
the immortality of man is a faint shadow of the Eter
nity of God ; man's forethought, of the DiA'ine Provi
dence ; man's intuition, of the Divine Intelligence ;
man's memory, of the Divine Knowledge ; man's
imagination, of God's conception of all things possible,
though they are not. More plainly yet, man's will,
power, desire to communicate himself, love, compla
cence, tenderness, justice, truth, are imparted copies
of God's Infinite Perfections. Nay, those three es
pecially, memory, reason, will, have, both in earlier h
and later times of the Gospel, been thought to be a
shadow of the All-Holy Trinity in Itself. "That
Holy and Eternal Trinity," says S. Bernard, c in a
passage of most condensed thought, " that Holy and
Eternal Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, One
God ; Supreme Power, Supreme Wisdom, Supreme
Goodness, created a certain trinity after Their Image
and Likeness, to wit, the reasonable soul : which
" see S. Augustine Confessions xiii. 11. p. 283. and note t Oxf. Tr.
c Serm. 45. de Divers, p. 1186, 7. ed. Mab,

40 Real faith entire.
therein showeth forth some trace of all that Supreme
Trinity, in that it consisteth of memory, reason, and
will. Moreover, He created it such, that, abiding
in Him, it might be happy in the participation of
Him ; if turned away from Him, whithersoever it
should betake itself, it should remain miserable. But
this created trinity chose rather, through the motion
of its own will, to fall, than by the grace of its Crea
tor, through free will, to stand. It fell then through
suggestion, delight, consent, from that supreme and
goodly trinity, power, wisdom, purity, into a con
trary foul trinity of weakness, blindness, impurity.
For memory became weak and powerless ; reason,
rash and clouded ; will, impure. Moreover memory,
Avhich, while standing, meditated on the power of
the simple Essence of God, falling therefrom, was
broken and dashed into three parts, carnal, cumber
some, empty thoughts. Reason fell into threefold
ignorance ; of good and evil, of truth and falsehood,
of fitting and unfitting. The will, into lust of the
flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life. There is a
trinity whereby we rise again, faith, hope, charity.
These have threefold subdivisions. For there is faith
of commands, of signs, of promises : there is hope of
pardon, of grace, of glory : and there is ' charity out
of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith
unfeigned.' "
Even in man's fallen state, he still for the most
part, in what he pursues, pursues something which
has a perverted likeness to what, in God, is good.

Real faith entire. 41
Even seeming good must have a likeness to the One
real Good. All things which have any loveliness in
them, must have their loveliness from God ; man,
hoAvever fallen, corrupted, decayed, perverted, still
bears such impress of the image wherein he was
created, that he seeks as his end something akin to
the Attributes of God. " Souls in their sins," says S.
Augustine,15 " seek but a sort of likeness of God, in a
proud and perverted, and, so to say, slavish freedom."
Pride" imitates God's high Majesty; ambition, His
Glory ; cruelty abuses His Power ; vanity receives
the Praise due to Him ; wanton tenderness is a cor
ruption of Love ; luxury distorts that " fulness and
never-failing plenteousness of incorruptible pleasures "
Avhich is Avith Him ; prodigality caricatures His boun-
tifulness ; covetousness, His richness of possession ;
envy longs for His excellency ; anger perverts His
indignation ; even sloth imitates unseasonably the
everlasting rest of God, into which we shall one clay,
through the grace of God, enter. Strange sovereign
ty of good, that man, even when most perverted,
must still chase after, in the creature, some shadow
of what is to be found only in the Creator !
This ruin God Avilled to restore, amid increased
difficulties, entailed through Adam's sin, but through
super-abundant grace, bestowed through the Merits
of the Redeemer. Adam had original righteousness,
and the grace of God through which to stand ; we
1 de Trin. xi. 5.
" abridged from a beautiful passage in S. Aug. Confessions ii. §. 13. p. 25.
Oxf. Tr.

42 Real faith entire.
have, amid our inborn corruption, the Righteousness
of Christ, and the Presence of Christ, and the Might
of Christ, wherewith, when fallen, to arise. But
although our weakness is aggravated, and the Divine
might imparted to us is enlarged ; although we have
the power of Christ 's Spirit within us, whereAvith to
remedy the Aveakness inherent in us; still the purpose
of God, to be accomplished in us, is the same ; the
character of the trial is, in its general outline, the
same ; the Aveapons whereby we must conquer, are
the same. Entire conformity of the whole powers
and faculties of the creature to the Creator is the end
to be accomplished in us ; the victory which over-
cometh the world, is entireness of faith.
The trial set before Angels and men was, with
their free-will through the grace of God, wholly and
entirely to believe God, and, believing, to choose the
will of God. The end proposed to them was, so
believing and so choosing, to be perfected in His
Perfection. Both were created, knowing that they
had all good which they had, from God. Both had
their choice to receive from God, or to seek as their
own, Avhatever was yet lacking to their perfection.
The Angels who received and used the grace of
God, to long for and to find their everlasting blessed
ness, above themselves, in God, stood. The Angels
who, following their bad chief, in pride said, " I f will
be like the Most High," either e seeking as the bliss
' Is. xiv. 14. s Aquin. i. <i. 63. art. 3.

Real faith entire. 43
of their being, that which God had not assigned
them, or seeking what they sought by the virtue of
their own nature, not by the aid of God ( " / will
be like the Most High") fell.
Man's trial was in kind the same. By faith man
would have stood, believing what God said, cleaving
to Him Avith umvavering, unclouded, peaceful faith
and trust, until, his painless probation over, he were
fitted to be translated into the Beatific sight of God.
Through want of faith man marred his whole nature.
He desired out of God what God willed him to find
in God ; he judged hardly of God, as though God
had forbidden him what was good and profitable to
him. From pride came faithlessness ; from faithless
ness, disobedience ; from his own disobedience to
God, the disobedience of his appetites and passions
to himself.
Through pride of independance and through faith
lessness man fell. Through the submission and obe
dience of faith, God willed to restore him. Rebellion
had spread through the whole of man ; the restoration
of man was to be through entire conformity to the
Mind of God. God had made man wholly for Him
self. His whole self, his will, his reason, his memory,
his affections, He made to find their perfection and
their bliss in Himself; to be in harmony with Him;
united with Him, to reflect Him ; and, reflecting Him,
to glorify Him. The entire conformation of man's
whole self to God is the end of all God's dispensa
tions towards him, from the Death of the Incarnate

44 Real faith entire.
Son, to the minutest trial by which, through His own
Grace, God ripens a single soul for eternity. In eter
nity, this entire conformity will be. In time, it is to
be formed in us. And this entire conformity to God,
is to be formed through entire faith in God. Adam's
faith failed him in one thing, and he wholly fell.
So then there is to be worked in us an entire confor
mity of will, affections, reason, with the Mind of
God; and this is broken, if man wilfully Avithholds
in any respect either his will or reason or affections,
and submit them not to the Mind of God. The
mean whereby this conformity is to be wrought in
us, is entireness of faith ; and this is broken, if we
in any respect wilfully withhold our faith from the
revealed Mind of God.
Faith, Avhether in God or man, is an implicit, full,
unswerving reliance in the being who is the object of
faith. If it is not absolute or perfect, it is not faith.
It may be, as to man, circumscribed in its extent,
but, within that compass, it must be absolute. If in
matters of affection we trust husband or wife or child;
if in matters of commercial honesty Ave trust those
Avith Avhom we have dealings of trade ; if in matters
of public faith we trust the honesty of politicians or
political enemies , if in matters of science Ave receive
conclusions unproved to us, but which have been,
( as the universal belief informs us on the knowledge
of those whom we trust ) demonstrated to others ; one
single flaw destroys the Avhole faith.
There may remain opinion, probability, more or

Real faith entire. 45
less, according as the flaw goes deeper into the heart
of that which is the subject of our faith, or lies near
the surface. But it is even a common phrase among
us, on the first disappointment in some one, in whom,
in whatever matter, Ave had rested our faith, " I have
lost all faith in him," " my faith in him is all gone."
We may afterwards find and acknowledge our
selves to have been mistaken ; Ave may keep our
judgement, more or less, in abeyance ; or the object
of our faith may himself no longer be the same ( as
one who is repentant and converted is no longer the
same man, ) but so long as the object is the same,
and the flaw undoubted, we may have hope or good
opinion ; we may hold a thing to be likely ; we may
have ground enough to act on ; we may, by circum
stances, be constrained to act as if Ave had faith ; but
we have it not. Whatever be the subject of our
faith, the authority, ( whatever it is ) must be abso
lute. For what is doubtful in one point is doubtful
as to all. There is no more authority as to any
point which remains, than to that one which is gone.
Whether the subject of our faith be others' disco
veries in science, or in maxims of morals, or truth
of history, or honesty in intercourse, our faith, if
betrayed, perishes wholly. Faith then is one and
indivisible. It depends on the absolute credibility
of him on Avhom we rely, that he knows certainly
that for which we depend upon him, and that he
tells us with undoubted truth what he certainly
knows. But Faith in God has this, over and above

46 Real faith entire.
faith in man, that it is one virtue, tending toAvards
One Object and One End.h God is the One Object
of Faith in that God in Whom it centres, is the
Primal, Essential, Uncreated, Truth, from Whom is
all truth, the Archetype, Example, Pattern, Rule of
all truth, to Whose very Being all falsehood is a
contradiction, Whose very Nature it is, to communi
cate the Truth Avhich He has and Is. God is the
One End of Faith, in that God, Who has proposed
Himself as the " exceeding great Reward " of Faith,
is the Highest Good, the Fountain of all Good,
having in Himself and being all manner of Good, so
that in all eternity, all created being, yea, all possible
creation, could not unitedly exhaust the fulness of
His Good, or of any one side or aspect of His Good
ness. For all possible creation is and must be finite;
and no multiplication of the finite can measure or
reach the Infinite. Faith, then, is borne towards
God, as its Highest Object and its Highest End ;
faith bears the Avhole soul towards God ; faith knits
it to God ; faith retains the Avhole soul in its right
relation to God. Faith is one habit of mind towards
God. Man is not man's centre. Guilelessness and
unsuspiciousness are graces, but faith in any parti
cular man is no duty. If faith in one man is destroy
ed, faith becomes more cautious Avhere it shall rest,
but it may still revive towards others. Whatever
touches faith in God in one point, touches the whole
h Aq. in iii. Dist. 23. q. 2. art. 1. concl.

Real faith entire. 47
spiritual being. It is perilous to touch even a mistaken
faith. For since the whole of Divine faith rests to
each on One Authority, one mistake seems to shake all
which rests on that one authority. Even as to mis
taken faith, it is safer to expand and enlarge what is
true, so that what is not true should fall off, as it
were of itself, well-nigh unperceived.
But if true faith is touched in one point, the whole
relation to God is changed. This may take place in
many AATays. The subjects of faith are manifold ; the
Object and Source of faith is One, God. Whatever
God reveals to us, proposes to our belief, sanctions
in any Avay distinctly with His own Authority that
is matter of faith. Some things God reveals to us
of which human reason is not cognizant, for which
it has no standard, nor measure, nor plumbline to
fathom them, which it can neither know beforehand,
nor demonstrate, when made known to it by reve
lation. But besides these things absolutely unknown
to, and unknowable by man's natural reason, there
are other truths as to God and ourselves, handed
down originally from Revelation to Adam, which be
came part of the stock of human knowledge, and
to which the more thoughtful minds of the Hea
then wise more or less assented. On these truths
too God has been pleased to set His seal, because,
however reflective souls may have revived or re-dis
covered or disinterred them, when lost, from heaps
of rubbish which overlaid them, they were hardly
learned by the few, lacking in authority and unin-

48 Real faith entire.
fluential to the many, and mingled probably with
error for all. These too the superadded Authority
of God transmuted from the vagueness of human
opinion to the certainty of Divine Faith. Such were
e. g. the Unity of the Divine Essence, or the corrup
tion of our human nature, or the hope of its resto
ration. It matters not, in this respect, whether God
has revealed Himself, and His Attributes which are
Himself, in plain words or in acts of His Divine
Government of mankind which He has declared ;
whether He teach immediately, as to those, who are
the organs of His Revelation, Moses or the Prophets
or the Apostles, or mediately, as to those, to whom
that Revelation is conveyed or transmitted ; whether,
as in the New Testament, He declares beforehand
that He will put His words into the mouths of men
inspired by Himself, or whether, as to the Old, He
stamps with His OAvn Authority writings which by
His Spirit they have written. God gives, in each
case, tokens whereby they to whom the Revelation
is addressed, may know that it is He Who speaks.
Whatsoever it be, which God has sanctioned, whether
it be moral truth, or lesson of history, or interpre
tation of prophecy, or argument of His inspired
Apostles, or harmony of the two Testaments, or dis
covery as to the soul, or the influences of evil beings
either upon soul or body, or the resurrection of this
same flesh, or the eternity or nature of future pu
nishment, or the character of single actions, or judg
ments as to individuals other than we should have

Real faith entire. 49
expected, or inspiration of books of Holy Scrip
ture — Avhatever it be, to which God hath set His
seal, — that becomes matter of faith. Before, it might
have been matter of human knoAvledge, but fallible ;
now, it bears the stamp and impress of Him, Who
can neither deceive, nor be deceived. What results
from human understanding alone, has but human
certainty. The river does not arise above its source.
The sanction of God absorbs the human in the
Divine. Faith, as a habit in man, is in itself co-extensive
with " the Faith," i. e. that which is proposed to man
for his belief. Accidentally they may differ. Partial
ignorance of any matter of faith, if that ignorance is
wholly involuntary, not self-contracted, and the de
fect does not He in the will, does not vitiate man's
faith. For the characteristic of Divine Faith is,
that the understanding is moved, not by any demon
stration of human reason, but by the will, acted
upon, enlightened, empowered by God. The character
of the will, whether or no it subjects itself to the
expressed and understood Will of God, not the clear
ness of understanding, nor accuracy of conception,
nor fulness of knowledge, determines the relation of
the soul to God. The simplest mind which believes
in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Ghost, and that there is but One God, believes really
and savingly the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity in
Unity. He who believes that God the Son for us
and for our salvation became Man, really and sa-
E

50 Real faith entire.
vingly believes the Doctrine of the Incarnation, al
though he knows none of the other truths, involved
in these simple statements.
The trials of faith do not lie in simple appre
hension of the truth, what we are to believe. This,
" they who run, " can, if simple-minded, " read. "
The trial lies, not Avith " the foolish things of the
world," or " the Aveak things of the world, " or
" things despised." They have their own trials, but
not this. The lowly find it not hard to pass through
the lowly door. Hard to flesh and blood was the
Apostles' lot, to forsake all, to be as "the offscouring
of all things " and to " die daily." But they clung
not to their own conceptions of the Christ. They
laid aside, one by one, their thoughts what He should
be, in sight of what He was. The trial of faith lies
with acuteness, or subtlety, or inventiveness, whether
these will receive with simplicity what God has said,
as He has spoken it, or Avhether they will make the
revelation of God to mean wdiat they will, bending it,
if they can, to their own thoughts, or if they cannot
bend it, breaking it and themselves against it.
But since God, the Object of Faith, is One, and
the substance of the Faith is one, viz. whatsoever
God has proposed to our faith, and the habit of faith
in the soul towards God is one, then any deliberate
rejection of the Faith in any one point is, in fact, a
rejection of the whole habit of Faith.
God Himself has taught us this as to His moral
laAV, as also the principle upon which it rests.

Real faith entire. 51
"Whosoever * shall keep the Avhole law, and yet
offend in one point, he is guilty of all." And the
ground which He assigns is this, that the law is one
whole, given by One LaAvgiver. Whosoever then
offends wilfully against any one law, offends against
that whole, of Avhich the one laAV is a part, and
despises the Avhole Authority Who gave the law.
" For He that said, Do not commit adultery, said
also, Do not kill. Noav if thou commit no adultery,
yet if thou kill, thou art a transgressor of the law."
He is just as much a criminal, although not so great a
criminal, as if he had broken all. He has as truly
turned away from God, the Centre of our being, and
turned to something out of God, although he has
not turned away so wholly, or so far, as if he had
turned aAvay from Him in all. A robe is one whole,
and the Avhole is torn, if one part is torn ; one dis
cordant note spoils the Avhole harmony ; the failure
of one link destroys the whole chain. Righteousness is
one robe, enveloping our whole being ; one harmony,
making our whole souls into one ; one chain, binding
earth to heaven, and our souls to God. The principle
of love is one. On the principle of love " hang all
the law and the prophets." Whoso Avilfully offends
against one law of love, violates the whole principle
of love upon which they hang. He breaks the law
as a whole, though not the whole which is in the law.
What of the law he still keeps, he does not keep from

S. James i. 10.
e2

52 Real faith entire.
the principle of love or obedience, or reverence of
God; for these would hold alike in all. He only
does not break what he yet refrains from breaking,
because he is not tempted so strongly. He has
broken it in will, if he has not broken it in fact.
The principle, then, of the oneness of both faith
and obedience, is, that they are directed towards
One, and come from the authority of One, Who
reveals what we are to believe and commands what
we are to do. Faith is obedience to His revelation,
as such ; and obedience is faith in Him Who, in His
commands, bids us deny ourselves, and promises to
give us Himself. He Avho wilfully rejects any truth
proposed to him by God, does in fact reject God as
the Supreme Truth, the Fountain of all truth ; as he
who disobeys any one command does, in fact, reject
God, as the Supreme Good, the Rule and Measure
and Source of all good. And as he Avho rejects one
command, performs any other moral duty ( in what
ever degree he does perform any ) not from the
authority of God, which he has rejected, but from
some conformity to his taste or natural feelings, or
because his whole moral sense, which he has by
nature, is not yet corrupted, or the lingering grace
of God still withholds him ; so he who rejects any
one revealed truth, does not hold whatever other
truth he does not part Avith, out of submission to the
authority of God Who has revealed it, but because
it approves itself in some way to his own natural
mind and judgment. What he holds, he holds of

Real faith entire. 53
himself, accounting it to be truth, not as faith. In
natural things, too, a man may hold some truth be
longing to a science Avhose principles he does not
knoAV, and Avhose truth consequently he could not
establish. Unless he holds such truth on the autho
rity of others, it is to him plainly a mere matter
of opinion, although he may imagine to himself
that he holds it as certain truth. Even so, a man
may suppose that he holds, as of faith, any truth
which he believes as to Almighty God ; yet unless
he believes God in all things, he does believe Him
in nothing. He holds then, a truth above nature
as to God, as in their degree did the Heathen also,
but he does not hold it from God.
As faith and obedience agree in this same law and
principle, that since their very essence consists in the
creature's cleaving wholly to its Creator, both if
injured in one point, are injured as wholes, so also
they agree in the results of this laAV. In both, the
principle of decay, beginning from that one point,
spreads overtly through the whole substance, whe
ther of faith or practice. The links lie side by side ;
you do not see, until you attempt to move them, that
they have no hold on one another. The bough is
still green ; flowers or fruit still rest upon it ; it still
has some freshness from the Vine ; you do not see
till the morrow, that it is severed, that the flower
fadeth, and the fruit is withered.
The sin spreads so soon as the temptation spreads.
Hence Heathen wisdom also saw, that one who

54 Real faith entire.
should have one virtue perfectly, must needs have
all virtues, and that one who " notably k failed as to
one, had in fact none." Such a man may, from
natural inclination or custom, or because such acts
cost him nothing, do acts, Avhich may seem like
virtues. But any stronger temptation shews that
they have no root in him. He sacrifices at once
his seeming virtues to his master-vice. -Hence that
phaenomenon in characters of history, which have
in them some nobleness, how a man with great faults
and, as it is said, great virtues, will, on some signal
occasion, fail in those very virtues.
No one who departs from God, by departing in
any one point from the revealed Will and Mind of
k " If thou confess that thou hast not one virtue, it must he that thou hast
none." Cic. Tusc. ii. 14. quoted by Aq. 1. 2. q. 65. Art. 1. " Virtues attend
upon one another, not only in that he who hath one hath all, but also that he
who doth any thing whatever according to one, acts according to all, nor is he
a perfect man who hath not all virtues, nor is that a perfect action which is not
done according to all virtues." Chrysippus in Plutarch de Stoieor. repugn.
n. 27. ed. Wytt. " They say that the good and honorable man is perfect
because he is wanting in no one virtue ; but that the bad on the contrary is
imperfect, because he partakes of no one virtue." Stob. Eclog. L. ii. c. 7.
p. 196, 8. ed. Heer. see numerous Jewish sayings in Schoettgen on S.James
ad loc. "Virtues are, as it were, connected and concatenated together ; so
that he who has one seems to have more." S. Ambrose on S. Luke L. v.
n. 63. " One virtue without another is either none at all or imperfect." S.
Greg. Moral. L. 22. init. see further T. 2. p. 546, 7. Oxf. Tr. " The virtues
which are in the mind of man, although they are each conceived differently,
are no ways separated from one another, so that whosoever should be equal
in fortitude, for instance, would be equal in prudence too and temperance
and justice. For if you should say that they are equal in fortitude, but that
the one excels in prudence, it follows that the fortitude of the other is less
prudent ; and so they are not equal in fortitude either, since the fortitude of
the one is more prudent. And so you will find as to the other virtues, if you
go over them with the same consideration." S. Aug. de Trin. vi. 4. quoted
by Aq. 1. c. See also S. Aug. on the passage of S. James Ep. 167. ad Hieron.

Real faith entire. 55
God, has any standing-ground where to rest his foot.
Practical unbelief spreads to the defacing of the
Avhole moral Attributes of God ; theoretic unbelief
Avidens, until it has iiwaded His Whole Being. Ei
ther also branches out into the other. For specula
tive error, in that it conceives of God, as other than
He is, almost of necessity conceives of His creatures'
relation to Him, as other than it is ; and practical
disbelief, as bearing upon the Attributes of God, in
itself implies that His Holiness, Righteousness, Jus
tice, Love, Wisdom, Goodness, are other than they
are. For since God requires of us nothing arbitra
rily, but only what is for our OAvn well-being and
required by His Holiness and Wisdom, then sin,
by rebelling against these laws, denies His Wisdom
in commanding them, and His Justice in punishing
their violation.
This effect too of parting with one single point
of faith, as of practice, is the more visible, in that
the poison spreads gradually from that centre. "No
one ever suddenly became wholly debased," was a
Heathen proverb, as to moral declension. No one,
one may say, suddenly became wholly an infidel.
There is this obvious difference between one who
never was within the Gospel, and one who, having
been admitted into the Faith, parts with it. To
the native infidel, who rejects the Gospel, all alike
is matter of scoffing and derision. He looks but for
materials of his scornful profanity. There is no
oneness in his attacks on the faith. He takes it up

56 Real faith entire.
or lays it doAvn, as something uncouth, which he
cannot make out, in which he sees no entireness, no
principle, and out of which he snatches at hazard
something AArhich he may burlesque or make to sub-
serve or shield his infidelity. Those who have
watched the unhappy minds which part from the
faith, have seen hoAv the departure starts from some
one point. Some have themselves related of them
selves these " phases" of unbelief; in others they
have been observed. The course may have been
longer or shorter ; they may have more or less con
sciously admitted, at first, a principle which was
inconsistent with their faith ; they may have been
retarded more or less, in following out their own
principle ; they may have struggled even piteously
in their downward course, clinging the more despe
rately, for the time, to the fragments of truth by
which they yet held in some sort to a Living Per
sonal God, through the very anticipation that these
too would, like the rest, soon elude them ; l they may
have veiled their unbelief from themselves, or a
1 " Sterling's gainsaying had given way on many points [1839] ; but on
others it continued stiff as ever, as may be seen in that Article [ on Mr. Car-
lyle himself: ] indeed he fought Parthian-like in such cases, holding out his
last position as doggedly as the first : and to some of my notions he seemed
to grow in stubbornness of opposition, with the growing inevitability, and never
would surrender." Carlyle's life of T. Sterling p. 249. He had said of Sterling
in 1835. " In fact, it became clear to me more and more, that here was noble
ness of heart striving towards all nobleness ; here was ardent recognition of
the worth of Christianity, for one thing, but no belief in it at all, in my sense
of the word belief. — no belief but one definable as mere theoretic moonshine,
which would never stand the wind and weather of fact. Nay, it struck me
farther that Sterling's was not intrinsically, nor had ever been in the highest
or chief degree, a devotional mind." Ib. p. 163, 4.

Real faith entire. 57
surrounding atmosphere of laxity may have allowed
them longer to deceive themselves ; the veil may, at
last, have been drawn off their eyes by a seeming
accident,™ or they may have unravelled deliberately
the articles of their faith. But this is a characteristic
of all who have parted with faith, that they began
with some one point. They parted, as they thought
with one point of faith ; the event shewed that they
parted with the faith itself. And this is the more
illustrative, because those first points of deflection
Avould often not seem at first sight to have been
cardinal points. S. Augustine relates n how one tor
mented by flies, fell through impatience, into the
snare of the Manichee, and came to deny that man
also was the work of the Good God. The Pantheism
of Protestant Germany began in the denial of the
possessions by devils related in the Gospels. A dis
belief in the doctrine of transmission of original sin,
even amid the acknowledgement of the fact of man 's
own evil, has been the prelude to Pantheism. Satan
skilfully adapts his temptations to the peculiar struc
ture of each mind. In faith, as in morals, " The
cost is in the first step." The rest follow. But the
very variety of the points, whence the parting with
the actual faith began, shews the more, that that on
which the whole issue turned, was not the specialty
of the point of faith itself, but the fact that the un
happy man did part with what was of faith.
m Autobiography of Blanco White.
" Horn. 1. in S. John §. 14. p. 13. Oxf. Tr.

58 Real faith entire.
Most commonly, also, the first unsubmission of
the soul to God's revealed truth is not overt. Whe
ther in faith or morals the soul will, if it can, blind
itself from seeing the nature of its own acts. It
would seem obvious, that if any one overtly denied
any thing Avhich God had revealed, acknowledging
to himself that what he denied was part of that
which claimed to be a revelation from God, he would
thereby destroy his Avhole belief in that revelation.
For, plainly, the same fountain cannot " send forth
sweet water and bitter." What comes from God
must be wholly true. Any, therefore, the very slight
est admixture of untruth, in Avhat claims to come
from God, vitiates that claim. The subtlety of Satan
then has been, to persuade persons to reject what
was God's truth, at the same time teaching them
to persuade themselves, that what they" parted with,
Avas not really of God. That first act of faithless
ness and disobedience in man's fall has been the type
of other first acts of rejecting the commands or the
truth of God. " Yea hath God said, ye shall not
eat of every tree of the garden ? " It is so sore a
thing to part Avith God, either in faith or in deed,
that the soul clasps at any pretence that it is not
doing what, in fact, it is doing. In sensual sins,
it will act in the very name of the God of nature
against His revealed laAV, and maintain to itself or
to others, that it is only fulfilling that for Avhich
God made it, and Avhich, being of nature, it cannot
help. As though there Avere no difference between

Real faith entire. 59
men and brutes ! In matters of faith, the soul will
persuade itself that, it is doing honour to God, re-
moAang human inventions and misinterpretations,
and A'indicating the Attributes of God, His Wisdom
or His Justice, His Love or His Tenderness, Avhile
it is denying the truth of God. But, in either case,
the poison Avorks not the less, because the soul takes
it under some other name, and will look at the gold-
leaf in which she Avraps it, and heeds not that it is
death. Both in faith and morals, evil must spread, be
cause it is separated, and separates the soul, from
Him Who can alone keep the soul in good. The
soul must drift down the stream, since it is cut loose
from that which alone Avould stay it, or could impel
it upwards. But even beyond this, evil has a con
sistency of its own and involves other evil. Every
moral evil bears in its bosom further evils, which
are its necessary offspring, without which it could
not itself be. Each moral evil may at any time
demand, as its price, further evil. Sins of the flesh
necessarily, besides themselves, involve intense sel
fishness, injustice, hard-heartedness, deceit; they often
issue in AArhat is murder. So as to faith. Faith being
one consistent Avhole, every departure from faith in
volves inconsistency. The system of truth before
rolled around its Centre, God. The withdrawal of
one truth disturbs the relations of the whole. The
introduction of one error involves the re-adjustment
of the Avhole. The human mind will, in the end, be

60 Real faith entire.
consistent. Partial error must find its consistency in
the end, upwards or downwards. On the Rock of
truth, or in the abyss ! There is no lasting footing
between. No heretic abides where he began. He
either sees the inherent inconsistency of his own one
point of heresy, or others point it out to him. If
he is too proud to return, he must plunge deeper.
Hence, as a heresy runs its course, it must deny
truth which at first it professed to reverence. Hence
every heresy seems to degenerate, in that the prin
ciples of error which it contains, are evolved. But
in truth, it only becomes more consistent with itself.
Thus, the early Arians believed that Christ our
Lord was the Son of God and God, Begotten before
the world by the Father, and that by Him all things
were created. With this, their heresy, that He was
not of the Same Substance with the Father, Co-
Equal and Co-Eternal with the Father, was plainly
inconsistent. And so they drifted about, making
alternately our Lord all but God, or supposing two
Gods, ° a primary and a secondary God, and so
Polytheists,P or else avoAving their belief that He
was a creature, and so Idolaters. q Even Socinus be
gan by ascribing worship to Him, to Whom his
followers ascribe human error, and ( God forgive
it ! ) sinful human passions.
Nestorius acknowledged that our Lord was One
0 S. Ath. Nic. Def. §. 7. p. 63. and note g. Oxf. Tr.
t> S. Ath. ag. Arians iii. §. 15. 16. p. 422. Oxf. Tr. §. 64. p. 492.
i S. Ath. ag. Ar. i. 8. p. 191. and note d.

Real faith entire. 61
Christ, .One Son, One Person in two natures ; r he
seemed only to deny that His Mother, when He was
born of her, bare God, or Him Who was God. He
shrank from confessing the condescension of God,
that He did not abhor the Virgin 's womb. It might
be represented that the Avhole question lay between
the words ©eoTo/cos s and X/3(o-tot6a;o? ; " she who bare
God" or "she who bare Christ." Later, he saw,
that if He Who was born was not God, neither was
He after His Birth ; not as an Infant,' not in riper

r [S. Paul] "being about [Phil, ii.] to make mention of the Death [of
Christ], lest any one should hence suppose that God the Word was Pas
sible, places the word' Christ,' as a title signifying the Impassible and the
Passible Nature in one single Person, so that Christ might safely be called
both Impassible and Passible, Impassible in the Godhead, Passible in the
nature of the Body." Nestor. Ep. ad S. Cyril in S. Cyril's Epistles Ep. 5.
T. 5. L. 2. p. 26. "In the second head [of S. Cyril] I praise also the dis
tinction of the Natures, according to the Manhood and Godhead, and their
conjunction in One Person." Ib. p. 27. " I wish you to hold this firmly.
There is no division of the conjunction of dignity, of Sonship ; there is no
division of the being Christ ; but of the Godhead and the Manhood there is
a division. Christ, as Christ, is Indivisible ; for we have not two Christs
nor two Sons. Eor we have not a first and a second ; one and another ; nor
again one and another Son ; but One and the Same is twofold, not in dignity
but in Nature." Nestor, in S. Cyril adv. Nest. L. 2. T. 6. p. 44. quoted by
Petav. de Incam. 1.9. 6.
s In an ambiguous sense, Nestorius was willing, during the Council of
Ephesus, to adopt the word ®(ot6kos, "bare Him Who became God," by the
conjunction ( such as he admitted ) with God ; if the Church would adopt
the word o.vSpwttot6kos, " bare a man," i. e. a mere man. Serm. 12. Nestorii
§. 7-11. in Mercator Op. T. 2. p. 86.
' " Eor not obscure were those things, openly proclaimed in his letters
and in his books, and heard outright in his public discourses, and in the very
metropolis of the Ephesians openly spoken by him to some of the most pious
Bishops. For he ceased not to say : He that was made Man for our sakes
ought not to be called God: reproaching the Godhead with the human things,
which, not through weakness, but through love for man, It took. Laughing
to scom, as it were, our dread and divine Mystery, he dared to say, when
disputing with our most pious Bishops : ' One, two or three months old, I

62 Real faith entire.
years. And so he came to hold, that our Lord was
purely a Man, like Moses or any other man in
whom God should dwell.u His heresy had one prin
ciple, that God, the All-perfect, could be degraded
by His loving-kindness for man ; and so he saw that
he must deny the whole doctrine of the Incarnation,
and became a mere Humanitarian.
Eutyches began with the same principle on the
opposite side. He could not persuade himself that
our Lord Jesus Christ had a Body of the same sub-

called not God ' : and this, three whole days before our holy Synod, as the au
thentic records testify." Relat. Synod. Eph. ad Imp. P. ii. Act. 1. n. 7. p.
1100. ed. Col.
u "As we call the Creator of all things God, and Moses, god ; far he saith
' I have made thee a god to Pharaoh ' ; and [we call ] Israel, son of God,
for He saith, ' Israel My firstborn ' ; and as we call Saul, Christ, for he
saith, ' I will not lay my hand upon him, for he is the Christ [ Anointed] of
the Lord' ; and Cyrus in like way, ' Thus saith the Lord to my Christ Cyrus,
and we call the Babylonians, ' holy ' for he saith, ' I command them ; they
are sanctified, and I lead them;' (Is. 13. 3. lxx. ) so we call the Lord also
Christ and God and Son and holy : but the community of the names is like ;
the dignity not the same." Ib. p. 40. The fallacy of Nestorius was, that
while he avoided terms which implied or expressed a Personal Union between
the Godhead and Manhood in our Lord, he used freely words which ex
pressed a mere "conjunction" "indwelling," as God the Holy Ghost dwells
in Christians. He disbelieved an Union between the Godhead and Manhood,
but, maintaining that our Lord was born a mere man, he supposed that at
His Baptism, or some other time, the Godhead descended into Him, and that
thus the Manhood was associated with the Godhead, in dignity, will, good-
pleasure and the like. He allowed of a conjunction of relation (irxeViy) re
ference to God (aytupopti) indwelling ( <Wjoj(n? ) operation ( tvepyeia .) He
even conceded, in words, a Personal association, ( crwacpelu Kara irpiaa-wov ) in
the sense that Christ was " a common man, born of a woman, who by his
growth, and his own human wisdom, made himself worthy of being honoured,
and by a connection of person ( <rvya(peiif irpoirdnrov ) with the Word from
God, and in that he was elected according to foreknowledge." ( S. Cyril de
recta fide ad regin. T. v. P. 2. p. 54. ) see Petav. de Incarn. i. 9. iii. 3. 4.
vi. 5. Hence Nestorius held that " Christ was not truly God, but a God-
bearing man." ap. S. Cyril adv. Nest. L. 1. p. 10.

Real faith entire. 63
stance as our' s ; but he Avould approximate as nearly
as he could to the true doctrine, by confessing that
" the v holy Virgin was of the same substance with
us, and that of her the Lord was Incarnate." In
truth, he did not believe that our Lord took our
human nature at all, w but believed, like the Mar-
cionites, a mere phantastic body, x a nature which,
not being our's, was absorbed, he held into the Di-

7 In Council of Constantinople A. D. 448. Act. vii. ap. Cone. Chalced.
Act. 1. p. 1013, 5. ed. Col. " The Archbishop said, ' Do you not say that He
is Consubstantial with the Father as touching His Godhead, and that the
Same is Consubstantial with us as touching His Manhood ? ' The priest
Eutyches said : ' Up to this day I have not said that the Body of our Lord
and God is Consubstantial with us, but I confess that the holy Virgin is con
substantial with us, and that our God was Incarnate of her.' Florentius the
Patrician said : Do you or do you not say, that our Lord Who is of the Virgin
is after the Incarnation Consubstantial and of two Natures ?' Eutyches the
priest said : ' I confess that our Lord was of two Natures before the Union ; but
after the Union, I confess One Nature.' "
w" [Eutyches] said that God the Word took from the Virgin nothing of
man, but that being changed without change and becoming flesh ( I use his
own absurd words ) made only a transit through the Virgin, and that the
Uncircumscribed and Infinite and Incomprehensible Godhead of the Only-
Begotten was nailed and fastened to the Cross, and that This, being committed
to the tomb, obtained the Resurrection," Theod. Hreret. Fab. iv. 13,
1 " Without doubt, as the Holy Spirit has laid open to you, they are asso
ciated with the error of the Manichees, who deny that the Only Begotten Son
of God took very Man of our nature, and hold that all His bodily actions
were those of a feigned phantasm," S. Leo Ep. 59. ad Cler, et Pop. Const, c.
1. p. 976, ed. Ball. " denying that our human nature exists in the Word of
God, so that while he revolts at humility in the Majesty of God, he either
maintains that Christ had a false shadow of a body, or that all His acts, or
bodily affections, belonged to the Godhead rather than to the flesh." Ib-
p. 978. " He attempted to persuade the simple, that the Word of God was
so ' made Elesh,' that He took not the true flesh of His Mother ; nor had a
Body of our kind ; but that the Nature of His Divinity and Elesh were one :
so that he said that our One Lord Jesus Christ was both a false Man and a
Passible God. But neither reverence for the faith, nor the nature of the
Sacrament admit, either that the Deity was in His Own Nature Passible, or
that the Truth lied in taking human nature," Ep. 102. Synod, ad Episc.
Gall. c. 3. p. 1138, 9.

64 Real faith entire.
vine/ But since he denied that our Lord had our
human nature, he denied at once both the Incarna
tion and the Atonement, that our Lord suffered in
our human flesh which, in us, had sinned. Nay, had
he even seemed to retain this belief, he must either
have maintained that the Godhead suffered, or de
nied that our Lord was God. Thus, beginning, as
he thought, in doing honour to God, by exempting
Him from contact with our human flesh, he ended

" Asserting that every thing seen, every thing heard, every thing in short, by
the testimony of the Gospel, touched and handled in the Only-Begotten Son
of God, was not His, Whose it was proved to be, but was of the Substance
Co-Eternal and Co-Essential with the Eather ; as though either the Nature
of the Divinity were fixed to the wood of the Cross, or the Unchangeable
grew in years, and the Eternal Wisdom increased in wisdom, or God, Who
is a Spirit, could be filled with the Spirit." Ep. 120. ad Theodoret §. 3. p.
1223. " This profane asserter of a newer sacrilege, confessed indeed the union
of the two Natures in Christ, but said that by the very union it was brought
about, that of the two one remained, the substance of the other noways exis
ting, which could not in truth be brought to an end, except by being consumed
or detached. But these things are so hostile to sound faith, that they cannot
be received without the destruction of the Christian Name. Eor if the Incar
nation of the Word be the Union of the Divine and Human Nature, but by
this very Union, what was two-fold becomes single, Divinity Alone is born of
the Virgin's womb, and, amid a deceitful semblance, It Alone underwent nou
rishment and bodily increase: and, (to omit all the changes of the human
state, ) the Divinity Alone was crucified, the Divinity Alone died, the Divinity
Alone was buried : so that with them who think such things, there is no reason
for hoping for the resurrection, nor is Christ the First Begotten from the dead
for there was no one to be raised again, if there had been no one who could
be killed." Id. Serm. 28. ( in Nat. Dom. 8. ) c. 5.
y Orth. " Tell us what you mean by one Nature after the Union ? Is it
that the two become one, or that the one remains, the other being destroyed ? "
Eran. " I say that the Godhead remains, and that the Manhood is absorbed
by it." Theod. Dial. 2. p. 114. Orth. "If there can be blending without con
fusion in bodies, it is clear madness to imagine confusion [ of the two Natures]
in the Undefined and Unchangeable Substance, and a destruction of the na
ture which was taken ; the more, since it was taken for the benefit of our
race ? " Eran. " We do not speak of the destruction of the nature taken,
but of the change into the Substance of the Godhead." Ib. p. 116.

Real faith entire. 65
by holding either that He Who suffered was neither
God nor man, or that the Divine Nature Itself suf
fered, since he supposed the Visible Nature which
Christ had, to be really absorbed into the Divine.
Pelagius began with vindicating the glory of God
in the power which He had given to man to fulfil
His commandments. The listless, easy, undecided
lives of ordinary Christians seemed to him a re
proach to the poAver of the Gospel. He ended by
denying all grace of God, and reducing it to man's
natural powers or the outward laAV. His next fol
lowers believed that our Lord Himself obtained by
His mere Human Powers the dignity of becoming
the Son of God. z
These deflections are the more instructive, in that
the authors of these heresies were often acute, and
still more, some were earnest men. Some even stum
bled on their heresies by assailing, with unallowed

z This heresy appeared both in Nestorianism and Pelagianism, which also
allied themselves. It followed naturally from the phase of Nestorianism,
which supposed the Divine Indwelling to have been bestowed upon our Lord
at His Baptism, or after He grew up. It was adopted naturally by the Pela
gians, as furnishing them with an instance of One, in Whom their theory of
the perfectability of man might be exemplified. Leporius, who was converted
by S. Augustine, owns this of himself. He held that the Man in Christ, " by
degrees, as it were, and times, advanced into God, and that He was in one
condition before, in another after the Resurrection " ; that " by labour, de
votion, merits, He attained the end of His Merits"; and " that Christ our
Lord so fulfilled all things which belonged to His Sufferings, that in no one
was He, as a Perfect Man, helped by the aid of the Divinity ; and ( he says ) I
meant so to assign in Christ a Perfect Man, that I might assert that the
Word of the Eather was free from these sufferings, and I essayed to prove that
man by himself alone, did all these things by the capabilities of mortal na
ture without any aid of the Deity." libell. emendat. in App. S. Aug. T. x. p.
127, 8. see also Pet. de Incarn. i. 12.

66 Real faith entire.
weapons, an opposite heresy, and fell oftentimes into
the very heresy which they at first so vehemently
rejected.3. For since truth is one living whole, it
matters not in which part of the body the poison is
introduced. One drop spreads through the whole,
and the whole faith of the man is dead.
The form of heresy was different ; the principle was
the same. Man trusted his own conceptions of what
a Revelation from God should be, what it were fitting
for the Infinite God to do and be, rather than submit
blindly to what God had revealed of Himself, that
not trusting in his oavii light, he might receive pure
and unmixed the light from God. Hence they stum
bled mostly at that rock of offence, " to the Jews a
stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness," " the
* Arius ( although a bad and profane man ) fell into his heresy, as a. sort
of reaction against Sabellianism ; Apollinaris into his, which was the parent
of so many others, while opposing Arianism ; Marcellus into his, against
Semi-Arianism. Nestorius began with a fiery zeal against all heretics ; and
in act against Arians, Macedonians, Novatians, and Quarto-decimans. The
services and faith of Eutyches against the heresy of Nestorius were owned in
the Council of Constantinople, when he was on trial for his own, ( Flavian
in Act. iv. Cone. Const, ap. Cone. Chalc. Act. i. p. 990. ) and the Council was
amazed at the charge. (Ib. p. 934. ) Pelagius, on the practical side, began with
opposing relaxed notions of a Christian's duty. S. Celestine bears witness in
what respect Nestorius was held ; " you lived aforetime in such estimation
that other cities even envied your people." ( Ep. ad Nest, in Cone. Eph. P. i.
c. 18. p. 903. ed. Col.) S. Augustine attests that Pelagius was accounted by
those who knew him, " a good and praiseworthy man," " a holy man and an
advanced Christian," " of pure life and praiseworthy manners," &c. ( Praef.
Bened. ad S. Aug. T. x. p. 2. ) Apollinaris was accounted among the most
learned of his day ; and " thirty books " in defence of the Gospel " against
Porphyry, were amongst his most approved works." ( S. Jerome de Virr. 111.
c. 104. ) Nestorius did not fall into his heresy until after he was Archbishop ;
Eutyches in extreme age. ( Cone. Const. Act. 3. Ib. p. 984. ) On the way in
which different heresies ran into each other, see Petav. de Inc. L. 1. and notes
on S. Ath, ag. Arians p. 189. b. 292. n. 295. o.

Real faith entire. 67
Word, God with God, made Flesh." " Having care
fully considered," says S. Leo," " the opinions of most
of those who believe falsely, those too which go head
long to the denial of the Holy Spirit, Ave learn that
no one well-nigh went astray, save such as believed
not the truth of two Natures of Christ Avith the con
fession of One Person." They denied the Godhead
of our Lord, or His Manhood ; they who " could u not
understand the Unity of God except in Unity of
Person," held that God dwelt in the Man as His
Temple, in a higher degree only than He dAvells in
Christians ; they persuaded themselves that there
could be a second God, or a Being, not from eternity,
who yet was not a creature ; they imagined our Lord
to be a Being of almost Infinite Perfections, or a mere
man ; or they would exempt Him from the infirmi
ties of human nature ; they thought to honour Him
by supposing the Godhead to be in place of a soul or
a mind ; or to have been clad in an ethereal or phan
tom Nature, or with a fore-existing Body, taking no
thing from the Virgin ; or that It came into our
Lord's Human Body, when already born ; or at His
Baptism ; or that It dwelt in that Body, yet in no
close relation to It. In all these ways, man would
excuse God, as it were, from the special humility of
the Incarnation ; but in truth he corrupted his
whole faith and knowledge of God. For if man
b Serm. 28. [ de Nativ. Dom. 8. ] c. 4. p. 99.
0 Ibid. The Sabellians, and probably the Patro-passians, escaped in this way
the belief that God the Father suffered.
f2

68 Real faith entire.
thinks of God, otherwise than God has revealed Him
self, he no longer believes in the true God, i. e. he
no longer believes in God at all, but in some idol of
his own imagining. Every heresy which has afflicted
the Church of Christ has, in some way, impugned the
Being of God, as He Is. Even those heresies which
do not apparently relate to His Being, either in Him
self, or through the way in which our human nature
was united to the Divine Person of our Lord, here
sies which relate to His Dispensation towards us
only, the denial of the place of repentance to the
fallen, or of the doctrines of grace, or of the efficacy
of the Sacraments ministered by the unworthy, the
Novatian, Pelagian or Donatist, did, in fact, repre
sent God as other than He Is.
In these days, most commonly man believes some
Attributes of God, such as His Goodness, or His
Wisdom, or His General Providence, apart from His
Being, as though some Qualities of Almighty God
could be the One True Living God !
These grounds from experience, from the very
principle and character of faith, from the Unity of
its Object, and from the analogy of moral duty, are,
in truth, but an explanation of the Apostle's declara
tion, that as there is " One Lord, " so there is " One
Faith. " As there is " One Lord," from Whom the
Faith comes, to Whom the Faith leads, so there can
be from that One Lord, One only Faith. Faith
partakes of the Oneness of Its Author. As the Lord
in Whom we believe, is not One and the Same to

Real faith entire. 69
those who believe in Him as Very God and Very
Man, and to those Avho think of Him, as either not
True God or not True Man ; so neither is the Faith
One and the Same, to those avIio include opposite
and contradictory doctrines Avithin their body of sup
posed Faith. The " One Faith " which God declares
by His Apostle, must be one complete Whole ; else it
is in no sense, " One." Nor does Holy Scripture know
any thing of Revelation except as One Whole. It
speaks, d not of Faiths but of " the Faith," " the Faith
which is in Christ Jesus" ; not of different and va
rying " truths," but of " the Truth" ; not of " another
Gospel" except to anathematize it, but of " the Gos
pel "¦ ; " the Word of God," " the Word of the Truth
of the Gospel," " the Word of Christ." Every where
it implies or asserts, that that which is revealed to
our belief, is One Indivisible Whole. And this One
Whole Avas proposed, not for questioning, or dis
puting, or curious argument, or parade of know
ledge, but for obedience. "By Whom we have re
ceived, " S. Paul says, " Grace and Apostleship for
obedience6 to the Faith." The Apostles received grace
d See Sermon " on the Rule of faith." p. 11-14. and references.
e The meaning of the words is exactly the same, whether els itrnKo^v jn'trrews
be rendered " for obedience to the Faith," or " for obedience of faith." " Obedi
ence to the Faith " is expressed in 2 Cor. ix. 13. ejrl rfj inrorayij ttjs 6/j.oAoyias
i/j.av eis rb tvayyeAiov roii Xpio-rov, "for the subjection of your confession to
the Gospel of Christ." But the stress is on the word " obedience." Whether
the soul is " obedient to the Eaith," i. e. the Revelation of God ; or whe
ther " faith " in us " is obedient to God," it is one and the same. The relation
to God, expressed is the same ; 1. our obedience to what He has revealed to us
as matter of faith ; or 2. the obedience of our faith to what God has revealed
to us.

70 Real faith entire.
and the mission to teach what God had taught them
and they had heard of Him ; and what He taught,
that we are not to criticise, not to mould after our
own pleasure, not to add to, not to take from, but
to receive and obey.
But since the entire restoration of man is through
entire conformity to the Mind of God, and that con
formity is worked in us through entire obedience to
His revealed Mind and Will, the very first condition
of our restoration is entire self-surrender, and pro
stration of our whole selves, our imaginations, our
minds, our wills, our spiritual conceptions of what
is right and fitting, as blind and dark and indistinct
and confused, dim guesses, uncertain opinions, float
ing notions, before the " Light of the Glory of God in
the Face of Jesus Christ." There is no room for con
ceptions a priori of what it is likely God would be
or do, hoAV He Avould reveal Himself, how He would
continue that Revelation, what creatures He would
form, under Avhat conditions He would create them,
how He would deal with them, what He Avould re
quire of them, how ( since any relation of the Infinite
to the finite must be by some attempering of Himself
to His creatures ) He Avould adapt Himself to them,
how much of His Infinite Wisdom, Goodness, Holi
ness, Beauty, Love, He would unfold at once to them.
Even human wisdom rejects as unwise in its oaati
sphere of knowledge, the enquiry how things are
likely to be, when we may know certainly, how they
are. Such guesses or combinations teach men how

Real faith entire. 71
to look, what to observe. When we have the power
of observing or analyzing, human reason would re
ject as absurd and irrational, the attempt to demon
strate how things must be. It has been the boast of
the "inductive philosophy," to employ theory, only
in combination with well-grounded fact, which sub
stantiates the deductions of theory, or furnishes a
physical interpretation of mathematical reasoning.
Men reject a priori notions as to the things with
which the poAvers of their own mind are commen
surate, physical science or the mind and will of man,
and they think that they may judge a priori as to
things which the Spirit of God Alone can search out
or fathom, the Unsearchableness of the Mind of God.
It would be thought the extremest rashness to pro
nounce a priori as to man, that he did or did not
do this thing, wdien the facts could be ascertained
from certain evidence. It would be accounted a
childish waste of time to canvass, from a vague gene
ral knowledge of character, what any historical per
sonage probably did, when we might know certainly
what he did. Mental science would not, in human
things, be allowed to usurp the province of history ;
nor mathematical formulas to supersede the experi
ments of physics. A priori notions then confessedly
are not to be admitted, where there may be certain
truth. But to assume that we may not know as
certainly the truths of Revelation, as we can those
of this world of sense, is to assume that God either
cannot, or has not revealed Himself. The truths

72 Real faith entire.
which God has revealed of Himself, are the facts as
to the Mind and Being and Character of Almighty
God, which He provides for us, not to shape, or mo
dify, or explain away, or distort, at our own pleasure,
but to bend and conform our own minds to them,
and by them to correct our own pre-conceived ima
ginings as to the Unknown God.
Yet well-nigh every heresy has begun in some a
priori notion as to God, in Himself or in His ways
towards us. And these a priori notions have been
superficial, as well as impatient and unsubmissive.
Instead of thinking " What has God said ? " men
have said in their hearts, " God could not have meant
this. " They judge beforehand, Avhat could or could
not be the Mind of Almighty God. And what they
thus think that God could not reveal, that to which
their minds are energetically opposed, that they will
not receive. If they can detach it from the Reve
lation, they will receive the residue, to Avhich they
do not object. If they cannot detach it, they reject
the whole. But whether they accept or reject the
residue, the principle of unsubmission is still the
same. They make themselves judges of what is fit
for God. They will not allow Him to reveal what
they do not like. In vain God says, " My f thoughts
are not your thoughts ; neither are your ways, My
ways." They make their own notions the criterion
of the Mind of God ; not the revealed Mind of God,
the corrective of their own thoughts.
All will see this plainly in the Jews and Pagans.
fIs. lv. 8.

Real faith entire. 73
None a\411 now openly take the part of the Jews
against the Prophets or our Lord. In their own
time, the false Prophets doubtless had much to say
of God's faithfulness to His Promises, of His " Ever
lasting g CoA'cnant " ; everlasting h ordinances ; that
He had promised to them their land for " an ' ever
lasting possession," that /the throne of David should
be " established k for ever," and that God's " mercy
should not depart aAvay from him " ; and those who
willed not to believe God's threats, slew His true
Prophets and beheved the false. The Jews Avho would
not believe the prophecies, that the Christ would
be " despised and rejected of men," fulfilled ' them
by despising, rejecting and condemning Him. The
Greeks, to whom it seemed impossible that God
should raise the dead, rejected the Gospel, in Avhich
was preached Jesus and the Resurrection ; they who
thought scorn to worship One Crucified, cast it aside
as "foolishness." The different tribes of Gnostics or
the Manichees did not less oppose themselves to the
Mind of God, while they ascribed to the Evil Prin
ciple the creation of the world and the origin
of matter, because they believed a phantom-Christ
and received a mutilated Gospel. We have not the
temptations of Jews or Gnostics, Manichees or Nova-
tians. The doctrines of the Resurrection or of the
creation of matter are as unexplained now, as in the.
s Gen. xvii. 7.
h Ex. xii. 14. 17. xxvii. 21. xxviii. 43. xxx. 21. Lev. iii. 17. vi. 18.
1 Gen. xvii. 8. xlviii. 4. "2 Sam. vii. 13. 15.
1 Acts iii. 18.

74 Real faith entire.
times of the Philosophers of Mars' Hill. Yet it is
not the sort of difficulty which weighs upon our
minds, and so even unsubmissive tempers yield a
sort of vague assent to it, or square it to themselves
by assuming a resurrection of bodies, yet not the
same flesh, or they deny this one doctrine altogether
and yet, as they think, believe the Gospel, wThich
the Heathen rejected on the ground of the self-same
doctrine. The phases of human nature change, but our na
ture itself remains unchanged, except through the
Grace of God. The outward form of objection, or
opposition, or cavil passes away ; the opposition re
appears, in substance the same, but wearing the guise
and fashion of the times. In difficulties which are not
our own, we may see our own temptations. We are
in danger, Avhere we sympathise ; we see the principle
of our OAvn temptation dispassionately, where the er
ror is alien from our habit of mind, and suggests no
temptation to us. The chief temptation of this day
is not, overtly or wholly to reject Christ. A sort of
religion is a necessity of our times. We want a God,
Whom we need not think much of while we live, but
Who is to make us happy somehow, when we die.
We would be on good terms with Him, if we can,
but on terms of our own, not His. It satisfies the
intellect, to think of a " Supreme Moral Cause " ; it
ennobles ourselves, to speak of " m an endless living,
"' CErsted, " the soul in nature," quoted by Prof. Powell Essays p. 39.

Real faith entire. 75
and acting Reason," whose " laws exist in our " na
tural " reason " also ; it is a resting-place for the
mind and intellect to acknoAvledge " a presiding
Mind," Whose laAvs give an unity to all the varia
tions of nature ; so that man can escape from ac-
knoAvledging a supreme Will, Whose laws we must
obey, Whom Ave must believe, Whom we must re
verence, and Who will punish.
Our temptation is to remove from religion all
which is austere, all which is aweful, all which is
self-denying, all which shocks our sensitiveness or
our taste or our ways of thinking, or which requires
a decided submission of our minds, or is at variance
with our preconceived notions of God or His Ways of
acting, — all in a word, what would not be in a Reve
lation from God, if we were to make it. And so
people light on distinctions, what is to be really mat
ter of Revelation, and what not ; they assume that
there is a part of Holy Scripture which they may
freely criticise, another which they are passively to
believe. Or, if they would be respectful to our
Lord and His Apostles, they say that He and they
" accommodated themselves " to the then prevailing
notions in matters which, ( it is assumed ) do not
affect the centre of religion, i. e. in part they taught
the truth of God, in part they countenanced human
error. All the while, more consistent thinkers see
that the line cannot be distinctly drawn ; that the
subjects still reserved for Divine faith melt insensibly
into those abandoned to human reason, and that

76 Real faith entire.
therefore either the claims of human reason must
be restricted or the province of Divine Faith must
anew be contracted yet more narrowly.11 Those
whose feelings predominate over their intellectual
consistency, will ensconce themselves in some nook in
the downward descent, believing what they like, and
disbelieving what they do not like. Those of keener
intellects see the inconsistency still unremoved at
each step of the descent, descend lower and lower in
the hope of finding some standing-ground, and find
none, until they say, " There is no God." For since
One is the God of Nature and of Grace, One the
God of the Old Testament and the New ; of Nature
and Grace ; and the books of both, all bear the im
press of His One Hand, whatever is objected to in
any one part, vibrates in fact through the whole
scheme of God's Providence and Revelation ; and
what is out of harmony with any one part, is in fact
out of harmony with all.
One, overwhelming, heavy, impenetrable, cloud,
does weigh on all which we see of God 's creation ; a
cloud, which we cannot remove, cannot lighten,
cannot understand in this world, and which proba
bly none will understand, save those who shall read
the meaning of the mystery in the Face of the
Living God. The mystery of evil in the works of
God, Almighty, All- Wise, and All- Good, can neither
be explained, nor softened, on any system of religion
" Phases of faith, p. 82, 3. 111-15. 144.

Real faith entire. 77
or irreligion. For Pantheism, besides its other ab
surdities, has this above all, that it avoids admitting
that God permits evil, by making Him the Actor
of all evil. In the Pantheistic system, whatever sin
is committed, it is God Himself who sins."
But since the existence of evil in the works of God
is wholly beyond reason, and yet we must believe
in the Infinite Love and Goodness of our God, al
though we cannot in the least understand, why He
Who is All-Good should have created that which
He knew would become evil, then it were against
reason to require as a condition of our belief, that
we should understand any thing bound up with the
existence of that evil. Since we are Avholly ignorant
about the whole, it were childish to insist that Ave
should fully understand apart.? If we understand not
some law impressed by God on His Natural Crea
tion, we do not require to understand any thing
depending upon that law. Since we understand not
the connection of our souls and bodies, we do not
refuse to believe that we have souls, because we
cannot explain some result of that connection.
Since we cannot, in any the least act of choice in
0 See S. Augustine in Note on the Manichees at the end of his Confessions,
p. 323. and Conf. iv. 26. p. 61. This belief that the sinful acts of man are, in fact
the acts of the Deity of whom the soul is held to be a part, has been found by our
Missionaries in India to deaden the conscience of the common Hindoo and
to hinder conversion, add Conf. v. §. 18. p. 78. viii. §. 22.
P The appeal " Nay but O man, who art thou that repliest unto God,"
is not an " inference of Wisdom from Power i. e. that Might makes Right,"
(Phases of faith p. 75. ) but a denial of the right of human ignorance to im
pugn Divine Wisdom or Justice.

78 Real faith entire.
this life, reconcile God's Knowledge and our free
will, we are content to leave Predestination, as a
Mystery which need not be cleared to us. We do
not become fatalists, because we cannot reconcile
the fact of our free-will with the absolute Knowledge
of God. Were any consistent fatalist to act on the
denial of his own free-will and his own responsibi
lity, his fellows would be compelled, in self-defence,
to confine him as a lunatic or a malefactor. And
yet, in the abstract, they could not solve his dif
ficulty. Since we cannot understand how God crea
ted out of nothing, we cannot in reason, require
to understand in any part, whatever is involved in
the Mystery of Creation. Since we must believe
that, having in all eternity existed without Creating,
God, without change in Himself, did what He did
not before, no a priori objection can be raised against
any seeming change in Divine Revelation. Since
the very mode of God's Being, as a Spirit, is wholly
unknown to us, and we cannot even picture to
ourselves any mere Spirit, much less the Being of
God, Who is Wholly every where, but the Whole of
Him no where, it Avere the extremest folly and in
consistency to object that to be Three in One is con
tradictory^ in His Mode of Existence, of Which we
know nothing. Since the existence of an Infinite
Eternity before all creation was, is wholly beyond
our thought, and in vain Ave go back and back and
« Phases of Faith, p. 48, 88.

Real faith entire. 79
back to find a Beginning to that which had no Be
ginning, and Ave must needs speak of Eternity back
wards under the image of past time, then it is no
thing inconsistent to speak of God the Son, as " "Be
gotten from everlasting of the Father," in order to
express that in His Eternal Unchangeable Being, He
Is Ever Begotten by the Father, and never was time
when He was not. Since we can know nothing,
except by experience, of the way in which God
speaks to the soul, to argue that those to whom He
revealed Himself, had no certain criterion8 by which
they could recognize that it Avas He Who spake,
is to limit Divine Wisdom and Power on the ground
of a man's own ignorance, much as though one de
nied the reality of a language which one's self knew
not. And so, since the existence of evil is abso
lutely inexplicable, then it is an unreasonable cavil
to except against the extermination of the Canaan-
ites, or the eternity of punishment, or any doctrine
of the Atonement,' as contrary to the Attributes
r "To me it seemed a most unworthy shuffling with words to say that the
Son was begotten, but was never begotten. The very form of our past partici
ple is invented to indicate an event in past time." Phases of faith p. 84. Not
in past time certainly. All our phrases as to eternity must involve imperfec
tion. Scripture says, "from everlasting to everlasting," "Whose Goings forth
have been of old from everlasting." But " from everlasting " is an inadequate
expression ; since in Eternity there is no point from which to begin. " Begot
ten from everlasting " contradicts the Arian heresy that the Son had a Be
ginning. One human phrase cannot express all sides of Divine Truth, that
the Relation of the Father and the Son is One Unceasing Relation ; not an
Act, hut an Eternal, Unchangeable Fact in the Divine Essence. See S. Ath.
against Arians i. §. 14. p. 201. and note b- Oxf. Tr.
8 Phases of faith p. 176, 7. 181. 148-151. The last reference extends to our
Lord Himself.
1 See Note A. at the end ; Phases of faith p. 92.

80 Real faith entire.
of God. For since we cannot in the least under
stand, how the existence of evil at all is reconcileable
Avith the Attributes of God, plainly Ave cannot un
derstand Avhat is a part and consequence of what we
understand not.
Rather as to all these and the like questions, we
might say ; explain to me the Mystery on which your
objection hangs, and I will explain to you the wis
dom of that to which you object. Explain to me
the Mode of God's Being as a Spirit, and I will ex
plain to you, hoAv God is Three in One ; explain to
me the Essence of God, and I will explain to you
how that Essence is Eternally Communicated by the
Father to the Son, and, through the Son, to the
Holy Ghost, and hoAv the Three Divine Persons
Eternally In-exist in One Another. Explain to me
" Unde malum," how the existence of eAdl at all
is consistent Avith the Infinite Wisdom and Power
and Love of God ; and I will explain to you the
Justice of eternal punishment. Explain to me His
Justice and Love in the sufferings of the neAv-born
infant, and I will explain to you how and Avhy the
Justice of God required that the Innocent should
bear the guilt of us sinners, and it pleased the Lord
to lay upon Him the iniquities of us all. Explain to
me the Mode of the Knowledge of God, and I will
explain to you our OAvn free agency and the mystery
of Predestination and of the efficacy of prayer. Ex
plain to me the Act Avhereby God created out of no
thing, and I will unfold to you all the mysteries of

Real faith entire. 81
creation. Explain to me the nature of the Spiritual
Body after the Resurrection, and I will explain to
you, how this same flesh shall arise. Make known
to me how the soul dwells in the body, and I will
explain to you how God the Holy Ghost dwells in
the soul. Make clear to me how " the reasonable soul
and flesh is one man," and I will make clear to you,
how " God and Man are One Christ."11 Lay open
to me how God by His ordinary Grace acts upon the
soul, and I will make clear to you, how God made
known to Abraham/ that it was He Who bade him
offer up his son. Make known to me, whence and
how those lightning thoughts come, which flash into
our minds, kindle our hearts, enlighten our souls, are
in and not of us, and yet are attempered to the cha
racters of each of us, and I will explain to you how
God the Holy Ghost inspired Apostles, led them into
the whole truth, spake in them, yet suggested the
thoughts which He gave to each, in forms adapted to
the mind of each. Shew me how we can fully,
definitely, accurately, comprehend a thought with
out words, and then require me to believe that He
u Athan. Creed, trauss denied this on the mere ground that it could
not be understood. " Whether Person be an abiding oneness of life, Nature,
or the complex of laws according to which the conditions of life have their
course, it is inconceivable how two, so thoroughly different, systems of con
ditions of life can coincide in one centre." ( quoted by Dr Mill, Pan
theistic principles p. 28. ) The statement of the difficulty shows how lit
tle trauss understood the very belief which he criticised. The illustration,
in the Athanasian Creed ( like all illustrations ) must be imperfect, in that
the soul and body are parts of our nature, not, as the Godhead and Man
hood in our Lord, two Natures. But if we cannot understand the less
how much less the greater !
T Phases of faith p, 150. &c.
G

82 Real faith entire..
Who promised that God the Holy Ghost should
lead the Apostles " into the whole truth," and should
" speak in " them, inspired the Apostles without
words, and call on me to deny verbal inspiration.
Explain to me the different spiritual conditions and
natural tempers and trials of children of the same
parents, and I will explain to you the partialness
of the Divine Revelation.
But if, in all these and many more things, we
knoAV the that, rather than the how or the why ;
if, as to our very earthly lives, and the daily func
tions of our bodies and souls, God has given us
full practical knoAvledge, but has kept from us the
hidden springs, and we know not what is the prin
ciple of our life, what is sleep, or why it refreshes
us, how the nerves communicate their sensations,
how we see, what is our memory, or our imaginations,
and whereon they depend ; what folly and madness
to act in Divine things and in what concerns the
soul, as we should not in human, which much con
cern us.
" It is a main characteristic, " we are told, " of
sound ( physical ) philosophy, that it draws the line
precisely between the known and unknown ; " that
having once grasped firmly a great principle, we
should be satisfied to leave minor difficulties to
wait their solution ; that we must not assume a
physical phenomenon to be inexplicable, because we
cannot explain it. T The confession of human ig-
T See Prof. Powell Essays, p. 106. 94. sqq. 155. sqq. see Note B. at the end.

Real faith entire. 83
norance is rightly urged in defence of the results
of human science. In human science too we must
not argue against the legitimate inferences from
what we know, on the ground of things which we
do not know. It is matter of faith, that there can
be no place for chance or necessity in the works
of God : it is a contradiction to conceive that His
works do not bear on them the impress of the
Unity of their Creator. Doubtless, if we could
grasp it, the physical creation is one great Whole,
reflecting in its order and harmony, the One Mind
Which formed it : the least things as well as the
greatest, the foul and the beautiful, the seeming ano
maly as well as the rule, the useless ( as it would
seem ) or the noxious as well as those things whose
uses are most obvious ; things which seem to contra
dict God's Will as well as those which directly fulfil it,
obeying His Word and accomplishing that for which
He made them. Nay more, it has often been by
believing a truth of nature, notwithstanding sur
rounding difficulties and adverse phenomena, that
successive generations of students of natural truth
have come to see its full bearings and evidence.
So also, by and upon believing, we see some por
tion of the reasonableness of mysteries which are
beyond our reason, or the unreasonableness of ob
jections, or the harmony between distant truths.
Superficial reason has scoffed at the Mystery of
the Trinity and of the lowliness of the Incarnation.
To faith, the Mystery of the Trinity lays open, as
g2

84 Real faith entire.
far as may be, the adequate Bliss of Almighty God
in all eternity, hoAV He Who Is Infinite Wisdom
and Infinite Love had within Himself the adequate
Object of His Wisdom and His Love. He, Love
Infinite, exists in, contains, Is One A\ith, loA^es with
His Whole Infinite Being, Co-Equal Co-Eternal Love.
To superficial reason, the Incarnation has seemed
a thing incredible. To faith it seems more rea
sonable that God, having vouchsafed to make in
telligent creatures capable of His Love, did not
keep them apart from Himself, to adore only and
admire and love Him from without, but that He
united them to Himself by the closest union Avhich
was possible between the creature and the Creator,
and, having taken the Manhood into God, " ga
thered x together in One all things in Christ, both
which are in heaven and AA'hich are in earth, in Him
in Whom Ave also have obtained an Inheritance."
And so too faith is, with reason, assured, that
what is not yet made clear to it, will, when we
no longer see through a glass darkly, reflect the
Glory and Wisdom of God. Some things it sees,
which once it could not discern. And so, the more
cheerfully it trusts those other truths with its God ;
sure, that those far-distant nebules, Avhich still hang
in the midst of the starry sky of God's Revelation,
in unAvonted unexplained forms, will, Avhen his eye
shall be stengthened to behold their structure, re-
*¦ Eph. i. 10. 11.

Real faith entire. 85
solve themselves into glorious suns, irradiating with
Light from God, those distant and darker parts of
the system of Divine Wisdom, which now we can
not bear to look upon.
Meanwhile, one Unfailing Light there ever is
in our remaining darkness, to Which if we cleave,
our darkness will be light around us. Truths of
God wear a very different aspect, as we scrutinize,
speculate, theorize, criticise, or as we love, adore,
reverence, hearken, obey. In criticising, men stand,
as it were, without and above God's Word ; they
handle it, as a thing subject to them ; they tell
over its syllables, arrange its words, analyze its con
struction ; but never will they catch its meaning.
As they look into it, so it will look to them. They
insert their own meaning into it ; they do not read
out of it the Mind of God. Such busy themselves
with a letter, to them dead. They think not of it
as the Voice of God ; and that Voice which reaches
all who hearken to It, is silent to unheeding ears.
But to those who will hearken, Jesus, our Saviour
and our God, still lives and speaks, hushes, assures,
calms the soul. Faith does not "admire" or "praise,"
as if it were yielding some testimony of its own to
the Perfection of its Redeemer. Criticism must mis
judge, because He is no Object of criticism. "I re
ceive not," He said, "honour from men." He came
not to gain honour, but to bestow it. If we go to
Jesus otherwise than as little children, to learn of
Him, we mistake our own relation to Him, as His

86 Real faith entire.
creatures •, we should already in our hearts disown
Him, as our Divine Master. Whether in matters
of faith or practice, we must submit ourselves to
Him without reserve. We must not "hold back
part of the price." " If Baal be God, then follow
him ; but if the Lord be God, then follow Him."
The difficulties as to faith are well-nigh over, if
with an entire, whole-hearted, loyal devotion, with
out reserves, without dread of consequences, without
thought that this or that will not be popular with
the philosophers or the friends of advancement,
or that it may frighten back half-believers, we re
sign ourselves to believe, submit to, obey, do, what
ever is the revealed Mind of God. The battle of
faith was never won by half-heartedness. Only fix
steadfastly in thy heart what God Is, and what
thou. He, the All- Wise, the All-Good, Who out
of nothing made thee for Himself, Who, for thy
good alone, reveals Himself to thee, to Whom thou
belongest by every right, because He made thee,
He redeemed thee, He would sanctify thee, that
thou shouldest be His for ever, partake of All which
is His, His Wisdom, His Love, His Goodness, His
Glory, His Beauty ; and, if His Infinity must be
withheld from His creatures, it is but that thou
shouldest never come to an end of the stores of
His Good, because they are Infinite. And we,
what are we ? His creatures, who can only think,
while He gives us power to think ; who can only
will, because He endows us with, and maintains us

Real faith entire. 87
in, that power to will ; who live the life of the
flesh, through His Gift, and if Ave have a spiritual
life, through His Life in our souls. And what are
Ave then, that Ave should make terms Avith Him,
what, or how much we shall believe, what we can
receive, what it were fitting for Him to declare ?
" Speak Lord, for Thy servant heareth," is the only
fittino; voice of the creature to the Creator. So
speak to Him, without reserve ; yield thyself wholly
to Him, as clay to the potter, not to mould His
Words, but that His Words may re-mould thee ;
surrender thyself to him for time and for Eternity,
for the very least as for the greatest, to learn
of Him all which He will teach. Listen to the
Words of Jesus, and let not Him be as a stran
ger p to thee, and thou wilt find, that the Office
of God the Holy Ghost has not ceased in the
Church, that He will still guide into the whole
Truth those who will indeed be Christ's disciples,
and will learn of Him ; thou wilt still find thy
"heart burn within " thee, while, in His words
which He spake on earth, Jesus will still speak
to thee by the Avay ; thou shaft know with a know
ledge above demonstration, proof against cavil, cer
tain as sight, unshaken as the Living Rock, in
Whom thou hast beheved. For He has said, " They
shall be all taught of God."

i " My historical conception of Jesus had so gradually melted into dimness
that He had receded out of my practical religion, I knew not exactly when."
Phases of Faith p. 188, 9.

88 Real faith entire.
" Lord to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words
of Eternal Life." Whom should we follow, save
Thee, since Thou hast, Thou art, Thou in Thy Faith
fulness and Mercy wilt give, the Life which Thou
hast promised ? Thou Thyself art the Truth ; the
Unerring Way unto Thyself the Life, with the Father
and the Holy Ghost, One God, Blessed, and Blessed-
making for evermore.

C&anfes bt to <&ob.

NOTES TO SERMON II.

Note A.
Mr. Jowett's objections to the doctrine of the Atone
ment, have their whole force from his implying that
they would involve human passions in God. (Doctrine of
the Atonement p. 472.) He ignores that our Lord
Himself speaks of God the Father as giving His Only-
Begotten Son (S. John. iii. 16.) as a special act of Love
for man. (comp. Tit. iii. 4. 5.) Mr. Jowett specifically
excepts to the idea, " that there were ' some impossibili
ties in the nature of things ' which prevented God from
doing other than He did." Thus (he says) " we in
troduce a moral principle superior to God, just as in
the Grecian mythology fate and necessity are superior to
Jupiter." ( Ib. ) The meaning of the words " that there
was an impossibility in the nature of things " would be
expressed more accurately, that " it might have involved a
contradiction to the Divine Nature." All the Acts of
God are obviously the result of the Divine Mind, as hu
man acts are the result of the human mind. Since
then, God is Infinitely Wise, Holy, and Good, we
know that whatever He has done is the result of His
Wisdom, Holiness, and Goodness ; and, , consequently, that
it would not have been equally consistent with His Wis
dom, Holiness, and Goodness, to have done otherwise.

90 NOTES.
It is impossible even to guess what in Mr. Jowett's mind
lies under the vague language, which he substitutes for
the doctrine of the Atonement, p. ( 480-2. )
Having formally rejected the doctrine that our Lord's
Death was a " Satisfaction " for our sins, or, in any real
sense " a Sacrifice for our sins," which is so explicitly
taught by the Church of England a also, Mr. Jowett at
tempts to substitute an " explanation of the doctrine of the
Atonement " such as " nature and Scripture, and the still
small voice of Christian feeling ( as he thinks ) give."
i. Every where S. Paul speaks of the Christian as one
with Christ. This union with Him is a union not in His
Death merely, but in all the stages of His Existence :
living with Him, suffering with Him, dying with Him,
crucified with Him, buried with Him, rising again with
Him, renewed in His image, glorified together with Him
— these are the expressions by which this union is deno
ted. There is enough here for faith to feed on, without
sullying the mirror of God's Justice, or overclouding His
Truth : peace and consolation enough without raising a
suspicion which secretly destroys peace."
It is, of course, true that Holy Scripture tells us, that
the Merits of Christ's Death are imparted to us, that we
are made partakers both of His Death and of His Life,
¦ " One Christ, Very God and Very Man, Who truly suffered, was cru
cified, dead and buried, to reconcile His Father to us, and to be a Sacrifice
not only for original guilt, but also for the sins of men." Art. ii. " The Offer
ing of Christ, once made, is that perfect Redemption, Propitiation, and Sa
tisfaction for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual ; and
there is none other Satisfaction for sin, but That only." Art. lxxxi. " Almighty
God, our Heavenly Father, Who of Thy tender Mercy, didst give Thine Only
Son Jesus Christ, to suffer Death upon the Cross for our Redemption, Who
made there by His One Oblation of Himself, once offered, a full, perfect, and
sufficient Sacrifice, Oblation, and Satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world."
Prayer of Consecration in the Order of the Holy Communion. " That Thy
bountiful help and mercy may speedily help and deliver us, through the Satis
faction of Thy Son our Lord." Collect for the fourth Sunday in Advent.

NOTES. 91
that we are mystically united with Christ. But this truth
in no way supersedes, nor is any explanation of the
passages in which our Lord and His Inspired Apostles
tell us, that He died for us.
II. That we need an assurance that " when the grave
covers us there is a God to Whom we still live. This
assurance is given to us by the life and death of Christ.
Not the sacrifice, not the satisfaction, not the ransom, but
the greatest moral act done in the world, — the act of one
in our likeness — is the assurance to us that God in
Christ is reconciled to the world." Our Lord's Death for
us is such an assurance. But in itself, the " greatest
moral act done in this world by one in our likeness"
would only shew, that there was one Being " in our
likeness " with whom God was well-pleased. The perfect
Holiness of Christ would not make us less sinners, or child
ren of wrath, had He been only " One in our likeness,"
unless His Holiness had removed the guilt of our unholi-
ness, His Innocence had effaced our sinfulness. This it
has done, since He " isb the Mediator between God and man,
Who ga\re Himself a Ransom for all." Our Lord Himself
insists, not on the Act alone, but on its Vicariousness :
" The u Son of man came to give His Life a Ransom for
many." in. " We are all unprofitable servants, even the best of
us." But we have this " true sense of man's unprofitable
ness accompanied also by an unshaken confidence in the
mercy of God. No account can be given of the confidence."
An account can be given of it, and is given of it by every
simple Christian, who can say with the Apostle " I live
by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave
Himself for me." But this trust, which if well-founded,
is the fruit of our reconciliation with God through faith
b 1 Tim. ii. 5. 6. c S. Matt. xx. 28.

92 NOTES.
in the Blood of Christ, cannot stand as an account of
the Atonement. They who believe that God has, for
Christ's Sake, forgiven them, have a ground of assured
peace, notwithstanding their own unworthiness. It must
be a miserable condition in which we should be left on
Mr. Jowett's theory. " He who has this confidence finds
the reasons of it desert him, the moment he begins to
consider them." (p. 481.)
Mr. Jowett sums up ; iv. " There is more in the Life
and Death of Christ than we pretend to fathom. De
finite statements respecting the relation of Christ, either
to God or man, are but human figures transferred to a
subject which is beyond speech and thought." All the
truths of Revelation are "beyond speech and thought ;"
but in their depth and fulness, not in their meaning ;
else it were no Revelation at all. We do not understand
how the Father and the Son Exist in the Eternal Relation
of the Father and Son : but we do know that such Is Their
Eternal Being. So also as to the Very Being of God.
We cannot understand His Being, Infinity, Eternity, Om
nipresence, Omniscience. We could not understand them,
unless we ourselves were God. But we can understand,
that God Is Omnipresent, Omniscient, Eternal, Infinite,
although we can understand " in part " only, how much
those words Eternal, Infinite contain. We can know, for
instance, " God Is in this place " ; and, since God Is Indi
visible, we can know that He is in that place, in all His
Majesty and Glory, ( if we could but behold Him. ) On
ly, how the Infinite God can be wholly in one place, we
know not. So as to every truth of God. Without " de
finite statements " we know nothing. A statement, which
is not definite, has no meaning at all. A " definite state
ment " implies that we have some knowledge, not that
we have all. " God is a Spirit," is a definite statement,

NOTES. 93
although we know not what " Spirit " is, save that it is
not material. So also they are " definite " truths, that
" God sent His Son to be a Propitiation for our sins ; "
that " He made His Soul to be an Offering for sin;" " He
was bruised for our iniquities ; " " while enemies, we
were reconciled to God by the Death of His Son;" "the
Lord laid upon Him the iniquities of us all ; " " Christ hath
once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, to bring
us to God." Our Lord's Vicarious Sufferings, that He
bore the penalty of our sins, which was due to us, and
that our sins are forgiven us, because " He bare them for
us," are clear definite truths, although we cannot under
stand the depth, either of the Holiness or the Justice or
the Love of God. But a statement, which is not definite,
is, in fact, no positive statement or truth at all. It is to
give us a shadow, instead of the substance of truth.
Mr Jowett admits (p. 475,6.) that the Apostles, in
this, spake as Jews. "They remained so [Jews] after their
conversion in their thoughts and language." He admits that
they taught the doctrine of the Atonement, as we believe it.
If this, being the very Centre of the Gospel, had not been
true, neither could we depend upon them in any thing else.
No consistent minds will ever occupy such ground as this.
They must go on to full unbelief, or they must return
to definite faith.
Note B.
I cannot quote Professor Powell's work, without ex
pressing a hope that the Rev. Professor will make out
more clearly, where his theory on the absolute Uniformity
of Nature, and on Causation ( Essay i. §. iii. iv. ) leaves room
for miracles. The answer is easy, if he can give it, that
no theory as to God's ordinary workings interferes with
the belief, that He, whensoever He Wills, suspends that

94 NOTES.
mode of working. By the constant operation of His Will,
He now upholdeth all things by an uniform law ; at His
Will, by which He ordinarily continues that law, He acts
otherwise when it seemeth Him good. Prof. Powell al
ludes in one place to a theory as to miracles, that " instead
of interruptions, they are really to be regarded rather as
instances of some more comprehensive laws unknown to
us " ; but apparently, only to lay it aside, (p. 473. sqq. ) All
such theories represent God as a Great Architect, as it
were, of the Universe, Who, when He had finished His
work, left it to stand independent of Himself. They ex
clude His Providence, as much as His Miraculous Work
ing. Prof. Powell gives no statement of his own. Scien
tific writers, even if Clergymen, need not introduce Theo
logy ; but at least, a Christian is bound, not to exhibit
a theory which would obviously involve a negation of mi
racles, without explaining in what way it does not ( as,
if true, it cannot ) exclude them. Prof. Powell asserts,
but does not prove, that the results of Geology are in
consistent with the truth of the account of the Creation
in the Book of Genesis.

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