promises and medium courses that serve to quiet the conscience, than to stand firmly against the tide and the storm, upon the old-fashioned, despised platform of apostles and prophets. Moral courage is far rarer than physical courage, and many persons are constitutionally deficient in both. It is difficult for them to become soldiers. Often it is easier to face bristling bayonets than to meet reproach and obloquy in "contending for the faith once delivered to the saints." And every Christian needs that this should be an important one of the inspired injunctions, "giving all diligence, add to your faith (åperǹv,) courage." As error is one of the parents of sin, the Christian warfare is largely a contest for doctrinal truth; and there will be found, as in every war, many who desire peace at any price. Pusillanimity is often mistaken for charity, and so, easily reconciles the weak, the indolent, the selfish, to every class and party but one.

Moreover, we shall make no attempt to decide just how far downward lies the dividing step between saving faith and fatal scepticism. It is dangerous to begin to go downward, for each step taken renders the taking of the next more easy and probable. All who descend do not go down precisely the same way. There may be great variation in rapidity, in process, and direction. The Atonement being highest, steps are found on every side, differing in length, in number, and in quality ; but all beginning from this crowning doctrine; "what think ye of Christ," being everywhere the test both of theology and piety. The dividing line between real faith and real scepticism would be different on different sides, as the different stairways have been wrought out and perfected in different ages and under different influences and degrees of light and heat. The state of the heart having so great influence over the theological views, and the theological views having so great influence upon the state of the heart, the separating line between the savingly true and the fatally defective, will often be difficult to fix, as it must vary with the experience, the light, the prejudices, and constitution of different individuals. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God;" "but he that is spiritual judgeth all things."

This may be safely predicated, that a really renewed person, or church consisting chiefly of renewed persons, placed by unto

ward circumstances on the lower theological steps, will surely climb upwards with more or less rapidity towards the true scriptural atonement; and really false professors and denominations, placed by favoring circumstances upon the higher theological steps, will surely go downward, and be continually looking for old steps, or hewing out new ones, by which they may make descent for themselves and their allies more gradual, easy, and less startling. Our object, therefore, is to expose tendencies and processes towards ultimate fatal results, rather than to fix the particular boundaries of Christian charity. We shall notice particular steps in the different processes mainly for the purpose of pointing out how uniformly these processes begin from the Atonement.

If we begin with the Papists we see at a glance that both logically and historically the first step in the downward process was the denial of the sufficiency in itself of Christ's Atonement, the second step was, necessarily, the rejection of imputation. The third, very naturally, was the addition of human merit to supplement that of Christ. Then followed penance, purgatory, and the whole round of perversions and abuses which made the Romish Church the mother of harlots.

The Romanists did not reject original sin, nor the divinity of Christ, nor the necessity of repentance and faith, nor future punishment; they did not even set aside the Atonement; they only perverted it by subtracting one of its essential elements, and the consequence was ruin to the whole system. The superstructure of a building may be complete in all its parts; but it will ere long fall to ruins if the corner-stone be divided and imperfect. Holding fast the other doctrines did not save them from general corruption. Holding fast the Atonement is an adequate correction and safeguard. The other doctrines are not central. No one of them spans the whole structure. This is the keystone of the arch. The other doctrines revolve around, and are held in their orbits by, this centre of gravitation, the Atonement.

The work of the Reformation was to bring the Church back to faith in the full, sufficient, expiatory, and substitutionary nature of the atoning sufferings of Christ. In Hagenbach's "History of Doctrines," this process of departure from scriptural

Atonement by the Romish Church is fully traced. The learned Duns Scotus, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, fairly stands as the theological representative of ripened Romanism, as Luther and Melancthon found it. From pp. 354-5, 2d vol. Hagenbach, Am. ed., we make the following extracts:

"As Protestants and Roman Catholics agreed in resting their doctrines concerning theology and Christology on the basis of the œcumenical symbols, [the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene, and the Athanasian,] so they espoused in common the doctrine of Atonement as given in Anslem's theory of satisfaction, only with this difference, that (in connection with other principles) the Protestants gave the preference to that aspect of this theory presented by Thomas Aquinas, while the Roman Catholics, on the contrary, were favorable (at least in part), to the scheme of Duns Scotus. On the one hand, they

(the Protestants) so extended the idea of vicarious suffering, as to make it include the divine curse (mors æterna) — an opinion which was combated by the divines of the Romish Church."

"There were indeed some eminent Roman Catholic writers, among them even Bellarmin, who sided with Thomas Aquinas, but (to judge from occasional expressions) it would appear that even with them the scheme of Duns Scotus had in some respects greater authority. Comp. Baur, p. 345 with p. 348. A further difference was this, that in the opinion of the Roman Catholics, by the death of Christ, satisfaction was made only for guilt contracted before baptism; while only the eternal punishment, due to mortal sins committed after baptism, has been remitted; so that Christians have themselves to make satisfaction for temporal punishment."

On p. 47 of the same volume, we are shown the fundamental distinction between the views of these two representative men, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus; and we find the source of departure to be at the Atonement.

"Thus Thomas Aquinas brought the priestly office of Christ prominently forward, and laid great stress upon the superabounding merit of his death. Duns Scotus went to the other extreme, denying its sufficiency; but he supposed a voluntary acceptance on the part of God. Wycliff and Wessel attached importance to the theory of satisfaction in its practical bearing upon evangelical piety, and thus introduced the period of the Reformation."

It is a noticeable fact, which may be better explained as we proceed, that Duns Scotus laid great stress upon the Freedom of the Will.

That the whole Romish system of steps downward begins with diminishing the doctrine of Atonement, setting aside some of its elemental facts, is evident from the standard volume, entitled, "Moral Theology of Peter Dens," as prepared for the use of Romish seminaries and students of theology. Under the head of Justification the following language is used:

"What are the principal errors of our heretics in this matter? Ans. 2. That justification is not effected through habitual grace dwelling in the soul, but through the alone righteousness of Christ imputed to us. Prove against the heretics, that justification is formally effected through the application of habitual grace dwelling in the soul; but not through the righteousness of Christ outwardly imputed to us."

Then follow ingenious arguments to parry the force of some of the strong passages of Scripture, which remind us of other similar attempts in the same direction, for which we have greater reason to blush. It is affirmed that where Christ is said to be "made to us of God, wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification; and where Christ is called our peace, life, salvation, &c., the language "Ought to be received in a causal not a formal sense; for it is only meant, that Christ is the meritorious cause of our justification.” (!)

Such, with all the vast corruptions and darkness involved, are the steps of the Papacy downward from that grand peculiarity of the Gospel which had been before a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks.

There is in the history of the Church a very marked stairway, starting from the Scripture doctrine of the Atonement, down to Pelagianism. The semi-Pelagians of different ages and classes pause at a landing a little higher in the scale; while the Arians and Socinians or Unitarians descend still lower and reject altogether both the necessity of an atonement in order to forgiveness of sin, and the proper divinity of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Infidels "can only be said to be a step or two lower down, though they maintain that circumstances are the sole causes of virtue, and that the life, death, and doctrines of Christ are altogether useless, and consequently that the Scriptures are but an imposition on human credulity.

Though Pelagius was opposed and vanquished by Augustine

in the fifth century, yet Pelagianism as a system has continued to the present time to be the marked antagonist of the orthodox faith. The steps which the Pelagians of different varieties and names take downward from the Atonement are nearly in the following order: First, "That the law is as good a means of salvation (lex sic mittit ad regnum cœlorum) as the gospel." (Hag. vol. i. p. 297.) Or, as we find the views of the original sect, stated in “The Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge,” p. 919, "That the grace of God is given according to our merits,' and, “That the law qualified men for the kingdom of heaven, and was founded upon equal promises with the gospel." This is an indirect and roundabout yet real departure from the necessity and alone sufficiency of the Atonement for removing sin. Says the apostle in Rom. viii. 3, "For what the law could not do" ("namely, condemn sin, without destroying the sinner," see "Bengel's Gnomon,” in loco,) “in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin" (by a sacrifice for sin) "condemned" (removed) "sin" (which was laid on the Son of God) "in the flesh." This perversion of the nature and design of the Atonement as expiatory and compensating, prepared the way for all the errors in doctrine which the Pelagians of every shade and period desired to bring in. And we see not how, such as they were, they could have been plausibly brought in without first undermining the integrity of the atoning work of Christ.

downward was the denial of "Adam's sin injured only "New-born infants are in

The second step of Pelagianism original sin and innate depravity. himself, and not the human race." the same condition in which Adam was previous to the fall, (ante prævaricationem)." Hag. v. 1, p. 297.

The denial of man's sinful nature being a leading practical object of those who travel down these steps, it is made very prominent in discussion and in the histories of doctrines; while the new position in relation to the Atonement is less apparent, like the hidden source of a fatal disease. Hence, at first view, many might regard the position in relation to human depravity as the first rather than the second step in the series. However, it logically must occupy the second place; inasmuch as, the divine wisdom being assumed, the remedy implies the existence