be! We admire the writer's honesty, and blush for his brazen boldness.


15. Luther's Faith without Works.

Out of Luther's opposition to the sale of indulgences there grew in the
course of time one of the fundamental principles of Protestantism:
complete, universal, and free salvation of sinners by grace through
faith in Jesus Christ. In the controversies which started immediately
after the publication of the Ninety-five Theses, Luther was led step by
step to a greater clearness in his view of sin and grace, faith and
works, human reason and the divine revelation. Not yet realizing the
full import of his act, Luther had in the Theses made that article of
the Christian faith with which the Church either stands or falls the
issue of his lifelong conflict with Rome--the article of the
justification of a sinner before God. It is, therefore, convenient to
review the misrepresentations which Luther has suffered from Catholic
writers because of his teaching on the subject of justification at this
early stage in our review, though in doing so a great many things will
have to be anticipated.

Catholic writers charge Luther with having perverted the meaning of
justifying faith. Luther held that justifying faith is essentially the
assurance that since Christ lived on earth as a man, labored, suffered,
died, and rose again in the place of sinners, the world _en masse_ and
every individual sinner are without guilt in the estimation of God. "God
was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their
trespasses unto them." (2 Cor. 5, 19.) To this reconciliation the sinner
has contributed nothing. It has been accomplished without him. He cannot
add anything to it. God only asks the sinner to believe in his salvation