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THE DOCTRINE

OF

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH,

AS HELD BY THE

ROMISH AND PROTESTANT CHURCHES, COMPARED;

IN A

SERMON,

PREACHED IN THE PARISH CHURCH OF CAMPDEN,

AT THE VISITATION

OF THE

LORD BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER.

BY THE REV.

CHARLES E. KENNAWAY, M.A.

VICAR OF CAMPDEN,

LATE FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

PUBLISHED

AT THE REQUEST OF THE PRINCIPAL INHABITANTS OF THE TOWN,
TO WHOM IT IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED,

AND DEDICATED, BY PERMISSION, MOST RESPECTFULLY,
TO HIS LORDSHIP.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR J. G. & F. RIVINGTON,
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH YARD,

AND WATERLOO PLACE, PALL MALL.

1835.

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A

SERMO N,

&c.

JUDE 3.

"Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and to exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints."

THERE are two remarkable features in the character of Revelation, which distinguish it from all that may be classed under the head of science. These are its primitive sufficiency, and its unchangeableness. Science is essentially progressive-knowledge grows with the growth of time: the ages, as they are called, of antiquity are in reality the days of the world's youth, and those whom we call our Fathers, though they precede us in point of time, yet come behind us in point of acquirement and experience. What was a discovery in one age, and understood only by the privileged few, becomes oftentimes in that which follows, a truth admitted by all.-Science still extends her bounds-the acquirements of a

scholar now, would have been the complement of a master's learning in by-gone days, for children smile at what their fathers admired.

Now, this very progression marks insufficiency, and necessitates change. For as knowledge grows, the scientific draperies of one age, however ample they might have been at the time at which they were first put on, become like a child's garment, too scanty for the growing dimensions of a future; change is seen in the explosion of old systems of error, and in the introduction of new and different systems of truth in their place. The terms in which propositions are enunciated, as well as the propositions themselves, require alteration: and when all this is done, where is that period in the history of science, in which any of its thoughtful students would venture to assert, that error has been entirely excluded from every department, and that it would never again admit either of improvement or of change?

It is on these grounds, that in all matters of science we advocate the search for what is new, because novelty is so often identical with improvement. But whilst in the advancement of human knowledge, Time must be allowed to be the greatest of all innovators, we can make no such concession in respect to that knowledge which is divine. In this, far from countenancing novelty we glory in what is old here we desire most strictly to be guided by the prophet's direction, and in searching for "the good way," to ask, as the surest means of

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