An uneducated Romanist, who peradventure has read the translations authorised by his Church, will promptly reply, that Penance is enjoined again and again in Holy Scripture. But the Bishop of Strasbourg is not an uneducated Romanist. He knows perfectly well, that the expressions penance and to do penance, which perpetually occur with most ridiculous absurdity in the romish versions of the New Testament, do not exhibit the true idea of the original words μετάνοια and μετανοεῖν. These words, from the very necessity of their etymology, relate, not to the outward austerities which the Latin Church enjoins under the name of Penance, but purely and exclusively to that moral change of mind which we denominate Repentance. Nay, what renders Dr. Trevern still more inexcusable, is the notorious fact, that, to escape absolute nonsense, the romish versions are sometimes actually compelled to exhibit the true sense of the original. Thus, while they render one and the same. greek word uɛravoɛīv, sometimes to repent, and sometimes to do penance: the Bishop of Strasbourg is not ashamed to attack the hated Reformation, on the score that it rejects the necessity of bodily penance, and requires only mental repentance evidencing itself (as St. Paul speaks) in meet or appropriate works of holiness; thus insinuating, what is palpably contrary to fact, that the phraseology of the New Testament equally inculcates the two perfectly distinct ideas by two perfectly distinct words, and that the Reformation arbitrarily adopts the one inculcated idea while it rejects the other no less inculcated idea.

By this lamentable, and (I fear) systematic mistranslation of the greek original, thousands and millions may have been seduced by the apostatic Church of Rome into a scheme of mere unauthorised and misdeemed meritorious will-worship.

NUMBER III.

SATISFACTION.

In point of principle or of theoretical rationalè, the fruitful parent of expiatory penance, expiatory good deeds, purgatory, indulgences, and supererogation is the vain phantasy so congenial to our proud though fallen nature, the phantasy of Meritorious Satisfaction.

This deeply rooted and widely pullulating heresy, which lies at the bottom of all false schemes of religion whether pagan or papal or mohammedan or socinian, is cherished in all its baneful luxuriance by the Church of Rome: and the account, which is very accurately given of it by the Bishop of Strasbourg, may be briefly stated in manner following.

The meritorious passion of Christ upon the cross delivers us only from the eternal punishment of sin in a temporal point of view, we ourselves must make satisfaction for it to the offended justice of God. Now this satisfaction is made, partly by our personally undergoing certain penalties, and partly by our performing certain meritorious good works. With respect to the penalties, they consist of bodily penance here and of the pains of purgatory hereafter: with respect to the meritorious or expiatory good works (œuvres expiatoires), they consist of abstinence and fasting and the care of widows or orphans and alms-giving and the visitation of the sick; works, Dr. Trevern observes, which in the Latin Church are reckoned among the most important satisfactions. Discuss. Amic. Lettr. xii. vol. ii. p. 204-225.

I. For such a scheme of doctrine as this; I speak in regard to its principle or rationale: the question is, whe

ther there be any foundation, either in Holy Scripture, or in the avowed faith of the really primitive Church.

1. Dr. Trevern, according to his wont, confidently asserts that Christ made satisfaction for our sins, only so far as to exempt us from eternal punishment; and that we ourselves must supply the defect in our Redeemer's expiation, partly by undergoing temporal punishment on earth or in purgatory, partly by performing certain meritorious actions in the way of an expiatory satisfaction to God for our transgressions. This doctrine he boldly avows to be the undoubted mind of Christ: and, as such, he claims to prove it from Scripture itself.

What, then, is the amount of his promised demonstration? Truly, his meagre proof from Scripture is limited, after all his lofty grandiloquence and endlessly prolix declamation, to the mourning of Job among the ashes on account of his trials, to the sackcloth repentance of David and Ahab and the King of Nineveh, and to a strange perversion of a very plain passage of St. Paul wherein the Apostle speaks of the afflictions of Christ the head being filled up in the afflictions of his mystical body the Church.

How these are to demonstrate, that either temporal sufferings or the performance of good deeds can make an expiatory satisfaction to God's justice for our varied transgressions; the lofty enterprize undertaken by the Bishop of Strasbourg: I must even confess myself utterly unable to comprehend. There is not, so far as I can discover, the very slightest perceptible coherence between his premises and his conclusion. When thrown into the useful form of a syllogism, which will distinctly exhibit the real amount of Dr. Trevern's prodigal verbosity, his whole argument runs in manner following.

Job mourned among the ashes on account of his trials: David and Ahab and the king of Nineveh repented in

sackcloth and the afflictions of Christ the head are still harmoniously prolonged in the afflictions of his suffering body the Church. THEREFORE, temporal punishments endured, and good deeds performed, are able, by their expiatory meritoriousness, to satisfy the strict justice of our heavenly Father.

I have rarely fortuned to light upon a more perfect specimen of logical inconclusiveness.

2. If the proof from Scripture be thus palpably and even ludicrously defective, the testimony of the early Fathers to a doctrine altogether unscriptural could only benefit the Church of Rome so far as establishing the deplorable fact of a very rapid and baneful corruption.

Dr. Trevern quotes, Tertullian of the second and third centuries, Cyprian of the third century, Ambrose of the fourth century, and Augustine of the fourth and fifth centuries, as teaching, that We make satisfaction to God by the temporal pains which we endure.

If these writers employ such language in the sense annexed to it by the Latin Church, I can have no hesitation in saying, that they speak without a shadow of authority from Scripture. But I greatly doubt, whether they mean to convey the precise idea, which the Bishop would ascribe to them. We all know, that, in the classical idiom, the same phrase indifferently signifies to give satisfaction and to suffer punishment. This very simple circumstance is probably the true key to the phraseology employed by certain of the Fathers. When they spake of a man making satisfaction to God by any manner of temporal suffering; they meant not, I apprehend, to intimate, that his pains were meritoriously capable of expiating his transgressions, but only that in the course of God's just moral government sin ought to have merited punishment as its companion even though the offender might ultimately be saved.

In this view of the matter, I seem to be confirmed by the language of Ambrose, so late as the last quarter of the fourth century: language, which is of no very easy reconciliation with the theory advocated by Dr. Trevern.

Utinam hanc stipulam in messe, hoc est, inanem avenam fructus mei, non abjiciat, sed colligat-Ergo et agendam poenitentiam, et tribuendam veniam, credere nos convenit: ut veniam, tamen, tanquam ex fide speremus, non tanquam ex debito. Ambros. de Poenit. lib. ii. c. 8. Oper. col. 191.

Would that the Lord would not reject, but collect, this my mere stubble in the harvest, these empty wild oats of my fructification !It is fitting, therefore, to believe, both that penance is to be performed, and that pardon is to be granted: nevertheless, in such manner, that we should hope for pardon, as from faith, not as from debt.

Be this, however, as it may, if we must refer to the ancients for the purpose of ascertaining the real doctrine of the primitive Church, doubtless the testimony and authority of St. Paul's own fellow-labourer, the Roman Clement, who flourished in the first century and who was taught by the Apostles, are incomparably more valuable and more decisive, than those of the much later Fathers, Tertullian and Cyprian and Ambrose and Augustine.

Πάντες οὖν ἐδοξάσθησαν καὶ ἐμεγαλύνθησαν, οὐ δι' αὐτῶν ἢ τῶν ἔργων αὐτῶν τῆς δικαιοπραγίας ἧς κατειργάσαντο, ἀλλὰ διὰ θελήματος αὐτοῦ. Καὶ ἡμεῖς οὖν, διὰ θελήματος αὐτοῦ ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ κληθέντες, οὐ δι ̓ ἑαυτῶν δικαιού μεθα, οὐδὲ διὰ τῆς ἡμετέρας σοφίας, ἢ συνέσεως, ἢ εὐσε βείας, ἢ ἔργων ὦν κατειργασάμεθα ἐν ὁσιότητι καρδίας ἀλλὰ διὰ τῆς πίστεως, δι ̓ ἧς πάντας τοὺς ἀπ' αἰῶνος ὁ παντοκράτωρ Θεὸς ἐδικαίωσεν· ᾧ ἔστω δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων. Αμήν. Τί οὖν ποιήσωμεν, ἀδελφοί; 'Αγάσωμεν ἀπὸ τῆς ἀγαθοποιΐας, καὶ ἐγκαταλείπωμεν τὴν ἁγὰ