The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

true followers of Jesus; she believes that Christ may preserve many of His
own there now. Even in considering the Pope as in his claims and
assumptions an Antichrist, she does not exclude him as a person from the
possibility of salvation; but she dares not let go her truthful testimony
against Romish errors. She dare not let her children think that it is a matter
of indifference, whether they hold to justification by faith, or justification
by works, or, as regards the Sacrament, hold to the opus operatum,
Transubstantiation, and the Mass, or to the pure doctrine she confesses.
And here we throw back upon such an objector his own question. He
acknowledges that Luther was a Christian before he left the Church of
Rome, and that God has His own saints, even under the corrupt system of
that Church. Are his own views, then, against the opus operatum, against
Transubstantiation and the Mass, a part of Christian orthodoxy, or only of
Protestant orthodoxy? Shall our Protestant creeds exclude a man from
our Protestant Churches and Pulpits, because he is a Romanist, who, we
yet acknowledge, may be God's child, and an heir of heaven? As to the
great Communions, whose distinctive life originated in the Era of the
Reformation, the case is no less clear. We need hardly say how heartily
we acknowledge, that, in the Evangelical Protestant Churches, in their
ministry and people, there are noble exemplifications of Christian grace.
Nevertheless, we do not believe that there is a Christian living, who would
not be more perfect as a Christian, in a pure New Testament faith in regard
to the Sacraments, than he can be in human error regarding them, and we
believe that pure New Testament faith to be the faith which is confessed by
our Church.
Christians in Protestant Churches.
At the same time, we freely acknowledge, that, as Channing, though
a Unitarian, was more lovely morally than many a Trinitarian, so, much
more, may some particular Christians, who are in error on the matter of the
Sacraments, far surpass in Christian grace some individuals, who belong to
a Church, whose sacramental faith is pure. Some men are on the level of
their systems, some rise above them, some fall below them.