individual of the saved who lived and died before those events had been realized, than was the article of his death. In what Luther says about abstaining from what he calls ‘the secret will of majesty,’ he speaks indistinctly, injuriously, and contradictorily: indistinctly, because there is a use as well as an abuse of such inquiries, which he ought to have distinguished; injuriously, because his observations would go the length of deterring men from even recognizing such a will, and so they would mar the joy and fear and gratitude and love of the Lord’s people; contradictorily, because he afterwards recognises and makes assertions about it. Christ truly impinges on some of God’s reprobates! — Still, a hint or two may be borrowed with advantage from Luther’s statement. God, in addressing himself to the world as He does by the Gospel to be preached everywhere, clearly sets himself forth to as many as have a heart that is in any degree softened and turned towards him. This is done in the form and character of the Father of mercies who is not willing that any should perish. Such should not be deterred and frightened by the knowledge that He has his reprobates. The melting heart is not the heart of a reprobate. But is he to shut his eyes to the fact that God has his reprobates? No; that fact combined with the consciousness of his own personal impotency, turns to him for a testimony. Nor without that testimony can he regard God as he should now, or in any future stage of his experience; for without it, the God whom he serves is not the true God.
[←402]
Epicycles. A little circle whose centre is in the circumference of a greater; or a small orb which, being fixed in the deferent of a planet, carries it round its own axis, while it is itself carried round the axis of the planet. An invention of some bungling philosophers to account for the anomalies of planetary motion.
[←403]
This text does not seem to bear on the point in hand; viz. that we should not scrutinize the personal will of God; or as he terms it, ‘the will of majesty,’ or sovereignty. Luther understands ‘their seeking God daily, and desiring to know his ways, and asking of him the ordinances of justice; as if they not only complained of God’s appointments towards them being unjust, but were prying curiously into their secret springs. But does God, speaking by his Prophet, really mean any more than that they were hypocrites and formalists, yet expected the acceptance of true and devout worshippers? Accordingly, they were answered by showing them that their fasts were not such as he had chosen, and that the worship which he accepts is the reverse of theirs. ‘Ask of me the ordinances of justice,’ are the only words which bear at all upon the subject; and these do not necessarily imply, or with any probability imply here, a spirit of curiousness.
[←404]
Rationem scrutari. Rat. More literally, the method of that will. ‘Ratio’ expresses most nearly the ‘all about it.’ Scrut. (see last Section, note p) does not necessarily denote a bad state of mind; though it is clearly so here: a mind which doubts the fact that God has such a will, questions his right to have it, and cavils at its decisions. To inquire what the word of God has recorded concerning this will with deep reverence — and to meekly, rejoicingly, submit to that record — would not be making war as the giants of old did against Jupiter.
[←405]
See here a confirmation of my remark in Sect. 28. note t, that Luther is protesting against the impugners and deniers of that will which is distinct from God’s legislative will, not against its sober investigators and maintainers! His answer to the cavil from Matthew 23 and like passages is, ‘Yes, but there is another will behind this, which is contrary to this, and which we must be content to leave with asserting it. God as revealed, or as he afterwards describes him, Christ the incarnate God, wills only life; but there is another will of God, a will not expressed by this incarnate God, which wills death; and therefore these things which appear to prove Freewill (by inference) may still be said, and yet man be in bondage. This is because, while He deplores, he does also not deplore. This latter will is not to be searched into or acted upon; it is only to be asserted and believed. Deny it if you dare; you will only be running your head against the wall, making war against God. For objections to this statement, and for a more consistent answer to the cavil, etc. see note s in the last Section. — Luther says worse than he means, but he means ignorantly. It had not been given to him to know the mystery of God and the Father, and of Christ. He did not understand how God is not hiding himself behind Christ, but making himself seen in Christ; so that it may be truly said, “He that has seen me has seen the Father: if you had known me, you would have known my Father also; and from now on you know him, and have seen him.” (Joh 14.9, 7)
[←406]
See above, Sect. 20.
[←407]
Frigent. See above, Sect. 29. note y.
[←408]
It is you who take away all warmth and life from such passages as these, by making the will a contradiction; it can do nothing, it can do all things: these assertions destroy each other, and leave nothing as the result, unless they mean opposite things, such as ‘yes,’ and ‘no,’ at the same instant.
[←409]
Tropo. Any figurative mode of speech, as opposed to one that is plain, simple, and straightforward, whatever the particular nature of the obliquity is — whether grammatical, as here, or rhetorical.
[←410]
Luther gives three answers to these texts. 1. Erasmus is inconsistent with himself. 2. They teach human impotency. 3. They insinuate the possibility of divine help, and glance at his predestinative favour. — In some instances, doubtless, as in Matthew 19 and its parallels (Mark 10, Luke 18), a peculiar design may also be traced — the teaching of the natural man’s impotency, and the hint at what God, according to his eternal purpose, will do in his people — but all these, multifarious as they are, may be resolved into, ‘the Lawgiver speaks,’ whose voice implies neither power in man, nor promise in God. The end is not always conviction of sin in mercy; sometimes it is “whom he will, he hardens;” but always, it is man made to show what he is, to the more perfect manifestation of God by him. See Sect. 28. notes t v x.
[←411]
Natura, necessitas. By ‘nature,’ in this connection, I suppose he means an inherent, settled, constitution of things,’ which produces actions involuntarily: by ‘necessity,’ he means ‘a compulsory influence’ exercised on such a constitution, from without.
[←412]
The inconsistency is Erasmus’: his Freewill is necessity; but according to him, it is the subject of reward.
[←413]
Such is Luther’s representation of the New Testament as contrasted with the Old, and of the Gospel. The New is ‘promises and exhortations;’ the Old is ‘law and threatenings.’ The Gospel is ‘the Spirit, and grace unto salvation, offered to all men through Christ, who died for all.’ Note that he distinguishes between the Spirit and grace, though not very correctly; it is the Spirit as given to the justified, of which he speaks: but this is part of the grace of God; that is, “of the things which are freely given to us of God.”
For some objections to this statement, as it respects offers of grace, see above, Sect. 23. note a; as it respects the opposition between the Law and the Gospel, see above, Sect. 24. note l. The Gospel is certainly to be preached to all — to the reprobate as well as to the elect; but with what propriety this can be called an offer of grace to all, or to any, may be fairly questioned: much more, with what consistency such language can be used by one who so stoutly maintained, as Luther did, both the impotency of the natural man, and the God-made difference between the elect and the reprobate. With such views as Luther had of the atonement, as though Christ had shed his blood for those from whom it was the Father’s good pleasure to hide the mysteries of his kingdom; and with such a lack of insight into the first principle of divine counsel, operation, and revelation — even God’s design of manifesting himself; in short, with such a lack of insight into God, it was impossible that he would not speak inconsistently. Indeed it would be little if inconsistency were all. Such language is illusive, perplexing, and subversive to man; and while it aims to beautify God, it defames him! He is correct, however, to some considerable extent: he nobly asserts, that salva tion is altogether gratuitous, the produce of the Father’s mercy, conferred upon the hell-deserving through the alone merit of Christ’s death. He nobly asserts, that the preceptive parts of the New Testament are for the called and justified only. But why is the Old Testament to be thus set in array against the New? Where is the law and threatenings in the book of Genesis? What more truly Evangelical words are to be found in the New Testament, than in Isaiah and the other Prophets; in the Psalms, and in Luther’s favourite book of Deuteronomy? The Old Testament,