So far as Luther was right in regarding the
doctrine of justification by faith only as the great article at issue,
it must have been, because the opposite doctrine favored the conceit of
a mysterious mediating power vested in a priesthood--a conceit so
favorable to the aggrandizement of the order thus distinguished. But
considered as a _politic_ movement--as an advance in rightly adjusting
the social relations--the Reformation aimed principally at that ill
arrangement, by which the authorized expounders of the law divine found
their account, in involving that law in a glorious uncertainty, and
entrapping people in a frequent violation thereof. Considered as a
politic institution, Protestantism differs essentially from Popery, in
that it makes more of prevention than of remedy; gives the ministry its
best flourish, in the best welfare of the whole body; and pays for
spiritual health, rather than for spiritual sickness. If all
Protestants do not consistently so, the fact accords with the dim
understanding, on both sides, of the essential points contested.
This dim understanding further appears, in that after all the political
discussion which has been, the success of republican institutions is
still appealed to, as vindicating the reign of justice and benevolence
in the public mind; mankind have within so much of the divine, are so
self-disposed to do right, that they do not need much control, but may
pretty safely be left to their own guidance.
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