Fowler affirms that those who are sincerely righteous, and from an inward living principle allow themselves in no known sin, nor in the neglect of any known duty, which is to be truly, evangelically righteous, shall be dealt with and rewarded, in and through Christ, as if they were perfectly and in a strict legal sense so. Entering essentially into Fowler’s notion of faith is the idea of its being the germ of Christian virtue: and, as it regards the connection between faith and justification, he believes that the receiving of Christ as Lord is a prerequisite to the obtaining of Christ as Redeemer. He defines justifying faith in these words:--“A grace of the Holy Spirit, whereby a man being convinced of his sin and miserable estate in regard of it, and an all-sufficiency in Christ to save from both, receives Him as He is tendered in the Gospel, or according to his three offices of Prophet, Priest, and King;” and,--which is important to the understanding of Fowler’s views,--he adds, “That act of receiving Christ as Lord, is to go before that of receiving Him as a Priest; for we may not rely upon Him for salvation, till we are willing to yield obedience to Him.”[474] In all this, and in much more, may be recognized a striving after some way of thoroughly meeting the two sides of that redemption from evil, which in the Gospel is ever represented as one. Whilst some theologians made holiness the result of faith in a Divine salvation, which salvation was treated by them as identical with justification, and others considered holiness as an essential part of it,--Fowler leaned in the direction of making holiness the means of salvation; and the tendency to adopt a _via media_ further appears in his attempt to steer a middle course between Calvinism and Arminianism:--He remarks, “That there is such a thing as distinguishing grace, whereby some persons are absolutely elected, by virtue whereof they shall be (having potent and infallible means prepared for them) irresistibly saved. But that others, that are not in the number of those singular and special favourites, are not at all in a desperate condition, but have sufficient means appointed for them to qualify them for greater or less degrees of happiness, and have sufficient grace offered to them some way or other, and some time or other; and are in a capacity of salvation either greater or less, through the merits of Jesus Christ; and that none of them are damned, but those that wilfully refuse to co-operate with that grace of God, and will not act in some moral suitableness to that power they have received.”[475] [Sidenote: FOWLER.] Universal redemption,--by which is signified the universal applicability of our Lord’s atoning sacrifice,--is strenuously maintained by this Divine;[476] and he speaks hopefully of the future state, through Christ, of virtuous heathens.