and Jerome.

Now you may say, "What can we require more than this? Here we have, at
the time of a great catastrophe, Scriptural truth come down to us in the
burning matter which melted and preserved it, in the persecuting
language of Epiphanius and Jerome. When corruptions began to press
themselves on the notice of Christians, here you find three witnesses
raising their distinct and solemn protest in different parts of the
Church, independently of each other, in Gaul, in Italy, and in Asia
Minor, against prayers for the dead, veneration of relics, candles in
the day-time, the merit of celibacy, the need of fasting, the observance
of days, difference in future rewards, the defectibility of the
regenerate, and the divine origin of episcopacy. Here is pure and
scriptural Protestantism." Such is the phenomenon on which a few remarks
are now to be offered.

5.

1. I observe then, first, that this case so presented to us, does not
answer the purpose required. The doctrine of these three Protestants, if
I am to be forced into calling them so, is, after all, but negative. We
know what they protested _against_, not what they protested _for_. We do
not know what the system of doctrine and ritual was which they
substituted for the Catholic, or whether they had any such. Though they
differed from the ancients, there is no proof that they agreed with the
moderns. Parties which differ from a common third, do not necessarily
agree with each other; from two negative propositions nothing is
inferred. For instance, the moral temper and doctrinal character of the
sixteenth century is best symbolized by its views about faith and
justification, to which I have already referred, and upon the duty of
each individual man drawing his own creed from the Scriptures. This is
its positive shape, as far as it may be considered positive at all. Now
does any one mean to maintain that Aerius, Jovinian, or Vigilantius,
held justification by faith only in the sense of John Wesley, or of
John Newton? Did they consider that baptism was a thing of nought; that
faith did everything; that faith was trust, and the perfection of faith
assurance; that it consisted in believing that "I am pardoned;" and that
works might be left to themselves, to come as they might, as being
_necessary_ fruits of faith, without our trouble? Did they know anything
of the "apprehensive" power of faith, or of man's proneness to consider
his imperfect services, done in and by gra