Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/387

 precious and important to it, the establishment of the sacraments, has itself declined to ascribe any meaning to that institution, and has been unable to justify it by anything but a naïve assertion that it is necessary to believe that it is so.

By reducing in this manner the conception of faith to trust and obedience, and by dividing the inseparable, the Theology has involuntarily arrived at the question about the relation to each other of these two imaginary, unthinkable conceptions of faith, trust in what you are told, and good works, which are independent of faith. The following Art. 198 analyzes the relation of these two imaginary conceptions.

In order to understand the following article, it is necessary to keep in mind that since the earliest times when the false conception of trust in place of faith was introduced, there has arisen the question as to what saves, whether faith, or good works, and that those who have confessed this teaching have since the earliest times been divided into two hostile camps. Some say that faith saves, and others say that works save. Our Theology, with its customary method and complete freedom from all bonds of logic, affirms that both save. And here is the import of the following 198th article:

“However, no matter how great may be the value of faith, which embraces in its broader sense both hope and charity, and although this faith is the first condition for the appropriation by man of Christ’s deserts,—it alone is not sufficient for its aim. By faith alone a man may receive his justification and cleanse himself from sin in the sacrament of baptism, only when he just enters the kingdom of Christ’s grace: he may after that receive the gifts of grace through the other sacraments of the church. But, that he may be able, after having entered the kingdom of grace, to preserve the righteousness and purity which he has acquired in baptism; that he may be