as in the
conception of the method by which the atonement was imagined to be
efficacious. The material or sacramental view of it, though it
lingered inconsistently in the mind even of Luther himself, was
substantially gone. New ideas adopted in enthusiasm are necessarily
extreme. The wrath of God was held to be inseparably and eternally
attached to every act of sin, however infirm the sinner. That his
nature could be changed, and that he could be mystically strengthened
by incorporation with Christ's body in the Church was contrary to
experience, and was no longer credible. The conscience of every man,
in the Church or out of it, told him that he was daily and hourly
offending. God's law demanded a life of perfect obedience, eternal
death being the penalty of the lightest breach of it. No human being
was capable of such perfect obedience. He could not do one single act
which would endure so strict a scrutiny. All mankind were thus
included under sin. The Catholic Purgatory was swept away. It had
degenerated into a contrivance for feeding the priests with money, and
it implied that human nature could in itself be renovated by its own
sufferings. Thus nothing lay before the whole race except everlasting
reprobation. But the door of hope had been opened on the cross of
Christ. Christ had done what man could never do. He had fulfilled the
law perfectly. God was ready to accept Christ's perfect righteousness
as a substitute for the righteousness which man was required to
present to him, but could not. The conditions of acceptance were no
longer sacraments or outward acts, or lame and impotent efforts after
a moral life, but faith in what Christ had done; a complete
self-abnegation, a resigned consciousness of utter unworthiness, and
an unreserved acceptance of the mercy held out through the Atonement.
It might have been thought that since man was born so weak that it was
impossible for him to do what the law required, consideration would be
had for his infirmity; that it was even dangerous to attribute to the
Almighty a character so arbitrary as that He would exact an account
from his creatures which the creature's necessary inadequacy rendered
him incapable of meeting. But the impetuosity of the new theology
would listen to no such excuses. God was infinitely pure, and nothing
impure could stand in his sight. Man, so long as he rested on merit of
his own, must be for ever excluded from his presence. He must accept
grace on