several ideas contained in it. — We do not ask for miracles, etc.; we do not even ask for an example by way of illustrating it; but we do require a clear and explicit affirmation of what you mean; a full and precise description of the supposed substance.
[←204]
Qui ne dicitis quidem. You are not even the nightingale. (See above, Sect. 1.) They had voice enough, when speaking for themselves; but none with which to answer the questions and demands of their opponents.
[←205]
Neque speciem neque nomen. They can neither define it, nor find an appropriate name by which to express it.
[←206]
Mendaci vocabulo. Though they cannot find a name for it, they have a word for it: but that word is a liar; for it proclaims the will to be free, which is really in bondage. Logicians distinguish ‘vocabulum’ from ‘nomen;’ the former is arbitrary and general; the latter is descriptive and precise. What you cannot name (according to this distinction) you may speak of. ‘Differunt nomina et vocabula; quia nomina finita sunt et significant res proprias; vocabula autem infinita, et res communes designant.’
[←207]
Appellamus. A forensic expression, applied to advocate, witnesses, and judge; but to each, consistent with its primary meaning of ‘addressing a person by name;’ prosagoreuw Luther would avail himself of Erasmus’ own testimony and advice, now that he has shown the dogma of Freewill to be this unauthorized and unprofitable one. Erasmus had recommended that all such things should be suppressed.
[←208]
Inanibus bullis verborum. ‘Prettinesses of style.’ ‘Bulla’ is properly a bubble made by boiling water, and is thence applied to divers ornaments of dress; particularly to one in the shape of a heart, worn by the Roman youth. The quality of it depended on their rank, or degree of nobility. This they dedicated to the Lares, when they took the manly gown.
[←209]
Vertumnus had, among the Latins, the same property of assuming all shapes, which Proteus had among the Greeks.
[←210]
Luther does not tell us to whom he is indebted for this metrical aphorism. — Erasmus had played the physician, prescribing silence with respect to some dogmas; his own is shown to be one of them.
[←211]
Erasmus had bestowed these and some other commendations upon the Greek and Latin Fathers, to the disparagement of the Reformers, as making for his side in the argument. Luther asks whether what they had said on Freewill was a specimen of this richness of invention, and laboriousness of investigation and expression? Here they had not excelled any more than Erasmus himself; to whom Luther was not reluctant to ascribe the praise of resembling and even equalling them.
[←212]
John Faber, a native of Suabia, who from one of his works against the Reformers, probably this very work, was called ‘The Hammer of the Heretics.’ He was advanced to the see of Vienna in 1531, and died there in 1542. His elevation was supposed to have been the fruit of his zeal against Luther. He entitled it his Pearl: but Luther would rather call it his Dunghill, an allusion to Hercules’ famous labour of removing the long accumulated filth of 3000 oxen. — For the fifth labor, Eurystheus ordered Hercules to clean up King Augeas’ stables, which is the parenthetical reference here.
[←213]
Dissimulárit. ‘Diligenter et astutè celo, occulto, fingo non esse, quod reverà est.’
[←214]
Stulov kai edraiwma thv alhqeiav. Luther connects and refers these words, as the older editions of the Scriptures and our translators have done; but Griesbach, and others after him, connect them with what follows. A very important sense is thus elicited; “the pillar and ground of the truth (and without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness) is that God was manifested in the flesh,” etc. — But there seems an evident allusion to the ancient tabernacle, with its boards and sockets (the pillars, or uprights, and the silver foundations into which these were grooved; see Exod. 26.15-30), of which the Church of God is the blessed reality; even as that was the image, or figure.
[←215]
Luther seems to have inferred the immaculateness of the militant and visible Church, from the above and other like testimonies; ‘an entire exemption from error in a certain ever-subsistent community of the Lord’s people tabernacling in flesh of sin.’ The Nineteenth Article of our Church declares, more correctly, ‘The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure word of God is preached, and the sacraments are duly ministered, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same. Just as the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch have erred, so also the Church of Rome has erred, not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also in matters of faith.’ — The same remark extends to each individual of the faithful. Who has not erred in his lifetime? Of whom shall we say that he died without any mixture of error in his creed? — Luther’s representation, therefore, requires restriction: of that error which he is disputing about, it holds good.
[←216]
Omne quod publicum erat. ‘Men of public station, as opposed to private men.’ Luther does not forget Erasmus’ privatus and publicus.
[←217]
Frequent promises are made in this Prophet that a remnant shall be left. “Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us a very small remnant, we would have been as Sodom,” etc. (Isa 1.9) “The remnant of Israel and those who have escaped from the house of Jacob… The remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God.” “For though my people Israel are the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return. (10.20, 21, 22. Compare Rom 9.27) So Isa 11.11-16. But I do not find the expressions ‘dregs’ and ‘remnant’ united.
[←218]
Arrianorum seculum. Arianism arose early in the fourth century; about three hundred years before the rise of the Popedom; and though condemned by Councils, it was adopted by several of Constantine’s successors, and became a source of grievous persecution to those who were sound in the faith. For an account of its origin and real nature, see Milner’s Eccle. Hist. vol. ii. pp. 51-54. It was, in substance, a denial of the co-eternity, co-equality, and co-essentiality of the Lord Jesus Christ with the Father. Already some secret and ambiguous attempts had been made to lessen the idea of the divinity of the Son of God. While his eternity was admitted by Eusebius the historian, he yet was not willing to own him co-equal with the Father. Arius went greater lengths: he said that, ‘the Son proceeded out of a state of non-existence; that he was not before he was made; that he, who is without beginning, has set his Son as the beginning of things that are made; and that God made one, whom he called Word, Son, and Wisdom, by whom he did create us.’ (Miln. in loc.) Like all the rest of heresy, it is truth corrupted; and the only solid and satisfactory answer will be given to it, not by boldly asserting and proving the real and proper divinity of the Lord Jesus, but by showing forth his whole person in its complexity; made up, as it is, of two persons, a divine person and a human person, held together by an indissoluble union: the secret being that God does all his works by this complex person’s agency, who acts in his human person as plenarily inspired by the Holy Ghost. This person who thus does that will of God — of God, even the Trinity — which is referred to the Father personally, does hereby, among other subjects of manifestation, especially manifest that which we may well suppose to be the preeminent object of display in the TRI-UNE Jehovah, the threefold personality of his one undivided essence. I am aware that the term ‘union of persons,’ as substituted for ‘union of natures,’ will be deemed objectionable, till it is well-considered. But I have the authority of one of the best philosophers I know, for thus entitling the human part of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
‘That which can contrive, which can design, must be a person. These capacities constitute personality, for they imply consciousness and thought. They require that which can perceive an end or purpose; as well as the power of providing means, and of directing them to their end. They require a centre in which perceptions unite, and from which volitions flow; which is mind. The acts of a mind prove the existence of a mind; and whatever a mind resides in, is a person. The seat of intellect is a person.’ (Paley’s Nat. Theol. pp. 439, 440, 14th Edn.)
Now, is it not plain from Scripture, and the admission of all Christians, with a very few heretical exceptions, that the Lord Jesus had this human mind, distinct from his godhead? He had, therefore, according to this description, a person distinct from his divine person. — And what is to hinder that divine person, if the will of God is so, from taking up a human person into union with himself, and acting in that person, from there, and not in his divine person? Is not that union real, which subsists between this divine person and this human person, when this human person, having been first generated, is afterwards inhabited by his co-equal, co-essential, in the unity of God? Does it not also subsist without forfeiture of distinctness? Is it not also constant and unbroken, when that divine person evermore acts in and by that human person, putting his godhead as it were into abeyance? Yet, are not his acts and his sufferings the acts and sufferings