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benefits, has power to procure for himself the means of salvation."1

Is there a cure for the corruption of man's nature; a remedy for a perverted will; deliverance from the thraldom of sin? "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 7. 25). The law brings no relief; it gives the knowledge and intensifies the consciousness of sin's enormity and guilt, but brings no cure. "Therefore, though man nills evil and wills good, yet he can neither conquer the one nor perform the other till he receives the grace of Christ, till he seeks and finds redemption in his blood. Here, then, the free agency of man is preserved, without which he could not be in a salvable state; and the honor of the grace of Christ is maintained, without which there can be no actual salvation."2

One can readily distinguish between necessitated action and voluntary obedience prompted by love. The one is the obedience of a slave, the other that of a child. Irenæus has beautifully expressed this thought: "The piety and obedience due to the Master of the household should be equally rendered both by servants and children; while the children possess greater confidence than the servants, inasmuch as the working of liberty is greater and more glorious than that obedience which is rendered in a state of slavery." Realizing the responsibility that grows out of his free moral agency, it is the Christian's privilege and duty voluntarily to surrender every faculty of body and mind to Jesus Christ, and to know by experience that whom the Son maketh free they are free indeed (John 8. 36).

The religious thought of the eighteenth century, which saw the birth and early development of Methodism, was

1 Irenæus, Against Heresies, book iv, chap. xiii.

2 Clarke on Rom. 7. 19. 'Against Heresies, book iv, chap. xiii.

largely Calvinistic. The Calvinistic divines maintained the utter inability of man to do anything but evil, and that grace is irresistible. The Arminians, though ascribing all good works in man to the grace of God, asserted that this grace is not irresistible.

Wesley and his coworkers raised a barrier against Calvinism and controverted its claims. From that time its adherents have sought its modification, and its force has waned. Wesley and Fletcher put Arminianism into the heart of Methodist theology, and went farther from the dogmas of Calvinism than Arminius himself, who evidently held not only to the real physical and metaphysical unity of all men in Adam, but even to the imputation of the guilt of Adam's sin to all men, which Wesley and Fletcher denied. Free will was the keynote of the message of salvation borne by the founders of American Methodism to the people of this Western world; and Methodism everywhere has been true to its earliest teachings of free will, free grace, and universal redemption. This was the message the world needed, one that has never been so clearly and so widely declared as at this time. Arminius failed to establish it in his own land, and his doctrines were condemned by the Council of Dort after his death. The great leader of the Arminians, Barneveldt, died upon the scaffold, really for his faith, though on a political pretense. The prevailing systems of theology are built upon the principle of the freedom of the will. Absolute, unconditional predestination is rejected by the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches, by the Church of England, the Protestant Episcopal Church of America, by the Lutherans the world over, the Freewill Baptists, and by the largest of all evangelical bodies operating on the voluntary principle, the Methodists.1

1 See Dr. W. F. Warren, Methodist Quarterly Review, 1857, p. 360.

ARTICLE IX

OF THE JUSTIFICATION OF MAN

We are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for our own works or deservings. Wherefore, that we are justified by faith only is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort.

I. THE ORIGIN

The original of this Article, prepared by the Reformers in 1553, in the reign of King Edward, was as follows: "Justification by only faith in Jesus Christ, in that sense as it is declared in the Homily of Justification, is a most certain and wholesome doctrine for Christian men." It coincides with number IV of the Augsburg series. In its present form the Article was framed by Bishop Parker, who copied it, in 1562, in part from the Augsburg and Würtemberg Confessions, and in this form it passed into the Thirty-nine Articles of 1571. The Westminster divines in their attempted revision of the Articles in 1643 inserted a clause, "His (Christ's) whole obedience and satisfaction being by God imputed unto us." This the Church of England would not accept. In adopting the Article in 1784 Wesley omitted the reference to the Homily.

II. THE AIM

The Article is directly aimed against theories of human merit which largely prevailed prior to the Reformation, and which contributed one of the disturbing elements that caused the revolt against Romanism. At that time religion of the heart was little taught or known. The

Church "set a great value on external actions, legal observances, and penitential works. The more these practices were observed, the more righteous man became; by them heaven was gained.”1

Against this Luther thundered the Pauline doctrine of "justification by faith." The statement that "a man is justified when he believes himself justified" has been called the peculiar symbol of Lutheranism. This expression occurs in words almost identical with these in Article VI and in six other parts of the Augsburg Confession. The doctrine of justification by faith was fully accepted in England, and the Article aimed at expressing this, while avoiding the Lutheran phraseology. The Article also avoids the Genevan idea that Christ's righteousness is imputed to the sinner for his justification. Running parallel with the work of the Reformers were the erroneous tenets of the Anabaptists. Archbishop Hermann thus alluded to them: "They boast themselves to be righteous and to please God, not purely and absolutely for Christ's sake, but for their own mortification of themselves, for their own good works and persecution, if they suffer any." Probably the Article was framed with these errorists in view.

III. THE EXPOSITION

We are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for our own works or deservings.

Justification is that act of God's free grace in which he pardons our sins and accepts us as righteous for the sake of Jesus Christ. When this takes place we are admitted into God's favor as though we had not sinned, no matter what our past life may have been. Justification

1 D'Aubigné, History of the Reformation, vol. i, p. 53. 2 Archbishop Hermann, Consultatio.

and the forgiveness of sin relate to one and the same act of God and to one and the same privilege of believers. God forgives for Christ's sake, and our pardon is sealed in the court of heaven and is made known to us by the Holy Spirit. Its evidence is the removal of condemnation, and the presence of an abiding peace. "There is therefore now no condemnation to "them which are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8. 1). "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 5. 1).

This act of God is described in varied language in the Holy Scriptures: "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity" (Psa. 32. 1, 2). "As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us" (Psa. 103. 12). "For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more” (Heb. 8. 12). Here sin is "covered," "not imputed," "removed," "remembered no more." All these phrases signify that sin is pardoned. As all have sinned, and all the world of mankind is guilty before God, no one can be acquitted on the ground of innocence; therefore justification on the ground of pardon is the only hope for a sinful world. It is wonderful that man at the very beginning of his Christian career should be delivered from the burden of sin, preceded only by repentance and faith, to which he is graciously assisted by the Holy Spirit. How could he work out his salvation under the weight of a just condemnation? But God forgives, accounts us righteous, permits us to start anew with a clean record, and "crowns us at the outset, and makes the contest light."

The Roman Church and some Protestant theologians confound justification with regeneration, and teach that

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