the terms on which it was held out to him. Then and then only
God would extend his pity to him. He was no longer a child of wrath:
he was God's child. His infirmities remained, but they were constantly
obliterated by the merits of Christ. And he had strength given to him,
partially, at least, to overcome temptation, under which, but for that
strength, he would have fallen. Though nothing which he could do could
deserve reward, yet he received grace in proportion to the firmness of
his belief; and his efforts after obedience, imperfect though they
might be, were accepted for Christ's sake. A good life, or a constant
effort after a good life, was still the object which a man was bound
to labour after. Though giving no claim to pardon, still less for
reward, it was the necessary fruit of a sense of what Christ had done,
and of love and gratitude towards him. Good works were the test of
saving faith, and if there were no signs of them, the faith was
barren: it was not real faith at all.

This was the Puritan belief in England in the seventeenth century. The
reason starts at it, but all religion is paradoxical to reason. God
hates sin, yet sin exists. He is omnipotent, yet evil is not overcome.
The will of man is free, or there can be no guilt, yet the action of
the will, so far as experience can throw light on its operation, is as
much determined by antecedent causes as every other natural force.
Prayer is addressed to a Being assumed to be omniscient, who knows
better what is good for us than we can know, who sees our thought
without requiring to hear them in words, whose will is fixed and
cannot be changed. Prayer, therefore, in the eye of reason is an
impertinence. The Puritan theology is not more open to objection on
the ground of unreasonableness than the Catholic theology or any other
which regards man as answerable to God for his conduct. We must judge
of a creed by its effects on character, as we judge of the
wholesomeness of food as it conduces to bodily health. And the creed
which swept like a wave through England at that time, and recommended
itself to the noblest and most powerful intellects, produced also in
those who accepted it a horror of sin, an enthusiasm for justice,
purity, and manliness, which can be paralleled only in the first age
of Christianity. Certainly there never was such a theory to take man's
conceit out of him. He was a miserable wretch, so worthless at his
best as to deserve everlasting perd