Volume Iv Part 2 (2/2)

Ib. p. 189.

And if Moses had not cas.h.i.+ered and put himself out of his office, and had not taken it away with these words, (where he saith, 'The Lord thy G.o.d 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 pa.s.sage (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 a.n.a.logy does immortal suffering bear to the only death which is known to us?

Since I wrote the above, G.o.d 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 G.o.d's a.s.sistance) that (at such a time when Moses setteth upon thee with his law, and fearfully affrighteth thee, accuseth and condemneth thee, threateneth thee with G.o.d'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 a.s.saulted with trials and temptations, and when the conscience hath to do with G.o.d, 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 a.s.suredly right difficult it is for us, while we are yet in the narrow chamber of death, with our faces to the dusky falsifying looking-gla.s.s that covers the scant end-side of the blind pa.s.sage 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 a.s.signed to the deeds enjoined or forbidden; and correlatively in the subjects of the law, there are supposed, first, a.s.surance 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 pa.s.sive 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 ('formae 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, grat.i.tude, 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 const.i.tute 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!

<script>