Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

THE LITERARY REMAINS

OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

COLLECTED AND EDITED BY

HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, ESQ. M.A.

VOLUME THE FOURTH

ALBI DISCIP ANGLVS

LONDON

WILLIAM PICKERING

1839

CONTENTS

ADVERTISEMENT

Notes on Luther

Notes on St Theresa

Notes on Bedell

Notes on Baxter

Notes on Leighton

Notes on Sherlock

Notes on Waterland

Notes on Skelton

Notes on Andrew Fuller

Notes on Whitaker

Notes on Oxlee

Notes on A Barrister's Hints

Notes on Davison

Notes on Irving

Notes on Noble

Essay on Faith

* * * * *

ADVERTISEMENT.

For some remarks on the character of this publication, the Editor begs to refer the Reader to the Preface to the third volume of these Remains. That volume and the present are expressly connected together as one work.

The various materials arranged in the following pages were preserved, and kindly placed in the Editor's hands, by Mr. Southey, Mr. Green, Mr. Gillman, Mr. Alfred Elwyn of Philadelphia, United States, Mr. Money, Mr. Hartley Coleridge, and the Rev. Edward Coleridge; and to those gentlemen the Editor's best acknowledgments are due.

Lincoln's Inn, 9th May, 1839.

* * * * *

LITERARY REMAINS.

* * * * *

NOTES ON LUTHER'S TABLE TALK [1]

I cannot meditate too often, too deeply, or too devotionally on the personeity of God, and his personality in the Word, [Greek: Gío to monogenei], and thence on the individuity of the responsible creature;--that it is a perfection which, not indeed in my intellect, but yet in my habit of feeling, I have too much confounded with that 'complexus' of visual images, cycles or customs of sensations, and fellow-travelling circumstances (as the ship to the mariner), which make up our empirical self: thence to bring myself to apprehend livelily the exceeding mercifulness and love of the act of the Son of God, in descending to seek after the prodigal children, and to house with them in the sty. Likewise by the relation of my own understanding to the light of reason, and (the most important of all the truths that have been vouchsafed to me!) to the will which is the reason,--will in the form of reason--I can form a sufficient gleam of the possibility of the subsistence of the human soul in Jesus to the Eternal Word, and how it might perfect itself so as to merit glorification and abiding union with the Divinity; and how this gave a humanity to our Lord's righteousness no less than to his sufferings. Doubtless, as God, as the absolute Alterity of the Absolute, he could not suffer; but that he could not lay aside the absolute, and by union with the creaturely become affectible, and a second, but spiritual Adam, and so as afterwards to be partaker of the absolute in the Absolute, even as the Absolute had partaken of passion ([Greek: tou páschein]) and infirmity in it, that is, the finite and fallen creature;--this can be asserted only by one who (unconsciously perhaps), has accustomed himself to think of God as a thing,--having a necessity of constitution, that wills, or rather tends and inclines to this or that, because it is this or that, not as being that, which is that which it wills to be. Such a necessity is truly compulsion; nor is it in the least altered in its nature by being assumed to be eternal, in virtue of an endless remotion or retrusion of the constituent cause, which being manifested by the understanding becomes a foreseen despair of a cause.

Sunday 11th February, 1826.

One argument strikes me in favour of the tenet of Apostolic succession, in the ordination of Bishops and Presbyters, as taught by the Church of Rome, and by the larger part of the earlier divines of the Church of England, which I have not seen in any of the books on this subject; namely, that in strict analogy with other parts of Christian history, the miracle itself contained a check upon the inconvenient consequences necessarily attached to all miracles, as miracles, narrowing the possible claims to any rights not proveable at the bar of universal reason and experience. Every man among the Sectaries, however ignorant, may justify himself in scattering stones and fire squibs by an alleged unction of the Spirit. The miracle becomes perpetual, still beginning, never ending. Now on the Church doctrine, the original miracle provides for the future recurrence to the ordinary and calculable laws of the human understanding and moral sense; instead of leaving every man a judge of his own gifts, and of his right to act publicly on that judgment. The initiative alone is supernatural; but all beginning is necessarily miraculous, that is, hath either no antecedent, or one [Greek: hetérou genous], which therefore is not its, but merely an, antecedent,--or an incausative alien co-incident in time; as if, for instance, Jack's shout were followed by a flash of lightning, which should strike and precipitate the ball on St. Paul's cathedral. This would be a miracle as long as no causative 'nexus' was conceivable between the antecedent, the noise of the shout, and the consequent, the atmospheric discharge.

The Epistle Dedicatory.

But this will be your glory and inexpugnable, if you cleave in truth
and practice to God's holy service, worship and religion: that
religion and faith of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is pure and
undefiled before God even the Father, which is to visit the fatherless
and widows in their affliction, and to keep yourselves unspotted from
the world.

James i. 27.

Few mistranslations (unless indeed the word used by the translator of St. James meant differently from its present meaning), have led astray more than this rendering of [Greek: Thraeskeía.] (outward or ceremonial worship, 'cultus', divine service,) by the English 'religion'. St. James sublimely says: What the 'ceremonies' of the law were to morality, 'that' morality itself is to the faith in Christ, that is, its outward symbol, not the substance itself.

Chap. I. p. 1, 2.

That the Bible is the word of God (said Luther) the same I prove as
followeth: All things that have been and now are in the world; also
how it now goeth and standeth in the world, the same was written
altogether particularly at the beginning, in the first book of Moses
concerning the creation. And even as God made and created it, even so
it was, even so it is, and even so doth it stand to this present day.
And although King Alexander the Great, the kingdom of Egypt, the
Empire of Babel, the Persian, Grecian and Roman monarchs; the Emperors
Julius and Augustus most fiercely did rage and swell against this
Book, utterly to suppress and destroy the same; yet notwithstanding
they could prevail nothing, they are all gone and vanished; but this
Book from time to time hath remained, and will remain unremoved in
full and ample manner as it was written at the first.

A proof worthy of the manly mind of Luther, and compared with which the Grotian pretended demonstrations, from Grotius himself to Paley, are mischievous underminings of the Faith, pleadings fitter for an Old Bailey thieves' counsellor than for a Christian divine. The true evidence of the Bible is the Bible,--of Christianity the living fact of Christianity itself, as the manifest 'archeus' or predominant of the life of the planet.

Ib. p. 4.

The art of the School divines (said Luther) with their speculations in
the Holy Scriptures, are merely vain and human cogitations, spun out
of their own natural wit and understanding. They talk much of the
union of the will and understanding, but all is mere fantasy and
fondness. The right and true speculation (said Luther) is this,
Believe in Christ; do what thou oughtest to do in thy vocation, &c.
This is the only practice in divinity. Also, 'Mystica Theologia
Dionysii' is a mere fable, and a lie, like to Plato's fables. 'Omnia
sunt non ens, et omnia sunt ens'; all is something, and all is
nothing, and so he leaveth all hanging in frivolous and idle sort.

Still, however, 'du theure Mann Gottes, mein verehrter Luther'! reason, will, understanding are words, to which real entities correspond; and we may in a sound and good sense say that reason is the ray, the projected disk or image, from the Sun of Righteousness, an echo from the Eternal Word--'the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world'; and that when the will placeth itself in a right line with the reason, there ariseth the spirit, through which the will of God floweth into and actuates the will of man, so that it willeth the things of God, and the understanding is enlivened, and thenceforward useth the materials supplied to it by the senses symbolically; that is, with an insight into the true substance thereof.

Ib. p. 9.

The Pope usurpeth and taketh to himself the power to expound and to
construe the Scriptures according to his pleasure. What he saith, must
stand and be spoken as from heaven. Therefore let us love and
preciously value the divine word, that thereby we may be able to
resist the Devil and his swarm.

As often as I use in prayer the 16th verse of the 71st Psalm, (in our Prayer-book version), my thoughts especially revert to the subject of the right appreciation of the Scriptures, and in what sense the Bible may be called the word of God, and how and under what conditions the unity of the Spirit is translucent through the letter, which, read as the letter merely, is the word of this and that pious but fallible and imperfect man. Alas for the superstition, where the words themselves are made to be the Spirit! O might I live but to utter all my meditations on this most concerning point!

Ib. p. 12.

Bullinger said once in my hearing (said Luther) that he was earnest
against the Anabaptists, as contemners of God's word, and also against
those which attributed too much to the literal word, for (said he)
such do sin against God and his almighty power; as the Jews did in
naming the ark, God. But, (said he) whoso holdeth a mean between both,
the same is taught what is the right use of the word and sacraments.

Whereupon (said Luther) I answered him and said; Bullinger, you err,
you know neither yourself, nor what you hold; I mark well your tricks
and fallacies: Zuinglius and OEcolampadius likewise proceeded too far
in the ungodly meaning: but when Brentius withstood them, they then
lessened their opinions, alleging, they did not reject the literal
word, but only condemned certain gross abuses. By this your error you
cut in sunder and separate the word and the spirit, &c.

In my present state of mind, and with what light I now enjoy,--(may God increase it, and cleanse it from the dark mist into the 'lumen siccum' of sincere knowledge!)--I cannot persuade myself that this vehemence of our dear man of God against Bullinger, Zuinglius and OEcolampadius on this point could have had other origin, than his misconception of what they intended. But Luther spoke often (I like him and love him all the better therefor,) in his moods and according to the mood. Was not that a different mood, in which he called St. James's Epistle a 'Jack-Straw poppet'; and even in this work selects one verse as the best in the whole letter,--evidently meaning, the only verse of any great value? Besides he accustomed himself to use the term, 'the word,' in a very wide sense when the narrower would have cramped him. When he was on the point of rejecting the Apocalypse, then 'the word' meant the spirit of the Scriptures collectively.

Ib. p. 21.

I, (said Luther), do not hold that children are without faith when
they are baptized; for inasmuch as they are brought to Christ by his
command, and that the Church prayeth for them; therefore, without all
doubt, faith is given unto them, although with our natural sense and
reason we neither see nor understand it.

Nay, but dear honoured Luther! is this fair? If Christ or Scripture had said in one place, 'Believe, and thou mayest be baptized'; and in another place, 'Baptize infants'; then we might perhaps be allowed to reconcile the two seemingly jarring texts, by such words as "faith is given to them, although, &c." But when no such text, as the latter, is to be found, nor any one instance as a substitute, then your conclusion seems arbitrary.

Ib. p. 25.

This argument (said Luther), concludeth so much as nothing; for,
although they had been angels from heaven, yet that troubleth me
nothing at all; we are now dealing about God's word, and with the
truth of the Gospel, that is a matter of far greater weight to have
the same kept and preserved pure and clear; therefore we (said
Luther), neither care nor trouble ourselves for, and about, the
greatness of Saint Peter and the other Apostles, or how many and great
miracles they wrought: the thing which we strive for is, that the
truth of the Holy Gospel may stand; for God regardeth not men's
reputations nor persons.

Oh, that the dear man Luther had but told us here what he meant by the term, Gospel! That St. Paul had seen even St. Luke's, is but a conjecture, grounded on a conjectural interpretation of a single text, doubly equivocal; namely, that the Luke mentioned was the same with the Evangelist Luke; and that the 'evangelium' signified a book; the latter, of itself improbable, derives its probability from the undoubtedly very strong probability of the former. If then not any book, much less the four books, now called the four Gospels, were meant by Paul, but the contents of those books, as far as they are veracious, and whatever else was known on equal authority at that time, though not contained in those books; if, in short, the whole sum of Christ's acts and discourses be what Paul meant by the Gospel; then the argument is circuitous, and returns to the first point,--What 'is' the Gospel? Shall we believe you, and not rather the companions of Christ, the eye and ear witnesses of his doings and sayings? Now I should require strong inducements to make me believe that St. Paul had been guilty of such palpably false logic; and I therefore feel myself compelled to infer, that by the Gospel Paul intended the eternal truths known ideally from the beginning, and historically realized in the manifestation of the Word in Christ Jesus; and that he used the ideal immutable truth as the canon and criterion of the oral traditions. For example, a Greek mathematician, standing in the same relation of time and country to Euclid as that in which St. Paul stood to Jesus Christ, might have exclaimed in the same spirit: "What do you talk to me of this, that, and the other intimate acquaintance of Euclid's? My object is to convey the sublime system of geometry which he realized, and by that must I decide." "I," says St. Paul, "have been taught by the spirit of Christ, a teaching susceptible of no addition, and for which no personal anecdotes, however reverendly attested, can be a substitute." But dearest Luther was a translator; he could not, must not, see this.

Ib. p. 32.

That God's word, and the Christian Church, is preserved against the
raging of the world.

The Papists have lost the cause; with God's word they are not able to
resist or withstand us. * * * 'The kings of the earth stand up, and
the rulers take counsel together, &c'. God will deal well enough with
these angry gentlemen, and will give them but small thanks for their
labor, in going about to suppress his word and servants; he hath sat
in counsel above these five thousand five hundred years, hath ruled
and made laws. Good Sirs! be not so choleric; go further from the
wall, lest you knock your pates against it. 'Kiss the Son lest he be
angry, &c'. That is, take hold on Christ, or the Devil will take hold
on you, &c.

The second Psalm (said Luther), is a proud Psalm against those
fellows. It begins mild and simply, but it endeth stately and
rattling. * * * I have now angered the Pope about his images of
idolatry. O! how the sow raiseth her bristles! * * The Lord saith:
'Ego suscitabo vos in novissimo die': and then he will call and say:
ho! Martin Luther, Philip Melancthon, Justus Jonas, John Calvin, &c.
Arise, come up, * * * Well on, (said Luther), let us be of good
comfort.

A delicious paragraph. How our fine preachers would turn up their Tom-tit beaks and flirt with their tails at it! But this is the way in which the man of life, the man of power, sets the dry bones in motion.

Chap. II. p. 37.

This is the thanks that God hath for his grace, for creating, for
redeeming, sanctifying, nourishing, and for preserving us: such a
seed, fruit, and godly child is the world. O, woe be to it!

Too true.

Ib. p. 54.

That out of the best comes the worst.

Out of the Patriarchs and holy Fathers came the Jews that crucified
Christ; out of the Apostles came Judas the traitor; out of the city
Alexandria (where a fair illustrious and famous school was, and from
whence proceeded many upright and godly learned men), came Arius and
Origenes.

Poor Origen! Surely Luther was put to it for an instance, and had never read the works of that very best of the old Fathers, and eminently upright and godly learned man.

Ib.

The sparrows are the least birds, and yet they are very hurtful, and
have the best nourishment.

'Ergo digni sunt omni persecutione'. Poor little Philip Sparrows! Luther did not know that they more than earn their good wages by destroying grubs and other small vermin.

Ib. p. 61.

He that without danger will know God, and will speculate of him, let
him look first into the manger, that is, let him begin below, and let
him first learn to know the Son of the Virgin Mary, born at Bethlehem,
that lies and sucks in his mother's bosom; or let one look upon him
hanging on the Cross. ** But take good heed in any case of high
climbing cogitations, to clamber up to heaven without this ladder,
namely, the Lord Christ in his humanity.

To know God as God ([Greek: tòn Zaena], the living God) we must assume his personality: otherwise what were it but an ether, a gravitation? --but to assume his personality, we must begin with his humanity, and this is impossible but in history; for man is an historical--not an eternal being. 'Ergo'. Christianity is of necessity historical and not philosophical only.

Ib. p. 62.

'What is that to thee'? said Christ to Peter. 'Follow thou me'--me,
follow me, and not thy questions, or cogitations.

Lord! keep us looking to, and humbly following, thee!

Chap. VI. p. 103.

The philosophers and learned heathen (said Luther) have described God,
that he is as a circle, the point whereof in the midst is every where;
but the circumference, which on the outside goeth round about, is no
where: herewith they would shew that God is all, and yet is nothing.

What a huge difference the absence of a blank space, which is nothing, or next to nothing, may make! The words here should have been printed, "God is all, and yet is no thing;" For what does 'thing' mean? Itself, that is, the 'ing', or inclosure, that which is contained within an outline, or circumscribed. So likewise to 'think' is to inclose, to determine, confine and define. To think an infinite is a contradiction in terms equal to a boundless bound. So in German 'Ding, denken'; in Latin 'res, reor'.

Chap. VII. p. 113.

Helvidius alleged the mother of Christ was not a virgin; so that
according to his wicked allegation, Christ was born in original sin.

O, what a tangle of impure whimsies has this notion of an immaculate conception, an Ebionite tradition, as I think, brought into the Christian Church! I have sometimes suspected that the Apostle John had a particular view to this point, in the first half of the first chapter of his Gospel. Not that I suppose our present Matthew then in existence, or that, if John had seen the Gospel according to Luke, the 'Christopædia' had been already prefixed to it. But the rumor might have been whispered about, and as the purport was to give a psilanthropic explanation and solution of the phrases, Son of God and Son of Man,--so Saint John met it by the true solution, namely, the eternal Filiation of the Word.

Ib. p. 120. Of Christ's riding into Jerusalem.

But I hold (said Luther) that Christ himself did not mention that
prophecy of Zechariah, but rather, that the Apostles and Evangelists
did use it for a witness.

Worth remembering for the purpose of applying it to the text in which our Lord is represented in the first (or Matthew's) Gospel, and by that alone, as citing Daniel by name. It was this text that so sorely, but I think very unnecessarily, perplexed and gravelled Bentley, who was too profound a scholar and too acute a critic to admit the genuineness of the whole of that book.

Ib.

The Prophets (said Luther) did set, speak, and preach of the second
coming of Christ in manner as we now do.

I regret that Mr. Irving should have blended such extravagancies and presumptuous prophesyings with his support and vindication of the Millennium, and the return of Jesus in his corporeal individuality, --because these have furnished divines in general, both Churchmen and Dissenting, with a pretext for treating his doctrine with silent contempt. Had he followed the example of his own Ben Ezra, and argued temperately and learnedly, the controversy must have forced the momentous question on our Clergy:--Are Christians bound to believe whatever an Apostle believed,--and in the same way and sense? I think Saint Paul himself lived to doubt the solidity of his own literal interpretation of our Lord's words.

The whole passage in which our Lord describes his coming is so evidently, and so intentionally expressed in the diction and images of the Prophets, that nothing but the carnal literality common to the Jews at that time and most strongly marked in the disciples, who were among the least educated of their countrymen, could have prevented the symbolic import and character of the words from being seen. The whole Gospel and the Epistles of John, are a virtual confutation of this reigning error--and no less is the Apocalypse whether written by, or under the authority of, the Evangelist.

The unhappy effect which St. Paul's (may I not say) incautious language respecting Christ's return produced on the Thessalonians, led him to reflect on the subject, and he instantly in the second epistle to them qualified the doctrine, and never afterwards resumed it; but on the contrary, in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, c. 15, substitutes the doctrine of immortality in a celestial state and a spiritual body. On the nature of our Lord's future epiphany or phenomenal person, I am not ashamed to acknowledge, that my views approach very nearly to those of Emanuel Swedenborg.

Ib. p. 121.

Doctor Jacob Schenck never preacheth out of his book, but I do, (said
Luther), though not of necessity, but I do it for example's sake to
others.

As many notes, 'memoranda', cues of connection and transition as the preacher may find expedient or serviceable to him; well and good. But to read in a manuscript book, as our Clergy now do, is not to preach at all. Preach out of a book, if you must; but do not read in it, or even from it. A read sermon of twenty minutes will seem longer to the hearers than a free discourse of an hour.

Ib.

My simple opinion is (said Luther) and I do believe that Christ for us
descended into hell, to the end he might break and destroy the same,
as in Psalm xvi, and Acts ii, is shewed and proved.

Could Luther have been ignorant, that this clause was not inserted into the Apostle's Creed till the sixth century after Christ? I believe the original intention of the clause was no more than 'vere mortuus est'--in contradiction to the hypothesis of a trance or state of suspended animation.

Chap. VII. p. 122.

When Christ (said Luther) forbiddeth to spread abroad or to make known
his works of wonder; there he speaketh as being sent from the Father,
and doth well and right therein in forbidding them, to the end that
thereby he might leave us an example, not to seek our own praise and
honor in that wherein we do good; but we ought to seek only and alone
the honor of God.

Not satisfactory. Doubtless, the command was in connection with the silence enjoined respecting his Messiahship.

Chap. VIII. p. 147.

Doctor Hennage said to Luther, Sir, where you say that the Holy Spirit
is the certainty in the word towards God, that is, that a man is
certain of his own mind and opinion; then it must needs follow that
all sects have the Holy Ghost, for they will needs be most certain of
their doctrine and religion.

Luther might have answered, "positive, you mean, not certain."

Chap. IX. p. 160.

But who hath power to forgive or to detain sins? Answer; the Apostles
and all Church servants, and (in case of necessity) every Christian.
Christ giveth them not power over money, wealth, kingdoms, &c; but
over sins and the consciences of human creatures, over the power of
the Devil, and the throat of Hell.

Few passages in the Sacred Writings have occasioned so much mischief, abject slavishness, bloated pride, tyrannous usurpation, bloody persecution, with kings even against their will the drudges, false soul-destroying quiet of conscience, as this text, 'John' xx. 23. misinterpreted. It is really a tremendous proof of what the misunderstanding of a few words can do. That even Luther partook of the delusion, this paragraph gives proof. But that a delusion it is; that the commission given to the Seventy whom Christ sent out to proclaim and offer the kingdom of God, and afterwards to the Apostles, refers either to the power of making rules and ordinances in the Church, or otherwise to the gifts of miraculous healing, which our Lord at that time conferred on them; and that 'per figuram causce pro effecto', 'sins' here mean diseases, seems to me more than probable. At all events, the text surely does not mean that the salvation of a repentant and believing Christian depends upon the will of a priest in absolution.

Ib. p. 161.

And again, they are able to absolve and make a human creature free and
loose from all his sins, if in case he repenteth and believeth in
Christ; and on the contrary, they are able to detain all his sina, if
he doth not repent and believeth not in Christ.

In like manner if he sincerely repent and believe, his sins are forgiven, whether the minister absolve him or not. Now if M + 5 =5, and 5-M = 5, M = O. If he be impenitent and unbelieving, his sins are detained, no doubt, whether the minister do or do not detain them.

Ib. p. 163.

Adam was created of God in such sort righteous, as that he became of a
righteous an unrighteous person; as Paul himself argueth, and withall
instructeth himself, where he saith, The law is not given for a
righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient.

This follows from the very definition or idea of righteousness;-it is itself the law;--[Greek: pas gàr díkais autonomos.]

Ib.

The Scripture saith, God maketh the ungodly righteous; there he
calleth us all, one with another, despairing and wicked wretches; for
what will an ungodly creature not dare to accomplish, if he may but
have occasion, place, and opportunity?

That is with a lust within correspondent to the temptation from without.

A Christian's conscience, methinks, ought to be a 'Janus bifrons',--a Gospel-face retrospective, and smiling through penitent tears on the sins of the past, and a Moses-face looking forward in frown and menace, frightening the harlot will into a holy abortion of sins conceived but not yet born, perchance not yet quickened. The fanatic Antinomian reverses this; for the past he requires all the horrors of remorse and despair, till the moment of assurance; thenceforward, he may do what he likes, for he cannot sin.

Ib. p. 165.

All natural inclinations (said Luther) are either against or without
God; therefore none are good. We see that no man is so honest as to
marry a wife, only thereby to have children, to love and to bring them
up in the fear of God.

This is a very weak instance. If a man had been commanded to marry by God, being so formed as that no sensual delight accompanied, and refused to do so, unless this appetite and gratification were added,--then indeed!

Chap. X. p. 168, 9.

Ah Lord God (said Luther), why should we any way boast of our
free-will, as if it were able to do anything in divine and spiritual
matters were they never so small? * * * I confess that mankind hath a
free-will, but it is to milk kine, to build houses, &c., and no
further: for so long as a man sitteth well and in safety, and sticketh
in no want, so long he thinketh he hath a free-will which is able to
do something; but, when want and need appeareth, that there is neither
to eat nor to drink, neither money nor provision, where is then the
free will? It is utterly lost, and cannot stand when it cometh to the
pinch. But faith only standeth fast and sure, and seeketh Christ.

Luther confounds free-will with efficient power, which neither does nor can exist save where the finite will is one with the absolute Will. That Luther was practically on the right side in this famous controversy, and that he was driving at the truth, I see abundant reason to believe. But it is no less evident that he saw it in a mist, or rather as a mist with dissolving outline; and as he saw the thing as a mist, so he ever and anon mistakes a mist for the thing. But Erasmus and Saavedra were equally indistinct; and shallow and unsubstantial to boot. In fact, till the appearance of Kant's 'Kritiques' of the pure and of the practical Reason the problem had never been accurately or adequately stated, much less solved.

26 June, 1826.

Ib. p. 174.

Loving friends, (said Luther) our doctrine that free-will is dead and
nothing at all is grounded powerfully in Holy Scripture.

It is of vital importance for a theological student to understand clearly the utter diversity of the Lutheran, which is likewise the Calvinistic, denial of free-will in the unregenerate, and the doctrine of the modern Necessitarians and ('proh pudor!') of the later Calvinists, which denies the proper existence of will altogether. The former is sound, Scriptural, compatible with the divine justice, a new, yea, a mighty motive to morality, and, finally, the dictate of common sense grounded on common experience. The latter the very contrary of all these.

Chap. xii. p. 187.

This is now (said Luther), the first instruction concerning the law;
namely, that the same must be used to hinder the ungodly from their
wicked and mischievous intentions. For the Devil, who is an Abbot and
a Prince of this world, driveth and allureth people to work all manner
of sin and wickedness; for which cause God hath ordained magistrates,
elders, schoolmasters, laws, and statutes, to the end, if they cannot
do more, yet at least that they may bind the claws of the Devil, and
to hinder him from raging and swelling so powerfully (in those which
are his) according to his will and pleasure.

And (said Luther), although thou hadst not committed this or that sin,
yet nevertheless, thou art an ungodly creature, &c. but what is done
cannot he undone, he that hath stolen, let him henceforward steal no
more.

Secondly, we use the law spiritually, which is done in this manner;
that it maketh the transgressions greater, as Saint Paul saith; that
is, that it may reveal and discover to people their sins, blindness,
misery, and ungodly doings wherein they were conceived and born;
namely, that they are ignorant of God, and are his enemies, and
therefore have justly deserved death, hell, God's judgments, his
everlasting wrath and indignation. Saint Paul, (said Luther),
expoundeth such spiritual offices and works of the law with many words.

Rom. vii.

Nothing can be more sound or more philosophic than the contents of these two paragraphs. They afford a sufficient answer to the pretence of the Romanists and Arminians, that by the law St. Paul meant only the ceremonial law.

Ib. p. 189.

And if Moses had not cashiered and put himself out of his office, and
had not taken it away with these words, (where he saith, 'The Lord thy
God will raise up unto thee another prophet out of thy brethren; Him
shall thou hear'. (Deut. xviii.)) who then at any time would or could
have believed the Gospel, and forsaken Moses?

If I could be persuaded that this passage (Deut. xviii. 15-19.) primarily referred to Christ, and that Christ, not Joshua and his successors, was the prophet here promised; I must either become a Unitarian psilanthrophist, and join Priestley and Belsham,--or abandon to the Jews their own Messiah as yet to come, and cling to the religion of John and Paul, without further reference to Moses than to Lycurgus, Solon and Numa; all of whom in their different spheres no less prepared the way for the coming of the Lord, 'the desire of the nations'.

Ib. p. 190.

It is therefore most evident (said Luther), that the law can but only
help us to know our sins, and to make us afraid of death. Now sins and
death are such things as belong to the world, and which are therein.

Both in Paul and Luther, (names which I can never separate),--not indeed peculiar to these, for it is the same in the Psalms, Ezekiel, and throughout the Scriptures, but which I feel most in Paul and Luther, --there is one fearful blank, the wisdom or necessity of which I do not doubt, yet cannot help groping and straining after like one that stares in the dark; and this is Death. The law makes us afraid of death. What is death?--an unhappy life? Who does not feel the insufficiency of this answer? What analogy does immortal suffering bear to the only death which is known to us?

Since I wrote the above, God has, I humbly trust, given me a clearer light as to the true nature of the 'death' so often mentioned in the Scriptures.

Ib.

It is (said Luther), a very hard matter: yea, an impossible thing for
thy human strength, whosoever thou art (without God's assistance) that
(at such a time when Moses setteth upon thee with his law, and
fearfully affrighteth thee, accuseth and condemneth thee, threateneth
thee with God's wrath and death) thou shouldest as then be of such a
mind; namely, as if no law nor sin had ever been at any time:--I say,
it is in a manner a thing impossible, that a human creature should
carry himself in such a sort, when he is and feeleth himself assaulted
with trials and temptations, and when the conscience hath to do with
God, as then to think no otherwise, than that from everlasting nothing
hath been, but only and alone Christ, altogether grace and deliverance.

Yea, verily, Amen and Amen! For this short heroic paragraph contains the sum and substance, the heighth and the depth of all true philosophy. Most assuredly right difficult it is for us, while we are yet in the narrow chamber of death, with our faces to the dusky falsifying looking-glass that covers the scant end-side of the blind passage from floor to ceiling,--right difficult for us, so wedged between its walls that we cannot turn round, nor have other escape possible but by walking backward, to understand that all we behold or have any memory of having ever beholden, yea, our very selves as seen by us, are but shadows, and when the forms that we loved vanish, impossible not to feel as if they were real.

Ib. p. 197.

Nothing that is good proceedeth out of the works of the law, except
grace be present; for what we are forced to do, the same goeth not
from the heart, neither is acceptable.

A law supposes a law-giver, and implies an actuator and executor, and consequently rewards and punishments publicly announced, and distinctly assigned to the deeds enjoined or forbidden; and correlatively in the subjects of the law, there are supposed, first, assurance of the being, the power, the veracity and seeingness of the law-giver, in whom I here comprise the legislative, judicial and executive functions; and secondly, self-interest, desire, hope and fear. Now from this view, it is evident that the deeds or works of the Law are themselves null and dead, deriving their whole significance from their attachment or alligation to the rewards and punishments, even as this diversely shaped and ink colored paper has its value wholly from the words or meanings, which have been arbitrarily connected therewith; or as a ladder, or flight of stairs, of a provision-loft, or treasury. If the architect or master of the house had chosen to place the store-room or treasury on the ground floor, the ladder or steps would have been useless. The life is divided between the rewards and punishments on the one hand, and the hope and fear on the other: namely, the active life or excitancy belongs to the former, the passive life or excitability to the latter. Call the former the afficients, the latter the affections, the deeds being merely the signs or impresses of the former, as the seal, on the latter as the wax. Equally evident is it, that the affections are wholly formed by the deeds, which are themselves but the lifeless unsubstantial shapes of the actual forms ('formæ formantes'), namely, the rewards and punishments. Now contrast with this the process of the Gospel. There the affections are formed in the first instance, not by any reference to works or deeds, but by an unmerited rescue from death, liberation from slavish task-work; by faith, gratitude, love, and affectionate contemplation of the exceeding goodness and loveliness of the Saviour, Redeemer, Benefactor: from the affections flow the deeds, or rather the affections overflow in the deeds, and the rewards are but a continuance and continued increase of the free grace in the state of the soul and in the growth and gradual perfecting of that state, which are themselves gifts of the same free grace, and one with the rewards; for in the kingdom of Christ which is the realm of love and inter-community, the joy and grace of each regenerated spirit becomes double, and thereby augments the joys and the graces of the others, and the joys and graces of all unite in each;--Christ, the head, and by his Spirit the bond, or unitive 'copula' of all, being the spiritual sun whose entire image is reflected in every individual of the myriads of dew-drops. While under the Law, the all was but an aggregate of subjects, each striving after a reward for himself, --not as included in and resulting from the state,--but as the stipulated wages of the task-work, as a loaf of bread may be the pay or bounty promised for the hewing of wood or the breaking of stones!

Ib.

He (said Luther), that will dispute with the Devil, &c.

Queries.

I. Abstractedly from, and independently of, all sensible substances, and
the bodies, wills, faculties, and affections of men, has the Devil,
or would the Devil have, a personal self-subsistence? Does he, or
can he, exist as a conscious individual agent or person? Should the
answer to this query be in the negative: then--

II. Do there exist finite and personal beings, whether with composite
and decomponible bodies, that is, embodied, or with simple and
indecomponible bodies, (which is all that can be meant by
disembodied as applied to finite creatures), so eminently wicked, or
wicked and mischievous in so peculiar a kind, as to constitute a
distinct 'genus' of beings under the name of devils?

III. Is this second 'hypothesis' compatible with the acts and functions
attributed to the Devil in Scripture? O! to have had these three
questions put by Melancthon to Luther, and to have heard his reply!

Ib. p. 200.

If (said Luther) God should give unto us a strong and an unwavering
faith, then we should he proud, yea also, we should at last contemn
Him. Again, if he should give us the right knowledge of the law, then
we should be dismayed and fainthearted, we should not know which way
to wind ourselves.

The main reason is, because in this instance, the change in the relation constitutes the difference of the things. A. considered as acting 'ab extra' on the selfish fears and desires of men is the Law: the same A: acting 'ab intra' as a new nature infused by grace, as the mind of Christ prompting to all obedience, is the Gospel. Yet what Luther says is likewise very true. Could we reduce the great spiritual truths or ideas of our faith to comprehensible conceptions, or (for the thing itself is impossible) fancy we had done so, we should inevitably be 'proud vain asses.'

Ib. p. 203.

And as to know his works and actions, is not yet rightly to know the
Gospel, (for thereby we know not as yet that he hath overcome sin
death and the Devil); even so likewise, it is not as yet to know the
Gospel, when we know such doctrine and commandments, but when the
voice soundeth, which saith, Christ is thine own with life, with
doctrine, with works, death, resurrection, and with all that he hath,
doth and may do.

Most true.

Ib. p. 205.

The ancient Fathers said: 'Distingue tempora et concordabis
Scripturas'; distinguish the times; then may we easily reconcile the
Scriptures together.

Yea! and not only so, but we shall reconcile truths, that seem to repeal this or that passage of Scripture, with the Scriptures. For Christ is with his Church even to the end.

Ib.

I verily believe, (said Luther) it (the abolition of the Law) vexed to
the heart the beloved St. Paul himself before his conversion.

How dearly Martin Luther loved St. Paul! How dearly would St. Paul have loved Martin Luther! And how impossible, that either should not have done so!

Ib.

In this case, touching the distinguishing the Law from the Gospel, we
must utterly expel all human and natural wisdom, reason, and
understanding.

All reason is above nature. Therefore by reason in Luther, or rather in his translator, you must understand the reasoning faculty:--that is, the logical intellect, or the intellectual understanding. For the understanding is in all respects a medial and mediate faculty, and has therefore two extremities or poles, the sensual, in which form it is St. Paul's [Greek: phrónaema sarkòs]; and the intellectual pole, or the hemisphere (as it were) turned towards the reason. Now the reason ('lux idealis seu spiritualis') shines down into the understanding, which recognizes the light, 'id est, lumen a luce spirituali quasi alienigenum aliquid', which it can only comprehend or describe to itself by attributes opposite to its own essential properties. Now these latter being contingency, and (for though the immediate objects of the understanding are 'genera et species', still they are particular 'genera et species') particularity, it distinguishes the formal light ('lumen') (not the substantial light, 'lux') of reason by the attributes of the necessary and the universal; and by irradiation of this 'lumen' or 'shine' the understanding becomes a conclusive or logical faculty. As such it is [Greek: Lógos anthrôpinos].

Ib. 206.

When Satan saith in thy heart, God will not pardon thy sins, nor be
gracious unto thee, I pray (said Luther) how wilt thou then, as a poor
sinner, raise up and comfort thyself, especially when other signs of
God's wrath besides do beat upon thee, as sickness, poverty, &c. And
that thy heart beginneth to preach and say, Behold, here thou livest
in sickness, thou art poor and forsaken of every one, &c.

Oh! how true, how affectingly true is this! And when too Satan, the tempter, becomes Satan the accuser, saying in thy heart:--"This sickness is the consequence of sin, or sinful infirmity, and thou hast brought thyself into a fearful dilemma; thou canst not hope for salvation as long as thou continuest in any sinful practice, and yet thou canst not abandon thy daily dose of this or that poison without suicide. For the sin of thy soul has become the necessity of thy body, daily tormenting thee, without yielding thee any the least pleasurable sensation, but goading thee on by terror without hope. Under such evidence of God's wrath how canst thou expect to be saved?" Well may the heart cry out, "Who shall deliver me from the 'body of this death',--from this death that lives and tyrannizes in my body?" But the Gospel answers--"There is a redemption from the body promised; only cling to Christ. Call on him continually with all thy heart, and all thy soul, to give thee strength, and be strong in thy weakness; and what Christ doth not see good to relieve thee from, suffer in hope. It may be better for thee to be kept humble and in self-abasement. The thorn in the flesh may remain and yet the grace of God through Christ prove sufficient for thee. Only cling to Christ, and do thy best. In all love and well-doing gird thyself up to improve and use aright what remains free in thee, and if thou doest ought aright, say and thankfully believe that Christ hath done it for thee." O what a miserable despairing wretch should I become, if I believed the doctrines of Bishop Jeremy Taylor in his Treatise on Repentance, or those I heard preached by Dr.----; if I gave up the faith, that the life of Christ would precipitate the remaining dregs of sin in the crisis of death, and that I shall rise in purer capacity of Christ; blind to be irradiated by his light, empty to be possessed by his fullness, naked of merit to be clothed with his righteousness!

Ib. p. 207.

The nobility, the gentry, citizens, and farmers, &c. are now become so
haughty and ungodly, that they regard no ministers nor preachers; and
(said Luther) if we were not holpen somewhat by great princes and
persons, we could not long subsist: therefore Isaiah saith well,
'And kings shall be their nurses', &c.

Corpulent nurses too often, that overlay the babe; distempered nurses, that convey poison in their milk!

Chap. XIII. p. 208.

Philip Melancthon said to Luther, The opinion of St. Austin of
justification (as it seemeth) was more pertinent, fit and convenient
when he disputed not, than it was when he used to speak and dispute;
for thus he saith, We ought to censure and hold that we are justified
by faith, that is by our regeneration, or by being made new creatures.
Now if it be so, then we are not justified only by faith, but by all
the gifts and virtues of God given unto us. Now what is your opinion
Sir? Do you hold that a man is justified by this regeneration, as is
St. Austin's opinion?

Luther answered and said, I hold this, and am certain, that the true
meaning of the Gospel and of the Apostle is, that we are justified
before God 'gratis', for nothing, only by God's mere mercy, wherewith
and by reason whereof, he imputeth righteousness unto us in Christ.

True; but is it more than a dispute about words? Is not the regeneration likewise 'gratis', only by God's mere mercy? We, according to the necessity of our imperfect understandings, must divide and distinguish. But surely justification and sanctification are one act of God, and only different perspectives of redemption by and through and for Christ. They are one and the same plant, justification the root, sanctification the flower; and (may I not venture to add?) transubstantiation into Christ the celestial fruit.

Ib. p. 210-11. Melancthon's sixth reply.

Sir! you say Paul was justified, that is, was received to everlasting
life, only for mercy's sake. Against which, I say, if the piece-meal
or partial cause, namely our obedience, followeth not; then we are not
saved, according to these words, 'Woe is me if I preach not the
Gospel'. 1. Cor. ix.

Luther's answer.

No piecing or partial cause (said Luther) approacheth thereupto: for
faith is powerful continually without ceasing; otherwise, it is no
faith. Therefore what the works are, or of what value, the same they
are through the honor and power of faith, which undeniably is the sun
or sun-beam of this shining.

This is indeed a difficult question; and one, I am disposed to think, which can receive its solution only by the idea, or the act and fact of justification by faith self-reflected. But, humanly considered, this position of Luther's provokes the mind to ask, is there no receptivity of faith, considered as a free gift of God, prerequisite in the individual? Does faith commence by generating the receptivity of itself? If so, there is no difference either in kind or in degree between the receivers and the rejectors of the word, at the moment preceeding this reception or rejection; and a stone is a subject as capable of faith as a man. How can obedience exist, where disobedience was not possible? Surely two or three texts from St. Paul, detached from the total 'organismus' of his reasoning, ought not to out-weigh the plain fact, that the contrary position is implied in, or is an immediate consequent of, our Lord's own invitations and assurances. Every where a something is attributed to the will. [2]

Chap. XIII. p. 211.

To conclude, a faithful person is a new creature, a new tree.
Therefore all these speeches, which in the law are usual, belong not
to this case; as to say 'A faithful' person must do good works.
Neither were it rightly spoken, to say the sun shall shine: a good
tree shall bring forth good fruit, &c. For the sun 'shall' not shine,
but it doth shine by nature unbidden, it is thereunto created.

This important paragraph is obscure by the translator's ignorance of the true import of the German 'soll', which does not answer to our 'shall;' but rather to our 'ought', that is, 'should' do this or that,--is under an obligation to do it.

Ib. p. 213.

And I, my loving Brentius, to the end I may better understand this
case, do use to think in this manner, namely, as if in my heart were
no quality or virtue at all, which is called faith, and love, (as the
Sophists do speak and dream thereof), but I set all on Christ, and
say, my 'formalis justitia', that is, my sure, my constant and
complete righteousness (in which is no want nor failing, but is, as
before God it ought to be) is Christ my Lord and Saviour.

Aye! this, this is indeed to the purpose. In this doctrine my soul can find rest. I hope to be saved by faith, not by my faith, but by the faith of Christ in me.

Ib. p. 214.

The Scripture nameth the faithful a people of God's saints. But here
one may say; the sins which daily we commit, do offend and anger God;
how then can we be holy?

'Answer'. A mother's love to her child is much stronger than are the
excrements and scurf thereof. Even so God's love towards us is far
stronger than our filthiness and uncleanness.

Yea, one may say again, we sin without ceasing, and where sin is,
there the holy Spirit is not: therefore we are not holy, because the
holy Spirit is not in us, who maketh holy.

'Answer'. (John xvi. 14.) Now where Christ is, there is the holy
Spirit. The text saith plainly, 'The holy Ghost shall glorify me, &c.'
Now Christ is in the faithful (although they have and feel sins, do
confess the same, and with sorrow of heart do complain thereover);
therefore sins do not separate Christ from those that believe.