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the door is very low, so that the high and arrogant man cannot run in; but he must stoop low, and humble himself, that shall enter into it. Presumption and arrogancy are the mother of all error; and humility needeth to fear no error. For humility will only search to know the truth; it will search, and will bring together one place with another, and where it cannot find out the meaning, it will pray, it will ask of others that know, and will not presumptuously and rashly define any thing which it knoweth not. Therefore the humble man may search any truth boldly in the Scripture, without any danger of error. And if he be ignorant, he ought the more to read it, and to search Holy Scripture to bring him out of ignorance"."

• In "A Papist misrepresented and represented," (p. 32.) we are told, "It is not for the preserving ignorance, he allows a restraint upon the reading the Scriptures, but for the preventing a blind, ignorant presumption; and that it may be done to edification, and not to destruction, and without casting what is holy to dogs, or pearls to swine." It may be sufficient to remark respecting this sort of anxiety to guard the Scripture from indiscriminate contact, that it does not appear to have been felt by our Saviour, or his Apostles. On the contrary, Jesus said to the Jews" Search the Scriptures:" (St. John v. 39.) and in the Acts (xvii. 11.) it is said of the Bereans, that "These were more noble than those of Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether these things were so." St. Peter, it is true, as Romish polemics do not forget to tell their readers, says, that there are in St. Paul's epistles, "some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction." (II St. Pet. iii.

The second homily is upon The misery of mankind, and it contains much excellent matter calculated to leave upon the mind a thorough conviction of human unworthiness, both from a corrupt nature, and from vicious habits. In this discourse appears no direct allusion to any of the theological questions most agitated at the period of the Reformation; but a discerning reader could hardly fail of remarking, that by the scriptural declarations submitted to his notice, asserting the universal prevalence of iniquity and unworthiness, every doctrine depending upon the admission of human merit is plainly overthrown.

The third homily, on The salvation of mankind, by only Christ our Saviour, from sin and death everlasting, was according to respectable contem

16.) The Apostle, however, does not add that it is therefore proper to restrain any man from access to Scripture. His words, indeed, only assert of the Scripture, what may be said of every thing else within the reach of man, that it may be abused; at the same time furnishing an argument for the propriety of consigning theology as their especial employment to a particular order of men. As for the defections from their Church which, as Romanists truly state, have flowed from the reading of Scripture, these have originated not with the unlearned, but with such persons as no Papist would venture to interdict from access to Scripture. Luther, Zuingle, Cranmer, Ridley, Calvin, and other leaders of the Reformation were among the first theologians of their own, or of any age. Nor has an indiscriminate access to Scripture engendered so much discordance of opinion as is commonly attributed to it. On the contrary, the great majority of those who read their Bibles, agree as to the essentials of faith and morals; their differences chiefly relating to ecclesiastical discipline, and to some of the more abstruse speculations of theology.

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porary evidence composed entirely by Archbishop Cranmer. In this discourse is explained the doctrine of justification by faith, which in the hands of Luther, a few years before, had given so severe a shock to the prevailing confidence in personal austerities, and in alleged sacramental operations. It is clearly proved in the homily, from Scripture, and the fathers, that the remission of sin wholly depends upon the Redeemer's sufferings; and hence it follows; that no penance can be so severe, no religious office so effectual as to secure the justification of any human being. This doctrine, however, largely detracts from the importance assigned by Romanists both to the departed spirits of holy men, and to sacramental ministrations. But while so much solicitude is manifested in this discourse, to impress upon the minds of men, that the meritorious cause of human justification is only Christ; that, in other words, it flows entirely through faith in the Saviour', not in any degree, through the acts

P Bishop Woolton, in his Christian Manuell, 1576. Introduction to Todd's Declarations of our Reformers, 13.

Justification is the state of individuals who, having had their former sins remitted, are accounted just in the sight of God, and as such are placed in a condition for the attainment of salvation.

The difficulty of rightly understanding this subject, as Bishop Sherlock excellently observes, "arises from confounding and blending together ideas which are perfectly distinct, from not separating between faith considered as a principle of knowledge, and as a principle of religion." (Sermons, I. 385. Lond. 1759.) Religion is a struggle between sense and faith. The temptations to sin are the pleasures of this life; the incitements

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of the penitent, or the offices of religion; especial care is taken to guard against the corruptions and scandals of antinomianism. It is clearly taught, that faith, when once seated in the soul, unless it is fruitful in good works, furnishes no Christian ground of dependence; but that a man who professes religion without a conscientious regard to the duties which it enjoins, is deceiving himself as to the nature, and consequently, as to the issue of his principles.

The draught of this homily having been completed, after a very laborious and careful investigation, Cranmer sent it to Bishop Gardiner. To him it appeared highly objectionable. He could not, indeed, admit the doctrine which it inculcated without abandoning a belief in the efficacy of will-worship, congruous merit, and sacerdotal intervention. Not being prepared to surrender at discretion such a mass of deeply-rooted

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to virtue are the pleasures of the next. faith; those are the objects of every sense. tue all the motives, all the objects of faith of vice stand the formidable powers of sense, passion, and affection. Where the heart is established in the fulness of faith, the heavenly host prevails, and virtue triumphs over all the works of darkness but where sense governs, sin enters, and is served by every evil passion of the heart. If this be the case; if religion has nothing to oppose to the present allurements of the world, but the hopes and glories of futurity, which are seen only by faith; it is no more absurd to say men are saved by faith, than it is to say they are ruined by sense and passion; which we all know has so much of truth in it, that it can have nothing of absurdity." Ibid. 370.

Hist. Ref. under King Henry VIII. II. 310.

religion in a manner unknown to the record of God's will. "What man," it is asked, "having any judgment or learning, joined with a true zeal unto God, doth not see and lament to have entered into Christ's religion, such false doctrine, superstition, idolatry, hypocrisy, and other enormities and abuses, so as by little and little, through the sour leaven thereof, the sweet bread of God's holy Word hath been much hindered and laid apart? Neither had the Jews in their blindness so many pilgrimages unto images, nor used so much kneeling, kissing, and censing of them, as hath been used in our time. Sects and feigned religions were neither the fortieth part so many among the Jews, nor more superstitiously and ungodlily abused, than of late days they have been among us: which sects and religions had so many hypocritical and feigned works in their state of religion, as they arrogantly named it, that their lamps, as they said, ran always over, able to satisfy not only for their own sins, but also for all other their benefactors, brothers, and sisters of religion, as most ungodlily and craftily they had persuaded the multitude of ignorant people; keeping in divers places, as it were, marts or markets of merits, being full of their holy relics, images, shrines, and works of overflowing abundance ready to be sold: and all things which they had were called holy, holy cowls, holy girdles, holy

That is, combinations of monks and friars, usually termed religious orders; each of which is distinguished by certain peculiarities.

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