A group of chapters[120] treats of the nature and work of the Holy Spirit, the cause of good works, the works which are reputed good, the perfection of the Law of God, and the imperfection of man. Those who have overlooked the explicit statement in the third chapter concerning the depravity of man have generally overlooked or failed to perceive the full significance of the emphatic statements in the twelfth chapter regarding our entire dependence for spiritual renovation, and all good, on the Holy Spirit. The words are: "Of nature we are so dead, so blind, and so perverse, that nether can we feill when we ar pricked, see the licht when it shines, nor assent to the will of God when it is reveiled, unles the Spirit of the Lord Jesus quicken that quhilk is dead, remove the darknesse from our myndes, and bowe our stubburne hearts to the obedience of His blessed will;"[121] and again, "As we willingly spoyle ourselves of all honour and gloir of our awin creation and redemption, so do we also of our regeneration and sanctification."[122] These statements, however they may be viewed by others, seem to me no less explicit than those of the later Confession, which have been sometimes contrasted with them. "This effectual call is of God's free and special Grace alone, not from anything at all foreseen in man, who is altogether passive therein _until_, being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit, he is thereby enabled to answer this call, and to embrace the Grace offered and conveyed in it."[123] The last of this group of chapters contains the fullest and most direct exposition the Confession embodies of the views of its framers in the article of Justification. It is as follows: "It behovis us to apprehend Christ Jesus with His justice and satisfaction, quha is the end and accomplishment of the Law, be quhome we ar set at this liberty that the curse and malediction of God fall not upon us, albeit we fulfill not the same in al pointes. For God the Father, beholding us in the body of His Sonne Christ Jesus, acceptis our imperfite obedience as it were perfite, and covers our warks, quhilk ar defyled with mony spots, with the justice of His Sonne."[124] To the same effect it is said in chapter xxv. that "albeit sinne remaine and continuallie abyde in thir our mortall bodies, zit it is not imputed unto us, bot is remitted and covered with Christ's justice."[125] It has been questioned, however, whether we have in these statements the doctrine taught generally in the reformed churches regarding the _articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiæ_. This can be a question only with those who forget that the church which received this Confession, and required her adult members to assent to the heads of it, appointed for the instruction of her youth the Catechism in which this doctrine of Calvin is stated in his own words; and that the very men[126] who in 1560 drew it up, in 1566, along with their brethren of the General Assembly, declared of the _Later Helvetic Confession_--which is admitted to contain what has been termed "the Lutherano-Calvinian view" of justification--that therein was "most faithfully, holily, piously, and indeed divinely explained" what they themselves had for eight years been constantly teaching, and still by the grace of God continued to teach, and that in consequence they felt constrained not only to express their approval, but their "exceeding commendation of every chapter and of every sentence," save the one relating to holidays.[127] It may be taken for granted that they knew their own meaning, and that of their Swiss brethren;[128] the more especially as in our day Stähelin, whose impartiality and historical reputation will not be challenged, has adduced the statement in chapter xv. as one of his proofs that Calvin himself could not have framed the Scotch Confession otherwise than Knox has done.[129]