any
great difficulty connected with going through a penance that the priest
has imposed, buying a wax candle, reciting sixteen Paternosters and ten
Ave Marias, and then sitting down and saying to yourself: "Good boy!
you've done it, you have squared your account again with the Almighty"?
What sanctifying virtue lies in abstaining from beefsteak on Friday?
Rome nowhere has improved men by her mechanical piety. What she has
accomplished was made possible by the fear of purgatorial torments, by
slavish dread of her mysterious powers, by ambition and bigotry. We
would not exchange our abused treasures for her system of workmongery.

But the Catholic charge of tendencies to lawlessness that are said to be
contained in. Luther's teaching of faith without works are more serious.
Luther is cited by them as declaring that one may commit innumerable
sins, and they will not harm one as long as one keeps on believing in
the grace of forgiveness. It is true, Luther has spoken words to this
effect, and that, on quite a number of occasions. Worse
than that, what Luther has said is actually true. As a matter of fact,
no sin can deprive the believer of salvation. There is only one sin that
ultimately damns, final impenitence and unbelief, by which is understood
the rejection of the atonement which Christ offered for the sins of the
world. That atonement is actually the full satisfaction rendered to our
Judge for all the sins which we have done, are doing, and will be doing
till the end of our lives. For the person that dies a perfect saint,
sinless and impeccable, is still to be born. The comfort that I derive
from my Redeemer to-day will be my comfort to-morrow, that will be my
only prop and stay in my dying hour. I shall need Him every hour. This
is a perfectly Christian thought. St. John writes: "My little children,
these things write I unto you that ye sin not. And if any man sin,"--
mark this well: "If any man sin," though he ought not to sin,--what does
the apostle say to him? He does not say: Then you are damned! or: It
will require so many fasts, masses, and candles to restore you! but this
is what he says: "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father,
Jesus Christ the Righteous; and He is the propitiation for our sins, and
not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." (1 John
2, 1. 2.) John, then, must be included in the Catholic indictment of
Luther. Luther would not have been a preacher of the genuine