itive was
found in the doctrine of justification--the central point in the
discussions of the time, a plant from the garden of St Augustine.
Justification was the personal conviction of a lively (or living) faith,
and was defined as "a true trust and confidence of the mercy of God
through our Lord Jesus Christ, and a stedfast hope of all good things to
be received at His hands." Without this justification there could be no
good works. They were the signs of a lively faith and grew out of it.
Apart from it, what seemed to be "good works" were of the nature of sin,
phantom acts productive of nothing, "birds that were lost, unreal." So
were the works of pagans and heretics. The relation of almsgiving to
religion was thus entirely altered. The personal reward here or
hereafter to the actor was eliminated. The deed was good only in the
same sense in which the doer was good; it had in itself no merit. This
was a great gain, quite apart from any question as to the sufficiency or
insufficiency of the Protestant scheme of salvation. The deed, it was
realized, was only the outcome of the doer, the expression of himself,
what he was as a whole, neither better nor worse. Logically this led to
the discipline of the intelligence and the emotions, and undoubtedly
"justification" to very many was only consistent with such discipline
and implied it. Thus under a new guise the old position of charity
reasserted itself. But there were other differences.

The relation of charity to prayer, fasting, almsgiving and penance was
altsred. The prayerful contemplation of the Christ was preserved in
the mysticism of Protestantism; but it was dissociated from the
"historic Christ," from the fervent idealization of whom St Francis
drew his inspiration and his active charitable impulse. The tradition
did not die out, however. It remained with many, notably with George
Herbert, of whom it made, not unlike St Francis, a poet as well as a
practical parish priest; but the absence of it indicated in much
post-Reformation endeavour a want, if not of devotion, yet of
intensity of feeling which may in part account for the fact that
sectarianism in relief has since proved itself stronger than charity,
instead of yielding to charity as its superior and its organizer.
Fasting was parted from prayer and almsgiving. It was "a thing not of
its own proper nature good as the love of father or mother or
neighbour, but according to its en