In thus defining the doctrine of the Church, the Council did not, however, mean to deny that the sinner is in a true sense “justified by the justice of Christ,”—in so far namely, as our Lord has merited for us the grace of justification. He merely wished to emphasize the fact that a sinner is not _formaliter_ justified by the imputation of Christ’s justice. For the sake of greater clearness the various “causes” of justification are enumerated as follows: “Of this justification the causes are these: the final cause indeed is the glory of God and of Jesus Christ, and life everlasting; while the efficient cause is a merciful God, who washes and sanctifies gratuitously; ... but the meritorious cause is His most beloved only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who ... merited justification for us by His most holy Passion on the wood of the Cross; ... the instrumental cause is the Sacrament of Baptism, which is the sacrament of faith, without which no man was ever justified; lastly, the sole formal cause is the justice of God, not that whereby He Himself is just, but that whereby He maketh us just, that, to wit, with which we being endowed are renewed in the spirit of our mind, and are not only reputed, but are truly called, and are, just.”(910) So important did the distinction between the _causa meritoria_ and the _causa formalis_ of justification appear to the Fathers of Trent, that they made it the subject of a separate canon, to wit: “If anyone saith that men are just without the justice of Christ, whereby He merited for us to be justified; or that it is by that justice itself that they are formally just; let him be anathema.”(911) Justification in the Catholic sense, therefore, is not a mere outward imputation of the justice of Christ, but a true inward renewal and sanctification wrought by a grace intrinsically inhering in the soul. This grace theologians call the “grace of justification.” 2. REFUTATION OF THE LUTHERAN THEORY OF IMPUTATION.—Nothing is so foreign to both the spirit and the letter of Holy Scripture as the idea that justification merely covers a man’s sins with a cloak of justice and leaves him unsanctified within. Justification is described in the Bible not only as a remission of sins,(912) but likewise as the beginning of a new life,(913) a renewal of the spirit,(914) a new creation,(915) a regeneration,(916) a supernatural likeness of God,(917) etc. All these similes point to a permanent state of sanctity in the soul of the just.