and finally satisfied for our sins to God. It is only ours to make due satisfaction, as a witness and as an example, both to our brother and to the Church-" with such sacrifices God is well pleased." For another thing, the Romish doctrine of Culpa and Pœna received unqualified condemnation. Christ's Death wrought ultimate freedom from all sin, and from all consequences of sin, to the truly contrite. And God forgives all such fully as well as freely. This doctrine of unremitted pœna was felt to be a doctrine of reservation, in that the fulness of Christ's redemption was kept back from those whom His own words of unreserved welcome had allured from a life of sin. Tindale complains that as soon as they find a promise of forgiveness on repentance, they "put to" conditions of their own. The pope allows that his pardons are through the merits of Christ, but who, asks Tindale, gave him the right to keep back part of those merits ? 1 Surely Novatian was not so merciless," says Hooker.2 66 1 1 Tin. iii. 47, 142f. "If Christ deserved all for me, who gave the pope might to keep part of His deservings from me? 2 Hooker complains of Tertullian, who "through the very sourness of his own nature," taught that greater offences are punishable, but not pardonable by the Church." This is even more severe than the 66 Still clearer rings the note of warning against the cruel terrors of purgatory. With "temporal penalties" in another life the Reformers will have still less to do. "If aught remain, it is to be taught, not beaten," says Tindale.1 "It is not a purgatory but a jail of torment," he adds, "whose fire is as hot as that of hell." According to these writers there may be a place for learning and for progress, but for painful discipline there is none. The trials of this life are to the believer no pœna, and no means of satisfying for sin. They are the loving chastisements of a Heavenly Father to deepen repentance, strengthen faith, and foster holiness. Lastly, the effect of Absolution is to be not a bare forgiveness, but such a forgiveness as involves amendment, restoration, and renewal. To remove the guilt, yet leave the power of sin, would be but a half-remedy, or no remedy at all. The true Satisfaction, therefore, and the best amends, are amendment of life; and there is no real absolution before God without it. The Discipline of Repentance demands Satisfaction to the Church and to our neighbour; and that discipline implies the two essentials of restitution and of self-restraint. Romish doctrine of Pœna temporalis. Eccles. Pol. VI. vi. 6, 7. 1 Tind. iii. 142 f. Such was the Satisfaction taught by the Reformers-a satisfaction only of value through the Satisfaction of Jesus Christ, only possible through the power of the Holy Ghost: and even then to be regarded as in no sense any amends for our sin to God, but only as a witness and example to the Church and to our neighbour. "For merit lives from man to man, ADDITIONAL NOTE Mortal and Venial Sins Very few references are found in these writers to the distinction between mortal and venial sins; and even those do not go to the root of the distinction, but practically ignore it. They acknowledge the difference between scelera leviora and graviora, but though they sometimes distinguish between sins mortal and venial, we shall see that their definitions are quite alien to those of the Schoolmen. Tindale contrasts sins committed under grace, with those committed under the law: that is, between the sins of those who believe in Christ, and submit to His law, and the sins of those who yield themselves to sin to serve it. The former are venial, the latter mortal. This is not, of course, the Scholastic distinction. Tindale writes, "The first sin under grace, and their sins are venial, that is to say, forgiveable. The other sin under the law. . . and against the law of God and faith of Christ . . . and therefore sin deadly." Tindale repeats this teaching in his comments on 1 John iii. 9, and again in his answers to Sir T. More. He seems to regard deadly sin to be the "sin unto death," the "sin against the Holy Ghost; " while venial sins are those sins of ignorance or infirmity to which all God's children are liable, but in which there is no presumptuous sin. "They never sin of purpose, nor hold error malitiously, sinning against the Holy Ghost, but of weakness and infirmity.' 92 Latimer makes the same distinction, but puts it more clearly. There be two manner of sins: there is a deadly sin, and a venial sin; that is, sins that be pardonable, and sins that be not pardonable. Now how shall we know which be venial sins, or which be not? . . . When ye will know which be deadly sin or not, ye must first understand that there be two manner of some there be that be not justified . . men 1 Tind. ii. 10. 2 Ibid. ii. 191. "But if he that believeth sin, he doth it not of purpose, or that he consenteth to the life of sin; but of infirmity, chance, and some great temptation that hath overcome him. venial." (See iii. 33.) And therefore his sin is that is to say, not God's servants. . Now these persons . . . sin grieveth them not, they purpose to go forward in it and so all their works, whatsoever they do, be deadly sins: for as long as they be in purpose to sin, they sin deadly in all their doings. . . . Now this I say, ... every sin that is committed against God not wittingly, nor willingly, not consenting unto it, those be venial sins." 1 Bucer speaks of graviora vulnera which require a sharper cleansing than is needful for the lesser faults. The medicine which he would minister for such " graver wounds" is Public Penance, and a return to more primitive methods. In the case of daily lesser faults he lays down the necessity for confession to God: and he would have ministers exhort to this daily confession, penance, and amendment. He also speaks of the Libri Pænitentiales where sins are measured and weighed with scrupulous exactness, and penalties awarded according to each sin. It was this cast-iron tariff which led first to the necessity of dispensations for some penalties, and then, as Bucer held, to the scandal of indulgences. It also led, in his opinion, to regarding the external side of sin, rather than its true internal nature. Bucer thus glances briefly at the true secret 1 Latimer ii. 7 f. |