The Petrine Claims Author:Richard Frederick Littledale Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: in the name of the Lord : and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up ; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven hi... more »m. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much."—St. James v. 13-16. And, perhaps more significantly than these passages, the error of those who perverted St. Paul's teaching is combated directly, and not by way of broad general statement, whereby we learn that their error was Antinomianism, and it is not too much to say that, as an element of Christian teaching, St . James's doctrine of the necessity of works as a proof and fruit of faith, laid down in Chapter ii. 14-26, in correction of the misuse which had been made in the Early Church, as it has been in modern times also, of St. Paul's language in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians, is of incomparably greater practical importance, and has occupied a much larger space in Catholic theology, than the above-cited words of St. Peter. So, too, if we examine the Epistles of St. John, we shall find more explicit dogmatic teaching and clearer references to ecclesiastical discipline than in St. Peter's writings. There is, chiefly in the First Epistle, the doctrine of the Incarnation and of the Homoousion clearly laid down (i St. John i. i, 2; ii. 22, 23; iv. 3, 15; v. 6, 10, 12); while in the Second and Third we have these intimations of discipline:— " Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine ot Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed : for he that biddeth him God speed is...« less