faith which will justify them, or some wrong sort which will not.'
And many wise and good men in those times did say so, and tormented
their own minds, and the minds of weak brethren, with long arguments
and dry doctrines about faith, till, in their eagerness to make out
what sort of thing faith ought to be, they seemed quite to forget
that it must be faith in God, and so seemed to forget too who God
was, and what He was like. Therefore, they ended by making people
believe (as too many, I fear, do now-a-days) not that they were
justified freely by the grace of God, shown forth in the life, and
death, and resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ; no: but that they
were justified by believing in justification by faith, and that
their salvation depended not on being faithful to God and trusting
in Him, but in standing up fiercely for the doctrine of
justification by faith. And so they destroyed the doctrine of free
grace, while they thought they were fighting for it; for they taught
men not to look to God for salvation, so much as to their own faith,
their own frames, and feelings, and experiences; and these, as
common sense will show you, are just as much something in a man, as
acts of his own, and part of him, as his good works would be; and so
by making people fancy that it was having the right sort of feelings
which justified them, they fell back into the very same mistake as
the Papists against whom they were so bitter, namely, that it is
something in a man's self which justifies him, and not simply
Christ's merits and God's free grace.

But our old Reformers were of a different mind; and everlasting
thanks be to Almighty God that they were so. For by being so they
have made the Church of England (as I always have said, and always
will say) almost the only Church in Europe, Protestant or other,
which thoroughly and fully stands up for free grace, and