Protestantism, under its most favorable aspect, is not, even in the estimation of Protestants themselves, religion, or a religion; but the view of religion which the reformers took, or which men take or may take of religion. At best it is not the objective truth or reality, but a human doctrine or theory of it, which has no existence out of the mind that forms or entertains it. Hence, Protestants assert, as their cardinal doctrine, justification by faith alone; and which faith is not the truth, but the mind's view of it. Hence, too, they deny that the sacraments are efficacious _ex opere operato_, and maintain that, if efficacious at all, they are so _ex opere suscipientis_. They reject the Real Presence as a "fond imagination," and make every thing in religion depend on the subjective faith, conviction, or persuasion of the recipient. The church they recognize or assert is no living organism, no kingdom of God on earth, founded to teach and govern all men and nations in all things pertaining to eternal life or the spiritual end of man, but a simple association of individuals, with no life or authority except what it derives from the individuals associated, and which is not hers, but theirs. Some Protestants go so far as to doubt or deny that there is any truth or reality independent of the mind, and hold that man is himself his own teacher and his own law-giver; but all concede, nay, maintain, that what is known or is present to the mind is never the reality, the truth, or the divine law itself, but the mind's own representation of it. Hence their Protestantism is not something fixed and invariable, the same in all times and places, but varies as the mind of Protestants itself varies, or as their views, convictions, or feelings change, and they change ever with the spirit of the age or country. One of their gravest objections to the church was, in the sixteenth century, that she had altered the faith; and in the nineteenth century is, that she does not alter it, that she remains inflexibly the same, and absolutely refuses to change her faith to suit the times. They hold their own faith and doctrine alterable at will, and are continually changing it. Evidently, then, they do not hold it to be the truth; for truth never changes: nor to be the law of God, which they are bound to obey; for if the law of God is alterable at all, it can be so only by God himself, never by man, any body of men, or any creature of God. There is no Protestant ignorant or conceited enough to maintain the contrary.