_Another Statement of the Protestant Attitude:_ "It was in their profound sense of the reality of sin, and of its dominion in the human will, that the Protestants laid the foundation of their theology. The body of the Reformers rested on the Anselmic idea of satisfaction [in the Atonement] which likewise formed a part of the opposing [i. e., the Roman Catholic] creed. The point of difference was on the vital question how the soul, burdened with self-condemnation, is to obtain forgiveness of sins and peaceful reunion to God in the character of a reconciled father. In the teachings, injunctions, services, ceremonies of the Church, the Reformers had sought for this infinite good in vain. They found it in the doctrine of gratuitous pardon, from the bare Mercy of God, through the mediation of Christ; a pardon that waits for nothing but acceptance on the part of the soul--the belief, the trust, the faith of the penitent. Everything of the nature of satisfaction or merit on the part of the offender is precluded, by the utterly gratuitous nature of the gift, by the sufficiency of the Redeemer's expiation. Every assertion of the necessity of works or merit on the side of the offender, as the ground of forgiveness, is a disparagement of the Redeemer's Mercy and of his expiatory office. Faith, thus laying hold of a free forgiveness and reconnecting the soul with God, is the fountain of a new life of holiness, which depends not on fear and homage to law, but on gratitude and on filial sentiments. Christ himself nourishes this new life by spiritual influences that flow into the soul through the channel of its fellowship with him. Justification is thus a forensic[A] term; it is equivalent to the remission of sins. To justify, signifies not to make the offender righteous, to deliver him from the accusation of the law by the bestowal of a pardon. Saving faith is not a virtue to be rewarded, but an apprehensive act; the hand that takes the free gift. Such, in a brief statement, was the cardinal principle of the Protestant interpretation of the Gospel. The Christian life has its centre in this experience of forgiveness. Virtues of character and victories over temptation grow out of it. Christian ethics are united to Christian theology by this vital bond. [Footnote A: A term used in argumentation or discussion.] [Footnote: This idea of justification is the keynote in Luther's "Commentary on the Epistle to the Gallatians," and Malancthon's "Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans." It is the distinctive feature of the Protestant exegesis of the writings of Paul" (Fisher).]