The decrees of the Council of Trent (which fixed the doctrines of modern Romanism), against which so many of our Articles were promulgated, declare as follows:

The truth is contained in the written books [or Scriptures] and in the unwritten traditions [sine scripto traditionibus] which received by the Apostles themselves, the Holy Ghost dictating, have come down even unto us transmitted as it were from hand to hand-and we receive and venerate with equal feeling of piety and reverence all the books of the Old and the New Testament, as also the said traditions, relating as well to faith as to morals, as having either from the mouth of Christ himself or from the dictation of the Holy Ghost, been preserved by continuous succession in the Catholic Church.

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With this decree went an enumeration of the Apocryphal books as Holy Scripture equal with the restto wit: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and two books of Maccabees, first and second.

Professor Schaff expresses astonishment that the Augsburg Confession should have no tenet on the canonicity of the Holy Scriptures. But if he had considered the historic rule which his own labors helped to discover, he had found no cause for wonder. The Augsburg Articles were written in 1530, and the Roman Catholic Church did not declare the canonicity of the Apocrypha until sixteen years later, a year after the death of Luther. Up to that time the Vulgate on the basis of Jerome's translation had been accepted as

"The most absurd and extravagant dreams of the fathers and schoolmen were credited to this reservoir of tradition. Thus was Rome able to "prove" her most preposterous dog

mas.

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the canon, neither had there been up to this time a dogma on tradition. It was resentment produced by the Augsburg Articles that moved the Tridentine cardinals and bishops to adopt the sine scripto dogma. A sinister illustration of the rule!

The Seventh Article, “Of Original or Birth Sin,” follows very closely the Augsburg Confession, as may be seen from a comparison. The Augsburg Article reads:

Since the fall of Adam all men who are naturally engendered are born with a depraved nature (that is, without the fear of God or confidence toward him, but with sinful propensities), . we condemn the Pelagians and others who deny that this corruption is sin.

This tenet in the hands of both its German and English Confessors was primarily meant to express rejection of Pelagianism, which since the time of Pelagius had become a theological Proteus, having gone under many names and doubtless widely departed from what many now believe to have been the real teachings of Pelagius. The presence and doctrines of the Anabaptists were no doubt an immediate excitant of the Anglican prelates and doctors, for in the Edwardine Article, corresponding to this, to "the vain talk of the Pelagians" was added this other accusation, "which also the Anabaptists do nowadays renew." In addition to these reasons for the writing of the Article, it

"Jerome, who finished his translation of the Scriptures into the Latin in the fifth century, says of the Apocryphal books: "The Church doth now read them for example of life and for instruction of manners, but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine."

may be considered from the English and American standpoint as answer to the Council of Trent, which decreed thus:7

But this holy synod confesses, and is sensible, that in the baptized there remains concupiscence, or an incentive [to sin]. This concupiscence, which the apostle sometimes calls sin, the holy synod declares that the Catholic Church has never understood it to be called sin, as being truly and properly sin in those born again.

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This and some other Articles of our Confession have sometimes been classified as "Calvinistic." This charge can grow only out of an imperfect information. The English Articles were written, as Bishop Browne well shows, before the Calvinistic controversy arose in England, even before its seed were sown. The internal evidence is also plain that the Articles came from an extra-Calvinistic source. It is also susceptible of proof that when the Marian exiles who returned from Geneva after the accession of Elizabeth urged a turning to the Swiss reformers for a form of confession Archbishop Parker and the rest held firmly to the Ed

"The Council of Trent seemed once near passing no decree on the subject of original sin. The chief quarrel with Luther was that original sin remained after baptism. There were bishops in the Council who thought a definition unnecessary. As between Luther and the Catholics, they held it to be a dispute about words. Such was at one time the doubtful attitude of this disturbing dogma. This view is supported by the observations of Froude, the historian. (See "Council of Trent.")

In this decree the Romish Church is in the attitude of declaring what would be sin in the unbaptized to be no sin in the baptized.

wardine draft. For the new matter which they introduced into it they returned to their old allies-the Lutherans. A fact of history so palpable and accessible as this should escape nobody.

Article VIII., "Of Free Will," is clearly in the spirit of the Augsburg Article with the same title, as may be seen from this extract:

Concerning free will our Churches teach that the human will possesses some liberty for the performance of civil duties, and for the choice of those things lying within the control of reason. But it does not possess the power, without the influence of the Holy Spirit, of being just before God, or yielding spiritual obedience; for the natural man receiveth not the things which are of the Spirit of God; but this is accomplished in the heart, when the Holy Spirit is received through the Word.

Though there is so close a resemblance in this language to that of our Eighth Article, it is again to the Wurtemberg Confession that we must look for the true original. This Confession affirms that, though man after his fall (post lapsum) had some element of integrity or liberty left (tantam animi integritatem relictam), his condition is still "such that he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own strength and works for faith and calling upon God." The last clause of the Article is taken almost verbatim from St. Augustine's work, "Of Grace and Free Will."

"The original Latin text of the Wurtemberg Article is: "Quod autem nonnulli affirmant homini post lapsum tantam animi integritatem relictam, ut possit sese naturalibus suis viribus et bonis operibus, ad fidem et invocationem Dei convertere ac præparare haud obscure pugnat cum apostolica doctrina."

It is an interesting fact that of all the doctrines of the reformers this one concerning the will was least objected to in the Council of Trent. The divergence from it in any point was small. The decree of the Council on the matter was this:

If any saith, that, since Adam's sin, the free will of man is lost and extinguished; or that it is a thing with only a name, yea a name without a reality, a figment, in fine, introduced into the Church by Satan-if any man saith that it is not in man's power to make his ways evil-let him be anathema.

The quiet tone of the English Article is undoubtedly due to the recognition of the fact that the Romanists and the Protestants were so near together on the subject-matter of it. In truth, the Article had a more direct reference to the Anabaptists, who about this time in England were putting forth semi-Manichæan doctrines, adding to the claim that man might rise of his own free will the heresy that only the flesh participated in the fall, leaving the will and the mental powers unaffected.

Like the one immediately preceding it, the Ninth Article, "Of the Justification of Man," is in the spirit of its correspondent in the Augsburg Confession. The Augsburg Article is entitled simply “Of Justification,” and reads:

Men cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works; but they are justified gratuitously for Christ's sake, through faith; when they believe they are received into favor, and their sins are remitted on account of Christ who made satisfaction for our transgressions by his death.

There is likeness of spirit here, but for a certain origin we must, as in the case of the Article on "Free