13. Teaching of the Church of Rome on Justification.--The Catholic Church at the time, whatever errors in respect to other doctrines it entertained, held that salvation, justification before God, resulted through the exertion of man's free will, aided by the grace of God. It came through a union of faith and works on the part of man, and the rich outpouring of grace on the part of Deity; a doctrine which man is conscious of as operating upon and influencing human conduct, and at once in harmony with the whole tenor of revelation, and consonant with the great facts underlying the free will of man which have been already stated in this section.
14. Unfortunately for the Catholic Church, she did not stop here, but attached too great importance to external marks of { 238} repentance, to works of penance--to tears, fastings, mortifications of the flesh, and pilgrimages. Men were required to go barefooted, to wear coarse raiment next their bodies, to become exiles from their homes or to renounce the world and embrace a monastic life. Finally in the eleventh century voluntary whippings were added to these other punishments [see note 6, end of section]; and men learned to look upon these works of penance as purchasing a forgiveness of sins, and paid little attention to the inward regeneration of the heart. "As confession and penance are easier than the extirpation of sin and the abandonment of vice, many ceased contending against the lusts of the flesh, and preferred gratifying them at the expense of a few mortifications." [32] Especially did this become the case when the doctrine was promulgated that substitutes could be hired to receive the punishment originally inflicted upon the offender, and monks and priests could be found willing to undergo it for a consideration.
15. The church trusted too much in the works of penance, and did not insist stoutly enough upon repentance--a godly sorrow which worketh a reformation of life. If the reformers went to one extreme in attributing man's justification wholly to the act of faith and the grace of God, the Catholic church went to the other in assigning too much value to works of penance and performances of human invention for the forgiveness of sins.