"To look, and make (his life) like the pattern that was shown him in the mount." He is told that he cannot hope for the pardon of his sins, nor for everlasting life, unless he enter fully into the propitiatory and sacrificial spirit of Christ, and be prepared to be crucified with Him in atonement for sin; for that the merits of the atonement will be applied to him on no other condition. To be saved, he must have not only faith, but works.

Such is an imperfect outline of the doctrine of the atonement, considered as the basis of the Catholic Doctrine of Satisfaction. We think no impar tial person can examine it thoroughly, without pronouncing it, not only conformable to Scripture, but, also, entirely consistent with itself, and an admirable carrying out of the great scheme of man's redemption.

The Protestant takes a different view altogether of the atonement. He agrees with the Catholic in admitting its entire sufficiency and efficacy, for the reconciliation of the sinner, and for the salvation of men; but he differs from the Catholic, in regard to the manner in which its efficacy and merits are to be applied to the soul. The starting point of the Protestant, is the great principle broached by Luther and his coreformers that man is justified by faith ALONE without works. The merits of the atonement "are apprehended by faith;" and if the sinner have only faith, he need fear nothing; he will be justified in this life, and saved in the next. Let him only believe firmly that Christ has died for him, and that his sins are pardoned by Christ; and, from a sinner, he suddenly becomes a saint! No works of penance or satisfaction are at all requisite; no fasting, no bodily inflictions, no mortification; - faith alone will suffice for everything. Christ has undergone all the suffering; we need suffer nothing: He has fully expiated our sins; nothing expiatory remains for us to do. Nay, it would be a derogation from the all-sufficient atonement of Christ, were we to deem any thing but mere faith at all necessary for our justification. In a word, according to this system, Christ has done every thing in the way of satisfaction; He has left nothing for us to do, except to believe!

Luther carried out this comfortable doctrine to its fullest extent; he even rejected good works as useless, if not positively sinful. With him, faith was every thing, works nothing. He even boldly corrupted the Word of God, in order to make it speak a language conformable to his favorite theory; and he wholly rejected the Epistle of St. James, as "an epistle of straw, and unworthy an apostle," because it contains the following passages clearly condemnatory of his error

2

"What shall it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but hath not works? Shall faith be able to save him?"

"Even so faith, if it have not works, is dead in itself."

1 Exodus xxv, 40.

2 In the text of St. Paul (Rom. iii, 28): "For we account a man justified by faith," &c., Luther added alone; and when challenged on the subject he answered: Sic volo, sic jubeo, stat pro ratione voluntas! So I will, so I command, let my will stand for a reason!"

8 Cb ii, vv, 14, 17, 19, 26.

"The devils also believe and tremble."

"For as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead," &c.

Modern Protestants, indeed, appear to have mitigated somewhat this original doctrine of the reformation; but they retain the doctrine itself, and it still exercises a powerful influence over their entire system. They still maintain that we are justified by faith alone; though most of them require works as a sequel to faith, or as the necessary fruits of justification. They all, however, concur in rejecting the obligation of works of penance and satisfaction; and in this they are but consistent with their great principle of justification by faith alone. Luther was certainly more consistent than they: for he did not halt half way, but boldly carried out the principle to its fullest extent; while they appear to exclude only the class of works which is most painful to human nature.

It must be admitted, that the Protestant is a very convenient and comfortable doctrine, which has made the path to heaven quite smooth and easy! If it be only safe, it is certainly a decided improvement on the good old Catholic method of mortification and penance. It has widened and smoothed the once narrow and rugged way of salvation; and a Christian may now go to heaven on a comfortable turnpike, if not on a rail-road. Verily, ours is an age of improvement! We have greatly improved on the example of St. Paul, of St. John the Baptist, and of Christ Himself' These, and all the saints of the olden time, led a hard and mortified life; but our modern preachers of the Gospel have changed all this!

We are doing our separated brethren no injustice. We are merely endeavoring to paint, in a forcible manner, the obvious tendency of their system, which many of them, we are happy to believe, do not fully carry out in practice. But is it not fashionable among Protestants to sneer at celibacy, at fasting, at penitential austerities, at corporal inflictions and macerations? Are not all these practices often represented, as a useless and foolish and even impious self-torment? Are not Catholics often likened to the Brahmin devotee of India, or to the fanatical worshipers of Juggernaut? Are not our saints ridiculed for having worn haircloths, used the discipline, practised chastity, renounced the world with all its dangerous blandishments, and retired into the wilderness, in imitation of Elias, of St. John the Baptist, and of Christ Himself?

Whence this caviling and bitterly sneering spirit, if not from the very principle to which we allude? What does Protestantism enjoin or recommend, that is particularly painful to the senses? Does it not constantly flatter the pride of the human mind, by setting forth the glorious privilege of private judgment, in opposition to the authority of the Church? Does it not place the married above the unmarried life, in direct opposition to St. Paul? Does it often breathe a syllable about mental prayer, about entire abstraction from the world, about mortification of our carnal appetites, about love of solitude? Has it one institution

See 1 Corinth. ch. vii. Read the whole chapter.

embodying these lofty principles? Has it produced one saint, who reduced them to practice? If it has done any of these things, we apprehend the rest of the world has not known the fact.

In viewing the easy and comfortable doctrine of salvation, devised and practised by our dissentient brethren, we are forcibly reminded of a withering passage from the pen of Tertullian; who rebuked, with a biting sarcasm peculiarly his own, the softness of some among his cotemporaries, more than sixteen hundred years ago, in the following language:

"Is it proper for us to supplicate for pardon of our sins, while clad in scarlet and purple? I allow you a brooch for adjusting your hair, powders for whitening your teeth, and an instrument of iron or brass for trimming your nails; I allow you to paint your lips and cheeks, that they may shine forth with fictitious lustre; I entreat you to seek out more refreshing baths, and to cool yourselves in more shady gardens or maritime retreats; add to your expenses, seek out the fattest ox and feast on its dainty flesh, drain old wine to the dregs;-and if any one ask you, why you bestow so many comforts on your soul? Tell him, I have sinned against God, and am in danger of perishing eternally!!"

There are, then, two different ways to heaven: the one ancient, the other modern; the one strewn with thorns, the other with roses; the one offering us pardon and heaven, on condition of doing penance and practising good works in conjunction with faith, the other bidding us be of good cheer,- for that faith alone will save us. Which of these ways is the better and the safer? Which is more conformable to the passages of the inspired volume referred to above, and which more in accordance with the example set us by Jesus Christ, and by all the saints both of the old and of the new law? We think no one can be at a loss for an answer, and that every sensible man and sincere Christian would be disposed to respond, as Melancthon is said to have done to his dying mother, who asked his advice as to the religion she should then embrace: "The Protestant way is the more convenient, the Catholic is the SAFER."

We do not mean to imply, that all Catholics practise penitential austerities, and that all Protestants entirely neglect them. We are speaking of principles, not of men; of the nature and obvious tendency of the systems taught respectively by the Catholic and Protestant communions in regard to justification, not of the lives of those who profess to be governed by them. The Catholic may fall far short of his principles in daily practice, while the Protestant may go far beyond his :-and we have not a doubt that such is often the case in regard to both.

If we have dwelt thus long on general principles, it is because we deemed them of essential importance to the matter in hand; -a refutation of the specious quibbles of Mr. Palmer in regard to the Catholic Doctrine of Satisfaction.

1 "Num ergo in Coccino et Tyriis pro delictis supplicare nos condecet? Cedo acum crinibus distinguendis, et pulverem dentibus elimaudis, et bisulcum aliquid ferri vel æris unguibus repastinandis; siquid ficti nitoris, siquid coacti ruboris, in labia aut genas urgeat; præterea exquirite balneas lætiores, hortulani maritimive recessus; adjicito ad sumptum, conquirito altilium enormem saginam, defæcato senectutem vini; cum quis interrogarit, cur animæ largiaris, deliqui, dicito, in Deum. et periclitor in æternum perire" Tertullianus, Lib. de Pænitentia.

He does not go back to first principles at all; and though he devotes three lengthy letters to an examination of the Catholic doctrine on this and other kindred points, yet he does not say any thing in relation to the real basis upon which these Catholic principles and practices rest. We deemed it absolutely necessary to supply this deficiency. The foundation. of the Catholic Doctrine of Satisfaction, as well as that of the derivative or cognate doctrines of indulgences and purgatory, lies much deeper than the single principle which Mr. Palmer labors so strenuously to refute, viz: that after the guilt of mortal sin, and the eternal punishment due to it, have been remitted by God, there sometimes' or often remains a temporal punishment due to the divine justice; which temporal punishment will be exacted either in this life, or in the next in purgatory, unless it be remitted in view of the penitential works of the pardoned sinner, whether enjoined upon him or spontaneously undertaken, or of an indulgence granted by the Church in the name of Christ, or of both conjoined. This principle, indeed, is the immediate and proximate basis of the doctrine; but the cross of Jesus, and the obligation of imitating the example of Jesus crucified, and of entering into the spirit of His great atonement, constitute the more remote and deeper foundation of this and of all other Catholic doctrines. This, we trust, we have already shown, and Mr. Palmer has not even attempted to shake one of the great principles, we have above laid down and endeavored to demonstrate.

His attempt to disprove the principle just referred to, as the immediate basis of the doctrine of satisfaction, is one of the feeblest arguments we have ever chanced to read. It is as weak as it is pretending. It contains not one new idea, it presents not one new objection. A much stronger argument against the Catholic doctrine might have been produced, by merely translating Bellarmine's objections without his replies. An intelligent Scotch gentleman once informed us that this trick, on a larger scale, was actually tried some years ago in Edinburg; and that the translation of all Bellarmine's objections against Catholic doctrines, without his answers, was deemed the strongest book against "popery" which had ever appeared! 2

We venture the assertion, that there is not one objection against the doctrine of satisfaction in all the three Letters of Mr. Palmer, which had not been already alleged and better alleged-and refuted too, by Bellarmine, nearly two hundred and fifty years ago! And we go even farther, and say that there is scarcely one of our most commonplace theologians who has not taken up and answered those identical arguments. So much for the learning and originality of Mr. Palmer, the boasted "no

1 The Catholic doctrine, strictly speaking, only requires us to believe that a portion at least of the temporal punishment due to sin sometimes remains after the sin itself has been remitted; though our theologians usually employ the term often or generally instead of sometimes. Si quie dixerit totam pænam simul cum culpa remitti semper a Deo, satisfactionemque pænitentium non esse aliam quam fidem, qua apprehendunt Christum pro eis satisfecisse; anathema sit. (Canon xii, Bessio xiv, Concil. Trid) The wording, however, of the fifteenth canon seems to justify the manner of speaking adopted by Catholic divines.

2 The work was entitled Bellarminus Orthodoxus.

popery" champion of Oxford, the very impersonation of Anglican learning. Strip him of his borrowed plumage, and he would be bare indeed; take away his second-hand learning, and his works would become the mere shadow of their former selves. There is scarcely a tyro in Catholic theology, who could not make out a much stronger case against "popery," and refute it, too.

We are confident that we are doing the Oxford divine no injustice. We have surveyed the whole ground he has gone over, and we speak advisedly on the subject. Our narrow limits will not allow us to take up and answer, one by one, the objections he offers against the Catholic principle, that a portion of temporal punishment sometimes or often remains due to the divine justice, after the guilt and the eternal punishment of grievous sin have been remitted by God. But his principal and most specious arguments may be ranged under three heads, which we propose briefly to state, and to answer in succession.

1. The first class of objections consists of an attempt to refute the scriptural arguments, alleged by our divines in support of the Catholic principle.'

The holy Scriptures abound with examples of a temporal punishment exacted by God, even from His most favored servants, after their sins had been already divinely declared to be forgiven. The whole human race is, in fact, a striking example of this feature in the divine economy. Sickness, all the ills of life, and death itself,-what are they but the wages of that fatal sin, by which our first parents disobeyed the command of God in the garden of paradise? And yet there seems to be no doubt that this first sin was pardoned, in view of the long and rigorous penance of our proto-parents. Thus a vast accumulation of temporal punishments has been for centuries, and is yet, exacted by God, for a sin pardoned thousands of years ago. And no matter how perfect or holy may be the descendant of Adam; no matter how thoroughly he may have been purified in the blood of the Lamb, yet is he still subject to sickness, to numberless infirmities, to death. So unbending is this law of the divine justice, that even the great SAINT of SAINTS, the immaculate Son of God, was not exempt from its influence, when He vouchsafed to clothe Himself with man's nature, and to become man's Sponsor to His Father! Jesus suffered, Jesus died, in the midst of agony unspeakable, in consequence of the fall of Adam, and of the accumulated guilt of his tainted descendants. And though He expiated the fault by His death on the cross, yet is the temporal penalty still sternly exacted to this very day, and it will be exacted to the end of time.

This one great leading fact would suffice of itself to establish the Catholic principle. How does Mr. Palmer answer this argument? He meets it with the paltry quibble, that these temporal punishments are the award of original and not of actual sin, and that, therefore, they prove nothing!" But is not the principle clearly the same in regard to both species of sin?

1 Letter ii, p. 14, seqq.

2 Ibid. pp. 18, 19.