his sins are forgiven, whether the minister absolve him or not. Now if Mx5=5, and 5-M=5, M=0. If he be impenitent, and unbelieving, his sins are detained, no doubt, whether the minister do or do not detain them.

Ibid. 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 withal 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;-as yàp díkalos αὐτονόμος.

Ibid.

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.

Ibid. 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. commanded to marry by God,

If a man had been 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. pp. 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 freewill? 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.

Ibid. 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 be 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.

Ibid. 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 shalt 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 psilanthropist, 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.

Ibid. 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.

Ibid.

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.