The implication of the
promise to individuals is made by the Holy Spirit, working faith in the
individual, or enabling him to trust in Christ. "Being justified by
faith, we have peace with God," and this peace is the believer's
evidence, is the Testimony of the Spirit, that our sins are forgiven.
(_d_) The actual pardon of individuals by God, depends on their
possessing the moral fitness required by him. It is based on their
having performed the prescribed moral conditions sincerely, of which
none but the Omniscient Jehovah can certainly judge; hence, even the
declarative annunciation of pardon to individuals, is not only
unauthorized but dangerous. Because, even if conditionally announced,
the formality of the absolution, and the fact that the church has made
a _special rite_ of it, are calculated to beget the idea, especially in
the unintelligent, that the granting of absolutions by the minister, is
proof of the genuineness of their faith, and reality of their pardon.
(_e_) Finally, the doctrine of ministerial absolution, or the supposed
sin-forgiving power of the ministry, is inconsistent with the doctrine,
that justification or pardon can be attained only by a living faith in
Jesus Christ, a doctrine of cardinal importance in the eyes of the
Reformers, and the one which Luther has styled the _articulus stantis
vel cadentis ecclesiae_, the doctrine with which the church must stand
or fall.
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