The Doctrine of Divine Love

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THE
DOCTRINE OF DIVINE LOVE;

or,
OUTLINES OF THE MOR AL THEOLOGY OF THE

EVANGELI CAL CHUR CH.
BY
ERNEST SARTORIUS,
DOCTOR OF THEOLOGY, GENERAL SUPERINTENDENT,

CONSISTORIAL DIRECTOR AND SENIOR COURT PREACHER AT
KÖNIGSBERG.
Translated by
SOPHIA TAYLOR,
TRANSLATOR OF UHLHORN’S HISTORT OF CHRISTIAN CHARITY,

LUTHARDT’S APOLOGETIC WORKS, ETC.

EDINBURGH:
T. & T. CLARK, 88 GEORGE STREET,
1884.

FROM THE AUTHOR’S PREFACES TO THE FORMER
SEPARATE DIVISIONS.
I. To The First And Second Editions Of The First Division.
ON PRIMARY LOVE AND ITS OPPOSITE.
THEOLOGY is a sacred science, it is practical knowledge, i.e. a combination of

the apprehension of the intellect with the dispositions of the heart. This was
an axiom of older, and especially of Protestant theologians, who were always
mindful that the Reformation was based upon the scriptural doctrine of
reform, in other words, upon the moral renovation of man by repentance and
faith, that it was itself but a renewal of our Lord’s earliest preaching: Repent
ye, and believe the gospel (Mark i. 15; Luke xxiv. 47; com p. Luther’s first the-
sis). The first Protestant manual, Melanchthon’s Loci, 1524, beginning with the
locus de hominis viribus adeoque de libero arbitrio, and proceeding to the great
contrasts of sin and grace, law and gospel, repentance and faith, cannot, in the
modern sense of the terms, be designated as a work either on dogmatics or
morals; what it teaches concerning faith is full of practical moral energy, and
what it teaches of practice is full of the vital energy of faith. Protestant theol-
ogy was a practical science, and sought to assert itself as such, although pre-
vailing polemical interests and the strict forms of academic scholarship alien-
ated it more and more from life,—a circumstance on the one hand a result, on
the other a cause, of the separation of ethics and dogmatics. The reaction of
Pietism was in its way beneficial; but, being combined with a certain amount
of aversion to theological knowledge, it produced no revival within it, but
rather attempted to bring in the practical as an addition only. Thus a contrast
was formed between theory and practice, knowledge and experience, doctrine
and love, which, in the days of Illuminism, led to a total rupture between
ethics and dogmatics, life and faith; faith being regarded as only a subjective
opinion and divinity as a mere collection of doctrinal opinions, by no means
necessary, though in many respects useful, to a moral life, which by the due
exertion of man’s own power might be developed and perfected even without

Divine assistance. Where the need of such higher assistance was still main-
tained by Supernaturalists, it was chiefly regarded as only that higher instruc-
tion which must be given to a man by God by means of Revelation, and
according to which he must himself order both his life and will. Rationalism,
on the other hand, maintained the sufficiency of reason and denied the neces-
sity of higher instruction. And thus arose that endless preliminary contest
about the principles of knowledge, which stirred at one and the same time all
schools of philosophy, was discussed in those of theology only between a
more or less consistent Pelagianism, and promoted neither Christian practice
nor Christian knowledge. With respect to practice, it was, even when results
were favourable, unfruitful, because it had no direct reference thereto, but
was always revolving about the interests of doctrine and knowledge only. It
was, however, as unfruitful with respect to knowledge, because by reason of
its dealing only with the means of knowledge, it never attained to its matter,
to knowledge itself (2 Tim. iii. 7). One result was the quite immoderate expan-
sion and prominence of prolegomena and introductions in all works and lec-
tures on systematic theology, in which, contrary to all rules of scientific sym-
metry, the very extensive and detached vestibule was almost as large as the
edifice of the system itself. In these Prolegomena in the chapters on religion,
reason and revelation, faith and knowledge, miracles and prophecies, and
many other subjects really forming parts of Christian doctrine itself, were
discussed in a provisional manner. By such preliminary and merely formal
handling these matters lost not only their due position and importance, but
were also subjected to the interpolation of arbitrary assumptions, which
decided on the process of the system even before it was begun. With all the
apparent profundity which these endless and generally wearying Prolegom-
ena exhibited, their summary and partial nature was, nevertheless, very
detrimental to true knowledge. For these mere prefaces and discourses of the
author prevented the matter from speaking for itself, and having due justice
done to it, and already prejudged the different matters before their turn for
special treatment had arrived. A disproportionate importance was also thus
given to formal questions, while really weighty matters were, on account of
the provisional character of the discussion, only here and there spoken of in
that general manner, which attains no definite results and often conceals so
much inaccuracy, that the concise treatment of a single definite subject is often

of more scientific value than volumes of Prolegomena, in which the constant
reinvestigation of the sources is ever occupying the time which should be
spent in drinking from the stream.
The very title of the present attempt assumes the existence of an evan-
gelical Church, and that all its readers know that this Church bases its Credo in
Deum, etc., upon Holy Scripture. Hence, instead of the usual definitions of
religion, reason, revelation, etc., it starts with that scriptural definition of God,
as brief as it is excellent, God is Love (1 John iv. 8), which is not merely the
commencement, but also the vital principle from which theology, i.e. the doc-
trine of God or of Divine love, is developed in that community of believers
called the evangelical Church, and perceives by faith the nature, the works
and the benefits of that Love (1 John iv. 16). Since, then, faith in the love
wherewith God, as our Creator and Redeemer, first loved us, necessarily
begets in us the love wherewith we on our part love Him and keep His com-
mandments, this theology involves also the anthropological principle of evan-
gelical morality, which is as indissolubly connected with theology as the love
which we practise is with the love which we believe. Hence we find concen-
trated in love and its return, as combined in the words of St. John: We love
Him because He first loved us (1 John iv. 19), the sum-total of systematic the-
ology, of law and gospel, of dogma and practice, which though distinct are
united in the principle of Divine love. To give their joint exposition the title of
Moral Theology is justified not merely by the fact that in it morality is com-
bined with theology, but above and beyond this, because theology, as the
doctrine of the absolutely Good, or of absolute Love, is of an entirely moral or
sacred character, and also because the moral and the anthropological, as the
image of the Divine, are combined both theologically and in theanthropology.
The indissoluble nature of this twofold knowledge is well expressed by
Augustine in the significant saying: If I knew myself, O Lord! I should know
Thee. As however no fault can be found with the treatment of a comprehen-
sive science in different volumes, or of single divisions of the same in separate
parts, so neither can blame attach to separate treatises of dogmatics and
morals. When however an internal divorce is the result of such external sepa-
ration, when those absolutely ethical doctrines of evangelical theology and
anthropology, the doctrines of the Divine image, of sin, of repentance, of justi-

fication and sanctification, are misconceived or ignored, and morality is then,
in self-righteous fashion, constructed from its own principles, science is much
deteriorated by such a disagreement of systematic theology with itself, the
peculiar doctrinal and moral tenets of the Church are obscured, and the life is
deprived of the vital power of evangelical faith. Hence Nitzsch did good ser-
vice by the re-combination of the ethic and the dogmatic, which he introduced
in his System der Christlichen Lehre.
The present work on moral theology (the second division of which will
subsequently appear), by relinquishing the usual preliminary discussions, and
by entering at once into the inner sanctuary of its subject, withdraws from the
much-contended battlefields of the day, and retires not merely from ordinary
controversy and its trivial phraseology, but, mindful moreover that its princi-
ple is Divine Love, would not only avoid strife, but also endeavour to pro-
mote a spirit of peace even in the midst of opposites. The main points of pend-
ing controversies will be discussed in their places, in the development of the
doctrine itself, in a manner consistent with the ethical character of the whole.
Christian love is the love not merely of friends, but of foes, and as such may
neither ignore nor deny the hostile opposites which it grieves to encounter; it
must never fail (1 Cor. xiii. 8), and, founded on Christ the Reconciler, must
never give up the hope of reconciling the hostile. Truly, no self-invented pro-
posals of concession, no speculative fusions of opposites will reconcile their
discord, but only the love of Christ, the one Mediator, in whom dwelleth,
besides the fulness of the Godhead, the fulness also of wisdom and love to
reconcile all opposites, that hearts may be comforted, being knit together in
love and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowl-
edgment of the mystery of God (Col. i. 19, ii. 2). Perfect love is perfect knowl-
edge and perfect practice (1 Cor. xiii. 9-12). Peace be to the brethren, and love
with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. vi. 20).
K ÖNIGSBERG, March 1840 and June 1842.
II. Preface To The First Edition Of The Second Division.
OF REDEEMING LOVE.

The theological and anthropological doctrine of Divine love, its nature,
object and contrast, having been discussed in the first division of this work,
the anthropologic or Christologic doctrine of the reconciliation of this contrast
now follows, to be itself followed in a third division by the pneumatological
doctrine of sanctification and renewal.1 The internal connection of these parts,
the essentialness of each, and the necessity of the transition from one to the
other, is from the simplicity of the leading fundamental ideas self-evident. Love
as the primal source of all good, its contrast selfishness as the source of all evil,
and self-denial as the conquest of this contrast and the renewal of the bond of
love between God and man,— these are the necessary and chief elements in a
treatise, which is to regard Divine Love in every aspect, whether as existing,
suffering or acting. Hence it cannot be objected to, but must on the contrary be
regarded by all as indispensable, that in the doctrine of Divine love, the article
of redemption, which is the greatest and most sacred work of God’s love,
should form a chief portion, though many, who have been accustomed to rele-
gate this doctrine exclusively to dogmatics, might hesitate at letting it occupy
so large a space in a system of moral theology. For they have hitherto referred
to morality, in its abstraction from dogma, only the human side of the good,
from which they desire to separate the theological and Christological side,
considering the latter to appertain to the province of religious faith and
knowledge, the former to that of moral life and action. This severance of the
moral and the theological, which is of Pelagian origin and which places ethics
in a position of self-sufficient independence, is the very thing which this moral
theology, this doctrine of Divine love, both desires to oppose and must oppose.
It desires to do so in the interest of the living science of Christianity, which
consists not of the two divided and merely co-ordinate branches of dogma
and morals, but in an indivisible life of God in man and man in God. None is
good, but God only; there is no knowledge of the good, of true morality, with-
out the knowledge of God, the absolute Good; He is love, i.e. the absolute
Good, the perfect self-communicating fulness of life (summum bonum est com-
1 A busy life, with but little leisure, must plead my excuse for the long intervals at which these divisions
have appeared. The same cause forbids me to contemplate the appearance of the third until after a con-
siderable period. The present division may also be regarded as an independent monograph on the doc-
trine of the atonement.

municativum sui); all that is good is so only through His goodness, through the
communication of His love, through the image of Himself, and what is evil is
so only by reason of its contrast to Him. “Nothing avails with Him but His
own image.” That alone, in other words absolute and infinite good, can be the
principle, standard and aim of all relative good in the finite. All morality,
which is not religion, is either only civil morality, and contented with that
righteousness of works which even the natural man, though weak, can him-
self by his own will perform, or it offers only abstracta pro concreto, shadow for
substance, now rising in its own mind to the vain heights of self-righteousness
(autonomy), now sinking down again into eudæmonistic enjoyment. The holy
is the interpenetration of the religious and the moral; the holy can be known
only in the holiest of all, i.e. in God. Holy ethics must be theological as well as
anthropological, dogmatic as well as moral. The moral is nothing else than the
Divine in man, that Divine image in him, which is disfigured by sin and
restored by Christ Hence all the doctrines of our holy faith, all its articles,
from the first man’s creation in God’s image to the last, the last judgment, are
also doctrines of holy life; for the just lives by his faith.
There are not two kinds of Christian doctrine, not two kinds of Chris-
tian truth, one dogmatic the other moral, but only one holy truth, revealed by
the Spirit, who is equally the Spirit of truth and the Holy Spirit, and deposited
in Scripture, which, according to its whole contents, both human and Divine,
is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in right-
eousness (2 Tim. iii. 16). As inspired by the Holy Ghost, all that it contains,
whether treating of God, or man, or the God-man, whether law or gospel, has
a moral purpose, a holy aim. It is true that the one holy Christian doctrine has
many members, and is divided into articles and portions, and that single arti-
cles may, in pursuance of special objects, be separately discussed and treated
of, just as a physiologist concerns himself now with this, now with that mem-
ber or organ of the body. But as the members are all nevertheless members of
only one body, so too must all parts of Christian doctrine form but one living
whole, in which the Divine and the human, the evangelical and the legal,
though indeed distinct, appear everywhere united, and whose unifying head
is Christ the Lord, into whom we are all to grow up in the truth of love (Eph.
iv. 15). A strict distinction has ever been maintained in the Church, and espe-

cially in the evangelical Church, between the law and the gospel, and this dis-
tinction was, before the separation of dogmatics and ethics, carried out with
much greater clearness than afterwards; nay, the farther the attempt to sepa-
rate practice and faith has in recent times been carried, the more has it been
lost sight of. Expressly, however, as their difference was brought forward, and
decided as was the distinction made between faith and love, justification and
sanctification, they were not separated, but on the contrary their inward con-
nection the more deeply perceived. Hence, even if, in order to gain more
space for details, certain directly practical parts of Christian doctrine, such as
the law, sin, sanctification and the new obedience, the Church, the home, the
state, etc., may be separately treated, and even more than two parts of the
Christian system of doctrine formed from them, they must still appear as only
portions or articles of the entire system, and never as an independent, self-
contained science. In the province of Christian theology there can be no such
system of morality severed from dogma. The attempt has been made to bring
this to pass, but in vain. The boundaries cannot be maintained, the one is
always encroaching upon the other, articles of dogma constantly appertaining
also to morals, and articles of morals to dogma. The doctrines of human
nature, of sin, of free-will, of regeneration, justification, sanctification and
renewal, are essentially moral and also essentially dogmatic; they are funda-
mental articles of Christian doctrine, which manifests, as in all its articles, so
especially in these, an ethic character, without our being able to ascribe them
specially either to ethics or dogmatics.2 Here too, in this central doctrine of
Christianity, the two are inseparably intertwined, and can no more be divided
than Christ Himself, though there have not been wanting some, who have
attempted to separate the union between the manhood and the Godhead in
Him.
The separation of ethics from dogmatics, which was at first but an
2 The Christliche Ethik of Dr. Harless, which offers much that is unusually excellent, allots pt. 2 to dog-
matics, “the historical development of the acts of the world-redeeming God; to ethics, the historical
development of men redeemed by Him.” The distinction is unmistakeable, but it cannot abolish the
organic connection of the two sides, and cannot, without vital peril to both, be carried out to a separation.
In the order of salvation especially they must pass over into each other, to which Harless’ Ethik gives
speaking testimony in its three divisions,—the blessing of salvation, the possession of salvation, the
preservation of salvation.

external one, but which as time advanced became more and more an internal
one, did much to impair both. Morality, alienated from its evangelical basis,
degenerated into Pelagian legalism, self-sufficiency and self-righteousness,
and thus sank back again to the very standpoint contended against by the
Christian conscience of the Reformers, who found it disfigured not merely by
the human traditions of a despotic hierarchy, but also by those of a non-Chris-
tian philosophy. 3 On the other hand, Doctrine, from which the fruits of faith
were plucked off, was more and more developed into a tree, rich indeed in
foliage, but devoid of fruit, and clothed in the subtle forms of a theoretic sys-
tem, in which the controversial interest of being in the right before men far
outweighed the practical interest of being righteous before God. There was
consequently a return to that scholasticism against whose forms, modelled
after the Aristotelian philosophy, the Reformers had so loudly protested This
scholasticism was either bent back into these forms or submitted to the for-
mulse of more modern philosophical systems; and the more it was emptied of
the eternal fulness of Christ (Col. ii. 8) and conformed to the temporary doc-
trines of men, the more pretentiously did it come forward under the name of
Rationalism. It debased the practical truths of faith to merely historical or philo-
sophical opinions, and both exalted and diffused a so-called enlightened
morality, conformed to the spirit of the age, deficient both in faith, works and
love, but overflowing with prudential and utilitarian maxims, and with that
self-righteousness which is in direct opposition to the gospel. That of which
the Confession of Augsburg complains in its 20th article again took place, viz.
“that the doctrine of faith, which must be the chief of all in the Church, lay
long unknown, as all must confess, that in preaching there was the most pro-
found silence concerning the righteousness of faith, and that only the doctrine
of works was urged in churches.” Consequently both the doctrine and prac-
3 The opposition to the then prevailing, and not merely scholastic philosophy, comes vividly out in
Melanchthon’s Loci of 1521, comp. also the Apology, p. 62: Ex his opinionibus jam ideo prolapsa res est, ut
multi irrideant nos, qui docemus, aliam justitiam præter philosophicam quærendam esse. Audivimus
quosdam pro concione ablegate Evangelio Aristotelis Ethica enarrare. Nec errabant isti si vera sunt quæ
defendant adversarii. Nam Aristoteles de moribus ideo scripsit erudite, nihil ut de his requirendum sit
amplius.—Itaque si recipimus hie adversariorum doctrinam, quod mereamur operibus rationis remis-
sionem peccatorum et justificationem, nihil jam intererit inter justitiam philosophicam aut certe phari-
saicam et Christianam. The opposition of the Reformers to the Rationalism and semi-Rationalism of their
days is still far from receiving its due literary appreciation.

tice of the evangelical Church fell into the deepest decay, which has of late
advanced to an entire and terrible denial of Christ and of His gospel, for
which it has been presumptuously supposed possible to substitute a modern
“self-gospel.”
These aberrations, however, of evangelical faith into a self-constructed

morality, are founded upon a perception, that in Christianity the chief matter
is not so much knowledge and the persuasion of the understanding and
memory, as righteousness before God and holiness, without which no one can
be pleasing to the Lord. However weakened and distorted the sacred funda-
mental feature of Christianity may be in the neological systems of morality,
they nevertheless justly lay the main stress upon its ethical content. Their great
errors are, that, on the one hand, they seek for this content only in its precepts,
which they do not seriously enough apply to the inmost depths of the heart,
and so fail to attain a profound perception of sin; and that, on the other, they
misconceive that fulness of Divine Love and life-giving energy poured forth
from the Divine revelations, gracious benefits and promises of the gospel, into
the needy souls of men, and which really and effectually give them the right-
eousness which the law of the commandments demands, but does not give. If
then it is at all events a narrowness to desire to restrict Christianity to its
moral teaching, to its law, it is on the other hand a necessity to bring back the
entire Christian faith to its sacred ethical basis, and both to recognise, in gen-
eral, the identity of religion and morality in the union of the Divine and
human, and to lay the foundation, in particular, of the moral renewal of sinful
man upon faith in Jesus Christ, the God-man and Redeemer.
Philosophy too will only be able to recompose and raise herself from
the dissolution into which she has fallen, by more profound investigation of
that witness of the Spirit of God, which is borne by the conscience and which
testifies not only the existence, but also the will of the personal God to our
spirit. Here lies the inward foundation of all religion; there is none without
conscience; conscience—in which are united self-consciousness and con-
sciousness of God and of the world, in which are concentrated knowledge and
will, feeling and judgment—is the Divine centre of the human spirit, in which
meet all the radii of Divine truth, bright when it is bright, obscure when it is

obscure.4 Theology, as the science of the Divine and its opposite, and of their
reconciliation, moves entirely in a holy, i.e. a moral element, and cannot there-
fore be rightly understood by mere knowledge, but only by an active con-
science, which finds its direction in the revealed law, its satisfaction in the
gospel. How can self-knowledge or conviction of sin exist without conscience,
or knowledge of Christ without self-knowledge and conviction of sin? And
why are even well-informed and learned men so often ignorant in the knowl-
edge of Christ, but because, with all their knowledge and ability, they are still
without selfknowledge and the knowledge of sin, and, with all their critical
labours, are still devoid of the sacred criticism of conscience? This deficiency
is the fundamental fault of modern criticism, which for this very reason puts
dissolution (Auflösung) in the place of redemption (Erlösung).
Conscious of the barrenness of the merely theoretical controversies

then and now carried on between Rationalism and Supernaturalism, I have
striven, from the beginning of my theological course, to reanimate the teach-
ing and science of the evangelical Church from that ethic basis of conscience
and will from which it originally sprang to vigorous life.5 For it is not so much
the insufficiency of his knowledge and perceptive power,—according to
which man is not judged before God,—as, on the contrary, the insufficiency of
his righteousness before God and of his will-power to work it out, which is
the fundamental assumption of Christianity in general and of the Reformation
in particular, as the first glance both into Holy Scripture and the writings of
the Reformers proves. There is deep and suggestive instruction, not only for
life, but also for theology, in Melanchthon’s saying: conscius mihi sum me non
ob aliam causam τεθεολογηκέναι, nisi ut vitam emendarem. Only the theology
of regeneration can prove the regeneration of theology, which is the science
not of the natural mind, but of the Holy Spirit. As the reconciliation and union
of the Divine and human is the essence of Christianity, so also must the dog-
matic and the moral, the Thetic and the ethic, be combined in Christian theol-
ogy to form one sacred science.6 These are the leading principles of the
4 Comp. Beck, Einl. in das System der Christlichen Lehre, Stuttgart 1838, p. 73: Conscience, as still originally
existing in degenerate human nature, is the central seat of all religion.

5 Compare die lutherische Lehre vom Unvermögen des freien Willens zur höheren Sittlichkeit, Göttingen 1820.
6 Compare Beck’s above-quoted work, p. 45 sq.: Christian science should be set up as the organic union

present work on moral theology, which it seemed the more necessary to dis-
cuss at somewhat greater length in the preface to this, its second division,
because its contents belong, according to the ordinary view, more especially
to the realm of dogma. The interests of the day have for the present directed
such paramount attention to the external edifice of ecclesiastical matters, that,
amidst noisy and controversial treatises thereon, words concerning redemp-
tion can scarcely hope to meet with quiet hearts to receive them with patience,
while they are sure to encounter the hostility of those to whom they are
already objectionable, because the Church acknowledges their doctrine as her
faith and her inmost life. Everything which savours of the earnestness of the
Church’s creed has become an object of hostile attack in the region of modern
literature; the conceit of the cultured looks down upon it with contempt, and
nothing is more unpopular with the masses, than the old sacred truth, whose
spirit reproves the selfishness of the flesh. It will, however, abide in undying
strength; for Christ dieth no more, but reigns in the midst of His enemies; and
since the essence of His truth is reconciling love, is love to enemies, it will not
cease to reconcile enemies and convert them into friends, till its last enemy is
overcome.
K ÖNIGSBERG, March 1844.
III. To The First Half Of The Third Division.
“On Divine Renewing And Obeying Love.”
The wish with which I bring out this division of my Doctrine of Divine
Love, in which the holy fruits of faith are described, is, that it may, only in a
subordinate sense, be regarded as mine, and chiefly, as its title designates, as
the moral theology of the evangelical Church. I am far from claiming to create
a system of theological ethics bearing my name, or to have discovered any new
fundamental notions, as Rothe has thought necessary, for a farther scientific
of dogmatics and ethics. Also Die Christliche Lehrwissenschaft nach den biblischen Urkunden, Stuttgart 1841,
Part 1, p. 30 sqq., where also the idea of love, as constituent of Christian science, and indeed of both its
Divine and human sides, is carried out.

advance in this department. It appears to me, on the contrary, that we have
recently so deeply declined from the dogmatic and ethic fundamental notions
of the Church, that nothing could be more opportune, than to endeavour to
work ourselves up to them again,—to reopen those closed-up living streams,
and to conduct them into the furrows of the dried-up pastures of the world. I
place myself, and theological science too, in the obedience of the fourth (fifth)
commandment, believing that theology has a promise of the future only if it
knows how rightly to honour its fathers, its past times, and to return from its
progress in those revolutionary errors in which it has but too much sought its
own honour. It is a gross non sequitur to suppose, that because physical sci-
ence has made undeniably important progress in modern times, theology
must also have greatly advanced in the knowledge of Divine truth. The
regions of spirit, lying even in the departments of philosophy and aesthetics,
are so little to be measured by the standards of time, that it would be a highly
perverted and false proceeding to place the thinkers, the poets, the painters of
antiquity behind those of the day just in proportion to the interval of time that
has elapsed between them. Let those who measure even the Holy Spirit, the
Spirit of eternity, by time, imagine themselves the masters of past ages, I will
remain a disciple not only of prophets and apostles, but also of fathers and
reformers; and gladly as I acknowledge, with the evangelical Church, that
Holy Scripture, or the testimony of the apostolical Church, is above her, still,
as a humble member of the former, I would not place myself above her, but
abide in and under her. I regard this Church, however, even in its Lutheran
type,—of which my treatise bears the impress in the present division
also,—not as a separate confession, but as a branch of the œcumenical Chris-
tian Church, which only lives and thrives in the common trunk of Christian
antiquity and the œcumenical creed. This parent stock, whose main evangeli-
cal branch has, in the Confession of Augsburg, its first and most general testi-
mony, I ever have advocated and will advocate as the only orthodox and anti-
heretical basis of true Christian union and ecclesiastical association; and I
believe that it is on this immoveable foundation alone, that a stedfast and
decided faith can be combined with large-hearted and comprehensive love,
without being betrayed into the modern fusions of a self-complacent latitudi-
narianism. This I have maintained, and that with a constant tendency to the
ethic side of dogma, during the thirty years of my official position in the

Church, and shall continue to maintain to the end of my life.
With respect to the form and method of my work, I am fully conscious

that, though standing on a common foundation, it is inferior to that of Harless
in precision and copiousness, and very far from equalling that of Rothe in that
dialectic estimation of ideas in which he is so skilled a master. Its develop-
ment of thought is no complex web, but spun from a single thread, and will
therefore, as it advances, not infrequently exhibit monotony or repetition.
Abstract logic, whose ideal is a perfectly arranged registry, and which cannot
tolerate the appearance in one branch of knowledge of what belongs to
another, is particularly offended with such repetitions; but the logic of life, as
manifested in many component members of one organism, cannot oppose the
mutual transposition of the members, nor complain that the same blood
should ever and again circulate from the heart through the whole. Starting
from the fundamental principle and feature of Divine love, my work will give
only its more general and chief features, and await their more special explana-
tion and application in some fuller and more learned performance, to which,
the more it shall be inspired by the breath of Divine love, the more gladly will
I yield the palm.
These main features, which from the nature of the case are discussed at
greater length in that portion which relates to the active obedience of Divine
love, I have, without regard to any other ethic scheme, united to the text of the
ten commandments, or to the first portion of the catechism. They who, like
myself, are convinced of the ethic importance of authority in general, and par-
ticularly of the necessity for the Divine authority of moral and judicial law,
neither would nor could do otherwise; and they who do not think themselves
too wise to engage in a deeper study of the two tables of the ark in connection
with the Old and New Covenants, cannot fail to perceive also that, as the
summary of the law of God, they are written by His finger as much on the
conscience as on tables of stone, and that for this very reason no scriptural
moral theologian would presume to disregard them, and to compose other
tables with a different arrangement of duties. The ten commandments are as
far above our self-composed moral systems, as Sinai is higher than our profes-
sorial chairs. Such systems are very fond of being diffusive in breadth, but

they only the more level thereby that sublime majesty and profound impres-
sion of the Divine law, on which so much depends in the matter of obedience.
To look down with scientific conceit upon the Decalogue, because it also
forms the first part of an instruction for children, is surely contrary to the
mind of Him, who placed a little child in the midst of His disciples, that they
might learn from it (Matt. xviii.). It is in fact a great disgrace to our public
schools, that their scholars often know far less of the ten commandments and
the articles of faith than children do. The catechism, with its scriptural teach-
ing of leading doctrines, is of infinitely greater importance to the prosperity of
the Church, to the welfare of the state, to the elevation of the degraded
masses, to the happiness of the world, than all the special ethical systems of
theologians and philosophers, which the more they seek to surpass it, the far-
ther they remain behind it. Hence I would rather keep to the catechism than to
any other—ism.
I have not in this division carried my observations on the command-

ments beyond the first four, which contain those duties of the subordination
of man to God and His ordinances, which now so specially need to be
expressed and impressed. It was necessary, in order not to enlarge the extent
of this part too much beyond that of the two former, and not too long to delay
its appearance, to break off here, and to reserve the completion of the work for
a second half of the third division. This will, in the further sequence of the
commandments, treat of love to one’s neighbour, and then of love as suffer-
ing, hoping and triumphing, so that the book will conclude with eschatology.
May the Lamb, who by loving and suffering bore the sins of the world and is
now seated triumphant at the right hand of the Majesty on high, vouchsafe to
bestow upon it now and hereafter the consecration of His gracious blessing.
IV. To The Second Half Of The Third Division.
Of Divine Obeying And Perfecting Love.
The first division of this work, which has already reached a third edi-
tion, appeared in the year 1840; the second, of which two editions have been
required, in 1844; the third in 1851; the fourth and last is now published. I take

this opportunity of publicly apologizing for having brought out a work, inter-
nally connected in all its parts, in this fragmentary manner, at intervals so
long and unequal, and for having thus unduly kept many courteous readers
waiting for the continuation and conclusion, which they had a right to expect.
It is moreover unmistakeable, that, in consequence of these interruptions, both
the expression and impression of a work of one melting and casting are fre-
quently forfeited, and that in default of reference to matter close at hand,
unavoidable repetitions have here and there appeared. On the other hand,
however, it cannot be denied that the later divisions have gained much by the
nonum prematur in annum. For not only have they had the advantage accruing
from longer study, but also that arising from the highly important and, in
moral respects, the extremely instructive experiences of the last decade. These
our times have embraced much history in few years, in them the subversive
consequences of unchristian principles have led to alarming results, in which
we cannot fail to perceive the judgments of God. The evangelical doctrine of
Divine love, whose holiness consists in self-denial, is from the beginning and
in principle directed against those self-supposed theories of a self-exalting
egoism, by which the philosophical, moral and social doctrines of the latest
generations are more or less pervaded. Deeply as those principles have been
condemned by their outcome and outbreak in repeated and blood-stained
revolution, and proved before the whole world, both formerly and again
recently, to be essentially and practically destructive, they still continue to live
in the selfishness of the old Adam, until he is born again to Divine love and
truth in Christ, and to attain increased diffusion and approbation, as many
very popular signs of the times now show. For, without the wisdom which is
from above, history upon earth makes no one wise, not even by experiences of
the greatest evils, just because without this wisdom the reason of the evil is
always regarded as something extraneous, and not by the acknowledgment of
the universal and hereditary evil of selfishness, as common and proper to man.
Certainly the Church of Christ is above all things called and bound to
oppose to the proud and self-righteous wisdom of this world and age, and to
the restless spirit by whom it is ruled (Eph. ii. 2), the sacred testimony of the
Spirit of truth concerning the Lord our God, who, both in the height of His
majesty and in the depths of His humiliation to the state of a servant, is Him-

self Divine Love, and thus to abase the wisdom of the world to folly before
God (1 Cor. i. 20). For the disciples of Christ, this destroys the power of its
sophistical seductions, against which St. Paul already warns us (Col. ii. 8), and
puts a check upon the spiritual forces and lying powers of the prince of this
world. It is to be lamented that modern theologians have not as yet more vig-
orously encountered this strong spirit of the world and age, which has so long
ruled secular literature, the newspaper press and public opinion, with the
stronger spirit and word of the eternal God (Luke xi. 22), and particularly that
in Catholic countries, which are so specially disturbed by spiritual and mate-
rial revolution, the clerical and ecclesiastical testimony has been, and still is,
so weak and hesitating. It follows, however, that there is all the more urgent
necessity, that we at least should on our part the more conscientiously com-
plete and recover what has been lost either by sloth or slumber, and oppose
with resolute consistency in every department of morals, whether greater or
smaller, all the devices of the negative or oppositive and revolutionary princi-
ple of selfishness, and should thus unflinchingly counteract them by both the
law and gospel of Divine love. This sacred duty I have, in the present and last,
as well as in the former division of my Outlines of the Moral Theology of the
Evangelical Church, endeavoured to the best of my power to fulfil, and thus
also to refute the recent and still raging views of those who, by banishing
morals from the region of politics, demoralize the latter. Hence I can but
expect that this book will displease the entire rationalistic liberal party, which
is ever and again emerging in new rhetorical forms, from its extreme commu-
nistic left, and through all its syncretistic sections (among which that of Bun-
sen is now the chief), to its refined and oscillating centre, and will also find no
acceptance among its professional scholars and recently created doctors of
theology, made such more amoris than honoris causa. I do not however despair
of extorting, by my present work, at least some scientific respect from even
such scholars, for the first portion of our small and larger catechisms, which
greatly excels all modern systems of morals, and leaves far beneath it the sup-
posed higher ethics of all older and more recent orders, sects, and schools, and
philosophical morality in general.
It only remains to take a retrospect of the whole now completed work,

and by a short survey of the contents of the several divisions to point out to

the reader the internal connection of the whole. The four divisions form two
parts or volumes, each of which is subdivided into three sections. The first two
divisions form the first part, and bear the common title, Divine Love, its con-
trast, and the reconciliation of this contrast. The first section, on primary
Divine Love, treats in Chapter I. of the Triune God, in Chapter II. of creation,
III. of the Divine image in man, IV. of his original surroundings. The second
section, also divided into four chapters, treats, Chapter I., of the nature of sin;
II., of the universality and beginning of sin; III., of Divine law, its principle, its
extent, and the imputation of sin through the law; IV., of the inability of the
natural free will to fulfil the law, the need of redemption, and the preparation
thereof. The third section, on Divine Love as reconciling, treats in Chapter I. of
Christ, the Reconciler of God and man; in Chapter II. of the reconciliation
through the sacrifice of a perfect fulfilment of the law by the Reconciler; in
Chapter III. of the objective appropriation of the reconciliation through the
Holy Spirit’s means of grace in the Christian Church; and Chapter IV, of the
subjective appropriation thereof through faith, or of justification. The treat-
ment of all these subjects will show that they belong as essentially to Ethics as
to Dogmatics. The last two divisions form the second part, and bear the joint
title of Divine Love renewing, obeying and perfecting. This part also contains
three sections, standing in relation to those of the first part. The first section
treats of Divine Love renewing, or of sanctification, and is divided into two
chapters—I. on love purifying; II. on love uniting. The second section dis-
cusses the new obedience, or Divine Love obeying, and treats, Chapter I., of
the agency of love in the new obedience; II., of the fulfilling of the three
commandments of the first table; III., of the fulfilling of the fourth command-
ment by reverent love; IV., of the fulfilling of the fifth to the tenth command-
ments of the second table by the love of one’s neighbour (conjugal, brotherly
love, etc.); V, of the conclusion of the commandment and the Decalogue in
general. With this is connected the third and last section on Divine Love per-
fecting, which is divided into two chapters—I., on the patience and hope of
love in sufferings and death; and II., on eternal life, the last judgment, and the
triumph of Divine Love.
In this entire work, now by God’s gracious assistance completed, what-

ever is lacking or faulty must be set to my account, and redound to my humili-

ation and confusion, in the presence of the height and depth and length and
breadth of such a subject (Eph. iii. 18); whatever is good and imperishable
comes from God, the alone good, who is Himself pure Love, and redounds to
the honour of the German Evangelical Church, which discerns it most clearly,
and whose honoured and enlightened fathers I esteem more highly than
myself and all the theologians of the day.
DR. ERNEST SARTORIUS.
K ÖNIGSBERG, Sept. 1, 1856.
CONTENTS.
PART I.
DIVINE LOVE, ITS CONTRAST, AND THE RECONCILIATION
THEREOF.
SECTION I.
OF PRIMARY LOVE, OR OF GOD AND THE DIVINE IMAGE IMPRESSED
ON MAN AT HIS CREATION.
CHAP. PAGE
I. Of God, ........ 3
II. Of Creation, ....... 22
III. Of the Divine Image in Man, ..... 28
IV. Of the External Circumstances of the First Man, ... 39
SECTION II.

SIN AND THE LAW.
I. Of the Nature of Sin, . . . . . .44
II. Of the Universality and Beginning of Sin, .... 58
Appendix.—Of The Devil, . . . 74
III. Of natural and revealed Law, its Principle and Extent, and of
the Imputation of Sin through the Law, ... 88
IV. Of the Inability of tho natural Free Will to ful61 the Law; of
Susceptibility of Redemption; and how the Law is the Pre-
paration of this Susceptibility, . .... 108
SECTION III.
OF DIVINE RECONCILING LOVE.
CHAP. PAGE
I. Of the Reconciler, ....... 128
II. Of Reconciliation by the perfect fulfilling of the Law or the
sufficing Sacrifice of the Reconciler, . . . .147
III. Of Reception into Communion with the Reconciler by the means
of Grace in the Christian Church, . . . .176
IV. Of the Appropriation of the Reconciliation, or of the justifying

Love of God, and of Faith in the same, . . .212
PART II.
OF DIVINE LOVE RENEWING, OBEYING AND PERFECTING. SECTION I.
OF DIVINE RENEWING LOVE.
Introductory Remarks, ...... 241
I. Of Love Purifying, ....... 246
II. Of Love Uniting, ....... 260
SECTION II. OP DIVINE LOVE OBETING. I. Of Active and Obeying Love, 310
SECTION III.
I. Of the Patience and Hope of Love in Sufferings and Death, . 324
II. Of Eternal Life, the Last Judgment, and the Victory of Love, . 355
Part First. PRIMARY DIVINE LOVE: ITS CONTRAST,

AND THE RECONCILIATION OF THAT CONTRAST.
SECTION I. OF PRIMARY LOVE, OR OF GOD AND THE

DIVINE IMAGE IN WHICH MAN WAS CREATED.
CHAPTER I. OF GOD.
GOD is love; he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him; every
one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God: for God is love (1 John iv.
7-16; comp. John xiv. 20-24 and xv. 9-12). All the propositions concerning the

nature and attributes of God usually explained after long preliminary discus-
sions in theological manuals, with abstract and often merely negative prolix-
ity, are summed up by the apostle in the great saying, God is love, in one liv-
ing, all-comprising, all-producing idea by which every one who has known
and experienced anything of the living power of love—and what human
being has not?— may know God, and know not only that He is, but also what
He is (1 John iv. 7). It becomes evangelical theology to start, not from defini-
tions of its own invention, but from an idea of God given in Holy Scripture,
and that not by some prophet of the Old Covenant, but by the apostle and
great prophet of the New Testament, by that bosom disciple of Him who is in
the bosom of the Father, of the only-begotten Son, who has declared unto us
what no eye has seen and no ear heard of God (John i. 18). God is love; this
apothegm of the Holy Ghost, in which all theology is enclosed, comes from
the depths of Deity. It is a God-given axiom, which we cannot surpass, but
from which we start; it is the principle of our science, 7 as it is also the principle
of all existence and life; for as God is God just because He is love, so too does
every creature exist through His love. But how are we to know God from His
word, which testifies of Him as love, if we do not first know what love is?
And how are we to get this knowledge? Words and definitions will not give
it, but only the possession of that love itself through which we are of divine
lineage. He that loveth is born of God and knoweth God; he that loveth not
knoweth not God, because he has no fellowship with Him. He that loveth
knoweth what love is, that it is not self-seeking, not egoism, but tuism, a liv-
ing, a tending of one to another (des Ichs zum Du), of the subject to its object,
and indeed to its personal and equal object. It is true that pleasure in and
desire for a material object or possession is called love in the broader and
lower sense of the word, as we speak, e.g., of a love of property or pleasure.
But as there is in this case a person only on one side, and on the other only a
thing, which neither experiences nor returns love, we have here but a
onesided, unequal, heterogeneous relation, in which the impersonal object is
in such wise subordinated to the personal subject, that the latter finds in the
former only the nourishment and increase of his egoism, and for want of
7 Its antithesis is that principle of the scientific system, already outlived, though deeply intertwined
with the egoism of the day, which, beginning with the human, I am Ego, and not advancing to Thou, but
only to the Non-ego, presents a complete theory of arrogant self-seeking.

communication of himself and what he possesses to other persons, continues
and is lost in unloving selfishness. The fundamental assumption of love is
consciousness, is personality; as none but persons can love, so can none but
persons be loved in the true sense of the word, because they alone can love in
return. In the higher and divine sense of the word, love is the oneness or
union of distinct persons, and this is, in the highest and most complete sense,
the triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Love. The older the-
ologians well perceived that that fundamental axiom, John iv. 16, contained
the entire knowledge of God. Gerhard, in his Loci Theol. loc. 2, cap. 6, § 84,
calls it a practical, i.e. an ethically active, definition of God, and says: “The
God of revelation is rightly denned as Love, because He does everything in
and from love—from love proceed all the works 6f God; the Holy Ghost, who
proceeds from the Father and the Son, is the essential love of the Father and
the Son; it was from love that God created all things in time, from love that He
sent His Son to effect the work of redemption, from love that He gives the
Holy Spirit, who arouses a like emotion in the hearts of believers. As, then, a
practical definition of God is derived from love, so also does the practical
knowledge of God consist in love. It profits nothing to dispute with subtlety
concerning God, and meantime to be without love to that highest Good, that
essential Love.”
God is Love; and whoso loveth not, knoweth not God, and is an alien
from true religion, which is one with true love. It is universally true that with-
out love there is no true knowledge, just as without knowledge there is no
true love, because the union between subject and object is wanting; the spirit
of truth is also the spirit of love, the bond of union between different persons.
Whatever amount of truth is contained in fragmentary proofs of the existence
of God, from the necessity of a first cause of the universe, from its order and
its laws, it all falls back upon the self-evidence of creative love, which it is not
so much we who prove by our wisdom, as itself which rather proves itself to,
and in, and about us, and manifests to us its eternal power and Godhead
through the works of creation (Rom. i. 19, 20). It is not by this multitude of
individual objects, this heap of things in the world atomistically regarded, i.e.
without love, that we know God; for He is neither one nor another of these
things (Polytheism), nor their totality (Pantheism), nor their mere fabricator in

Olim’s workshop, but that transcendent spiritual bond which, surpassing all
creatures, draws the one to the other, combines them all into a harmonious
and higher unity, and all-producing, allcontrolling, pervades as well as
embraces, upholds as well as governs, and morally orders the whole
world—which is God, which is Love. Love, upon whom the eyes of all wait, is
everywhere present, knows all, is mindful of all,—for what she forgot would
perish (Isa. xlix. 15),—embraces all her children even when sleeping, even
when dreaming and unmindful of her; nay, when in the hardness of their
hearts they desire to know nothing of her, she never forsakes them, but has
compassion on them, and manifests herself anew to them in the work of
redemption (Heb. i. 1-3). She is not, however, perceived by the sleeping and
the obdurate. Egoism bound only to itself knows not her bond; she is either
concealed from its narrowness, or too tender for its rudeness; even in human
relations she is foolishness to it, because the natural man (and that is just the
egoist) discerneth not the things of the Spirit of God, who is Love (1 Cor. ii.
14). And hence fools and the slothful of heart say indeed, there is no God (Ps.
xiv. 1). Lovelessness is godlessness, and this, wise as it may often be in
worldly matters and in its own interests, yet being blind and deaf and dumb
to that which, surpassing the bounds of its selfism, is the happiness of all as
well as of individuals, leads to darkness and perdition. He who loveth not
knoweth not God, because he knoweth not love, because as love is foreign to
him, so also is God. Love is known only by him whose self-conscious soul is
touched, moved, and penetrated thereby. Without it, the selfish man recog-
nises only an external, divine, supreme power confronting him, to which he
unwillingly and slavishly submits, or lives in God-forgetting levity. Not till
his affections are gained, his heart softened, his will made pliant by love, does
he recognise a spiritual, a divine power, which touches his inmost being, gen-
tly constrains, and at once deepens its sense for both its own inner and the
outer world, and unselfs the soul by delivering it from its self-circumscribed
boundaries, incorporating it into that Spirit of whom, and through whom, and
in whom are all things (Rom xi. 36); whoso loveth is born of God, and
knoweth God (1 John iv. 7). Only through perfect love, which is at the same
time perfect religion, will the fragmentary cease and knowledge be perfect, so
that we shall know even as we are known of divine love (1 Cor. xiii. 8-12).

God is Love; when this “practical definition of God” has been slighted
for all sorts of unpractical definitions and descriptions of the idea, the being,
and the attributes of God, we directly encounter that pernicious separation of
theory and practice, of metaphysics and ethics, which as much alienates truth
from life as life from truth, makes knowledge dead and action ignorant. Cer-
tainly the most practical, i.e. the most living, notion of the living God, who is
the source and fulness of all life, must also be theoretically the most correct,
and this it will be, the less it places together in juxtaposition mere characteris-
tics, and the more it brings forth all fulness from its internal resources. Is not
all that can be said of God’s spiritual, infinite, eternal nature, of His omnipo-
tence and omniscience, His holiness, justice, and truthfulness, as well as of His
blessedness and glory, comprised in the notion of absolute love? How little is
said when it is affirmed that God is a Spirit, when His incorporeity and invisi-
bility are only negatively asserted, or thought and will positively ascribed to
Him without any kind of qualitative or significant definition! Love is spirit, is
light, is life, is conscious personal life, which is not merely subjectively
engrossed in its own state, but also objectively diffuses, manifests and imparts
itself, and both fills all with itself and itself with all. In love is the true subjec-
tive objectivity, and hence in her and in her faithfulness alone are truth and
truthfulness. Infinity and eternity are but negative abstractions, unless they
are conceived of as filled by love, whose nature is to be unbounded and
unending (1 Cor. xiii. 8), but itself unrestrained to restrain, to embrace, to
pervade all things. Whence else could the love, which produces all that is
finite, arise, but from infinite love, and what else is, therefore, the eternal
cause of all that exists and subsists, but eternal primary love? And is not this
love, which made and orders all things, almighty and all-knowing? Is it not
that creative energy which powerfully and wisely arranges all, and produces
and preserves all the connection, harmony and mutual love of the creatures?
What else, too, is holiness, but love which desires only the holy, the good, i.e.
the Godlike, and is angry with the evil, the ungodlike, because it is the ruin of
man. And what else is justice than the order, the law of love, and the putting
that law into execution? The attributes of the divine nature, knowledge, and
will are explained and combined in too poor and human a relation of reflec-
tion, if they are not perceived to be one in all-comprehending love, which, as
free as necessary in its action, is not so much an attribute which God has, as

the nature which He is;8 for God is Love. Love almighty, all-knowing, holy, is
His glory, is His blessedness, for without love there is no blessedness.
God is love, not merely as the Creator and Preserver of the world, not
through and in the world only, not by means of anything else than Himself,
not first in time or per accidens, but by His nature absolutely, by means of
Himself, in Himself, for Himself, from eternity. He is infinitely perfect, eternal
Love impersonate, and that in more than One Person; for love consists in a
union of different persons. The subject of love is inconceivable without its
object, personal love without a personal object, without which it would be but
self-love. Hence the I requires a Thou, the first a second person, the loving a
beloved, without whom he could not love. God conceived of as only I, as a
mere subject, would be absolute egoism, and thus the very reverse of love. A
subject without an object is as inconceivable as thinking without a thought, or
a light which does not give light; only by means of its object, only by the fact
of its being consciously distinct from its object, is it personal; and only by the
fact of its object being also personal, is it in the union of subjective and objec-
tive personality personal love. Hence as truly as God is personal love, and as
truly as there can be no love without an object, without one beloved, so truly
is He both at once the Loving and Beloved, the Father and the Son (ὁ υἱός ὁ
ἀγαπητός, Matt. iii. 17, xvii. 5; John iii. 35, v. 20, xvii. 24; Eph. i. 4). God is a
Father; herein is expressed both His personality and love, His imparting and
producing love, whereby He, in and from the perfect fulness of His being,
begets His adequate object, the second coeternal Person to His eternal Person,
and imparts to Him all His own perfection. The nature of all love is to impart
(bonum est communicationum sui), hence the nature of that most perfect love
which the Father is, is to impart most perfectly; hence it could not but be that
the Father should concentrate, with infinite, eternal, vital energy, the whole
sphere of His divine essence and glory in the central-point of a second self-
consciousness, in a second Person,9 who is the eternal Thou of the eternal I,
8 It is sufficient here to hint how much modern theologians might, in the matter of the divine attributes,
learn from those of past times, at the head of whom Melancthon, Loc. Theol. de Deo, already affirms con-
cerning the divine attributes: sunt ipsa essentia; comp. Gerhard, Loci Theol. loc. 3, de natura Dei.
9 The Latin expression persona is in dogmatic use identical with the German Selbstbewusstseins (self-
consciousness) or Ich. As in ourselves self-consciousness is distinct from our nature, of which it is objec-

and who, just because He proceeds from the First or Father, and has what He
has from Him, is called the Son. 10 Hence then, because the most perfect recep-
tion must correspond to the most perfect communication,—for all communion
of love presupposes both the communication and the reception of love, and is as
communicative as it is participative,—all that the Father hath is the Son’s
(John xvi. 15); and the latter is, though not through Himself but through the
Father, His essential equal, as His light-giving, life-imparting creative Word
(John i. 1-4), as the express image of His being (Col. i. 15; Phil. ii. 6), and the
effulgence of His glory (Heb. i. 3), whom He loved before the foundation of
the world (John xvii. 24), and by whom and for whom He made all things
(Col. i. 16-19). Not as though the Son were, or as though He had, another
being beside the infinite Father; for if each had had His own to Himself, they
would then not have had all in common, they would then have confronted
each other in mutual limitation, in a dualistic manner, halving, so to speak,
infinity, not almighty but half-mighty, as two half-gods. No, says Christ, I and
the Father are one (John x. 30, 38); the Son is not beside the Father as a second
God, but in Him, in His bosom (John i. 18), in the one infinite glory of His
being, a sharer thereof (ὁμοούσιος) through the infinite unenvious love of the
Father (John xvii. 24), who reserves nothing egoistically to Himself, 11 but
imparts all to Him without thereby losing or alienating anything (John iii. 35);
for, on the contrary, the more love gives, the more it has and the happier it is,
it is rich only with the one beloved, without him poor, nay, extinguished like a
light which does not shine. The Father would not be all love, unless the Son as
His essential image were entirely His equal, unless all that was His were also,
without being thereby doubled, the Son’s also (John xvii. 10), but with the dis-
tively conscious as its circumference, and is the central-point which concentres the whole nature or sub-
stance, so must the notions person and being, or person and nature, be distinct in theology and Chris-
tology.
10 Because in Him the self-thought of God becomes objectivized thought, His consciousness knowledge
or wisdom, His percipient perception, He is called the Logos or the Word, as the expressed summary of
all the divine thoughts, whereby all things came into existence. Hence, too, the begetting of the Son has
been represented as an effect of divine thought. And this is correct, inasmuch as this process is ever but a
mental and metaphysical one, which, however, is carried on more by the ethics of divine love than by
the logic of divine knowledge.
11 Pater filium aequalem habere aut noluit aut non potuit, si noluit invidus est, si non potuit, infirmus
est.—August. Epist. 238. 25.

tinction, which must be well borne in mind, that all that the Son hath, He hath
not from Himself, but from the Father (John v. 19 sqq.); for if He had it from
Himself, He would then be a second Father, and not what He is through the
love of the Father, and thus the original unity of their relation, and conse-
quently that of God, would be given up, and we should fall into a dualism of
gods. Hence it is essential to monotheism to maintain the eternal generation of
the only-begotten Son of the Father (John i. 18), or the ever-proceeding impar-
tation, from the eternal love of the Father, of all His glory to the only imma-
nent Son, without which the Son would be neither Son nor God (Deus de Deo,
lumen de lumine), but an idol or creature, and the Father would not be the
Father in the nature of the Godhead, and would become such only when the
world was made, and by means of temporal creatures, and then such only in
the figurative sense of the word, a Father not to a homogeneous equal Son,
but to heterogeneous and adopted children.
If, then, because God is infinitely perfect love, He is for that very reason
both the subject and object of His love, both loving and beloved, Father and
Son, it undeniably follows that both are distinct though not separate, but on
the contrary as much essentially one as personally united, and that not merely
by the love through which the Son is in the bosom of the Father, but also by
the mutual love wherewith as the Father loves the Son, so also the Son loves
the Father. Of necessity both the giving (amare) and receiving (amari) of love,
as also its requital (redamare), or mutual love, appertain to the communion, to
the uniting bond of love. This responsive, mutual love of the Father and the
Son, proceeding from both, does not therefore separate into two effects, nor re-
combine fruitlessly and without effect, nor jealously refuse the love of the
other to any besides. This love does not desire to keep love all to itself, to
enjoy it without participation, without the uniting communion of a third. The
perfection of love everywhere consists not in duality but trinity. Wherever it
casts its bond around friends or lovers, it unites them to a third, to a common
object, to a common product, to one mutually loved, in whom love is triuni-
fied (trinitas reducit dualitatem ad trinitatem). The love which God is first proves
its perfection by willing not only to be loved, and loving in return, but also a
common participation in love, and therefore not merely the loving and the
beloved, but one beloved by both. The more blessed and loving the Son is in

the infinite love of the Father, and vice versa, the more do both desire to impart
this holy blessedness in equal perfection to a third personality of their com-
mon nature, i.e. according to the testimony of Scripture, to the Holy Ghost, in
whom they are inseparably one, the Father and the Son in the Spirit who is
from both, the Son and the Spirit in the Father from whom are both. This tri-
une existence is their perfect blessedness, holiness, and glory, which would
not be perfect without the Holy Ghost, and which requires His personality,
because the communion of love depends thereon. If He were no person, but
only an unconscious essence, an obscure energy of God, He would be neither
God nor Spirit, and Holy Scripture would speak falsely when it calls Him
such; for a spirit without personality and without consciousness would be a
spirit without spirit, and would not bring forth such fruits as are described
Gal. v. 22. To clearly prove Him to be a Divine Person, the Lord Himself calls
Him the Spirit of Truth, who, proceeding from the Father and sent by the Son,
guides into all truth, and therefore must Himself know the truth; and calls
Him the Comforter, who brings to remembrance, who teaches, who reproves,
and who glorifies the Son and the Father in us (John xv.-xvii.). Conformably
with this, St. Paul, who was himself enlightened by the Holy Spirit, also testi-
fies of Him, that He searches all things, yea, the deep things of God (1 Cor. ii.
10), that He sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts (Rom. v. 5), that He
divides the fulness of God’s gifts as He will (1 Cor. xii. 11). And can He who
thus perfectly knows and loves and wills not be a person? He is that third
Person, necessarily required by the idea and nature of the absolutely perfect
love of God as the bond of its perfection (Col. iii. 14), and whom the Church
acknowledges; He is that person who partakes in the divine nature by recep-
tion from the Father and the Son, but does not actively impart it to them,
while the Father only imparts it to the Son and Spirit, but does not receive it
from them, and the Son both receives it from the Father and imparts it to the
Spirit. As the life of all love consists in communication, reception, and partici-
pation, and its active procedure, its vital process, in producing and being
produced (processio), there are only these three hypostases or substances in its
union: the first, the principle which only communicates or produces (generat,
spirat); the second, which is produced and receives, but also communicates or
jointly produces (gineratur, spirat); the third, which only receives and partici-
pates, or is produced (spiratur s. procedit)12 Hence it cannot be objected, if this

be so, that several more Persons might be inferred in the Godhead. For every
subsequent person would be but a repetition or multiplication of those
already existing. And as in grammar, or in the verb, there is no fourth person,
but the plural follows immediately upon the third, so neither can there be
more than three persons in the divine perfection, because none can be con-
ceived of therein as double or plural. On the contrary, self-repeating plurality,
or a multiplicity going beyond triplicity, falls entirely within the province of
the finite and created. In the infinite nature of the Godhead (ad intra) the Holy
Ghost receives, in most active participation, the whole communion of the
divine glory in relation to the world (ad extra); on the other hand, the Holy
Ghost is the principle of all impartation of divine strength and love to the crea-
ture, the all-comprising medium of the operations of the Father and the Son,
whether in creation or redemption; in general, the spiritual bond between
God and the world and the world and God, and in particular the divine bond
of love in the spiritual fellowship of the Church (1 John iv. 12, 13). For as the
effects of the Father’s love descend to us through the Son in the Holy Ghost,
and are received by us in faith, so do our responsive love and prayer, united
in the Holy Ghost, ascend through the Son to the Father.13 Hence the apostle
entreats for believers who have been, according to the Lord’s command, bap-
tized in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, the love of
the Father, the grace of the Son, and the communion of the Holy Ghost (2 Cor.
xiii. 13).
Because God is love, is in Himself eternal, essential, primary, produc-

tive love, He is therefore ever triune in love and the return of love, and just by
12 Pater (fons et principium Deitatis) est persona producens tantum; Filius est persona et producta et
producens; Spiritus sanctus est persona producta tantum (Gerhard, Loc. Thiol, vol. i. loc. 5, de Deo patri,
etc. cap. 4). This makes apparent, even apart from the more obscure distinctions of generatio and spiratio,
of which the first is usually referred more to the divine thought, the latter more to the divine will, a dis-
tinct personal peculiarity (proprietas personalis s. character hypostaticus) in each of the three
hypostases. If the third hypostasis were also a persona producta et producens, it would be only a repetition
of the second, and the inference carried out would result in only still more complicated repetitions of the
same hypostatic character. The Greek theologians who make the Son only a persona producta, by attribut-
ing the procession of the Holy Ghost to the Father only, thus confuse their characteristic distinction and
connection.
13 Sicut opera Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa ita et cultus Trinitatis est indivisus.

the distinction of the giving,14 receiving, and responding of love essentially
one, while without such distinction His unity would be a merely indifferent life-
less and loveless identity. If unity excluded distinction, the most perfect unity
would be possessed by the inorganic, undistinguished mass of earth, stone,
wood, though it is just here that an internal connection least exists and a dis-
memberment most easily takes place; while the organic, the more decidedly it
consists of different members, in other words is differentiated, the more neces-
sarily is it also united, and the concrete of mental consciousness is based upon
the power of distinguishing. Upon the distinction of persons in the Godhead
the perfect union in love of its indivisible nature so depends, that if God were
not triune He would not be absolute love, and therefore, also, not the one liv-
ing and holy God. He is then, according to His essential nature, necessarily
triune; but this necessity is for that very reason freedom, because His nature is
love, which is the opposite of all constraint. The doctrine of the Trinity is not
based upon barren and abstract metaphysics, but upon absolute ethics, i.e. upon
the doctrine of absolute divine love, which is the foundation, the sum and the
aim of all good, and as the supreme and all-perfect good, the true metaphysics
of ethics. Hence it was needful briefly to discuss it at the beginning of a trea-
tise on evangelical moral theology, because a relegation of this article to mere
dogmatics is an actual misconception of its primary, i.e. its vital and practical,
character.
Our exposition of the Trinity from the active and perfect idea of per-
sonal primary love makes no claim to be a deduction of it from the natural rea-
son. It is true that the latter, too, is not without gleams from the original light,
but these have been too much intercepted by the obscurations of sin to make it
possible, even with all the efforts of human wisdom, to found any sure conclu-
sions upon them. Indeed, the nature and the action of love in general are often
only too much hidden to egoism, worldly wisdom, and worldly policy; how
then should the secrets of divine love be disclosed thereto? Hence glimpses of
it rest only on the revelation, which enlightens even children of Him who said
(Matt. xi. 25 sqq.), “No one knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whom
the Son will reveal Him.” In His light we see light, we clearly and necessarily
14 Idem est Deo dare et esse. Sicut esse suum est infinitum, sic et dare.— Raymond de Sahunde.

recognise the Beloved of Eternal Love, the Eternal Son of the Eternal Father,
and the Spirit who proceeds from both in the inseparable communion of love.
Orthodox theology, rooted in the Logos, has ever striven, especially in its
antitheses to heretical antilogies, both to see and understand in the light of
God, and therefore to perceive from the Spirit’s testimony in Holy Scripture
the inward necessity of the Divine Trinity.15 The speculative reflections of the
Fathers, the most prominent among whom is Athanasius, are now more of an
ontological, now more of a psychological character, but in all love is perceived
to be the bond of perfectness, of the Triune; and as wisdom is more especially
brought forward in the Son, so is love in the Holy Ghost, as the union of the
Father and the Son. But as with the divine nature every property of the divine
perfection belongs to each of the three Persons, though in a different manner,
so is love especially, as the personifying sum of all properties, common to all
three, and both unites and distinguishes them. Hence Augustine too, in his
excellent work de Trinitate, among acute observations on the Trinity, as
reflected in the nature, knowledge, and will of man, yet comprises it in the
most vivid manner in love when he says: “Thou seest the Trinity when thou
seest Love, for the Loving, the Beloved, and their Love are three.”16 A much
more finished development of this thought is, however, given by Richard St.
Victor, “one of the noblest and fullest minds of the Middle Ages,” in his six
books de Trinitate, from which Liebner in his Dogmatik aus Christologischem
Princip (Göttingen 1849, vol. i. p. 236 sqq.) gives very attractive extracts.17 It is
there proved in the most obvious manner that the notion of the perfect, holy,
and blessed love of God necessarily requires plurality of persons, that it can-
15 Comp. Dorner’s Entwicklungsgeschichte der Lehre von der Person Christi, 2nd ed. 1846.
16 Augustine, de Trinitat. lib. viii. 12, 14 (vol. xiii. ed. Benedict): Vides Trinitatem si caritatem vides. Ecce
tria sunt; amans et quod amatur et amor.

17 The harmony therein shown between my performance and that of Richard St. Victor, whose work
was not previously so well known to me, is the more surprising and satisfactory inasmuch as I freely
acknowledge its great superiority to my own. The agreement of witnesses is of incomparably higher
value to the truths of revelation and their testification by the Church than originality of thought—an
honour which I willingly renounce in favour of the Fathers. For the rest, the extracts produced by Lieb-
ner touch only the unconquered defects of the statement, not the matter itself. To those mentioned by
him may be added the following more recent work—Schöberlein’s thoughtful treatise, Die Grundlehren
des Heils entwickelt aus dem Princip der Liebe (Stuttg. 1848), especially p. 22 sqq.; and Lacordaire’s Lectures
at Notre Dame on The Inner Life of God, Paris.

not be realized in the creatures, but only in a persona æqualis et condigna, and
one both dilecta and condilecta. Whatever else of sound speculation has been
evolved in the Church, up to the present time, from the same holy fundamen-
tal notion, is referred to in the above-named work of Liebner (p. 70 sqq.), who
himself decidedly builds upon the same foundation, and joins with us in start-
ing from the principle, “God is love.” It is satisfactory to see how harmo-
niously the confession of the Church, in several, and in some instances wholly
independent witnesses, is ever increasingly arriving at the perception of its
immutable truth. Let us then without hesitation adhere to this confession,
based as it is upon such certain and decided testimony of Holy Scripture as
cannot be shaken, which the Church has therefore always taught and
defended, and from which, if any differ, they apostatize from her and become
idolatrous.18 The doctrine of the Divine Trinity, which asserts an immanent
subjective objectivity and threefold personality of the one Divine Being, and
thus presupposes the eternal objectivity and the realization of His infinite
love, omnipotence, and wisdom in the Deity Himself, is so necessary to the
having knowledge of God, that whoever denies its truth cannot do so abso-
lutely, but only by trying to substitute for it a spurious Trinity. This is done in
either a polytheistic or pantheistic manner.19 Abstract Theism, which accepts
an extramundane God lost in the silent emptiness of His solitary self-exis-
tence, a merely, so to speak, slumbering divine monad, who first arrives at a
waking state, that is, attains to the thought, will, and action of objective exis-
tence at the creation of the world in time, is a notion utterly irreconcilable
with the consciousness of the living God. Hence nothing is more natural than
that where the eternal Son is denied in the essence of the Godhead, an eternal
world should be forthwith put in His place,20 and that what applies to the
18 Hunc articulum semper docuimus et defendimus et sentimus eum habere certa et firma testimonia in
scripturis sanctis, quæ labefactari non queant. Et constantes affirmamus, aliter sentientes extra ecclesiam
Christi et idololatres esse et Deum contumeliam afficere. — Apolog. Confess. Aug. p. 50 (ed. Becheub.).
19 The denial of the triplicity of persons in the Divine Being leads to the former, the denial of the unity
to the latter. The orthodox doctrine keeps the true medium between these two errors: Fides catholica
hæc est, ut unum Deum in Trinitate et Trinitatem in unitatem veneremur, neque confiindentes personas
neque separantes substantiam.—Symb. Athan. Heresies are affected either with this confusion or this sepa-
ration.
20 This is unfortunately done by Rothe also in his Theologischen Ethik, vol. i. p. 85 sqq.; for, starting from
the personality or egoism of God, he does not proceed, as the notion of perfect love requires, to the sec-

eternal generation should be transferred to an eternal creation.21 The world is
then regarded as the necessary objectivization of the Divine nature and its
attributes, which come into action in the creation, preservation, and govern-
ment of all things, and in this alone; or it is esteemed as the selfdevelopment
of God in finiteness to His other existence, identical with Himself22 (see
Hegel’s Religions Philosophic, vol. ii., The Kingdom of the Son); humanity is the
God-man, and the Holy Ghost is the consciousness of the identity of the
divine and the human, the general religious spirit. Thus, or in some such
manner, is the immanent Trinity made to apply, not to the being of God, but
ad extra to the world and humanity, and to exist not in the nature of the Deity,
but only in His manifestation.23 According to such a view, God is only the
ond person as Thou, but only to the non-ego, and that which is not God, or the world, with its created
multitude, which, just because it is not a person (persona equalis et condigna), cannot be the adequate
object of the Divine love. Hence his ethics is more cosmological than theological.
21 It may suffice here to allude to the Jewish Pantheism of the Kabbala and even of Spinoza, as well as to
the Mohammedanism of Susi, as a proof that where Monotheism encloses itself in opposition to the
Christian doctrine of the Trinity, a more living Theosophy is changed into Pantheism.
22 Against which applies the canon: Filius non est aliud sed alius.
23 Comp. e.g. Questions and objections on the immanent Trinity of being, or the Trinitarian self-distinc-
tion of God, an epistle to Dr. Nitzsch in the Theol. Sludien und Kritiken for 1840, No. 1, p. 63 sqq., by Dr.
Lücke. This composition, which attacks with Socinian doubts the truth of the usual Christian doctrine, is
an interesting proof of this fact. For with the greatest candour it declares that the denial of the immanent
Trinitarian nature inevitably leads to the acknowledgment of “the world wherein we are ourselves
comprised as alone the infinitely Beloved of God, as the perfect object of the eternal love of God,” and
makes Him self-sufficing only as the eternal Creator of the universe. According then to this, God is evi-
dently the living, loving God, i.e. God, properly speaking, only through the world, and without the
world would neither be God nor the Father. If, then, the nature of God is love, Lücke makes only an
empty assertion when he also “decidedly” maintains that “God is by His very nature absolutely inde-
pendent of the world, and all his rejection of Pantheism is also vain; for to make the world as eternal and
necessary as God, to regard it alone as the eternal object of the eternal subject, or to put it in the place of
the eternal Son, is the deification of the world, is Pantheism, which then in the fulness of the world easily
transposes unity into multiplicity, the Son of God into sons of God (the infinitely beloved), and thus
becomes polytheistic. Lücke justly remarks against (p. 110) the misunderstood deduction of the Trinity
from the self-love of God, which is no true love at all, that “love always necessarily requires two sub-
jects, the loving and the beloved.” He thus confirms the fact, that just because God is love, which neces-
sarily requires a second self, there must be more than one subject in the infinite essential unity of God.
But if, as Lücke insists, the world is to be the second subject, he contradicts himself, the world being no
person, no subject, but the sum-total of the multiplicity of single and individual finite creatures, standing
as a work far below its Maker, and being therefore no adequate object of His perfect love. That Lücke’s
view is exegetically untenable is evident from the circumstance that in striking passages which “tor-

living God in and with the world and through its means, so that He can as lit-
tle be God without the world as He can he a Father without a Son; the world,
as the divine object, is as eternally necessary as the divine subject, and thus
God and the world, though distinct, are supposed to be as essentially united
and identical as are the Father and the Son in the Trinity. And this is nothing
else than Pantheism, whose characteristic mark may, from a Christian stand-
point, he found just in the fact that it puts the world, or that in it the world or
man puts himself, in the place of the Son of God, and thus deifies himself.
Pantheism thus but too easily separates into Polytheism, the deification of the
world, nature, or man in plurali, as Pantheism is their deification in singulari
numero. The poor and abstract unity of the divine subject is so outweighed by
the concrete multiplicity of the world object, in which alone it has its life, that
it retires obscurely into the background, while the infinite manifestations of
the Deity as sons of God or gods, come independently forward. In the history
of the doctrine of the Trinity, Sabellianism or Modalism inclines towards Pan-
theism, and Arianism in all its forms to Polytheism, which in Socinianism
runs into a common heathen apotheosis and adoration of the man Jesus.
Although such heresies have the appearance of seeking to exalt the monarchia
of the supreme God by the degradation of the Son and the Spirit, they do in
truth place Him behind creatures and the benefits they bestow upon us, and
obscure instead of glorifying the true God through the demigod Christ, while
by representing the Redeemer as only a creature, they make redemption from
creature service a new creature-vassalage.24
All these deifications of self, the world, and the creature, which disturb
ment” him “nothing is left” but the ordinary rationalistic “expedient” of a “poetic personification,” to
which the Logos, whom he esteems as only an energy of God, just as, on the other hand, he so regards
the devil, is degraded. This is a fresh proof of the peculiar horror of modern theology at the energy of
personality. At p. 91 the passages in which the Divine name is attributed to Christ are with much facility
got rid of, while those in which Scripture ascribes to Him Divine honours, works, and qualities, which
without His Divine nature would be idolatry, are scarcely noticed. We may here allude to Lessing’s
work, The Objections of Andreas Wissowatius against the Trinity, in which Lessing says, with approbation of
Liebnitz, that “his whole philosophy revolted against the superstitious nonsense, which would make a
mere creature so perfect as to deserve to be mentioned along with the Creator, not to speak of sharing in
the worship offered to Him.”
24 Comp. Möhler’s Athanasius der grosse und die Kirche seiner Zeit besonders im Kampfe mit dem Arianismus
(Maine 1827), Part I. p. 242 sqq.

the true relation of the creature to God, are opposed by the doctrine of the
Divine Trinity, which bases the absolute independence, all-sufficiency, and
blessedness of God upon that active love and personal communion of Father,
Son, and Spirit of itself immanent in the Divine nature, whereby He is in
Himself, with or without the world, the living and loving God, who, being
freely exalted above the world, has no need of it for His essential perfection,
but was, on the contrary, glorious in His love before the world was (John xvii.
5, 24). Hence, too, creation is no necessary product or emanation of His being,
but a work of His free condescension,—condescension to that which is not God,
which, moreover, is not, but which He calls into existence (Rom. iv. 17). The
non-eternity of the world, its beginning (ἦν ὅτε οὐκ ἦν), its creation out of
nothing (ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων), are in the Christian doctrine of creation definitions
which (as a glance at the Arian formula will instantly show) so essentially dis-
tinguish between the world and the Son, that they are as correctly denied of
the Son and affirmed of the world as they are incorrectly affirmed of the Son
and denied of the world. It is evident that the question here is not merely one
of distinction of time or duration, but that these definitions set up a fundamen-
tally essential distinction, which makes the world, in contradistinction to the
Son, not of divine nature (ἐτροούσιος), not absolutely necessary, not indepen-
dent, and therefore also not eternal, but in itself perishable, and incapable of
preserving itself and its great multitude of smaller creatures, subsisting only
by the will and good pleasure of that divine love, of which the finite world is
in any case no sufficient object. On the contrary, the world with all its greater
and smaller inhabitants is only a work of God’s good pleasure, an object of
His condescension (Ps. viii. 4, 5; Prov. viii. 30 sq.), as Hamann well describes
it, when he calls creation a work of divine humility.
Thus, then, the Christian doctrines of the nature of God, of the Trinity,
and of creation (opera ad intra and ad extra), all stand in most intimate and
inseparable connection; and the importance of these doctrines, acknowledged
as they are by all Christendom, with respect to the moral relations of man to
God, is self-evident. When the absolute, immanent, personal love of God is
misconceived, when the Trinity is denied, and the Son and Spirit of God
degraded into being only the world, the world, and consequently man,
occupy a totally different position towards God. God’s free sovereignty over

the world departs, and man misunderstands that eminence and condescen-
sion of divine love upon which rests his own relation of dependence upon
God. Then, too, his suitable response to this love, as also true humility, grati-
tude, and submission are lacking; while, on the contrary, a paganizing deifica-
tion of the world or humanity or self25 appears, and by its coarser or more
refined selfishness destroys true religion, that bond of love, a love full of
humility, between God and man, and consequently disturbs the whole moral
relation of mankind. Well then may we pray that the faith of the Church
catholic in the Trinity of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, sealed
by the sacrament of Holy Baptism, may remain among us sacred and invio-
lable.
CHAPTER II. OF CREATION.
It was from, with, and in condescending love that God created the
world; the Father created it through the Son in the Holy Spirit of love.
Creative love is absolute, and not like creature love, conditioned by an object,
but itself produces and conditions its own object. The natural love of the crea-
ture is produced by the charm or loveableness of an object, and therefore pre-
supposes one; but the creative love of God, selfsufficing in His Trinity, pre-
supposes no object beside Himself, was not produced by anything external to
Himself,—for then it would be rather created than creating,—but, moved by
itself alone, first produced all that exists, with all its goodness and loveliness,
and then looked approvingly at all it had made, and behold it was very good
(Gen. i. 31; Rom. xi. 35). Nothing is first given it, it precedes everything.
Beside the Triune God there was nothing eternal, no object which attracted,
effected, or solicited His love, nothing eternal, nothing divine, nothing inde-
pendent beside Himself; heaven and earth and all things came into existence
through absolute love, were made by the Father through the Son, through the
Word, and without Him was not anything made that was made (John i. 3;
Rom. xi. 36). It was His good pleasure, His counsel (θέλημα, decretum), that the
25 Dr. Strauss, in his Soliloquies on the transitory and the permanent in Christianity, acknowledges with
perfect candour, that that method of “modern culture,” which is the canon of his criticism, seeks to bring
“a new paganism into Protestant Germany.”

world should be, and it was through the power of His will, of His love, which
produces all from itself. Not as though this love had hitherto been inactive, or
had first found its object, its sphere of action, in the world; no, God is Himself
truly love, eternal love, and for this very reason as perfectly objective to Him-
self in the Trinity, as He is active in this perfect objectivity. It is therefore only
through the condescension of His loving sovereignty, of His all-powerful love,
that He, with self-renunciation, caused a something besides Himself to come
into being, which, as surely as it is not God, and not, like the Son, equal with
God (Phil. ii. 6), is not the adequate object nor the exhaustive expression of
His absolute perfection (χαρακτὴρ τῆς ὑποστάσεως), but only the work of His
fingers, wherein He graciously commences with babes and sucklings, out of
whose mouths He perfects praise (Ps. viii. 3, 4). In the humility of love He
manifests in the world through the Son (Col. i. 15 sqq.) His glory, nay, partial
images of Himself in the reasonable creatures, in men and angels, who, how-
ever, are profoundly subordinate to the express image of His being and the
brightness of His glory in Christ, their head and Lord (Heb. i. 2 sq.).26
Creation does not necessarily and eternally result, like the Son and
Spirit, from the nature of God (ἐξ οὐσίας), it is no essential effluence thereof,
nor is it from any other being, but from the will of God (ἐκθελήματός), and it
exists through a free, i.e. not an absolutely necessary and eternal, act of that
will. It would be incorrect to call the greatest work of free love an accidental
one on this account, for are the acts of the will accidental because they are not
absolutely necessary? Is not that activity which constitutes the living existence
of the vitality of a being, different from that effected by the acts of the will, but
are these therefore accidents or incidents? So, too, do the opera Dei ad intra et
ad extra differ in respect of necessity, without the latter being in consequence
tricks of accident or caprice, for which, moreover, there is no room where love
prevails and works.27 Creation is not an immanent productivity of the divine
nature, but an act, a fact, a deed of God; it has therefore a history. The Bible
begins with the history of creation by opening the history of the world, with
26 Homoiousia, but not homoousia, may only perhaps be predicated of them.

27 The opera ad intra might be called the effects of necessary, and the opera ad extra the effects of free love
(grace),—a distinction which, because love is the foundation of both, excludes both constraint in the
former and accident or caprice in the latter case.

divine certainty apart from human argumentation, with the truth, only to be
understood as a fact: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Such a beginning proceeding from no natural cause, but founding nature and
its causality upon a free act of Almighty will (potentia ordinans), is supernatu-
ral, is a miracle, is the primary miracle, and to this miraculous foundation of
nature is then joined, as the natural continuation, its preservation (potentia ordi-
nate). Their connection, however, by no means forms a uniformly advancing
series, but fresh beginnings are ever appearing both in the different grades of
co-existing creatures and in their succession in epochs of disappearance and
origination, which though not absolutely miraculous, because based upon an
existing foundation, are still relatively so, inasmuch as they are not a continua-
tion of already existing natures, nor of their laws, but on the contrary intro-
duce new natures, and, moreover, of a higher kind. The history of creation
plainly shows, as accurate investigators of nature have also proved, in various
histories of development, that the higher species of creatures did not grow by
a natural process from the lower, but that they originated and were
appointed, both with and after each other, by special acts or words of creative
will. It also brings to light the fact, that the origin of things has quite different
laws from their continuance. As, then, it is the free will of the Creator which
makes the beginning of things and works miracles,—for every act is miracu-
lous which is not founded upon the existing, but on the contrary itself founds
something new, 28—so also is it freedom, free will, in general, which, as the
power not to be determined by some law of nature, but itself to resolve on
something new, has in it something of the creative, of the miraculous. Every-
where does the will, as a free and higher causality, interpose in the lower and
earthly sphere of nature, and effect in it such things as of its own power it
could not produce, works of intelligence, which surpass its natural powers. So
also does God govern the world and nature as its Lord and the giver of its
laws, not as its servant, for His free and active will is on the contrary its law.
The deniers of miracles, who maintain an eternal, indissoluble chain of an unal-
terably determined causalnexus, abolish both Divine and human freedom,
and stand in fundamental contradiction, not merely to individual miracles,
but to the scriptural doctrines of creation, sin, and redemption, or renovation,
28 Not the old but the new is wondered at. Non sunt mira, nisi nova et rara.

whence it follows that the idea of miracles is not merely of physical or meta-
physical, but also of ethical importance.
In the history of creation the miraculous action of Divine love comes

forth, especially by means of the contrasts, which God both creates and so
brings into agreement that their harmonious union ever points back to the
original creative unity. He did not call forth His individual works from things
homogeneous to them, not light out of dawn, but out of darkness; He makes
the one, and then forms the other in it; He forms the duality, and then com-
bines it into the unity of love. God created the heavens and the earth; and the
earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the
deep. Heaven and earth stand in a connection of contrast; the earth is at first
created as obscure matter, but yet hovered over, embraced by the Spirit of
God; light is made by the word, and light and darkness are divided, and fol-
low each other at intervals as night and day. Then the water and air, and
water and land, which gives its increase, are divided, and yet still, though by
way of contrast, belong to and influence each other. The individualizing for-
mations of the following days’ works, of which the fourth unmistakeably
looks back to the first, the fifth to the second, and the sixth to the third, at first
manifest a more decided distinction of light and dark bodies and times, and
then cause water, air, and land to be filled with the manifold species of living
creatures, which are as much divided into sexes as they are united in love,
because they are of one origin. Divine love most glorifies itself in the creation
of man, for its supreme work, the image of God, is formed of the poor dust of
the earth, and soul and body, the heavenly spirit and the earthly matter, are
wondrously interwoven into a conscious personality, and this personality dou-
bly exhibited in man and woman, who are appointed by divine love to a
communion of life and love in marriage. The body is of earthly matter, and
lives on the earthly productions which the love of God has plentifully pro-
vided for it; its animating, loving soul is inbreathed and breathed upon by the
Spirit of God, is akin to God. In this union of body and soul, which forms the
fundamental characteristic of human nature, there is no flaw or defect, which
only Manichæism seeks to attach to matter, or to the body, or generally to the
substance of men. God created man in this substance; He harmoniously com-
bined body and soul, the sensuous and supersensuous, the heavenly and the

earthly, in man as the highest of earthly creatures; and therefore it is good
thus, for all that God made and ordered is good. Love creates only that which
is good (Gen. i. 13), and as loving care or providence, which rules not merely
over but in all things, graciously dwelling in and divinely ruling over them,
sensibly near to those who seek God, but hidden from those who shut their.-
hearts against Him (Acts xvii. 24-30), also preserves what it has created.
Creation and providence prove the greatness of God’s love, not merely by the
enormous extent of their sphere and operations, but still more by that most
special and sympathetic care for the little and the individual, which does not,
because concerned with the countless stars of heaven, forget even the fowls of
the air or the flowers of the field (Matt. vi. 20 sq.), but sends even the exalted
spirits of heaven to perform humble ministries for the welfare of insignificant
man (Heb. i. 14; Matt. xviii. 10). Holy Scripture specially brings forward the
loving faithfulness of God to the little, as contrasted with the greatness of the
world (cf. Ps. viii. and elsewhere); wherefore Hamann also says, that it was
written to prove that the government of God extends even to trifles. Luther,
too, aptly individualizes and specializes the article on creation in his exposi-
tion: “I believe that God made me, etc., from which faith directly results the
moral obligation, for all this I ought to thank and praise Him, to serve and
obey Him.” He who acknowledges that he has nothing from himself, but owes
all to God, acknowledges in himself creation out of nothing, and is conscious
that in himself also, the object of creation, which is the glorification of the
Creator in and by the creatures of His love in proportion to their powers, is
fulfilled.
CHAPTER III. ON THE DIVINE IMAGE IN MAN.
If God, who is love, made man in His own image, this image must have
chiefly consisted in the filling of man’s soul with divine love. Love created
man to resemble itself, in other words he was created for love, and conse-
quently for personality, for self-consciousness, which is a fundamental
assumption of love, but also for the believing knowledge or objective con-
sciousness of the Loving and Beloved one from whom he received both life
and love. As, then, self-consciousness is not attained and acquired knowledge,

but knowledge implanted by creation, nay, is the conscious soul itself, so too
the knowledge and love of God (God-consciousness) is neither attained, nor
acquired, but innate,—a consciousness originally given with and in human
nature as such, just that whereby God formed Himself therein, or, in other
words, made it in His image. It must be said of all love, that it is not a thing
self-made, but made by man, given and produced rather by the object than
the subject. Conjugal, parental, and filial love, which form the most essential,
moral, or dutiful relations of men, are innate; how much more must the love
of God, the original foundation of all piety and duty, be also innate in man!
Even in those lower stages of inclination or attraction which prevail in the
unreasoning creatures there is a touch of the preserving and providing care of
God; certainly then those emotions of love which pass through the God-
related human soul, and draw it not merely towards other souls, but towards
God Himself, whom all that can love must love, whether consciously or
unconsciously,29 must flow from the supreme source of love. The opinion that
the history of mankind began with a savage or brutal state of nature, with a
nonhuman condition, that it first made itself human, invented, from the wis-
dom which comes of necessity, religion, marriage, the family and the state
(which, however, are all null and void without love), is so rude a contrast to
scriptural and Church doctrine, so coarse a Pelagianism, without even a
notion of Divine Love, that we need devote no space to its refutation. Nor can
the view that the human soul was filled with only an uncertain, obscure pre-
sentiment of and longing for the Divine, or that it was furnished with only
empty dispositions for the Divine, suffice. On the contrary, as light was cre-
ated on the first day, so was the whole earthly creation, which attained its
consummation in man, a manifestation of God in the light of His love, which
brightly illumined and inwardly warmed the human soul. That the existence
of God was known is evident, for God manifested it to them (Rom. i. 19); they
did not first discover it, they did not need it to be first proved, that there
might be a God;30 God had Himself proved His existence to them, manifested
29 Augustine, Soliloq. lib. 1, 2 sq.: Deus quem amat omne, quod potest amare, sine sciens sive nesciens.
Deus, a quo exire, emori, ad quem redire, reviviscere, in quo habitare, vinere est—Quo nisi Deo plenus
est, qui plenus est dilectione?
30 There is a God; this indefinite proposition, which, as Daub somewhere remarks, only excites the ques-
tion: What kind of God? is the first main axiom of so-called natural religion, in opposition to which the

Himself to them, given Himself to them to be known and experienced as love
(Acts xvii. 27), the all-filling, personal love, who made them, who pervaded
them, that they might return His love and serve Him in righteousness, inno-
cence, and holiness (Eph. iv. 24).
Of this love of God, of this indwelling of His love, of Himself, they

were conscious through faith. Faith is the organ with which the soul not so
much loves as apprehends the love wherewith it is loved, receives it, and
tastes its sweetness. As surely as the love wherewith God loves man is the
cause of his salvation, nay, is his salvation, his happiness, so essential is faith
as its conscious appropriation, its assured certainty and possession. Saving
faith is not a general belief in the unity or infinity or omnipotence of God, but
that special belief of His love whereby He is our God, the inward confidence
that God loves us and dwells in us by His love. The love of God was shed
abroad in the innocent heart of the first made man and filled his whole soul,
which, pervaded therewith by faith, felt happy in its belief in this love. But it
was not only happy in this belief, but also righteous or good, for belief in the
love wherewith it was loved, begot and cherished in the heart a true respon-
sive love, and thus established therein the sum-total of all good, viz. the love
of God with all the heart, with all the soul, and with all the mind, which
includes also the true love of man, and loves in a neighbour the image of God
(1 John v. 1). The holy will of God, who is love, concerning His created image
can only be love, which is therefore called in Holy Scripture the fulfilling of
the law (Rom. xiii. 10), i.e. perfect righteousness (Eph. iv. 24). Where it lives it
is no idle feeling, but an active spiritual power filling the whole heart with
pure affections, the soul with holy will, and the mind (διάνοια) with light and
truth (Col. iii. 10); for what is truth but the agreement of the subject with the
object, or in a closer and higher sense the agreement of man with God? And
where is this, if not in love? It unites man with God and his neighbour in the
union of the Holy Spirit, who is as much the Spirit of love as of truth. Perfect,
however, as love is, no one can say that it is therefore a superhuman, a super-
natural perfection, an infinite ideal, a spirituality for angels, from which man
must remain at a distance, or which he can only with pains and difficulty
first division of the Christian catechism begins with that most definite self-testimony of the living God: I
am the Lord thy God.

approach. Certainly he knows but little of the human heart who does not per-
ceive that love, as well as the most divine, is also the most human of senti-
ments, who does not feel that human nature only feels quite at home and well
and sound in love, that in it alone the soul finds its happiness, the mind its
peace, the heart its true life. Our very notion of the human heart is none other
than that of love; the heart always loves, heart and love are synonymous; the
life of the heart is love, only this life may be affected by disease, by mortal
disease, viz. when love is not godly but ungodly, when it is selfish, carnal, and
then changing into the opposite of true love, works not life but death. But if
man, as the image of God, is appointed to life in God through love,—for he
who abideth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him,—then love based upon
faith is the soul’s inmost, most natural, freest and happiest life. The harmony
of all the powers of the soul, the concord of all the operations of the mind, the
equilibrium of all the impulses and feelings, is effected by the favour and love
shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost (Rom. v. 5). Harmony is not some-
thing above the notes, but in them; health is not a supernatural excellence of
the body, but its natural integrity; so, too, was this original righteousness no
supernatural perfection (donum superadditum) in the first man, who, on the
contrary, as certainly as he was the first made image of God, naturally lived in
first love. To sinful corrupt nature, such love is indeed supernatural, and so
surpassing its powers, that it can only reattain to it by regeneration from a
Divine source; but to innocence, to the pure heart, nothing is more natural
than love, as it is beautifully expressed in Richter’s hymn,—
Du darfst ja nur die leichte Liebe üben.

Ein kleines kind kann ja die Mutter lieben.31
Such a childlike relation of man to God the Father by no means results

from the natural cause, that man is a creature of God,—for then all creatures
would be by nature children of God,—but from the moral cause, that he was
created in the Divine image, and united with God by the bond of love. It was
just because this sonship was a moral one, based upon and consecrated by
love, that it could be lost through unfaithfulness and sin, which obscure the
divine likeness,—that man could become a lost son. This then is his guilt,
31 Thou hast but to do that easy thing, to love; a little child can love its mother.

while his original sonship, being the gift of love, is not his merit, for in the love
of a child merit and effort are quite out of question. A love which costs effort,
like a meritorious innocence, is a contradiction in terms. Love goes with incli-
nation, and there can be no disinclination, no effort, in love as such. It is from
God, and therefore no human performance; it is created by God, not manufac-
tured by man; it is given, not obtained. When obtaining love is spoken of, only
the love of others can be meant, it cannot be said that the love with which we
ourselves love is obtained or earned. He who boasts of his love as his work or
his merit has never loved, a love produced by effort is no love at all. Merit can
only be the result of an act, but love is its motive; it is not done, but does; it is
not a work, but it works; it is not willed, but it is the good will itself, and must
as such precede whatever good man might be capable of doing or effecting;
for that alone is good which goodness does, which love effects. But love itself
cannot be caused by an act of man, but only by the goodness of the All-Good,
by the bestowal of His love. Where the whole heart, the whole soul, is filled
by it, and it is consequently opposed by no evil inclination, there is peace and
concord, and therefore no struggle, no resistance, which always presupposes a
discord, a hostile contrast to be overcome. Such a contrast was utterly
unknown to the first human beings, in their state of innocence they were even
unconscious of the contrast of good and evil, just as a healthy man, who has
never yet experienced sickness either in himself or others, neither knows what
sickness is, nor has to struggle against it.
It is no concession, but, on the contrary, our most special assertion, that

this divine image imprinted in creation, this original righteousness both of
heart and deed, was no merit of man, because it was no virtue of his produc-
ing, no likeness to God wrought by his own power. Here, too, must we then
most decidedly oppose that Pelagian morality, which denies the moral charac-
ter and value of original righteousness on account of its lack of merit, declar-
ing it a merely natural product, of no more moral importance than the inno-
cence of an animal or a plant. Such morality, which is fundamentally opposed
to the Christian, appraises the moral value of man only according to the stan-
dard of his own merit, i.e. of what lie owes to his own effort, what he has
brought about in his moral condition by his own will. Hence all virtue is only
an act of the will, all sin its inaction. The conditions, the dispositions (habitus),

from which such acts of the will result, are matters of indifference, are but the
raw material which the will has to deal with, when anything has to be done.
For this whole system of morality is directed not so much to what a man is as
to what he does, and turns in general more on the hand than the heart, is
rather the moral science of the dealings than of the life. Its chief principles, as
a rule, begin with—Act so … and consequently neither embrace the corre-
sponding department of suffering, in which the moral character is proved, nor
the perennial inner springs of the moral life. Even eternal life is, by such a
morality of mere outside action, regarded as pre-eminently a state of external
felicity, which man is to purchase by the merit of his actions, or, where this
expression is avoided as too gross, by the worthiness of his actions, and that
from God, who is to mete out felicity in proportion to the weight of this wor-
thiness. The less the matter to be acted on by the will repays its efforts, the
more not merely external, but also internal hindrances are encountered in act-
ing in conformity with moral law, the greater therefore the force employed by
the will to produce or rather to force such action, the greater the merit or
moral praiseworthiness of its agent. If, then, a man’s moral worth is to be
determined by the standard of merit, the good has properly no independent
value, it is measured not by itself, nor by God, but only by the greatness of the
opposite to be overcome; and since the opposite to the good consists not so
much in the indifferent as, on the contrary, in the evil, which it is the most dif-
ficult, i.e. the most meritorious, to overcome, the value of the good depends
upon the proportion and quantity of the existing not good, or evil. If this is the
case, it would be desirable to be ever increasing the opposite to good in
human nature, that its conquest might result in so much the greater merit, and
to make the fulfilment of duty more and more difficult, that its meritorious-
ness and value might be enhanced; and the struggle between desire and dis-
like, or between the performance of duty and the heart’s aversion to it, would
be morally the highest excellence. That if this were so, God would not be
good, is self-evident.
They who deny these absurd consequences of self-righteous morality

carried to an extreme, do so at the cost of its consistency, for the truth of the
matter constrains them to make admissions which abolish the principle of this
false morality. Such an admission is involved in every acknowledgment of the

value of love, which the greater its life and activity, the less is its merit, in
every acknowledgment of the pre-eminence of a morality which has become
so habitual as to form character, over mere acts of morality put forth in indi-
vidual manifestations of power. For the more good becomes character or sec-
ond nature, the less its meritoriousness; while moral perfection evidently con-
sists in willing as well as doing the good in freest love, in every conflict
between good and evil. Necessary and honourable as the conflict is so long as
resistance proves the power of the evil, yet it must always be waged for the
sake of its cessation, i.e. for peace and the triumph of the good; and undoubt-
edly the sway of the good increases in proportion as the opposite, which is to
be overcome, decreases. Hence Christian morality, the divine morality of love,
employs a standard exactly the reverse, viz. one according to which the moral
or divine value of man increases with the decrease of his merit, just as God, who is
perfect love, is, without any merit, absolute good, or holiness. The command
of the Lord, to be converted and to become as undeserving children, if we
would enter the kingdom of heaven, upturns the whole Pelagian morality;
and when we are also commanded, with a loving combination of the divine
and the childlike, to be perfect, i.e. to love, as our Father in heaven (Matt. v.
44-48; Luke vi. 36), love, which is the bond of perfectness, is represented as the
highest pinnacle of man’s resemblance to God, and perfect love knows noth-
ing of constraint or merit, because in it freedom and necessity are one. For this
reason, too, the good and the beautiful are one in it; for all that originates from
love and its favour is lovely, pleasing, and beautiful, while all goodness which
is the result of constraint or effort is without grace or beauty.
The original divine image in the first created human beings, or the state
of innocence in which they were created, did not then consist in a merely nega-
tive innocence,—such as might be predicated also of unreasoning
creatures,—nor in a mere state of not having yet sinned, but also positively in
the fulness of divine love dwelling in them,—the love wherewith they both
were beloved of God and loved Him in return, and by which their whole soul
was sanctified.32
This, as has been already remarked, was no extraordinary virtue or
32 Non est anima ad imaginem Dei, in qua Deus non semper ist; comp. Apolog. p. 53.

supernatural task, but their natural vocation, their normal condition, for and
in which they were created, and appointed to have dominion over the other crea-
tures of the earth (Gen. i. 26). While all man’s other excellences, apart from this
sanctification, raised him above the brute creation only in degree, religion,
whose true and inmost essence is divine love, and therefore the divine image,
is the specific characteristic of human nature, which essentially distinguishes it
from all other earthly creatures.33 They all, including man, if conceived of
without religion, are but members in the chain of finite existences, swallowed
up in their causalnexus, involved in their attraction, subject to the attraction
which draws them downwards, and only by their strength or skill, their cun-
ning and prudence, superior one to another. By his reason and will—so far as
they are without Divine contents —man is so little lord of the earth, that, on
the contrary, though seated on a throne, he is, if his heart is set only on
worldly possessions, its slave. Man is emancipated from bondage to the earth
and raised to be its lord only by the love, that unites his soul to God the
Father, the Almighty Maker of heaven and earth. It is this that raises him
above the whole visible creation, and frees him from the service of the finite
and the perishable by consecrating him to its service, to that of his God. He
who serves God in sacred love, he who is united to Him in spirit and in truth,
who has in his heart the Lord of heaven and earth, rules with Him, is free
from the service of the creatures who, on the contrary, are obliged to serve
him, and, delighting in his God, seeks nothing in heaven or earth (Ps. lxxiii.
25), for neither height nor depth nor any other creature can separate him from
the love of God. Man’s dominion over the earth, which is the direct result of
the divine image (Gen. i. 26), is therefore no merely physical or psychical pre-
rogative, but an ethical and religious relation. Man, the last of earthly crea-
tures, is also their intellectual crown, who, with his feet upon earth, reaches
heaven with his looks and thoughts, and conscious in his heart of the love of
God, and beholding also His eternal power and Godhead in His works
around, offers him thanksgiving, praise, and adoration. Thus man, bearing in
an earthly body a living soul stirred by the breath of God, unites heaven and
earth within him, and in virtue of the divine image is, through the consecra-
tion of religion, the priest of nature, and in this his priestly is involved his
33 Summum bonum hominis in sola religione eat; nam cetera, etiam quæ putantur esse homini propria,
in ceteris quoque animalibus reperiuntur.— Lactant. divin. institut. I. iii. c. 10.

royal character (Rev. i. 6). This character is no addition, no merely ornamental
completion to an otherwise only animal nature, but it is the constituent stamp,
the normal composition, of the entire human being, which is to be wholly
sanctified in love and dedicated to the service of God (1 Thess. v. 23; 1 Cor. x.
31). It is therefore also inextinguishable, for though it ceases to be the form of
human nature when this is deformed through sin, it yet ever remains its norm,
its canon, just as health continues to be the norm even of the diseased body,
which feels itself sick and wretched just because it is at variance with its
immanent law. The irreligiousness of an animal is not its disgrace, its ruin,
because it is not intended for religion; but the ungodliness of man is his ruin,
just because godliness is his happiness, so that the very misery of his desecra-
tion witnesses to the original consecration of his nature, and the depth of his
fall proclaims his innate sovereignty, for, as Pascal aptly remarks, the misery
of fallen man is that of a dethroned monarch.
The divine image in man is also the reason of his immortality, which
rests, therefore, upon neither a merely physical nor metaphysical, but upon a
religious or sacred basis. Nothing finite can of itself continue to endure, or
become infinite; this is possible only by its union with the Infinite, with God.
Religion, as the union, the personal spiritual communion of man with the
absolutely immortal infinite God, is the pledge of his personal immortality, of
his eternal life, in which the impersonal creature, who has no communion
with God, has no share. What divine love created to be its own image, it can-
not, without abolishing itself, annihilate. If this union is disturbed by no sin, is
a union of pure love, immortality as its continuance is happy; but if a hostile,
and therefore deadly opposite enters into that living union, then immortality,
so far as this opposite is not overcome, is unhappy, obscured by death and the
forsaking of God, on which account, too, the law, which binds the sinner and
separates him from God, takes away the joy of faith in eternal life,34 while the
gospel, which releases him and reunites him to God, restores it. In the first
man there was no opposite to love and to life in God; he lived without sin, in
an undivided and unrestrained communion of love with the source of eternal
life, and therefore, without disease or deadness of soul, rejoiced in a happy
34 It falls into the background in the O. T., because here the revelation of the law is predominant.

immortality. Such a life of peace could not be invaded, as life now is, by the
death of the body and the distress of mind accompanying it. Not only Adam’s
soul, but his body also, with which it was associated, was sanctified as the
external manifestation of the Divine image, was dedicated as a pure temple of
the Spirit of God, was well-pleasing to God in its innocence and beauty. Why
should this edifice, reared by God for a spiritual habitation, for His own
divine indwelling, be destroyed? Why, if he was to be removed from this
earth, might he not have been transfigured, been clothed upon with a heav-
enly house (2 Cor. v. 1-4)? They who regard death as absolutely necessary,
because of the mortality of the animal world or the constitution of matter,
confound man with the animals, and misconceive that royal priesthood by
which he is raised above the unreasoning creatures, and in which is given him
even now, after the destruction of the sinful body of this death (Rom. vii.
23-25), the pledge of immortality and resurrection (2 Cor. v. 5). They also
misconceive the relation of spirit to matter by regarding the latter as an insu-
perable, impenetrable contrast to the former, as only a coarse, obscure cover-
ing, as a burden or prison to the spirit, by admitting no vital penetration and
transfiguration of matter by the quickening spirit, but always regarding it as
an evil to be borne for a time and then stripped off. This is a spiritualistic
Manichæism, which also annuls the resurrection of the dead (1 Cor. xv. 11 sq.)
and is at variance with Scripture, which does not represent matter as a hostile
contrast to the spirit, and esteems nothing evil which God has created, but
perceives all evil, whether physical or spiritual, and therefore both physical
and spiritual death, to be the consequence of sin, which is to be thereby pun-
ished, repressed, and weakened. This false view of matter is in a moral aspect
very prejudicial, for, as its consequence, the body, the sensuous or physical
nature of man, always appears as more or less the supreme seat of evil, or as
the chief temptation and fuel to sin. This is to assume in creation an original
incongruity of mind and body, whereby wrong-doings, for which sinful men
are accountable, are ill-excused and laid to the charge of their Maker. We
abide by the Scripture which says, that everything which God made was each
in its kind very good (Gen. i. 31).35
35 Comp. Augustine’s Confession, lib. viii. cap. 12.

CHAPTER IV. OF THE EXTERNAL CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE
FIRST MAN.
Divine love, which imprinted its image in man, also reflected itself
around him in the charms of nature as originally created, or in Paradise,
wherein he was placed by God. If man, as the image of God, was endowed
with dominion over the earth, and appointed its head, it follows that its condi-
tion must have been proportionate or analogous to his own. The love which
created man and dwelt in him, dwelt also around him in the habitation it had
prepared, and therefore so graciously furnished and adorned for him as to
make it a delightful abode—a garden of God. Herein, too, was his earthly
vocation allotted him, for he was not to roam idly in it, not inactively only to
enjoy it, but to till and to keep it (Gen. ii. 15). He was to be a tiller and gar-
dener, for this is the simplest and primary manner in which man outwardly
proves his God-bestowed dominion over the earth, and for this reason agricul-
ture was always regarded by the nations of antiquity as a sacred institution,
and still forms the proper basis of human society. Thus his earthly occupation,
and consequently the labour of his working days, was assigned to man by a
divine ordinance; but that he might never forget in his vocation to rule over
the earth, his heavenly vocation to serve God, in the labora the ora, there was
appointed to him, after the working days, the seventh day also, which, resting
from earthly occupation, he was to dedicate to the direct worship of God. The
appointment of the Sabbath, combined as it is with creation itself, is of high
ethical importance. It proves that religious worship is in its origin no human
institution, that, on the contrary, man was by his very creation destined
thereto, and that therefore the third (fourth) commandment essentially
belongs to the natural moral law or to the divine law of nature (Ex. xx. 8—11).
This leaves uncompromised the liberty of the N. T. Church, both with respect
to the choice of Sunday instead of Saturday, and to the regulation of its cus-
toms of public worship, the Decalogue merely laying down the most general
principles of the law. In the original distinction of the work day and the holy
day, corresponding to the twofold vocation of man, to serve God as His priest,
and to rule the earth as its king, is prefigured in this primal history the distinc-
tion between Church and State, which, though both instituted by God and
belonging to each other, are yet not therefore one, but will be, as in the begin-

ning so also at the end of all things, to the time of the new heavens and the
new earth (Rev. xxi.), distinct from each other.
Everywhere in the Church a holy time points to a holy place dedicated

exclusively to the worship and service of God, and this is exhibited also in
Paradise. It is not difficult to recognise the place of the sanctuary in Eden, the
Shechinah, as it were, of the garden of God, in those mysterious trees in its
midst, designated as the “Tree of life” and the “Tree of the knowledge of good
and evil,” because through the former the promise of divine favour, through
the latter the command of divine holiness, was made perceptible to the
senses.36 As the holy things of the temple were not to serve for daily use, so
neither was man to eat of the tree of knowledge as of other trees. Its fruit
alone was forbidden to him by the Lord, who had given all to him that he
might be constantly reminded by a visible sign, that though lord of the earth
he was yet to be subject in all humility to the Lord and God of his life, and to
serve Him, not only in love, but also in reverence and obedience. This twofold
vocation to dominion and obedience, to possession and renunciation, is signif-
icantly denoted by the twofold saying (Gen. ii. 16): “Of every tree of the gar-
den thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
thou shalt not eat;” just as in the law of the Sabbath (Ex. xx. 9 sq.) six days are
granted to man for his work, but the seventh forbidden him. The sovereign
right of man to use earthly things for his own benefit, and to rule in his home,
nay, in his kingdom, ceases with respect to things divine, ceases in the house
of God, where humble service is his duty, where even the king, to whom all
do obeisance, renouncing his rank, must bow to the command of God and pay
the homage of worship to the Lord of all lords. The dwelling-place of man in
Eden would not have been commensurate with his double, his both priestly
and royal, position, unless there had been in the garden of God, which he was
to dress and to keep a holy place, a sanctuary, corresponding to the holy time
of the Sabbath, such as we have found amid the sacred trees.
Such a time and place were and are the more necessary, since man was
to serve the Lord, not in solitude and after his own pleasure, but in common
with his neighbours, for religion, as the bond of love with God, was also to
36 Comp. Luther’s Exposition of Genesis, Walch, Part I. p. 169.

bind him in spiritual communion with his fellow-men. It is not good for the
man to be alone, said God; and why should he not be alone? but because his
love was to expand, because he was not only to love the God above him, but
also his fellow-men about him, and to prove by such love of his neighbour the
truth and reality of his love of God (1 John iv. 19-21). And because, as
mankind increased, their fellowship in love would be the most important of
all things, divine love instituted the marriage tie as the cause of their propaga-
tion, i.e. just that inmost communion of love and life between man and
woman which knits ever new ties of love in the children growing from it, and
continues to call into being similar ties by fresh and still more widely extend-
ing ramifications. If mankind did not naturally originate from the lower crea-
tures, but was created by God, it is not more marvellous that the first woman
should have been made of the substance of the man, than that the first man
should have been formed of the dust of the earth; nor is the present origina-
tion of man from a father and mother less marvellous.37 It is unmistakeable,
moreover, that if the woman had been made in the same manner as the man,
the copulation, the belonging to each other in love, the being one flesh (Gen.
ii. 23; Eph. v. 28 sqq.), would not have been so prominent in her creation. We
cannot here discuss, but merely hint in passing, how the family together with
the paternal authority and with its manifold relations of affection, service, and
property, and, furthermore, the race, the tribe, the State with its social organ-
ism, are developed from the marriage tie, blessed and hallowed by God, and
how, consequently, all the social bonds which unite mankind are founded, not
upon a human invention, but upon an appointment sacred and divine, though
often, indeed, perverted by the sin, selfishness and tyranny of man. The hint
will suffice to make the image of God, who is love, apparent in marriage also
and in all the social relations of mankind, and to show that love as the bond of
perfectness is there the fundamental constituent. It is well known that
37 Propterea Deus creare vult unum, de quo multitudo propagaretur, ut hac admonitione etiam in multis
concors unitas servaretur (Acts xvii. 26). Quod vero femina illi ex ejus latere facta est, etiam hinc satis
significatum est, quam casu mariti et uxoris debeat esse conjunctio. Hæc opera Dei propterea sunt utique
inusitata, quia prima.—Augustine, de civit. Dei, lxiii. c. 27. “Whatever is primitive is original, is miracu-
lous, and because not produced by its law, is not produced according to it. Law continues what already
exists, and controls its preservation, hence it belongs essentially to the idea of preservation, while mira-
cle appertains to that of creation. Miracles are new creations, or renewals of the old.”—Comp. Twesten’s
Dogmatik, Part I. p. 365 sqq.

betrothed and conjugal love, as the closest and happiest tie, is often compared
in Holy Scripture, whether of the Old or New Testament, to the covenant of
God with the human soul and with His elect Church; nay, that this covenant
itself is often designated as a spiritual conjugal tie, and unfaithfulness to it as
adultery. The profound inwardness and ardour, however, of the divine love
involved in such, not typical, but archetypical, comparison and designation, is
but too little considered.
In concluding the doctrine of the primitive condition of man (status

institutus), on the foundation of which alone the fall of the status destitutus can
be rightly appreciated, we have only once more to reiterate the assertion of its
actual truth and reality, in opposition to the view which regards this primitive
state as only the archetypal ideal of human nature. This opinion contradicts
the truth of Holy Scripture, spreads a veil of unloving obscurity over the
bright beginning of God’s loving dealings with the human race, and especially
darkens the true perception of evil, which can only be rightly apprehended in
contrast with original good, while every view, which does not make it pro-
ceed from an actual self-incurred fall from original righteousness, refers it to
God’s creation, and so denies its true character.
SECTION II. OF SIN AND THE LAW.
CHAPTER I. ON THE NATURE OF SIN.38
EVIL is the contrary of goodness, and goodness is love, for God is love, and
there is none good, absolutely good, but God only. Man is only good so far as
he is like Him in love; as abiding in love, he therefore abides also in God,
while he who abides not in love abideth not in God, but departs from Him,
and thereby becomes evil. Evil or sin is that which is neither in nor from, but
contrary to the good God; it is the antigodly, the godless and therefore the love-
less, the hostile in contrast to the friendliness of love, the unholy carnal dispo-
38 Though not everywhere agreeing with it, I yet refer with pleasure to Julius Müller’s profound and
complete work, Die Christlichen Lehre von der Sünde, 2nd ed., Breslau 1844.

sition which is enmity against God (Rom. viii. 7). Sin as the contrary of love
has a twofold character; it is both negative and positive, defective and affec-
tive. It consists, first, defectively in the absence of the love of God and one’s
neighbour, by which the heart, soul, and mind are not habitually pervaded;
hence the heart is wanting in purity and holy fulness of feeling, the will in
elevation and sincerity of effort, the reason, which turns from God, in light
and truth; for he that loveth not knoweth not God, because God is love (1 John
iv. 8).39 That such an internal defect in man is not from God, who made man
in His own image, that it is contrary to his divine destination to abide in the
love of God, and that therefore such an absence of the Holy Spirit who was to
dwell in man is a fault or sin, cannot be denied. It proves itself evil by being
the evil root of all spiritual sloth, indifference, debility and deadness, and by
bringing forth in actu, or rather in non-actu, countless sins of omission.
But it does not stop at deficiency, for the heart cannot tolerate a vac-
uum. On the contrary, when love retires, its positive contrary, viz. the affection
of selfishness, immediately comes forward and fills heart, soul and mind; and
this is the second and affective side of sin.40
The nature of love is self-abnegation, as that of sin is self-seeking. Love

is based upon free personality, it presupposes the existence of self as the Ego,
because only the I can have a Thou, the self another self, but it is only love
through the fact that the Ego does not abide in itself, but passes on to and
combines with another, that the self finds the aim and object of its life and
efforts in another self, that the subject finds an object in another subject. It is
alien to love to be its own object, for love seeketh not her own (1 Cor. xiii. 5); it
lives not in, not for itself, not in its own mind and will, but in and for the sake
of one beloved, the loving soul would live and move and have its being in the
Lord its God; it would please not itself, but Him; it desires not self-content-
ment, but His peace; it would not be its own master, but the Lord’s servant,
serving its neighbour in love for the Lord’s sake. This self-renunciation of love
is no self-losing; on the contrary, it is just in the objectivity of loving and being
39 Defectus sunt ignoratio Dei, non ardere amore Dei, vacare metu, fiducia Dei.—Melanchthon, Loci
1543, depeceaio originia; comp. Augsburg Confess. art. 2.

40 Hos defectus comitantur pravæ inclinationes, amor nostri superbia. – Melanchthon, l.c.

loved that the soul finds its true happiness; in God, whose image it is, it finds
itself and its happiness, if it has no other gods but Him; he who honours and
loves his parents and masters thereby builds up, in virtue of the fourth com-
mandment, his own happiness; and he who loves his wife loves himself (Eph.
v. 28, 33), as might also be said in general of loving one’s neighbour, while,
vice versa, no one will assert that he who loves himself also loves his neigh-
bour. As soon as the subject refers its love in an isolating manner to itself it
ceases to love; just as self-praise is no praise, so, too, is mere self-love no love,
but a denial of love, which can only, as lucus a non lucendo, be called love; it is
only life, only the animal instinct of self-preservation, and becomes in its sepa-
ration from the love of God and its neighbour only sinful selfishness. Holy
Scripture nowhere recommends a self-love exclusively relating to self, nor is
there any table of the law containing such duties; on the contrary, the first
duty in the following of1 Christ is self-denial (Matt. xvi. 24 sqq.). Where self-
love is thought of it is always interwoven with the love of God and our neigh-
bour, and regulated and hallowed thereby. It is in God that man is to love him-
self, his higher self, that the copy is to love its original. The love of God will
prepare for him true happiness, while, if he loves himself out of God, he gains
harm to his soul. The command, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, is
not intended to prescribe first an egotistic self-love, which is rather forbidden
than enjoined, and then to make this the pattern of our love to our neighbour;
for it does not say, As thou lovest thyself so love thy neighbour,41 but com-
mands us, on the contrary, to seek the object of our love of man not in our-
selves but in our fellow-man, to regard him as our self, our fellow-self, or
other self, so that he ceases to be a stranger, and becomes our neighbour.
Hence our Lord also answers the scribe’s inquiry, Who is my neighbour? by
showing him to whom he ought to be a neighbour (Luke x. 29-36). Not egoism
but tuism is love, and we do not love till we have a second self, till we find
ourselves again in our neighbour, perceive that we and our fellow-men are
41 Compare the excellent remarks of Luther on Gal. v. 14 in the Shorter Exposition of the Epistle to the Gala-
tians, Walch, Part IX. p. 303 sqq. Comp. also Schleiermacher’s Ent. eines Systems der Sittenlehre (Berlin
1835), p. 365, and Augustine, de doctrina Christiana, I. 1, c. xxiii-xxviii.; I. ii. c. vii. Of selfishness Augustine
justly says: Talis sui dilectio melius odium vocatur. Comp. de moribus ecclesiæ catholicæ, c. xxvi.: Fieri non
potest, ut se ipsum, qui Deum diligit, non diligat; immo vero solus se novit diligere qui Deum diligit.
Diliges proximum tuum sicut te ipsum. Te autem ipsum salubriter diligis, si plus quam te diligis Deum.

children of one Father, members of one body by an internal fellowship, and
therefore love them for God’s sake. Thus is our natural ordinary life raised to
one nobly human and spiritual, by the power of that love of God which both
comprises in itself and produces from itself all true love to man, and is the
cause of all happiness. When the former sinks the latter sinks too, and the
affection of selfishness or egoism becomes the more dominant in the soul.
The affection of selfishness (concupiscentia) proceeding from the defection

of love (carentia justitice originalis) is like the latter, neither a deed nor a per-
formance (actus opus), but a condition, a quality (habitus, qualitas), which, as
the opposite of love, is as antagonistic to the original divine image in man as
love corresponds to it.42 It is just because of this antagonism that sin (ἁμαρτία)
is habitual sin or sinfulness (peccatum inhabitans, Rom. vii. 17, 20), from which,
as symptoms from a disease, proceed actual sins, sins of omission and com-
mission, of every kind against God’s commandments. Being itself the impure
desire of the soul which is affected by it, it also so influences all the acts of the
will, that though these are as to their objects arbitrary, and may be either for-
bidden or commanded, a certain amount of selfishness always adheres to
them, just as a sick man may do different kinds of things and yet do feebly
even what is lawful and necessary. But not only is indwelling sin of various
kind in its actual manifestations modified as they are by the chequered mate-
rial of the external world, it is so also in its formed habits in proportion as
they are associated with one or another natural disposition. Not only human
nature in general, but also its special individual distinctions, which are
designed organically to complete one another in love, are the work of God; a
fact proved even by the creation of man and woman, with the distinction of
parents and children, of great and small therein involved. To it belong also the
differences of natural gifts, powers, and impulses, by which some are fitted
for a spontaneous, a ruling, a prominent, others more for a co-operative, minis-
tering and retired position, as well as those of temperament and character,
which were designed to keep each other in harmonious equilibrium in the
42 Nos igitur recte expressimus utrumque in descriptione peccati originalis, videlicet defectus illos, non
posse Deo credere, non posse Deum timere ac diligere. Item habere concupiscentiam, quæ carnalia quserit
contra verbum Dei, hoc est, quærit non solum voluptates corporis (sensuality), sed etiam sapientiam et
justitiam carnalem et confidit his bonis, contemnens Deum.—Apology for the Augub. Confess.

human community. As, then, these natural distinctions are not abolished, and
also not separated, but, on the contrary, all consecrated and combined with
each other in holy harmony and happy fellowship by love, the bond of per-
fectness, so, on the other hand, are they desecrated, and either unduly exag-
gerated or unduly suppressed, and split into destroying discords by the
entrance of selfishness. Then natural impulses become harmful passions, the
manly character becomes tyrannical, the womanly womanish, the childlike
childish, the strong temperament becomes violent, the warm hot, the tender
weak, the tranquil lazy; what is elevated becomes arrogant, what is humble
common; great strength makes men insolent, small strength cowardly. Selfish-
ness, as the essence of sinfulness, is at the bottom of all these degenerations,
each varying according to its natural substratum; for in all its departures from
its state as ordained by God, human nature, ever addicted to itself, turns to its
own way (Isa. liii. 6), nay, even those natural emotions of parental and frater-
nal affection, of love for family and native land, implanted in the heart by
God, are intermingled with selfishness, which, the more it loves its own and
its belongings, the more it hates what lies beyond its nearer or more distant
boundaries.
The whole sphere of human existence is not more pervaded by the soul
than by the selfishness which cleaves to it; its centre, however, is that inmost
point of the soul, the self, or ego. The chief seat of sin is the soul, the ego; this
proposition must be decidedly maintained by a Christian system of morals in
opposition to that widespread Manichæan-like view which refers sinfulness
chiefly to the somatic or to the sensual,43 and righteousness or virtue to the
spiritual side of his nature, thus changing the ethic contrast into a natural one,
a proceeding by which the soul seeks to excuse and justify itself at the expense
of the body. Sin, according to its idea and nature, must be indigenous where
righteousness is; if, then, the latter, as true love, as the outcome of the Spirit of
truth and love, has its seat in the best and highest powers of the soul, in the
reason, heart, and will, sin too clings to the same; for as a defection of true
love it is a fault of the very same spiritual faculties which ought to be filled
thereby, and as a selfish affection it consists in the circumstance that the
43 Comp., on the other hand, Nitzsch, System der Christlichen Lehre, § 108, note 2.

human spirit, separating itself from its centre in God, makes itself its own cen-
tre. Hence it is inherent in the mind as mental obscurity, in the reason as false
philosophy and self-deification, in the understanding as falsehood and unbe-
lief, in the will as wilfulness in the heart as self-love and selfish desire. 44 Such
spiritual selfishness may be combined, when it enters upon a self-chosen
worshipping of the angels, with a suppression and mortification of the
somatic sensuality (ἀφειδία σώματος), nay, it can make this its highest merit,
while yet it is the more unchristian in proportion as it rises in such self-chosen
righteousness, so that ordinary sensual sinners, just because sin occupies with
them a more external position, and is, as not cleaving so directly to the ego,
more easily perceived and put to shame, may precede these spiritual selflings
(Matt. xxi. 31). Such self-righteous ascetics are vainly puffed up in the mind of
the flesh (Col. ii. 18), which plainly enough shows that the scriptural expres-
sion flesh is by no means equivalent to the modern one of sensuality. On the
contrary, where the word flesh is used, in malam partem, in contrast to the
spirit, or the Holy Spirit (Gal. v. 17), it means the whole earthly sinful nature
of man, 45 to which belongs not merely the body, but also the soul, the reason,
and the will, in so far as they are turned from God, alienated from His Holy
Spirit, entangled in the service of the creature, whether subject or object (Col.
ii. 3).46 Conversely, the idea of the spirit does not refer only to the soul, but to
the whole man, whose spirit, together with his soul and body, is to be sancti-
fied, and if not spirit, to become spiritual, so that Scripture speaks of a spiri-
44 Hi defectus et inclinationes non sunt proprie sentientis potentiæ (sensuousness) sed superiorum,
mentis et voluntatis, et tamen sequitur etiam ingens ἀταξία in inferioribus viribus.—Melanchthon, Loci,
a. 1543, de pecc. orig.
45 Even where this ethic contrast is not predominant, as e.g. John i. 14, still σάρξ does not therefore
denote merely the body as bodily sensuality, but the earthly human nature in general, unless another
flesh is expressly designated, as in 1 Cor. xv. 39.
46 Melanchthon, Loci Theol. a. 1521, loc. de vi peccati: Sophistæ vocant carnem adpetitum sensitivum
(Sinnlichkeit) obliti phraseos scripturæ. Neu enim corpus seu partem hominis sed totum hominem, tam
animam quam corpus scriptura voce carnis signat, et quoties cum spiritu confertur, significat optimas
naturæ humanæ ac præstantissimas vires citra spiritum sanctum.—Comp. Augustine, de civit. Dei, lib.
xiv. c. 2-5. Specially interesting is the reference c. 2, that according to Scripture both the Epicureans, qui
animum bonum in corporis voluptate, and the Stoics, qui summum bonum in animo ponunt, secundum
carnem vivere, and that further, both carnalitates and animositates are opera carnis. See also Luther On the
Enslaved Will, Walch, Part xviii. p. 2352 sqq., and among moderns especially, Müller, die Lehre von der
Sünde, i. p. 166 sqq.

tual body (1 Cor. xv. 44, vi. 19) just as it does of fleshly souls. 47 Among the
fruits of the flesh (Gal. v. 20) are enumerated those which belong to the soul
(idolatry, etc.), and among the fruits of the spirit those which belong to the
body, e.g. chastity. Flesh and spirit, used antithetically with regard to man,
have always an ethical character, while the contrast of body and soul has a
physical one; in the former case they are ouly abstract terms for the more con-
crete contrast of the natural and the spiritual man (1 Cor. ii. 14, 15), or of the
old and new man (Eph. iv. 22-24; Col. iii. 9 sqq.), by which are understood, not
the higher and lower portions of human nature, but in both instances the
whole man, in so far as he serves either the law of God or sin. No flesh, i.e. no
man, must glory before God, nor seek to justify his soul, i.e. himself, at the cost
of his sensuous nature, which was created by God,48 for before the law all the
world, and by no means only the material world, is guilty (Rom. iii. 19); on the
contrary, sin, as a moral incongruity, is essentially of mental origin.49 Ambi-
tion, which descends through the various degrees of spiritual pride and arro-
gant self-satisfaction down to worldly vanity and petty self-conceit, is that
form of selfishness which, as directly referable to the ego, to the personality of
man, is most of a spiritual nature. The ego, the subject therein, arbitrarily
exalts itself before God or man, and fixes itself, its thought and will, as a self-
chosen centre both for itself and others. Personality as the ego is the central
point of human existence, and as essential to it as revolution around itself to a
planet; the planet on this account revolves subserviently round its centre, the
sun, and gives forth his light, not its own. The egoism of ambition desires,
however, to overstep that subservient position assigned by God to every crea-
47 Sicut spiritus carni serviens non incongrue carnalis, ita caro spiritui serviens recte appellabitur spiri-
talis, non quia in spiritum convertetur sed quia spiritui summa obtemperandi facilitate
subdetur.—Augustine’s above-quoted work, I. xiii. c. 20.
48 Comp. Augustine, cap. v.: Non igitur opus est, in peccatis vitiisque nostris ad Creatoris injuriam car-
nis acousare naturam, quse in genere atque online suo bona est; sed deserto Creatore bono, vivere secun-
dum carnem, sive secundum animam, sive secundum totum hominem, qui constat ex anima et came
(unde et nomine solius animæ et nomine solius carnis significari potest) eligat vivere. Only blind igno-
rance can reproach Augustine in his later days with Manichæism.
49 To those who recognise sin only on its sensual side, only as inobedientia inferionim virium hominis, the
words of the Apology, p. 53, apply: Leviores morbos in natura hominis agnoscit, graviores morbos præ-
cipua vitia naturæ humanæ pugnantia proprie cum prima tabula Decalogi, non agnoscit. Comp. p. 55:
Concupiscentia non tantum corruptio qualitatum corporis est, sed etiam prava conversio ad carnalia in
superioribus viribus.

ture, and even to the most exalted spirits by God (Heb. i. 13), and in the main-
tenance of which consists their true honour (Jude 6). He who seeks his own
honour, however, desires not to occupy this position of service, like the
planet, but to be as the fixed star, which shines by its own light and moves
only around itself; to have his light and life, his wisdom and righteousness in
himself; to ascribe to himself the honour due to God, and to say of himself
what is fitting to God alone: I am my own master. Self-deification,—the wish
to be as God (Gen. i. 3, 5; comp. 2 Thess. ii. 4),—whether in great things or
small, this is, consciously or unconsciously, the aim of ambition, hence is it the
first sin against the first commandment, and all arrogant conduct is an abomi-
nation to God (Luke xvi. 15). Arrogance, when flattered, feels itself gratified,
though not satisfied; when, on the other hand, it is resisted, and reacts against
the obstacles to its satisfaction, it produces those diabolical sins—hatred, vari-
ance, emulations, wrath, strife, envyings, murders (Gal. v. 20). Whoever
reflects what mighty and persistent forces show themselves in the manifesta-
tion of these sins must perceive how erroneous it is to define sin as only a
weakness of human nature, which is to make virtue its strength, and so to leave
only a difference of degree between sin and virtue. Selfishness does not so
much diminish the natural powers of man as, on the contrary, give them a
wrong direction; hence we find by no means only weak sinners, but also
strong ones, as e.g. the mighty Nimrod.
Self-exaltation may manifest itself in a proud contempt of the world

and an intensive (stoical) limitation to self, but it can also pass into a covetous-
ness extensively diffusing itself in the desire for conquest or acquisition.
Selfishness, discontented with the poverty and emptiness of self, then extends
from the subject to the object, from the personality to the objectivity, which
the wilfulness of egoism would have for its own possession, or over which it
desires to rule at will. It is not sinful to possess or to rule over the property
bestowed by God; this is, on the contrary, man’s earthly calling, but this is
corrupted by self-will in possession, and by selfish desires for what God has
not bestowed, whence arise both thirst of power and avarice, which as love of
the world, loves the world more than God (1 John ii. 15), and does not so
much freely rule and possess its good things as is ruled and possessed by
them. From the mighty conqueror to the common miser this sin passes down

in many forms, which vary according to the variableness of the attractive
object. The objective may, especially when it is of only a material nature like
riches, become so predominant as to make avarice stronger than ambition;
this is the case with sordid covetousness, to which the love of honour is
opposed, without therefore becoming a virtue; on the contrary, we have here
one form of selfishness opposing another, a state of things quite implied by
their discordant character and tendency to variance. The selfish greed, which
desires to have all itself, is still the root of all evil, whether it be the greed of
wealth or honour. In its insatiableness—which the more it has the more it
desires, because passion, in spite of its self-delusion, never finds in its wrong
paths that which it desires—it devours itself, and brings forth, both when its
wishes are advanced and when they are thwarted, many foolish and harmful
lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition (1 Tim. vi. 9 sq.).50
From objective desire selfishness turns back to subjective enjoyment, and

the love of pleasure appears together with covetousness, or even in opposition
thereto. As the latter desires pleasant objects, so the former craves after agree-
able conditions of soul and body, and brings into disorder especially the sen-
suous side of human nature,51 by exciting its impulses to fleshly lusts, which
war against the soul, so that as the spirit disobeys God, the body disobeys the
spirit, nay, even makes the latter its slave (Rom. vi. 12). It is the egotistic
delight in the lusts and pleasures of self, and the dislike of all that is displeas-
ing to self, and therefore a degeneration and perversion of joy in God, of
delight in the Lord, who gives and can give to His children their hearts’
desires (Ps. xxxvii. 4). It may become so powerful as to squander property for
its gratification, and so work in opposition to avarice, though none the less
selfish; it may also be of so rude, vulgar, and animal a kind as to be a disgrace,
and deprive its subject of all honour; but even then it only differs from ambi-
tion in that one is a higher, the other a lower form of selfishness. It makes an
50 Qui perverse amat cujus libet naturae bonum, etiamsi adipiscatur, ipse fit in bono malus et miser
meliore privatur.—Aug. de civit. Dei, cap. c. lxii. 8.

51 Though Rothe, Theolog. Ethik, B. ii. p. 170 sqq., makes selfishness and sensuality two co-ordinate prin-
ciples of sin, m which we, with Müller, cannot agree with him, he still perceives, p. 180, how they pass
over into one another. Certainly the fall in its deepest sense was not a sensual minimum, but a spiritual
maximum. St. Paul places φίλαυτοι first, and makes φιλάργυρος and ἀλαζόνες (seekers after property
and honour, 2 Tim. iii. 2) follow, while the series closes with φιλήδονοι μᾶλλον ἢ φιλόθεοι.

idol of the beautiful, whether in nature or art, by loving it for its own sake
alone, and not as a manifestation of the divine love and glory (Wisd. xiii. 3).
According to difference of disposition it appears in the active forms of keen
excitement, busy amusement, debauchery, or more passively as letting oneself
be amused, as receiving enjoyment, or even as lazy idleness or slothful
neglect. It descends from the more or less refined mental enjoyments to the
coarsest carnal pleasures, to those works of the flesh which St. Paul enumer-
ates Gal. v. 19-21. Among the three chief forms of evil lust cited by St. John (1
John ii. 16), the lust of the flesh corresponds with the love of pleasure, the lust
of the eyes with covetousness, the pride of life with ambition;52 and the three
temptations of our Lord, especially according to St. Luke’s order, refer to the
same.53 So manifold is habitual sin in its chief forms, which all, according to
the different dispositions in which they are inherent, assume special and indi-
vidual forms, and at the same time mingle with and intersect each other in the
most varying manner, and appear in their positive or negative effect in the
outer world in an infinite multitude of actual sins. Actual sin, which is related
to habitual sin as appearance to existence, is, however, no arbitrary produc-
tion of the latter, but arises from acts of the will, which, depending on certain
opportunities, are or even are not carried into effect, but which, when they
become actions, are always affected by the fundamental tendency of the mind.
It is not the external form of an action, which may be of extremely varied kind
and often accidental or arbitrary, which determines its moral value or worth-
lessness, but that inward direction of the will which remains the same under
very different appearances. Various, however, as these may be, still—and this
is the scientific and practical result of our investigation—the whole incalcula-
ble variety of sins is based upon only one spiritual evil principle, upon the one
universal sin of selfishness, whether upon its defective or affective side, and
this selfishness is the contrary to the principle of all good, viz. love.
In the bond of love, man, though dependent on God and on his neigh-
bour, is yet at the same time, because he feels and knows himself in union
52 Comp. Lactantius, divin. instit. I. vi. c. 19: Tres sunt affectus, qui homines in omnia facinora
præcipites agunt, ira, cupiditas, libido.

53 Comp. also the recent excellent work, die Religion im Leben oder dit Christliche Sittenlehre, by Dr. Hein-
rich Gelzer, Zurich 1839, third and fourth discourses.

with them, free as a child of God’s family. In selfishness, though free from
God and his neighbour, he is yet dependent on their opposite, enslaved by
divers lusts and passions, and the servant of the creature over which he ought
to rule. Thus does sin delude man with the appearance of liberty, while it
makes him a slave (John viii. 34). In love alone is liberty, in love alone is truth,
because it alone unites us with the object of knowledge, wherefore he who
loveth not knoweth not God, who is love (1 John iv. 8); and he who loveth not
his neighbour also misconceives him. Sin misconceives God, because it recog-
nises not in Him the source and fulness of its life and happiness, has no longer
its joy, its peace in Him, but seeks out of God what is only to be found in Him,
and fixes its thoughts and aims on the creature. As love denies itself for the
sake of God, selfishness for its own sake denies, if not the existence of God, at
least His truly Divine nature, viz. His love, which alone makes holy and
happy, and the righteousness of His commandments. From such a denial the
first sin arose (Gen. iii., iv.), whence it is said of the devil that he remained not
in the truth, but is the father of lies (John viii. 44). Falsehood and lying are
nothing else than selfishness of thought and purpose, which do not conform
to the object, but form themselves according to the subject, desire to have and
represent things according to their own mind and interest.54 Denial of God
leads to selfdeception, which leads the subject to seek and to imagine he finds,
but does not, that which is in truth to be found only in God, so that idolatry
and the deification of self or the creature, consequently sin against the first
commandment, is at the root of all sin. Hence it has been justly affirmed that
all sin is a lie, the deceptive enjoyment, as seductive as it is pernicious, com-
bined with it, bearing testimony to its false and diabolic character. 55 As the
essence of righteousness is the true and humble resemblance to God, which
from love fashions itself after its original and obeys Him, so is the essence of
sin a false and arrogant resemblance of God, which from selfishness would be
a law to itself, be independent like God, and obey only its own will and
notions.56 To such perverted and revolutionary likeness to God does the lying
54 “The homogeneous principle of falsehood and of lust is selfishness,” Nitzsch, System der
Christlichen Lehre, § 105.

55 Non frustra did potest, omne peccatum esse mendacium—mendacium est, quod quum fiat, ut bene sit
nobis, hinc potius pejus est nobis.—Augustine, de civit. Dei, lib. xiv. cap. 4.
56 Suum sibi existendo principium per superbiam, non summo veroque principio cohærendo per

serpent tempt (Gen. iii. 5). Evil is the revolution of the good, it is the good
reversed, and therefore always presupposes the good, while the reverse is by
no means the case;57 evil is, moreover, no proper evil substance, but only the
perversion of the good substance. Evil and good both manifest that aiming
after likeness to God which is so inextinguishably impressed upon human
nature, but with the contradictory contrast, that the good strives after it in the
bond of love with the true God and obtains it, the evil desires it out of and
against Him and does not obtain it. “Seek what you seek,” says Augustine,
“but it is not where you seek it;” and the same Father, in his Confessions, B. ii.
c. 6, thus impressively describes “the desire to be as God” of selfish sin in all
its forms: Pride imitates greatness, because Thou, the only God, art exalted
above all. And what does ambition seek but honour and glory, because Thou
art to be honoured above all, and glorious to eternity? The powerful aim at
being feared by their cruelty, but who is to be feared but God alone? The
wanton aim at being loved by their caresses, but nothing is more caressing
than Thy love. Curiosity assumes the appearance of a desire for knowledge,
while Thou knowest all things perfectly. Even ignorance and folly veil them-
selves under the names of simplicity and innocence, while more simplicity
and innocence than are in Thee are not to be found. Immoderate expenditure
likes to be called sufficiency and superfluity, but Thou art fulness and the
unfailing source of all delight. Extravagance throws out the shadow of liberal-
ity, but Thou art the most liberal giver of all good. Avarice craves to possess
much, and Thou possessest all things. Envy strives for pre-eminence, and
what is more pre-eminent than Thou? Wrath seeks revenge, who avenges
more justly than Thou? The sorrowful grieves over the things he has lost, and
which his desire idolized, for he desired to be deprived of nothing, as Thou
canst be deprived of nothing. So unfaithful to Thee is the soul that has
departed from Thee, it seeks apart from Thee the purity and brightness, which
it does not find until it returns to Thee. They who withdraw far from Thee and
exalt themselves against Thee, still imitate Thee. And in thus imitating Thee,
they show that Thou art the Creator of all nature and that it is impossible
obedientiam.—Augustine, de civit. Dei, c. 13.

57 Bona sine malis esse possunt, sicut Deus ipse verus et summus; mala vero sine bonis esse non pos-
sunt, quoniam naturæ, in quibus sunt in quantam naturæ sunt, utique bonæ sunt.—Aug. de civit. Dei, c.
II. and I. xii. c. 3; also Enchiridion de fide, spe et caritate, c. 13: Quid sat malus homo nisi malum bonum.

entirely to depart from Thee.
CHAPTER II. ON THE UNIVERSALITY AND THE

COMMENCEMENT OF SIN.
When we perceive that the essence of sin is selfishness, which is the

opposite to true love, a thorough self-knowledge will undoubtedly lead us to
perceive its universality. Egoism or selfishness is so universal—so indis-
putably universal— among men, that this very fact is a reason why many
deny its sinfulness, and regard it as merely natural, as pertaining to man’s
original nature. Much as the doctrine of habitual or hereditary sin has of late
been disputed, human nature itself has not altered because of the variety and
alteration of opinion concerning it, but has ever remained the same. True and
false doctrine have the same human being in view, and recognise him as the
same, only their valuation is different. Who that knows human nature could
mistake that, as man is at present constituted, the love of God and of his
neighbour is not the fundamental power and impulse of his being, but that, on
the contrary, egoism, as its fundamental feature, pervades all his thoughts and
efforts from his youth up, and under the form of concupiscence fills his soul
with a multitude of irregular desires and passions? Crying experience forces
this confession from every one, without the testimony of Holy Scripture. But
what the natural judgment denies is, that this state is sinful and abnormal by
declaring it only natural. Certainly it has become a second nature to man, and
may therefore be justly considered as natural as it is universal. And yet nei-
ther its naturalness nor its universality is a reason against its sinfulness. For
inasmuch as the latter is according to its notion an abnormity (ἡ ἁμαρτία ἐστὶν
ἡ ἀνομία, 1 John iii. 4), it cannot be measured by the type of that present natu-
ral state which is itself abnormal. On the contrary, a due estimation of abnor-
mal with relation to normal nature can only be arrived at by returning to the
latter, and judging the present image of man by his original image as pre-
sented by Holy Scripture. 58
58 It may be as well here to consider the twofold meaning of the word nature, stated by the Form of
Concord, p. 650: Per vocabulum naturæ intelligitur ipsa substantia, corpus et anima hominis; sæpe autem
proprietas aut conditio alicujus rei, tam in bonam quam in malam partem, vocatur ejus rei natura. The

Love is, as we have seen, the likeness to the divine image in man; to
love with all the heart, with all the soul, with all the mind, is the normal consti-
tution of the inner life, it is to be entirely pervaded by love, love is to be the
universal virtue which comprises in and produces from itself all the particular
virtues, and impresses upon all the stages and tendencies of life their corre-
sponding divine characteristic. Child, youth, maiden, man and woman are all
to be sanctified by love. Now selfishness, the opposite of love, is of just as
universal a character, and as the whole life becomes normal through the latter,
it becomes abnormal through the former. The seat of love is in the central
point of human nature, in the heart, in the personality, and not less when love
departs does selfishness occupy the centre of the self, whence, as is natural, its
radii traverse the whole circumference of human nature. If the self is once
affected with selfishness, man, as surely as he is never without self, is never
without sin. Sin is not neuter, but personal: I not only do and have sin, but I
am a sinner. The ego in us, the person, is sinful, and therefore also its whole
nature. If a member of the body is affected with some defect, not only is the
activity of that member impaired, but it is also, even when doing
nothing—when resting—still defective. So too man, when once the inmost
part of his being is affected by sin, is sinful, not occasionally only in this or
that act or omission, but constantly in all its activity or passivity. It is
extremely superficial and unscientific, however usual this may be in ordinary
morals, to find goodness only in good works or actions, and evil only in bad
actions, and not in both cases to recognise the being good or wicked as the
inward abiding cause of right or wrong doing. The bad as well as the good
tree brings forth its fruit in its season, but it is not therefore bad only when it
brings forth its bad fruit, but at all times, even when as a sprouting shoot it is
as yet incapable of bearing any fruit at all. Sinfulness or selfishness is inherent
word nature appears in the signification of substance or essence, and indeed in the distinction of subject
or person, in the doctrines of the Trinity and of the person of Christ. In this sense we can only say with
Augustine of the nature or substance of man, that it, in quantum natura est, bona est; comp. Apologia of
the Augsburg Confession, p. 58: Naturam non esse malam, id in loco dictum non reprehendimus. If it is
asserted that man is in this sense of the word evil by nature, this, as referring evil either to the Creator or
to an original evil being, is to be entirely repudiated. In the sense of the proprietas of man, the notion
nature, on the contrary, involves that of the subjective constitution or personality, in which sin is inher-
ent.

in man, not as a mere weakness, a minus in his goodness, from which, by a
greater exertion of power, he might deliver himself; it is, on the contrary, a
false direction of all his powers, originating in a dislocation of their centre, and
however great these may be, they are all selfish when he is so himself. Just as
the inmost and highest powers of man’s being are indwelt by love, so, on the
other hand, are they all pervaded by sin, both affectively and defectively; and
as love is not a virtue merely approaching the personality, but rather the
good, the loving personality itself, so too is selfishness no sinful object which
man inherits from without, but the sinful subject itself.
The universality of sin, of which we are here more immediately treat-

ing, is not so much that broad generality according to which all (omnes
homines) have sinned, as the close speciality by which the whole nature of the
sinful man (omnis homo), forming as it does an indivisible spiritual unity, is
affected by sin. Such generality may be regarded as commonly conceded;
even levity will not deny that every man has his faults and weaknesses; the
sanguinary history of the world, as well as the quiet histories of individuals,
bristles with proofs that all have in various manners sinned. The infinite multi-
tude of various transgressions, in which all have their share, is itself an unde-
niable proof that it is no longer a case of innocence with human nature; for if it
were at first only in a state of equilibrium between good and evil, it would be
impossible that all should incline to the left side. Consequently it is almost
universally acknowledged that man has an innate propensity to evil, so that
even Kant, with all the autarchy of his morality, maintained a radical evil in
man. The only question is, what and whence is this propensity? It cannot pro-
ceed from an original disproportion of the material and spiritual nature of
man, for God created no monster when he made man; it can be no sensual or
spiritual inclination of human nature as made by God, for God cannot tempt
any man, and all the pure inclinations of man’s heart incline towards Him in
love. This propensity to evil is, however, a turning from good, from God, a
failure of the love of God, and a preponderating inclination of man to
himself,— a desire not to depend upon the will of God, but upon his own will.
In short, it is nothing else than that selfishness which we have already
described as the root of all evil. That this should from its central position affect
only a portion, a part of man’s nature, and leave the rest untouched, can only

be maintained by those who would regard human nature in general as a
compound of separate portions. On the contrary, as a little leaven leavens the
whole lump, so also does the leaven of selfishness pervade the whole sphere
of life, and make it sinful or diseased, without the substance of life being on
that account itself sin, or the constitution of nature evil. When any one has bad
eyes, the evil is not that he has eyes, —that is, on the contrary, a good; the evil
is the disease, the weakness of the eyes; this, however, not pertaining to the
nature of the eyes, may be cured, and then the eyes are again all right. If a
man is ill, the evil is that he is ill, not that he is a man made by God.59 It is not
the reason, will, feeling and action of sinful man which are in themselves sin-
ful, but only the selfishness which affects them, and leaves nothing unaf-
fected. It makes the thought untrue, the will stubborn or remiss, the heart cold
or fervid, and all the action or forbearance defective; for whatever therein may
be conformable to the law, there is still, inasmuch as it is not done through
love, an imperfection, a defect therein, and the deficient, the defective, is sin
(id quod et minus est, quam debebat, vitium est). Truly we do not design to
deprive the laudable deeds of the heathen of the glory they deserve; would to
God such deeds were more frequent among ourselves! But what the apostle
says of the father of the faithful, we too must be allowed to say of heathens,
Jews and Turks: If Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to
glory, but not before God (Rom. iv. 3). How well and instructively does Augus-
tine speak (de civit. Dei, lib. v. c. 18) of the achievements of the Romans: “The
widely - extended and long-enduring dominion of the Romans, made glorious
and excellent through the virtues of such great men, was not only the reward
which they desired for their exertions, but holds forth also necessary examples
and warnings to us, so that if we have not for the glorious kingdom of God
virtues which they possessed for their earthly state, we need to be ashamed;
but if we have them, we have nothing to boast of.” Similarly the Apology of the
Confession of Augsburg, p. 64, says: “We willingly accord to the righteousness,
which reason can by its own powers in some degree produce, its due praise;
for this corrupt nature has no greater possession, and Aristotle justly says,
59 Lex naturam nostram non eam ob causam accusat, quod homines simus a Deo creati, sed ea de causa,
quod peccatores et mali simus. Neque eatenus, lex naturam accusat, quatenus etiam post lapsum ea in
nobis est opus et creature Dei, sed propterea et eatenus, quod per peccatum infecta et corrupta est.
Concord. Form. i. p. 645.

that neither Hesperus nor Lucifer is more beautiful than righteousness, and
God honours it also with an earthly reward. It must not, however, be praised
to the neglect of Christ, for it is an error to say that men can be accounted
righteous before God on account of this righteousness of reason.” According to
the verdict of God, all human righteousness, even the most illustrious, is defec-
tive and unrighteous. Even in His elect He finds a fault (concealed selfish-
ness); who will find one pure among those where no pure one is (Job xiv. 4, iv.
18)? They all come short of the glory of God (Rom. iii. 23); and even he who
could say with the great apostle: I know nothing against myself, must yet
confess with him: yet am I not hereby justified; it is the Lord who judgeth
even hidden sin (1 Cor. iv. 4).
The universality of sin comprises the human life both of individuals

and of all, not only in its co-existence, but also in its succession during its whole
course of development. The heathen too, and even the light-hearted poet, own
that sin is propagated from generation to generation throughout the progress
of history—
Aetas parentum, pejor avis tulit

Nos nequiores, mox daturos
Progeniem vitiosiorem.
That sin is produced by sin, and itself in its turn always produces sin,
can be mistaken by no one who knows what sin is in general, and how it
cleaves to life, which is constantly generated by itself. When we meet with an
actual sin, it was born of habitual sinful lust fertilized by temptation (Jas. i. 14
sq.), and itself begets again evil desire and temptation, both subjectively and
objectively, and thereby new sins ad infinitum. From whatever point we con-
template the history of sin, whether in the life of the community or the indi-
vidual, we can follow backwards as well as forwards an unbroken chain of
sinfulness. Since sin cleaves to the central point of human nature, to the ego or
self, which through all the various stages of life, with their different condi-
tions and circumstances, is the one constant thing of existence, it also remains
so amidst all the changes of life of the old man, and is always, even under
entirely opposite appearances, selfishness. So soon as the human ego can

assert itself, egoism with its passions unmistakeably makes its appearance,
and since it is not then added to the ego from without, but, on the contrary,
proceeds from it, it must have been already hidden in the before concealed
ego. The whole life of man, from his very earliest years, shows itself affected,
therefore, according to its stage of development, with a more or less devel-
oped selfishness. In the germ-life of man it is itself but a genu, which as exis-
tence unfolds successively unfolds itself together with the other vital powers.
In children it is as yet small like themselves, and therefore does not as yet
strike out into great actual sins, on which account a relative innocence is
attributed to them in comparison with adults. If, then, the origin of an individ-
ual sin goes back to the beginning of the life which a man inherited from his
parents, we cannot but say, that with the personal life he inherited also the
selfishness cleaving thereto—in other words, that this, like human life itself, is
hereditary. No one denies that man’s physical life is received by means of par-
ents, is transmitted by them to their children, and not immediately created by
God; and no one accepts the view that children receive from their parents only
a dead body. Whether the special mental gifts, in which parents and children
are often very dissimilar, are also engendered or directly created, is doubtful,
and the latter seems the more probable; but that the principle of personality,
which amidst every variety of endowment is inherent in all men as such, i.e. as
individuals or specimens of their species, is transmitted together with the
animated (ψυχικός) body, cannot be denied, unless we are willing to embrace
a mechanical Nestorianism in anthropology, a false dualism everywhere.
Generation and birth are, according to their notion, nothing else than a new
individualization or personification of the race; human propagation is a con-
tinued formation of human persons, and therefore involves eo ipso the propa-
gation of personality, and if this is affected by it, of egoism also (Ps. li. 7).60
Least of all can those, who derive evil from the preponderance of the
60 An exception proving the rule is formed, and must be formed, by the miraculous conception of Jesus,
who received human nature from His mother, both without egoism and without the ego, because in
Him the personality of the Divine nature forms also that of the human; nam filius Dei assumsit
humanam naturam in unitatem personæ. It is worthy of closer consideration how in propagation the
individual and the general, or the person-forming and nature-forming agency of the two sexes, are
related to each other, and whether the former does not chiefly fall to the share of the male.

bodily senses, deny that such a constitution was transmitted in the way of
natural generation. On the whole, it is not so much the descent by inheritance
of the condition of human nature which meets with opposition, as the asser-
tion that this condition is a sinful one; nay, its very connection with their
innate constitution is to many a proof that it is not sinful, that it is merely natu-
ral, that it was originally impressed on man at his creation; if it were so, it
could not indeed be sinful.
In refutation we appeal decidedly to Holy Scripture; God, who is love,

cannot in opposition to His law, which enjoins love, have made man selfish,
but, on the contrary, made him in conformity to His image, i.e. in and for love.
If, then, selfishness nevertheless rules in human nature, it cannot, as the con-
trary to love, have been in any natural or ordinary manner developed from it,
but must have entered it by an act of the human will;61 and love being a tie
and alliance of the soul with God, this act must have been a rupture of this
alliance, a revolt from God, a disobedience to His will. To explain the origin of
evil is in its very terms a mistaken task. Evil has no origin, but only a begin-
ning; just as the world did not originate from natural causality, but began
together with this through the free will of the Creator, so, too, the evil that is
in the world had not its origin in natural causes, but began in the free will of
the creature.62 An origin presupposes a cause, a primal reason. Sin has no rea-
son from which it proceeded as a consequence; the fall is not a consequence,
but a beginning; not an effect, but an uncaused cause, nam defectionis ratio suffi-
ciens deficit.63 Evil is irrational, and has therefore no rational and sufficient
reason. They who deny a free self-chosen act, an actual revolt against God, as
the beginning of evil, who do not recognise in this revolt a fall from an origi-
nally good state into an opposite one, also do not recognise evil as a positive
contrast to good and to God, misconceive sin as a disturbance of divine order,
an abnormity, a thing contrary to nature, inasmuch as it appears to them
61 A voluntate sumsit exordium quod naturaliter inolevit vitium.—Augustine, de civit. Dei, lib. xii. c. 3.
62 Hence Daub, Judas Iscariot, ii. p. 98, calls the devil, not with respect to his existence, but to his
sinfulness, “his own creator.”

63 Causam defectionis, cum efficiens non sit, sed deficiens, velle invenire tale est ac si quisquam velit
videre tenebras vel audire silentium.—Aug. de civit. Dei, lib. xii. c. 7, 9. Hence it very specially applies to the
causality of evil, that ita nesciendo scitur, ut sciendo nesciatur,—sicut oculus nusquam tenebras videt,
nisi ubi cœperit non videre, et silentium nullo rnodo nisi non audiendo sentitur.—Ibid.

merely negative imperfection, or the necessary limitation of finiteness, or a
natural stage of development. Of so great ethic importance is the actual reality
of the ideal primitive state, and of its cessation through the first sin, that they
who dispute it by no means merely hold certain anomalous historical notions,
but essentially alter the Christian doctrines of sin and righteousness, and
attack the substance of Christian truth itself, as the mythical treatment of
sacred history in general always does.
Either sin never had any special beginning, and what is so called origi-
nated together with human nature and is inherent in its notion, and then is
not sin but nature, or it began as an actual revolt against God, by a setting up
of self-will against His will, and hardened into selfishness. Just this actual,
historical commencement of sin is, as a testimony that it did not originate with
or out of the nature of man, a constituent element in the notion of sin, which
those who look down upon the history of the fall as a child’s tale entirely
misconceive, and hold on that very account an utterly different notion of sin
from that of Holy Scripture. The fact stated by Scripture as the beginning of
sin in the human race, is a transgression of the commandment of all com-
mandments, that of obedience to law. As the majestic tone of the first com-
mandment: I am the Lord thy God; Thou shalt have none other gods than me,
resounds throughout each, so also in the command given to our first parents
is the assertion: I am the Lord thy God, unmistakeable. The words: Of every
tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, as much recognise the dominion
over his earthly surrounding with which man was endowed by God, as those
which follow: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not
eat, point him, by the visible limitation they impose, to the limitation of obedi-
ence and service to the Lord his God. We have already seen that this was no
arbitrary command, that the distinction between the trees of the garden which
man was to dress and to keep, and that between working and Sabbath time,
designated man’s earthly and heavenly calling, his dominion over the earth
and his worship of God, and that the trees, consecrated and set apart from the
others by the word of God, formed the sanctuary of Paradise (accedat verbum
ad elementum et fit sacramentum). It is as foolish to say, that the sacred barrier,
by the transgression of which man committed the first sin, had better not have
been placed, as that no churches ought to be built, lest sacrilege should be

committed, or that there should be no law, and no limitation at all, that so
there might be no transgression, absence of restraint and lawlessness being,
on the contrary, the greatest of evils. A sacred barrier, an objective sanctuary,
in general, essentially belongs to the region of human life, as the latter is the
region of religion and destined to religious fellowship. Without a binding and
limit-fixing revelation it would be unbridled, fanatic, losing itself in the
immeasurable, and therein wandering from God. The sanctuary prescribed by
God keeps man in an orderly fellowship of love with God and His fellow-
men, it admonishes him to abide in love. The hearts of the first human beings
were filled with their first love, and needed therefore no impelling and pre-
scribing law, though they did require a regulative and restrictive one, just as
in a house, all whose members are united to one another by love, there is still
need of such regulations as the head of the family may appoint. 64 As it is not
the steps which a man has to ascend that are to be blamed for his fall, but his
own stumbling, so it is not the sanctuary which should elevate him, but man’s
unfaithfulness thereto, which is guilty of his fall; and as the sacrament of the
altar brings the more judgment on the unworthy, the greater a blessing it is to
the faithful, so also did the tree of knowledge bring the more judgment to
those who desecrated it, the more blessing its rightful use would have
afforded. He who doeth the law will live thereby, but he who breaks it will
die by it.
It is with doubt of the truth of the Divine word and law that the tempta-
tion to the first sin begins in the mind. The truth of God’s word is only per-
ceived and believed by the mind, and so, too, it is only the mind which doubts
and denies it. “Yea, hath God said?” To derive such an inquiry of doubt from
a merely natural serpent is, indeed, more than fabulous; hence the Church has
always referred it to a spiritual principle, i.e. to the devil. Man encounters the
seductive doubt with a simple affirmation of the truth, and is yet without sin,
and if he had remained in the truth might have remained without sin, and
been strengthened in his original righteousness. The serpent replies to this
affirmation by denial—casts suspicion on the love of God, and promises like-
ness to God 65 by emancipation from the restraint of the commandment, or
64 Akin with this is the usus tertius legis for the regenerate.
65 “Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. iii. 5), i.e. you shall be your own law.

elevation to an independent autonomy, and man, whose will could equally
have turned from the tempter and persevered in faith and love, inclines
towards the seductive falsehood, begins to mistrust the love of God, looks
away from it, and is immediately attracted by false love and selfish desire of
the forbidden; then arrogance, the lust of the eye and the lust of the flesh,
awake in the soul that is turned away from God, and the transgression of the
barrier, the deed of disobedience, the plunder of the sanctuary is accom-
plished. With this deed human personality departed from the sacred alliance
of love with God, and entered into discord with, into contrariety to Him,
which contrariety is on the other hand met by the law with censure and
rebuke. This contrariety rages in the focus of the consciousness as a conscious-
ness of guilt, and destroys the peace, the happiness of innocence, while
painful shame and fear take the place of childlike love (Gen. iii. 7, 8). As the
soul refused obedience to God, so does the body now refuse to obey the soul;
the ordinance of the subordination of the lower to the higher is done away
with; human nature has lost its royal centre (Jas. ii. 8), and hence the revolt of
selfishness spreads through all its members, obliterates the harmonious fea-
tures of the Divine image, and with it the divine sonship. In sin the fall pro-
duced a revolution, an overthrow in human nature, and its fall was the deeper
in proportion to the height on which it had stood; and the agitation of the evil
discord was the fiercer from its contrast to the former peaceful innocence, just
as now every first act of sin produces far more disturbing effects than its repe-
titions. Innocence did not gradually pass into its opposite, nor was selfishness
developed from love, but arose through apostasy from the love of God. All
the evils, troubles, and pains, together with death under which humanity now
sighs, serve for the chastisement and restraint of selfishness, which further
enjoyment of Paradisaic enjoyment would only have fostered, and therefore
have been pernicious. As earthly nature in general corresponds with the con-
stitution of man its lord, so did Paradise correspond with his original inno-
cence and purity, and was forfeited with these. He who does not remain in
love does not remain in God, and therefore not in Paradise. This was the fall,
that man did not remain in love, but fell into selfishness.
In this selfishness he still continues to live; for he died individually, but

not genetically. Adam and Eve were the primitive sum-total of the entire

human species, which is uninterruptedly propagated; they continue to live in
us all, we are the tree grown out of their root, which, however frequently it
changes its leaves, still remains the same. This is the deep truth of the apos-
tolic saying (Rom. v. 12 sqq.): As by one man sin entered into the world, and
death by sin; and so sin and death passed upon all men: and condemnation
also came upon all men through the imputation of the law; so by the right-
eousness of one justification of life comes upon all. Either Adam or Christ
lives in us. It is less fitting to say that in Adam all have sinned, than that he sins
in us all, because we are Adam living on the continuation and unfolding of his
nature.66 The nature transmitted to each man by his parents individualizes or
personifies itself anew, it is no nature alien to him, it becomes with all its
powers and impulses his own; and thus its sin, too, becomes his
own—becomes in him self - will, self - love, selfishness. This individualization
of human nature, which takes place in all individuals, by no means however
abolishes their communion, brought about by their common origin with all
men, whose generations, sprung from one blood, still flowing through their
veins, dwell upon the whole earth and form a humanity, the combined idea of
whose species is not a nominalistic abstract, but a realistic concrete one in the
historical primitive man and his progeny. Human nature in itself, in its sub-
stance, is not sinful,—for this is from God,—nor is its individualization, its
formation into a person—for on this depends its resemblance to God by love;
only the selfish, the loveless in the individualization is sinful. If, then, genera-
tion and birth are but a reproduction of the same nature, or rather a new indi-
vidualizing of the old nature, its egoism, its wilfulness are transmitted to the new
individual by becoming proper to its personality, and as it develops are actually
promoted and increased by their subjects’ man choice, unless a higher love
suppresses them. If any one would say his sin is not his own, because as to its
origin it was transmitted, he might as well call his ego not his own, because as
to its origin it was quite as much transmitted. It is precisely the process of
personal life to be a universal possession specially appropriated, to be the
generic becoming individual.
It would, however, be onesided to regard human life as propagated by
66 Omnium gentium unus homo, varium nomen est, una anima, varia vox, unus spiritus, varius sonus,
propria cuique genti loquela, sed loquelæ materia communis.—Tertullian, de testimonio animæ, c. 6.

generation and birth only, and to overlook how its condition is imparted also
by education, example, word and deed to both children and adults. Among all
men who have any connection with each other, an active intercourse of giving
and taking is constantly taking place, and both joy and happiness, suffering
and grief, are always passing from one to another in an ever fresh circulation
of all the powers, actions, and affections of life. As broad and long as is the
stream of history, so comprehensive is the continuous flow of sin from its
source to its distant estuary. As various as are the modes of transmission and
inheritance, so various also is the tradition of sin, which cleaves in its univer-
sality to all that is human, and is constantly reproducing itself. Just because it
would be incorrect to accept only an internal transmission of sin, it would be
still more so to maintain a merely external one through bad examples, etc.
This presupposes a very external view of sin in general, a misconception of its
habitual indwelling nature, and a stopping short at its actual manifestations
which alone can come forth as examples and be imitated, while the internal
nature of sin is a thing which cannot be copied. The universality of bad exam-
ple, of defective education, of pernicious circumstances and customs, is noth-
ing else than that universality of sin which is to be referred to the internal
cause of the selfishness of human nature coming forth under various appear-
ances.67 It is from this internal cause that we may often find all the more con-
ceit, arrogance and selfishness developed from an entirely secluded educa-
tion. To this may be added the fact, that while parental love causes children to
see and experience the least amount of selfishness, and they on the contrary
receive in their childhood and are surrounded by various kindnesses and
proofs of love, selfishness nevertheless is predominant in them — a manifest
proof that it proceeds from their inmost nature, and from which it follows that
all education makes a false calculation which misconceives original sin.
To lay the blame upon the sensual nature, or the development of sensu-
ality previously to the development of reason, is to lay the blame upon God,
since this is according to His arrangement.68 It is, moreover, to misconceive
67 Kähler aptly remarks (Wissenschaftlicher Abriss der christlichen Sittenlehre, Part I. p. 98): To explain sin
by education and circumstances is to explain rain by the clouds.

68 Comp. Kähler’s above-named work: Sensuality is but existence; depraved sensuality is the conse-
quence, not the cause of sin. Similarly Augustine, de civit. Dei, lib. xiv. c. 3: Non caro corruptibilis ani-

the spiritual nature of evil, the selfishness of even the higher powers, and also
to overlook the fact that very many vices do not appear in the full force of evil
desire till after the mental powers are fully developed, as e.g. voluptuousness
and ambition in youth, avarice and lust of power in manhood, etc If the Lord
adjudges the kingdom of heaven to children, it is not in consequence of the
merit of their relative innocence, but in consequence of His grace, for which
they are, in their absence of merit and pretension, the most receptive. His say-
ing remains unanswerable: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; unless a
man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John iii. 3-7). Though
births are thousandfold, they may be all reduced to two— one the birth of the
flesh of Adam, the other the birth of the Spirit of Christ. Though millions of
men exist, there are but two original men—Adam and Christ; the former the
head of sinful carnal humanity, the latter the head of redeemed, spiritual
humanity; and as is the head so are the members: By one man sin entered into
the world, and by sin condemnation came upon all men; and by the righteous-
ness of one also, justification of life came upon all men (Rom. v. 12, 18). That
atomistic view which regards humanity as only an aggregate, only a sum-total
of millions of separate individuals, without perceiving their vital connection,
their oneness with their head and members, is itself already a fruit of that iso-
lating selfishness which is entirely opposed to the view of Holy Scripture. This
is not only wont to comprise the whole human race in Adam or Christ, but
also individual nations in their founders, and to regard them as the multiplied
personal developments of their personal ancestors. It is such a concrete univer-
sality of sin, proceeding from a personal commencing and central point, and
penetrating the whole of its vast sphere, which we maintain and have in this
chapter confirmed. This centralization of evil among men, which in narrower
circles is ever anew fixing itself in subjects who become seducers, has, never-
theless, a still higher beginning and connection in regions which we will dis-
cuss in a special appendix to this chapter.
APPENDIX. OF THE DEVIL.
Our consideration of the beginning of sin among men pointed to its
mam peccatricem, sed anima peccatrix fecit esse corruptibilem carnem.

still earlier beginning and higher principle in the realm of spirits, by showing
us in the serpent an instrument of temptation employed by a higher spirit.
This tempting spirit, who tried to seduce even Christ, the second Adam, to
selfishness, is called by Him the devil or adversary, who remained not in the
truth, but is a liar, and the father of lies (John viii. 44). The saying: He
remained (abode, E. V.) not in the truth, and the truth is not in him, is
explained to us, who have known the truth and God Himself in love, by St
John’s saying: “He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love,” and “he
that remaineth not in love remaineth not in God, nor God in him” (E. V.: “He
that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him”) (1 John iv. 8, 16). If
the devil did not remain in the truth of love, he must have been originally in
it, as we maintain of all higher spirits made in the personal image of God.
Evil, i.e. selfish spirits fallen away from the love of God, among human beings
also, are, in Holy Scripture, designated by the general expression devils, while
the notion of the good angel essentially includes the properties of love, obedi-
ence, and humility. If, then, the devil is made prominent among devils as first
and leader, this by no means points to an actually specific difference between
his sinfulness and that of all other sinners; but he is merely regarded as that
sinner, who first rebelled against God and apostatized from Him. From this
personal beginning of apostasy and the continuance of its operation pro-
ceeded temptation and seduction to further apostasy, and thus the diffusion
of evil as from a central point took place and still goes on.69
It is a chief ethic element in the doctrine of the devil, that the revolt of
evil against good had a free, personal, actual beginning, and that in the region
of the will in the spiritual world, and therefore had not its cause in original
creation. This first of all excludes that coarser or more refined Manichæism,
which derives evil from primal evil being, or from matter, or regards it as
natural and resulting from the finite nature of man. Here, on the contrary, that
spiritual and personal character is asserted, which it shares, though in a
reversed manner, with good. For as this consists in the love which is based
upon a spiritual personality, so does evil consist in the selfishness which is,
according to its idea, a fault of the self, or of the personality and its will. As
69 Compare Martensen, Die Christliche Dogmatik (Clark’s translation). In him the evil principle is so
hypostatized, that he has become the personal centre and head in the kingdom of evil.

Scripture says, God is love, so may it be rightly said of the devil, who
remained not in love and in the truth, he is selfishness; this makes his person-
ality self-evident, for an unpersonal selfishness is a nonentity. Neither evil nor
good is a mere neuter, an unconscious abstractum; the existence of both is only
personal and concrete; no one is good but God only; evil is the evil one. Not as
though God and the devil, good and evil, confronted each other equilaterally;
on the contrary, all that God made was, both as to substance and quality,
good, existed in its good state without any contrast of evil, nay, is still as to its
substance good. Sin, on the contrary, has no substantial existence; it is only a
deterioration of that which is good by nature, and therefore exists in beings
created by God as defectiveness of persons. As disease is no independent exis-
tence, no substance or norm, but only an abnormity in an organism, which is
as to its physical nature and normal constitution good, so is sin no evil nature
of the soul, nor an evil addition to it, but only the depravation of that good
nature of the soul, which was intended for love, to selfishness, which, as the
contrary of love, as much presupposes it as sickness does health, as abnormity
does the norm. The very reason why sin is so ruinous is because it debases,
desecrates and ruins natures so exalted, so noble, so akin to God as angels and
men; thus the very harm it effects testifies to the dignity of the nature it viti-
ates.70 It follows—and this is the second ethic element of this doctrine—that
sin is not a result of natural weakness, limitation, or ignorance. The higher
spirits surpass men in concentration and extension of power and intellect, and
in their abundance of mental endowments. Nevertheless the chiefest among
them did not remain in the truth in which he stood, but fell into the revolt of
falsehood against the truth.71 Among men, too, we see the highest natural
mental endowments, on the one hand employed in the service of love and of
the kingdom of God, on the other perverted to the insolent service of selfish-
ness. Selfishness has its heroes, the assailants of earth and heaven, the great
geniuses, the acute thinkers, who, the more they are strangers to self-denying
70 Comp. Hirscher’s Christliche Moral, vol. i. div. ii. p. 101 sqq.

71 Vitio etiam magna multumque laudabilis ostenditur ipsa natura; cujus enim recte vituperatur vitium,
procul dubio natura laudatur; nam recte vitii vituperatio est, quod illo dehonestatur natura laudabilis.
Quapropter etiam vitio malorum angelorum, quo non adhærent Deo, quoniam omne vitium naturæ
nocet, satis manifestatur, Deum tam bonam earum creasse naturam, cui noxium sit, non esse cum
Deo.—Aug. de civit. Dei, lxii. c. 1.

love, are also the farther from the kingdom of God, and who, with all their
acuteness of intellect, are nevertheless, because their heart does not stand in
the truth of love, entangled in the sophistry of lies and self-deception. Sin, as
well as goodness, is found at every degree of mental power, the physical dif-
ference of which by no means involves an ethical one, unless it be that the
stronger natures, when they sin, sin only the more stoutly. In the more highly
gifted there is also the more possibility of self-exaltation; greater power may,
according to the direction of the will, be both more beneficently employed
and more malevolently abused; the higher forms of selfishness, viz. ambition,
love of power, intellectual and spiritual pride, are seductively near to the
nobler and more intellectual natures; and how much conceit and perversity
are often combined with education and scholarship! Sin, then, by no means
belongs only to the lower and more ignorant regions of existence, it is not
mere weakness or error, but had its principal commencement in the realm of
the stronger spirits, and originated among the angels, proving most clearly
that it is of a spiritual nature, though it ruins not the soul only, but the body
also. Hence the important saying of the apostle, that we wrestle not against
flesh and blood, but against evil spiritual powers, the rulers of the darkness of
this world (Eph. v. 12). It is remarkable that such scriptural and spiritual
notions of evil should, in the presence of the modern view, which regards it as
a result of matter, sensuousness, or weakness, put on an illuministic appear-
ance.
Every creature has the cause of its existence and prosperity not in itself
but in its Creator, who alone has life in Himself; and it is especially included
in the notion of a created image of God, that as relatively good it should have
its peace and happiness only in the absolutely good, only in fellowship with
the eternal Archetype, or in the union of love with Him, but that without this
fellowship, and resting on itself or in the creature, it should be evil and
unhappy. God, existing absolutely of and through Himself, the eternal loving
Triune, is, as truly as He is God, happy and holy in Himself; but the creature,
as truly as he is God’s creature, is neither in himself, but in God, in His love.72
72 Non est creatura rationalis vel intellectualis bonum, quo beata sit nisi Deus. Non ex se ipsa potest
esse beata, quia ex nihilo creata est scd ex illo, a quo creata est. Hoc enim adepto beata, quo amisso mis-
era est. Ille vero, qui non alio, sed se ipso bono beatus est, ideo ipse miser non potest esse, quia non se

Love has its foundation in personality, in the ego, because it is the union
between the I and the Thou; but as love is only possible with personality, so
also does the latter make possible that existence in and for self which, in its
pretension to divine absoluteness and autonomy (Gen. iii. 5), abolishes loving
dependence on God, breaks its faith with, and withdraws its obedience from
Him. With the unselfing of the self in love corresponds as a contrast the possi-
bility of its self-concentration in selfishness, just as the possibility of happiness
in God includes the possibility of unhappiness out of Him. That blessedness
in the love of God, whereby His created image far excels all other creatures,
involves also its deep ruin if it does not continue in that love, just as vice versa
the latter points to the former. Even in its perdition, therefore, its excellence
above other creatures is manifest. The eye is the light of the body, and there-
fore excellent above all the other members, though sight involves the possibil-
ity of the misery of blindness.
The devil did not remain in the truth, did not remain in the love of
God, the Supreme Good. He looked at the good, the gifts and benefits, which
he had himself received from God; and this was allowable, he might and
should rejoice in them, if with grateful remembrance of their Giver and
Creator he had then turned his glance towards Him. But—and with this but
begins the paralogism of sin—he suffered his glance to remain fixed on them,
and doubting the truth of the Supreme Good, and not turning back to the
truth, he began to love with false affection the gifts more than the Giver; he
regarded them as his own property, and took a selfish pleasure in them, and
thus fell by his own will. For he boasted of his dominion (Jude 6), and because
of the glory with which he had been invested would no longer be a servant of
God, but lord in his own province, like God. Thus he became disobedient, and
a sinner against the first commandment, opposing to the word of the Lord: I
am the Lord thy God: I am my lord and my god.73 It is not because egoism is
evil that the ego, without which there would be no love, is so; and gifts are not
to be despised because their giver is better than they, nor do good things cease
to be good because the Supreme Good is superior to them. Not that, then, to
which the devil turned when he turned from God, not his ego, not his nature,
potest amittere.—Aug. de civit. Dei, lib. xii. c. 1.

73 The devil, says Luther, is Antithesis Decalogi.

not his gifts and circumstances were evil;74 these were, on the contrary, as
God’s creatures, all good, but of course good in a far lower degree than the
Creator Himself; and to love this inferior good, which in due subordination
ought to be loved in proportion to its value and quantity, more than the high-
est Good, or rather than the high God, is that depreciation of Him, that revolt
against Him, which, because it reverses the order of love, reverses and brings
everything into disorder, 75 and not only corrupts the natural impulses and
feelings through selfishness, but also falsifies the judgment by its perverted
estimate, and changes the truth into a lie. If, according to Augustine’s excel-
lent saying, virtue is the order of love, sin is its disorder.
The truth is not in the devil, because a false love is in him, because he is
corrupted by deceitful lusts (Eph. iv. 22); when he speaks lies he speaks of his
own; turned to his own by self-will and self-love, he esteems it more highly
than what is God’s; desiring to he his own master, God, his Lord, is distasteful
to him, and he consequently misconceives and denies His holy love, and his
disposition is hostility to God and resistance to His law—the law of truth. The
self-deception of selfishness corrupts his whole moral judgment; to his arro-
gance humility is cringing, dependence on God slavery; simplicity and sincer-
ity seem folly to his false serpent-like wisdom, and love senseless susceptibil-
ity to his egoism, while repentance, reparation, and entreaties for mercy are
intolerable humiliation to his pride. His devices and desires make him think
his efforts to attain an autocratic likeness to God noble, his refusal of submis-
sion to God exalted; in false philosophy he deifies himself; he seeks and finds
his honour in opposition, in negation; he boasts of his power in revolution
and in unbending self-will; ambition and love of power impel all his actions,
and excuse them in his eyes. Such is he, for such are all who are of his seed,
and do according to their father’s lusts (John viii. 44). The father is known by
his children, and specimens are not far to seek; they are found everywhere,
and are, especially in these tumultuous times, striking likenesses. As all self-
ishness or sin in its self-deception seeks good, not in God, where it is to be
74 Non ipsius diaboli nature, in quantum natura est, malum est, sed perversitas eam
malam facit.—Augustine, de civit. Dei, lib. xix. c. 13.

75 Deficitur non ad mala sed male, id est non ad malas natures sed ideo mala, quia contra ordinem
naturarum ab eo quod summe est ad id quod minus est.— Aug. de civit. Dei, lib. xii. c. 8.

found, but out of God, where it is not to be found, and for that reason never
finds true satisfaction, and yet never ceases from its search, but, staying itself
with seeming, yet ever and again unsatisfying gratifications, is ever striving
after more and never contented, so also is it with the devil, who is none other
than the first of the selfish; for, as St. John says: The devil sinneth from the
beginning (1 John iii. 8).
The world, justifying itself with respect to the devil, has constructed an
image of him so deformed, so untrue, nay, so absurd, that it is very easy either
to reject it altogether or at least to disown having any fellowship with it. I do
not allude to the caricatures of superstition, which have been a laughing-stock
for children, but to those strange notions which regard the devil as an original
evil being, or an absolutely evil spirit, who wills and does evil only as evil and
for its own sake with a genuine consciousness of its horror and vileness, while
at the same time feeling only its torture and punishment. Such notions are so
at variance with all analogy of evil, as it generally manifests itself, and at the
same time introduce such contradiction between the thought and desire of the
devil, as to fall to pieces for want of harmony. He that sinneth is of the devil,
says St. John (1 John iii. 8), thus testifying that the devil, as a sinner, is not so
singular, not so monstrous, that no one resembles him, but on the contrary,
that all sin being from him, his too may and must be recognised by exhibiting
the common characteristics of sin. Hence what is true of sin in general—or,
since sin as selfishness can only exist personally, of sinners in general—is true
also of the devil in particular, who is the first among them. Now sin is every-
where affected with falsehood, and the truth is not in it, but a false love
impels it to esteem and desire the creature above the Creator; a false desire
allures it not to disgust but to false delight, which, though it brings disgust
afterwards, conceals it behind deceptive charms. Sin pursues not that which
seems evil, but that which seems good to it; it does not crave after what is loath-
some in spite of its loathsomeness, but lusts after what is agreeable, and tastes
with delight the sweet deceptive poison; though it knows what is forbidden, it
misconceives the prohibition, and longs for it as for something advantageous,
and keeps back the truth in unrighteousness (Rom. i. 18). This is just what our
Lord says of the devil: he remained not in the truth, and the truth is not in
him, for he is a liar. Self-deification, the false likeness to God of selfishness, is

the lie wherewith the devil seduced not only our first parents (Gen. iii. 5), but
himself also; this lie of selfishness, denying and reversing the truth of love,
pervades the entire realm of sin from the highest to the lowest of sinners, for
the devil is not only a liar, but also the father of lies. Ye are of your father the
devil, and after the lust of your father ye will do, says Christ (John viii. 44), in
accordance with the above words of St. John: he that doeth sin is of the devil,
inasmuch as the lust of sin is still dominant in him who does it. The homogene-
ity of diabolic and human sin is undeniably declared by this fatherhood, and
when Jesus adds, that the devil, according to whose lusts they desire to do, is
not only a liar, but also a murderer from the beginning, He very clearly con-
firms the fact, that as truth and love are inseparably combined in the Holy
Spirit (πνεῦμα τῆς ἀληθείας), so are lying and hatred in the evil spirit. If God
were your father, He had said shortly before (viii. 42), ye would love me; and
by the same criterion does St. John distinguish the children of God and the
children of the devil (1 John iii. 9-15), in which last verse he says, with unmis-
takeable reference to the murderer from the beginning: he that hateth his
brother is a murderer. Here too, then, selfishness comes forward as the com-
mon nature of all sin, whence it appears, that the devil is not so different from
us sinners as they suppose who regard him as a monstrum unicum.
The feature which distinguishes the sin of evil spirits from that of men,
consists, according to the notion of their nature, in the fact that their sin, in the
absence of earthly corporeity, does not manifest itself in the material forms of
sensual love of pleasure as it does in sensuous man. But they are not therefore
better than men, a most evident proof that spirituality of itself is of no ethic
advantage; but on the contrary, the more intensive their spiritual self-con-
sciousness, the more concentrated also is their selfishness, the energy of which
is, in its human subject, much restrained and weakened by the sensual wants
and dependence of a nature entwined by so many earthly ties.76 It is true that,
by reason of their supersensuousness an activity chiefly directed to the super-
sensual and psychical, and working in conscious opposition to God, must be
attributed to them, an activity employed in hindering and destroying the sal-
vation of souls by leading them by lying wonders to departure and apostasy
76 Comp. Müller, Lehre von der Sünde, i. p. 100 sq.

from God, as that of the good angels is in promoting it (2 Thess. ii. 9-11). The
saying of St. James (Jas. ii. 19), according to which the devils indeed believe
that there is one God, but included in that which is His opposite do not
believe in His love, but tremble before Him, also points to this opposition of
God. The opposition of God to them reacts, though with a longsuffering
which is only humiliating to them, upon their opposition to God, and this
eternal contrast of the holy will of God to their repugnance oppresses them as
punishment and condemnation, weighs upon them as eternal unhappiness, in
which, however, they are so far found of their own accord, that they will not,
in the defiance of their obdurate selfishness, fulfil the conditions of the hum-
ble and holy happiness of the good spirits, a phenomenon often witnessed in
obstinate selfwill, which would rather give up anything than itself. The devils
cannot pray the Lord’s prayer, because they will not renounce their name, their
kingdom, their will, for they are hardened in self-will and against the love and
grace of God; therefore they remain under wrath.
The peculiarity of the being who is called the devil par excellence, con-
sists, apart from the superiority of his natural gifts, in the circumstance, that
according to the words of the Lord, he is not only a liar, as all sinners are in
their own way (Rom. iii. 4), but also the father of lies or sins. Sin began in him
by self-seduction to departure from God, and was then further diffused by
him as a personal principle, by the seduction of others and the propagation of
his revolutionary spirit among angels and men. Evil is infectious, and though
its characteristic is selfish separation, still this expands into party spirit, and
party, which only lives upon opposition, is ever seeking to attain by various
enticements an increase of followers, while the head of the party, who resist-
ing the kingdom of God is striving to set up and extend his own kingdom
(Matt. xii. 26), is the most diligent of all in such efforts. As certainly as sin has
its seat in the personal will, so surely is there no constraint in the temptations
of the devil, which on the contrary consist in exciting a lust for what is forbid-
den, by means of doubts, lies and deceptions, often of a seemingly holy kind
(2 Cor. xi. 14), which lust inciting and alluring both receives the seed of sin
and also brings forth its fruit (Jas. i. 14). Thus the devil as the tempter is the
father of human sin, but the soul which lets itself be tempted is its mother. The
serpent’s seed of selfishness which it has received remains and carries on its

operations, producing thousands upon thousands of sins in every department
of human life, without there being any need to accept the notion of a fresh
direct interposition of Satan, whose agency as little excludes second causes as
these do him. Thus the sin of the devil and the sin of Adam continue to oper-
ate in our sin, and temptation, uncaused by his own sin (John xiv. 20), assailed
in renewed power and originality only the second Adam, and was tri-
umphantly overcome by Him, the breaker of the serpent’s head (Gen. iii. 15).
For this purpose was the Son of God manifested, that He might destroy the
works of the devil (1 John iii. 8), who, however, therefore opposed the work of
Christ with all the power of his followers, with all the force of lies and malice,
even of the most sanguinary malice (1 John iii. 12; 1 Pet. v. 8). All that is
antigodly and antichristian diffused throughout the world by far-reaching
radii, is concentrated in him as its principle, and inasmuch as he is the father
of the sin which enslaves the whole world, so far as it is not redeemed there-
from, he is, as the spirit which worketh in the children of disobedience, called
also the prince, nay, the god of this world (Eph. ii. 2; 2 Cor. iv. 4). Among
these children of disobedience, antichristianity, as the climax of selfishness,
will proceed even to the utter denial of the Father and the Son, and to the
most arrogant self-deification (1 John ii. 18, 22 5 2 Thess. ii. 4), but will then be
entirely destroyed by the Lord with the spirit of His mouth and by the bright-
ness of His coming (2 Thess. ii. 8). The devil’s system of hypocritical spiritual
lying is chiefly seen in his efforts to set the word of God in contradiction with
itself, to deny one part by means of another, the gospel by the law, grace by
righteousness, and thus to perplex the conscience, on which account he is also
called the accuser of the brethren, who after he has long accused them is him-
self cast down (Rev. xii. 10).
Controversy against the devil, which was formerly directed, with that
strength of faith and of the Holy Ghost which destroyed his works, against his
agency, i.e. against the spiritual power of evil, has recently been theoretically
directed, with the sceptical strength of unbelief, against his existence and pres-
ence, and either denies or ignores him as a mere phantom of the imagination.
Consequently the enemy being said to be no longer extant, the watchfulness,
prayer and manful resistance which Scripture so emphatically recommends,
are discontinued, which peaceful controversy is undoubtedly less offensive to

him than the former warlike kind. No other doctrine of Holy Scripture has
experienced such decided, general, and at the same time sarcastic disfavour
from a frivolous illusionism as the doctrine of the devil, which certainly, since
he rules in darkness, has dark depths (Rev. ii. 24). If the matter in question
had been merely the existence of a person more or less in the realm of spirits,
the dispute concerning it would have been of no ethical importance. But it
cannot be mistaken, that with a denial of the existence of the devil is com-
bined also a denial of the scriptural doctrine of sin, and that the endeavour to
disclaim the latter in its full moral seriousness, and to filter it off in this nega-
tive manner, has greatly contributed to placing the mere negation of the devil in
the place of his abnegation. The more he has been denied, the more has it been
affirmed that sin is only a consequence and property of sensuousness and
corporeity, or a mere limitation of finite existence, or a weakness, or only the
result of ignorance and a rude state of nature, which must yield to enlighten-
ment, better instruction in schools and higher intellectuality, or that it forms a
necessary stage of development in human nature, a necessary shadow to the
light, a necessary foundation for more exalted merit, and other like delusions
and rejections of the true notion of sin.77 The spiritual nature, the power, the
selfish personality of evil are denied with the personality of the devil, and it is
evident that when sin is thus misconceived the power and truth of redemp-
tion must be misconceived also, and a real conflict against evil relaxed.
On the other hand, it has been asserted that the doctrine of the devil is
prejudicial to moral earnestness, because it induces men to remove the guilt of
evil from themselves to the devil, and to lay the blame of sin in general upon
him and his temptations only, and thus, as it were, to transfer it from them-
selves, and to release themselves from its imputation. This reproach is, on
closer inspection, entirely reversed, and its whole weight falls upon the mod-
ern notions of evil, as is unquestionably proved even by the circumstance that
the more unaccustomed the age has become to the thought of the devil, the
laxer has it grown in the imputation and punishment of sin. The former age,
which did not deny the temptations and assaults of the devil, was yet so little
inclined to excuse men on that account, that it on the contrary considered an
77 Compare, on the contrary, Neander, Leben Jesu, Div. iii. pp. 113 and 286 sqq., also Twesten’s apt
remarks in Part II. of his Dogmatik, p. 368 sq.

intermission of resistance to the evil spirit, or any meddling with him, as the
most flagrant of offences, and exercised against it, together with the strictest
imputation, a harshness of criminal punishment at which we are horrified.
The opposite extreme to this severity is the laxity of modern penal justice, in
the administration of which judges and physicians are but too inclined either
to acquit criminals, or as much as possible to extenuate their crimes, on physi-
cal or psychical grounds, while the moral judgment of general public opinion
has become excessively lax and indulgent. It cannot be denied that in every
sin there is not merely an evil will, but also the enticement of some tempta-
tion; where, then, this is not referred to the devil, man by no means therefore
ascribes the sin to his own corrupt will, but appeals to other kinds of tempta-
tions, which, however, he does not derive from sin, but from nature, though
this is only seductive under the influence of sin. Undoubtedly the world and
the flesh are powers of objective and subjective temptation, but they are such
not through their natural substance, but through the influence of the evil with
which they are affected. But when, as at present, the temptation to evil is
referred only to sensuousness, to temperament, to natural lusts and passions,
or to circumstances or to fixed ideas, monomania and the like, the blame is
pre-eminently laid upon something ethically indifferent, or merely natural.
This is done with the less hesitation because less repugnance is felt to such
really innocent temptations; and an intermission of resistance may be easily
justified by appeals to their more physical than ethical character. Thus, since
the doctrine of the devil has been lost sight of, the lax excusing and non-impu-
tation of sin have been very specially and excessively prevalent. Matters are
on the other hand very different when temptation, though always using the
natural as a means, is perceived to have originally proceeded from an evil spir-
itual power, in personal opposition to whom man must feel as much called
upon to abhor as to resist, because submission and admission seem as danger-
ous as they are pernicious, and guilt not lessened but rather increased thereby.
Then man, equipped with spiritual weapons of offence and defence, enters
upon that conflict against the power of the evil one, to which St. Paul sum-
mons (Eph. v. 10-17), though unobeyed by the weaklings of this generation.
Not from their denials, but from the moral resistance of the believing Chris-
tian, does the devil flee (Jas. iv. 7). The accuser of our brethren is cast down,
and they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their tes-

timony.
CHAPTER III. OF NATURAL AND REVEALED LAW, ITS

PRINCIPLE AND EXTENT, AND OF THE IMPUTATION OF SIN
THROUGH THE LAW.
The notion of the Divine law has its roots in that of the Divine image.
Man was made to be an image of God; this expressed the Divine purpose, the
Divine law of his being. The law is that Divine archetype of human nature,
that ideal of man, after which he was created. Let us make man an image,
which may be like us—this counsel of the creation of man is the primal law of
his being; the will of God, that man should be an image of God, called him
into existence, and is continually calling him to likeness to God; for such a law
is immanent in human nature as its norm and type. It is an extremely inade-
quate notion, and one derived from human maxims, to think of the law of
God as a series of moral precepts according to which man must act, or a
summary of abstract propositions by which he must regulate his doing and
leaving undone. God lays down no such abstract moral law, nor sets it over
man apart from Himself; but His law is His living will itself, which, willing
men to resemble God, gives the Divine likeness as their norm, and that not as
an externally added precept, but as an internal, an innate canon. This will, the
loving will of God, did not merely will that man was to be like Him in love,
but what it willed it also effected, and made man not merely to be an image,
but also in the image of God (Gen. i. 27), created him not only for but also in
love. God did not cause the idea of man merely to hover over him as an
abstract model, an empty ideal, but manifested and realized it in him, when He
made him in His image. We have already seen that because God is love, His
image, imprinted in creation, consisted in the love with which He inspired
man, and filled in his state of innocence his heart and soul and mind. Again,
Holy Scripture most plainly and expressly testifies, that the love of God with
all the heart, witli all the soul, and with all the mind, is the first and greatest
commandment or summary of all the commandments (Matt. xxiii. 37; 1 Tim. i.
5); that love, moreover, is the supreme virtue and the sum-total of all virtues,
that it is the fulfilling of the law (1 Cor. xiii.; Rom. xiii. 10). Hence the con-

gruity of the notions of the Divine image, of the law and of love, which is the
explicit fulfilment of both, is self-evident.
There is, however, a difference between the original Divine image and
the present law in their attitude towards human nature. This difference con-
sists in the fact that the former was, because the first man was normally cre-
ated in it, no norm at variance with his normal condition, but was in conform-
ity or congruity therewith, which is far from being the case in the present state
of man. The original man was not under the law, but in it (non fait sub lege con-
ditio, sed in lege); it encountered him not as a command, an “ought,” but, being
what he ought to be, existence and duty coincided as a straight gauge does
with a straight line. Love equally fills the form of the Divine image and that of
the Divine law, which does not go beyond it, requires nothing higher than
love, but is satisfied by it; for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law
(Rom. xiii. 8). Love is itself law; it wills the good as the law does; its will and
that of God’s law is one will. Love does what is right, not because it ought or
must, but because it chooses; its will does not need the incentive of a com-
mand, for it is its own incentive; it is itself the good will, the Divine good plea-
sure, which likes to do right; it is the will of God, the indwelling of His Holy
Spirit, and spiritus sanctus est viva lex. Will and duty, freedom and necessity,
are united in love, because it is the free will of God and of His love. The more
a man loves, the more freely and willingly does he do ‘the good and remain
therein; and on the other hand, the more necessary it is to him, the more it
becomes to him a second nature, and the less can he will and do anything but
the good, on which account to love (lieben) and to be good (gutsein) are used as
synonyms. Love, as the fulfilling of the law, is also righteousness, and no law
is given to the righteous, because his will, his righteousness, is the living law
itself (1 Tim. i. 9).
If, then, the first man was in the state of first love, he was, for that very
reason, also in a state of innocence, which as yet knew not the contrast of good
and evil, as the law determines it, because in its congruity with the Divine
image the law was not as yet objectively confronted with it; and no other
commandment was given than that of the sanctification of the Sabbath for the
maintenance of original righteousness. A twofold consciousness, therefore, of

what he was and what he ought to be did not exist in man, so long as he
remained in untroubled peace with God. It was otherwise, however, when,
breaking the bond of first love, he departed from his original normal condi-
tion into an abnormal sinful course of conduct towards God. Then the human
consciousness parted into legal and actual, the consciousness of the primitive
condition remained, but no longer as of one which was, but of one which
ought to be, with which the consciousness of the now existing condition was at
variance. The former normal condition is just the concrete law impressed by
creation on human nature (concreta quia concreata), which, though that nature
entered, after the loss of original righteousness, into an abnormal condition,
continued nevertheless to be its norm and measure, just as health is the mea-
sure of sickness, for sickness is nothing else than the contrast to the law of
health. 78 The notion of abnormity always presupposes the norm or law from
which it is a departure, whence sin also, as a departure from the law of the
Divine likeness, cannot be more concisely defined than it is by the saying of
St. John: ἡ ἁμαρτία ἐστὶν ἡ ἀνομία: sin is lawlessness (1 John iii. 4).
It is then in consequence of sin that the normative will of God has

become a contrast to the human will, or that it rules the life of man as an
imperative law. A command had certainly been previously given; but this was
merely a limitation restricting his nature, not a contrast within it. It was not
till after opposition to God began in man, that the counter-opposition of the
Divine law of his nature also arose within him, and that duty, will and per-
formance widely diverged (Rom. vii. 14 sqq.). This opposition of the law of
God to sin involves its imputation; for sin is thereby as that which is not from
God but contrary to Him, ascribed, i.e. imputed to man as guilt; guilt is sin
imputed, and every sin is, in proportion to its deviation from the law, guilt,
and is accused, judged, and rebuked thereby. The medium of this imputation
is the conscience. Conscience is the consciousness of the Divine law as the orig-
inal norm and form of human nature.79 Where nature and its norm, where
78 “The notion of sickness includes the continuing reaction of nature, or of the original unity of the vital
powers and functions, though not the sufficiency of nature for the cure of the evil”—Nitzsch, System der
christlichen Lehre, § 106.
79 See the excellent treatment of the doctrine of conscience in Harless’ christliche Ethik (4th ed.,
Stuttgart 1849), p. 24 sqq.

existence and duty are in unison, there is peace, and the conscience as law is
silent; but where law and nature are at variance, the original norm reacts
against the abnormity, commanding, threatening, rebuking, and conscience
sits in judgment for God (Rom. ii. 14). The law is as far above man as he has
fallen by sin; if he were without sin he would not lie under the law, which
would then be no governor or taskmaster to him (usus pædagogicus legis), but
only his rule of life (usus didactus).
The content of the law, like that of the Divine image, is love, and con-
tinues to be love even when man stands in opposition thereto. And the very
right and zeal with which the law enjoins love to man, who in it alone comes
up to his vocation, his position towards God and his fellowmen, is, at the
same time, its holy wrath against sin, or against the lack of love and the pres-
ence of selfishness. The wrath of God is the holy reaction of His love against
its opposite, the love of God becomes, in contrast with evil, holy indignation.
God would not be holy love if He were not angry with that which is contrary
to love; the more He loves and wills the good of His creatures, the more angry
is He with that which is their evil and ruin, i.e. sin. The fire of Divine love,
beneficent to all who love, warming, melting all who surrender to it, is con-
suming to all who oppose it, whence Scripture rightly says: “Our God is a
consuming fire” (Heb. xii. 29; Deut. iv. 24), consuming the evil, cherishing the
good. He is the Lord, as ardent for righteousness as He is inflexible against
unrighteousness, for the one is the condition of the other, and they who mis-
conceive the wrath of God, misconceive both the ardour of His love and the
destructive nature of sin. It is a lax antinomism, a misconception of the
unchangeable truth and holiness of the law, to relegate the wrath of God only
to the past times of the O. T., thus diluting His Divine love in the N. T. to mere
good nature, and degrading His mercy in Christ to indulgent laxity. Both tes-
taments contain both law and gospel, both reveal the holy love and holy
wrath of God, but the N. T., as the completion of revelation, manifests both
more perfectly, i.e. the law in its most sacred and intrinsic severity (Matt. v. 17
sqq.), and in its holiest of holy sacrifices (Heb. ix. 11 sqq.), and the gospel in its
supreme proofs of love; both law and gospel being united in full perfection in
Christ; for He is the Redeemer of the world through His blood, at once its
Atoner and its Judge.

The law demands love as the happiness and fundamental duty of man,
and he having by sin failed to fulfil this duty, and never in his separation from
God satisfying this demand, is therefore a debtor to the law and is ever
accused (lex semper accusat) and condemned by it. As sickness is ever opposing
and again being opposed by the law of health, whence arises the disease, the
pain, the grief of illness, so is it with sin and the law. This conflict, this wrath
of the law against sin, worketh wrath (Rom. iv. 15); the mind either becomes
reluctant, servile, hostile, under the judgment of the law, or falls into discour-
agement and despair, into fear and anxiety. This is what St. Paul calls the
deathworking agency of the law, in the classic passage (Rom. vii. 7-24), which
strikingly describes the internal conflict stirred up by the law in the sinful
nature, and concludes with a sigh for deliverance. “I was alive without the
law once,” he says, “then sin was dead, I did not perceive it, but through the
law; I had known nothing of lust, unless the law had said: Thou shalt not
covet” (vv. 7-9); sin is not imputed where there is no law (ver. 13). The
entrance of the law into our consciousness, into our conscience, is the imputa-
tion of sin; through the law is the knowledge of sin, and with it its imputation
as guilt; for known sin is guilt. If, however, unperceived sin is not yet imputed
as guilt, it does not therefore follow that it is not sin; on the contrary, all law-
lessness, all abnormity (quævis absentia conformitatis cum lege sive defectus, sive
affectus, sive omissio, sive commissio), whether conscious or unconscious, against
an enlightened conscience or without it, is sin. Nay, the very absence of an
enlightened conscience, unconscientiousness, is, as being the deeper depravity
of human nature, so much the greater sin, though the more conscience with-
draws the less also is the imputation. It, however, by no means follows from
the fact that sin is not yet imputed, that it never will be; on the contrary, it is
said to be imputed for the very purpose of its being perceived. Original sin
too is imputed to every man, for the very purpose of his perceiving it to be sin
through the law which condemns it (Rom. vii. 7). Indeed, the chief business of
the law is to produce this accusing and rebuking knowledge of sin, and
thereby to arouse a feeling of the need of redemption (Rom. iii. 20).
It is true that the innate law, written on the heart of man, whose con-
science bears witness and the thoughts accuse or excuse one another, likewise

produces this knowledge of sin. But from the same heart, because it has fallen
into sin and is a prey to selfishness, come also wicked and lying thoughts,
which corrupt the truth of the natural law and the natural conscience. The
more essentially the characteristic of the Divine image belongs to human
nature, the more desperately does this corruption seize it. Conformity with
God is man’s ineradicable destination, the need of it, the struggle for it
remains with him even in his deformity, the law makes him perceive this
deformity but does not remove it; on the contrary, it causes it to be the more
felt as an oppressive guilty contrast to God. Such a discord, which sets a man
at variance not only with God but with himself, such a rebuking contrast
between the Most Holy, the Ever Present, and his unholiness and depravity,
cannot be long endured by man. Hence, when he cannot find the true reconcil-
iation, he invents a fictitious one by diluting, by lulling to sleep the law that is
in him, in other words, by falsely conforming it to himself, instead of himself
to it. Thus he fabricates for himself such a peace with God as suits him, and
strives after likeness to God, not by becoming like God, but by making God
like himself, as St. Paul plainly testifies when he says (Rom. i. 23): “They
changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corrupt-
ible man.” In the whole context of this passage the apostle makes it manifest,
that religions and moral error, that idolatry and all the immorality connected
therewith, do not arise from natural ignorance, but from sin; for this is the
very nature of sin, that man, as he did not remain in love, so neither did he in
truth, in other words, he changed the truth of God into a lie (Rom. i. 25; com-
pare our Lord’s saying concerning the devil, John viii. 44). As long as the
enmity of the carnal mind against the holy God is not reconciled by genuine
redemption, the flesh is ever striving either to free itself, in an arbitrary man-
ner, from the bonds of the law, or vainly puffed up (Col. ii. 18) is deluding
itself with the notion of not merely satisfying the divine commands, but of
even meritoriously exceeding them in self-chosen spirituality. Where such
licentiousness or arrogance of natural selfishness affects by turns mind and
heart, will and thought, there is no true knowledge of God and of His holy
law, because there is no true love, for he that loveth not knoweth not God. In such
a case the thing which a man impurely or inordinately loves, whether ele-
vated or degraded, whether himself or any other creature, becomes his deity,
his idol. In its deepest root all sin is both idolatry and falsehood, and all unbe-

lief and superstition, all lying and immorality have sprung from this one evil
root. They who misconceive and deny God, and in Him true love, are given
up to a deceitful love of the creature, which, darkening their heart, increases
even to that unnatural lust, so frequently found combined with idolatry (Rom.
i. 26 sq.). Sin ever begets sin, and when not removed, punishes itself by the
ever increasing perversion of the whole man, not only of feeling and desire,
but also of knowledge and conscience. He who is diverted from the love of
God, is given up to a perverted mind, and apart from God has no knowledge
of Him nor His law, and therefore no true self-knowledge.
It is therefore sin and its falseness which, if men are to be saved from
ruin by the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. ii. 4), make a new revelation of the
Divine law necessary, for the purpose of revealing, imputing and condemning
with incorruptible and holy sincerity and independently of sinful human
nature its sin, and re-exhibiting in their pure ideality the faded features of the
Divine image, that sinful man may thereby know himself in his guilt and sin.
This revelation must be supernatural and exalted above fallen human nature,
as certainly as it must be holy, undefiled and separated from all influence of
sin. The difference between naturalism and supernaturalism is of moral impor-
tance to evangelical theology, seeing that the contrast not of the physical and
metaphysical but of the sinful and the holy depends upon it. It is the differ-
ence between the unholy spirit of man and the Holy Spirit of God with which
we are here concerned. Inspiration and revelation as the operation of the Holy
Spirit are as well as regeneration essentially a sacred miracle. Holy men of
God spake as they were moved, not by their own selfish spirit, but by the
Holy Ghost, the Spirit of truth, who could not impart to them Divine truth
and holiness, without suppressing the human sin and falsehood that were in
them. Not to nature in itself, for it was made by God good and sufficient for
its destination, but to nature degenerate, diseased, fallen into the selfishness
and self-deception of sin, is the power of renewing itself by self-attained
knowledge of the truth, with psychological necessity denied. Only they who
question the sinfulness of the natural man, can dispute the necessity of a
supernatural revelation, which, just because it is revelation, also manifests its
inward and spiritual supernaturalness or inspiration in corresponding out-
ward and visible miracles.80 That which is to rise above the fallen and the

finite must be free from and raised above the causalnexus, for the lever placed
within what is to be lifted, will not lift. The disorder of nature cannot be
restored by the ordering of that which has fallen into disorder, but needs an
extraordinary remedy; he who denies this denies also the existence of disor-
der, of sin, or esteems it as only a slight external detriment, but thus deceives
himself, and the truth is not in him (1 John i. 8).
The revealed law of God, written, that it may remain unaltered, in Holy
Scripture, is the objective conscience of mankind. Objective, because the sub-
jective conscience is influenced by the selfishness of the subjectivity, and there-
fore can no longer be its true and correct norm, but is again to become such
when purified by this objective one. According to its positive content, as
comprehended in the fundamental commandment of love, it does not in sub-
stance differ from the Divine law implanted in creation, which is still, though
in obliterated characters, impressed on the heart and is renovated to pure
truth by the revealed law; for the law of Holy Scripture sanctifies and purifies
the conscience. It is, however, also of a chiefly negative or prohibitive charac-
ter, in contrast to the various forms of sin, and therefore expressed in prohibi-
tions as well as precepts, encountering transgression on every side with: Thou
shalt not.
The Decalogue in its two tables is the Divine summary of the revealed
law according to its twofold relation to God and man, as brought forward in
the chief commandment of love (Matt. xxii. 37-39). There is no third table of
isolated duties towards one’s own self, which, as soon as it refers only to itself,
is selfish; such duties are included in the first and second tables, for the love of
God and that of our neighbour and ourself cannot but be always closely inter-
woven. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul
and with all thy mind,” this is the chief and great commandment, this is the
first commandment. That which we love supremely, whose love or possession
is our happiness, whose wrath or loss is our unhappiness, npon which, there-
fore, we feel our whole existence dependent, that is our God.81 God is love,
80 The congruity of the Divine and majestic phenomena accompanying the giving of the law with its
contents (Ex. xix. and xx.) at once strikes the eye.

81 Comp. Luther’s excellent explanation of the first commandment in the Larger Catechism.

the holy, the supreme good. The first commandment begins: I am the Lord thy
God (to which the original text adds a decided testimony to His revealed love:
which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage),
thus claiming by these first words, full of majesty and love, the holy and rev-
erend love of the whole soul for the Lord our God (Deut. vi. 4, 5). It then con-
tinues in a prohibitive manner: Thou shalt have none other gods but me, thus
negatively commanding us to love God above all things, to have no other
possession or being for our God or idol, i.e. our supreme love (or in the oppo-
site case our supreme fear), nor, with polytheistically divided hearts, to have
several gods, whereby, together with the unity of God, the unity and truth of
love are as much denied in religion as they are in marriage by polygamy. The
first commandment, inasmuch as it demands to have the whole soul of man
dedicated to and filled with the love of the all-comprehending God, knows no
other duties besides, all others being, on the contrary, comprised in and under
it. We are not to love our neighbour as ourself, besides God, in as it were an
accessory manner, but in God; in His all-comprehending love, are we to love
as ourselves what He loves, i.e. our fellow-men, who bear His image as we do.
No one can love God, who is love, without also loving in Him that love of
man which makes all men brethren, without, i.e., brotherly love (1 John iv.
20).82 While, if the case is reversed, the love of other men, not to mention the
love of God, cannot proceed from the narrow and restricted love of one
human being; the love of the one all-loving God involves, on the contrary, the
love of every creature in its due proportion.
The highest moral principle, so frequently sought after by philoso-

phers, each in his own fashion, and so variously laid down in accordance
therewith, is and can in Christendom be none other than the one first com-
mandment of love, which includes in its Divine and human sides all the law
and the prophets (Matt xx. 36-40; Mark xii. 28-34), and is therefore rightly
called by St. James the royal law (Jas. ii. 8), in which, too, the Lord Himself
comprises all His sayings (John xiv. 23, 24, xv. 9 sqq., xiii. 34 sq.), the new
82 Nemo dicat: non novi quid diligam. Diligat fratrem, et diligat eandem dilectionem, magis enim novit
dilectionem, qua diligit, quam fratrem, quem diligit. Eoce jam potest notiorem Deum habere quam
fratrem, plane notiorem, quia præsentiorem, notiorem, quia interiorem, notiorem quia certiorem.
Amplectere dilectionem Deum et dilectione amplectere Deum.—Aug. de Trinitat. lib. viii. 12.

commandment answering to the new man. Hence, too, the first condition of
following Christ is self-denial (Matt. xvi. 24). The principles, which natural
morality has attempted to set up as supreme, are extremely weak in their
foundation, and either vague and empty or inadequate and onesided in their
definitions. They are indeed wont to appear in the imperative form, but this
imperative lacks the Imperator, and is therefore as weak as man himself who
decrees it. What is the use of saying to men: Thou shalt, Thou shalt not, when
there is no Lord to say to him: I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt, etc.? One can
scarcely refrain from a smile at seeing what pains philosophers take to consti-
tute, some this, some another self-invented principle as supreme, and so to
play the parts of lords and legislators, while in reality the supreme command-
ment can only be given by Him who is Himself supreme, the only Lord and
holy lawgiver (Jas. iv. 12), whom all created spirits must serve in lowly rever-
ence. A Jove principium, says even the heathen, but most of these so-called prin-
ciples quite look away from God the supreme principle, and give only an
abstract formula, a vague general theme, under which they sum up in all
kinds of divisions and subdivisions, different duties, and among them indeed
duties towards God, or divine things, in which, alas! piety for the most part
figures as only a means to virtue or success. Commandments, indeed, since
there is no one competent to give them, are almost out of question, so we have
merely maxims, rules of virtue, moral precepts, or moral sentiments, and
these relate not so much to the inward and habitual life and affections, as to
the actual doing and leaving undone, while the other contrast to doing, viz.
suffering, is almost entirely overlooked. The motives, too, whether addressed
to man’s native dignity, or to the completing of his perfection, or to his own or
the general welfare and utility, are only of a selfish and subjective nature; and
the ultimate object, the supreme good, is a proud or a satisfied self-righteous-
ness, which either in its own consciousness rewards its own virtue, or even
looks to God to reward it. These miserable dealings of a self-invented morality
devoid of all authority were rampant, while both law and gospel being mis-
conceived, a fanaticism for morality prevailed, and its votaries, full of self-
complacent prattle about virtue, thought they could set to rights, but really
impaired everything. Never did morality sink deeper and err more widely
than when the attempt was made to raise its autocracy to the highest pitch
independently of Christian faith, and man was preposterously to be allowed

to determine the very law which ought to determine him. Then morality,
revolving in the incongruous circle of the self-made legislation of unfaithful
subjects of the law, became as unscientific as it was impractical, because it had
lost the unity and truth of its highest principle, which is nothing else than the
first and chief commandment of the God of revelation, who is Divine love.
Love is the fulfilling of the law, the bond of perfectness, of truth; to will,
to do, to be good, are combined in it; it is the harmony of the triad of the true,
the beautiful, and the good; virtue and happiness are united in its likeness to
God. What truth there is in those inadequate moral principles is concentrated
in its living unity, nay, in the unity of God, of whom, by whom and in whom
are all things. Here, where is the one principle of all things, is also the one
principle of all goodness and justice; we must hold no other principle but the
alone good God, to whom we must be united in love. Love is the image of
God in us; the law requires this likeness to God, i.e. it requires love, which is
its principle and sum-total. Love is a principle, because it is not so much a
good effect or act, as rather the cause, the producing power of all good
actions; and while these are dependent on external opportunity, and therefore
only the temporary appearance of the good, it dwells as its constant nature in
the inner life. Hence, too, it is not, like these philosophic maxims, only an
abstract rule, a principle of thought, out of or into which the other moral rules
may be thought, but it is the vital generating principle which produces both the
right knowledge and the right fulfilment of the law, which not only confirms,
but also keeps the commandment. But not only does love, inasmuch as it
makes the Divine and human will one, effect the right willing and doing of the
Divine will; but when the Divine will, as the universal, exceeds the particular
human will, or even, as the holy, opposes the natural will, it also produces the
right state of subjection, or free obedience, and that not only in acting, but also
in suffering. For we ought not only to do the will of God according to His
commandments, but also to suffer it according to its dispensations, its opposi-
tion to our natural will; we must learn to love even the cross. Love prays for
both active and suffering obedience in the third petition of the Lord’s prayer,
and the sum of the Christian law has therefore been appropriately comprised
in the two words: love and suffer.

It is not a God whom we have subjectively formed after our own
notions, but the revealed God and Lord, the holy and gracious God of the Old
and New Testament, our Father, Redeemer and Comforter, whom we are to
love with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our mind. He is no
unknown and nameless God, whom men conceive of and name according to
their own notions, but One who by the self-testimony of His revelations has
proclaimed and made Himself known to us in His word and in His name; and
as He speaks to us through the word of His Spirit, so also ought we to answer
His word, to invoke His name in devotion, that it may not be taken in vain,
not desecrated, but hallowed by us. Hence, too, ought we to keep holy His
day by resting from our earthly labours, worshipping Him in the congrega-
tion according to His word, and letting His Holy Spirit work in us. Thus the
second and third commandments not only necessarily follow the first, but also
result from it as a principle, by which the fundamental elements of the worship
of God, viz. prayer, or the invocation of the Divine name and the sanctifica-
tion of the day of rest prescribed by God to His Church, are established. In the
performance of the written law, the ritual and liturgy of religious worship, as
its external objective order, are as much based upon the first table, as the judi-
cial and civil institutions, as the external objective of the moral, are upon the
second. For Scripture knows nothing of the modern contrasts of the moral,
ceremonial and judicial law, but, on the contrary, both bases all that relates to
worship upon a moral, and all that is judicial upon a religious, i.e. both upon a
sacred foundation. But the more special practices, necessitated by the devel-
opment of the kingdom of God in both time and space, are for that very rea-
son exterior to the two tables, because these have no eternal and universal
authority, but assume different forms according to the times of the old or new
covenant, or the natural circumstances and needs of nations. On the other
hand, the ten commandments themselves are as much the eternal moral law,
as they are the unchangeable natural rights of man, as written in the very heart
of human nature, by which they have indeed been misconceived, but from
which they can never be eradicated. As the first table comprises the Divine, so
does the second the human relations of man, though, in consequence of the
Divine image, the former reappear in the latter. If, then, the commands of the
second table are contained in the second and human side of the supreme
commandment, viz. in the words: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself

(Rom. xiii. 9), something higher is still commanded in the fourth (fifth) as the
transition from the first to the second table; for to honour means to esteem
some one more highly than oneself. Honour thy father and thy mother—how
appropriately does the first commandment of the second table begin with the
first human relation of dependence, with that of the child to its parents, in
which chiefly is reflected that of man to God, and from which is developed
the whole subsequent life of man! All other human relations of inferiority, that
of servants included, find their analogy in the composition of the family as
ordained by God; for in the pater familias was originally concentrated the
authority of the father and master, of the judge and priest. The domestic state
is the primitive state. From the subordinate relation of the child is developed
the brotherly and co-ordinate relation of man to his equals, his neighbours;
and here appears the commandment which the first brother transgressed
towards his brother—the commandment: Thou shalt not murder, nor envy
and hate, for whoso hateth his brother is a murderer (1 John iii. 15); but thou
shalt love him as thyself (comp. Matt. v. 21 sqq). New and closer ties of love
between grown-up and independent human beings are caused by the relation
of sex, which is sacred and pleasing to God only in the inviolable marriage
union, against the infringement and for the chaste keeping of which the sixth
commandment comes forward. The personal relations are followed by the
material; the dominion over the earth is divided among the races of men by
the separation of property, which, by inheritance and acquisition, by exchange
and gift, is ever passing to other owners, and is to be divided and bestowed
according to the Divine order of justice and love. The selfish and presumptu-
ous disturbance of such sacred and Divine order, including as it does both the
right of separate possession and the duty of charitable donation of property, is
opposed by the seventh commandment, which condemns with the same cate-
gorical conciseness as the preceding all sins taking place within the province
of the command. The sovereignty of these Divine commandments just consists
in the fact of their embracing in short but cogent imperatives great provinces
of life, and as the ruling principles of these declaring all infringements of their
holy order to be criminal, without distinction of their coarser or more refined
appearance. Thus the eighth commandment extends over the great province
of speech, or the intercourse of men by means of words, upon the faithfulness
of and belief in which depend all the ties of society, especially the state with its

law and jurisdiction, as well as the power of public opinion, of honour and of
a good name. It enjoins in this department truthfulness of testimony, faithful
keeping of promises, justice and fairness of judgment, and condemns lying,
treachery and slander. The ninth and tenth commandments forbidding cov-
etousness, the root of all evil, envy and all evil desire, close the Decalogue,
showing by their reference to what is spiritual and inward that only in holy
purity of heart is the law fulfilled. Such purity from every evil desire is, how-
ever, found only in a heart filled with divine and self-denying love. The fulfil-
ment of the first commandment is the cause of the fulfilment of all, for all the
moral relations are God’s ordinances, and these are only esteemed sacred in
His fear and love. Hence Luther well begins his explanations of each com-
mandment with the words: We must fear and love God, so that we, etc. It is
because the first commandment, comprising all the law, runs through all the
commandments, that it is transgressed in the transgression of each, and thus
the whole law broken (Jas. ii. 10), just as he who steps over one paling gets
over the whole fence.
Thus the Divine law embraces the whole life of man in his heavenly and
earthly relations. It is nothing else than the idea of the Divine image arranged
according to its various aspects, and placed in contrast with sin or ungodli-
ness, on which account everything in man which willingly or unwillingly
deviates from the norm of the revealed law is sin, and is imputed as sin
through the knowledge of that law. It does not extend through the life in only
individual items of action and conversation, nor does it as a complete and
general ideal conceive of life in complete generality, but as its vital notion
embraces its entire successive development, enjoining at every stage, in every
particular, its adequate normal condition sanctified by the vital principle of
love. It is just because a living man is never without the law of his life, but is
always conforming to, or deviating from it, that, whether acting or resting,
doing or suffering, he is never in a morally indifferent state. Acting and rest-
ing, doing and suffering, are the changing appearances of life; righteousness
or unrighteousness is no such changing appearance, but the abiding being83 of
83 Lex est doctrina divina, in qua justissima et immutabilis Dei voluntas revelatur, qualem oporteat esse
hominem in sua natura, cogitationibus verbis, factis, ut Deo probari et acceptus esse possit.—Concord.
Form. p. 713.

the man in relation to the Divine archetype and law of his nature, which he is
at all times either conforming to or violating. The moral character of a man is
the same even under the most varying manifestations; indwelling sin is con-
tinuously in the mind, is present both before and after the actual outbreak,
and remains, though latent, in the soul, even when he rests, even when he
sleeps, so that the saying: He who sleeps is not sinning, is correct only with
respect to actual sin, for habitual sin does not depart at night and return in the
morning, any more than the soul itself, in which it is always inherent. Sin, as
selfishness, cleaves to the subject, to the person of man, and being the peren-
nial centre in the variable circumference of his existence, the man affected
with sin is at all times a sinner before God’s law, to which he is never indiffer-
ent.84 Hence the subject is in a moral aspect never indifferent; and since, as he
is, so he acts, his action also is never indifferent, but like the actor, affected
with sin, i.e. unrighteous or righteous. A strong man is strong in all his
actions, a weak man weak, and a lame man limps on every path, not only on a
bad, but also on a good one. Very different is the case with the objects of life;
for the different classes and vocations, the circumstances and surroundings of
men, though all are so designed and arranged that the will of Divine love may
be realized in them, are still morally indifferent, i.e. of equal value, inasmuch as
the same degree of moral perfection may exist through faith and love in those
which vary the most widely; so that in this respect there is no difference
between a king and a slave. There is only one righteousness before God, and
in this all men, however great the difference between them, can be equal; and
just this is its liberty, that it is bound to no external distinction, to no natural
difference of men. It is true that this righteousness directs and hallows all
given circumstances from the central-point of life, and so by no means leaves
them in moral indifferentism, but, on the contrary, pervades them all with
Divine love, and gives them thereby their moral importance and perfection;
but no natural relation of man is too high or too low, too great or too small, to
be equally penetrated and sanctified thereby. Hence there is with it no respect
of either persons or things, but rather to its purity all things are pure, and
every creature of God good,85 and nothing to be refused, if it be received with
84 Hence Melanchthon calls it, Loci, a. 1521, p. 59 (August. ed.), sententiam evangelicissimam, non
esse opus indifferens.

85 In quantum creatura est, bona est; sed distinguatur res condita et depravatio non condita.

thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and by prayer (1 Tim. iv.
4, 5). The law, though ever requiring this righteousness of heart from all, by
no means prescribes the objects towards which, and the circumstances in
which, it is to be practised. These, on the contrary, often depend on other
Divine dispensations, on opportunities and on the choice of man as condi-
tioned thereby. While, therefore, man must be ruled in his inmost heart by the
command of love and the prohibition of selfishness, all is on the other hand
allowed him in the outer world which is not contrary to the love of God and of
his neighbour. As St. Paul says, all things are lawful for me, but I will not be
brought under the power of any (1 Cor. vi. 12), i.e. be made to depart from
God by any. Love, and then do what thou wilt, says Augustine, thus aptly den-
ning both the one ever enduring necessity and the manifold freedom of man,
according to which he is never indeed free from the law, but free in it. The law
is nothing else than that one demand for faithful love in all heavenly and
earthly relations, which, incessantly issued to the spirit of man from the unity
of the interior and Divine life, would freely fashion the manifold actions of his
external life to morality.
The law, then, is the Divine archetype of man perfect in love during his
whole development, so that it is as much that of the child as of the grown man
and woman. This archetype is, according to its notion, neither an unattainable
nor unattained ideal; not unattainable, for love is nothing supernatural, but
the most natural, the most normal sentiment in the heart of the pure man; not
unattained, for the original man was just the realization of this ideal; and as
the first Adam existed in original righteousness, though he did not continue
therein, so is the second Adam, who came to fulfil the law, its concrete fulfil-
ment in Divine love. Christ is no mere teacher or giver of law, He is the ful-
filled law itself, the archetypical and typical man, who from childhood up to
manhood so fulfilled in the perfect obedience of love all righteousness, that he
who does not resemble Him is unrighteous before Him and before God; and
for the same reason He is, as the personal law, the Judge of the world. It is an
advantage of the ancient philosophical systems of morals over those of the
moderns, that they concentrate the wide circumference of their doctrines of
duties, virtues and the good in the idea of the wise man, and thus lay down in
ethics not merely a collection of abstract precepts and descriptions, but the

concrete image of a life by which the living may measure themselves. But this
image of the perfectly wise man, who is just to duties, unites in himself the
cardinal virtues and possesses the supreme good, is only a subjective image
fashioned after the subjectivity of the philosopher, with which even he himself
does not correspond. It is only an imaginary self-invented ideal, devoid of
objective truth and reality, and for that very reason also of power truly to
direct and form the subject; it has its life only from the subject, and hence can
give him none. In Christ the objective ideal of the Divine law is real, the
Divine archetype of human nature is personal, the Word is made flesh. He is
righteousness, He is our righteousness, for He is the concrete principle of both
the knowledge and fulfilment of the law. The law was given, but not fulfilled,
by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ (John i. 17). All philosophical
morality, so far as it is without Him, is but misty and fragmentary.
CHAPTER IV. OF THE INABILITY OF THE NATURAL FREE WILL

TO FULFIL THE LAW; OF SUSCEPTIBILITY OF REDEMPTION,
AND HOW THE LAW IS THE PREPARATION OF THIS
SUSCEPTIBILITY.
Can the will by an act of its own fill the loveless heart of man with the
love which fulfils the law? This is the question on which all depends. It is a
confusion of ideas to mingle with this anthropological and ethical question
the theological and metaphysical question of the omnipotence and foreknowl-
edge of God, or that of the relation of Divine predestination to human self-
destination.86 However this relation may be denned, thus much is certain, that
it did not originate through sin, but was established from eternity by Divine
power and wisdom, that it is a Divine order, not a human disorder, and that
therefore redemption has no direct reference to it, because this is no dissolu-
tion of Divine order and predestination, but a deliverance from the bonds of
86 Compare the recent discussion of this subject in the Tübinger Zeitschrift für Theologie, 1839, No. 3, “On
the problem of the freedom or bondage of the human will,” by Prof. von Sigwart, p. 75: “If the interest of
omnipotence were the sole, or even the supreme matter, there would be no freedom of the created spirit;
but the priority belongs to Divine love, and this has revealed itself where alone it could—in the free crea-
ture.” Freedom, like love, is based on personality. Comp. also Baumgarten’s scriptural allusions to the doc-
trine of human freedom, in the Kiel theologischer Mitarbeiten of 1840, No. 2, p. 102 sqq.

sinful corruption. The inability of the human will, which is here in question,
that sinful inability which the Divine power of redemption has to encounter,
must not be referred to the Divine will, since it would then cease to be sinful,
but must be deduced from the human will itself as the cause of sin. The limita-
tion of the human by the Divine will, which takes place without respect to sin,
and even in the saints, is no bondage, no slavery; it is in connection with
Divine omnipotence so general, so common to both the good and the bad, as
to belong rather to the natural than the moral region.
When the bondage of the will is maintained, the natural and moral
standpoints of observation have frequently been confounded with each other,
and a simple and obvious question of human self-knowledge before the law
of God thus transformed into one of the most difficult and obscure disputes of
metaphysics and natural theology, one concerning which there has been end-
less contention, not only in, but quite apart from Christianity. The Reformers
too, who, in opposition to the Pelagian doctrine of the self-redemption of the
free will, very specially insisted on its bondage, which stood in need of
redemption (John viii. 34), at first confounded the predestination of all things
and sin as causes of its enslaved condition. But even in the first edition of
Melanchthon’s Loci, as also in Luther’s de servo arbitrio, we perceive that view
of the freedom of man in things external, which considerably modifies the
doctrine of universal predestination, and really reduces its unfreedom to the
moral region of spiritual righteousness. In the eighteenth article of the Confes-
sion of Augsburg this comes distinctly forward; it is there taught concerning
free will, that the will of man has a freedom to perform civil justice, and to
choose things submitted to the reason, but not the power, without the Holy
Spirit, to work the righteousness which avails before God, i.e. spiritual right-
eousness. In the antithesis of the article, the point in dispute appears exactly
as we have laid down the question,—it rejects the Pelagians and others who
teach that, without the aid of the Holy Spirit, and by the strength of nature
alone, we are able to love God above all things. In the later editions of his Loci,
Melanchthon expresses himself with special clearness concerning this confu-
sion of the doctrines of determination and of the corruption of the human will,
by beginning the portion, on human power or on free will, with the following
remarks, so important to the right consideration and ethic appreciation of the

subject: Valla et plerique alii non recte detrahunt voluntati hominis libertatem
ideo, quia fiant omnia decernente Deo, atque ita in universum tollunt contin-
gentiam; sed aliena est disputatio de contingentia ab hoc loco de viribus
humanis. Hic enim in Ecclesia quæritur: qualis sit natura hominis? au perfectam
obedientiam legi Dei prœstare possit? non quæritur de arcano Dei consilio guber-
nantis omnia? non quæritur de predestinatione, non agitur de omnibus contin-
gentibus. Ideo prudens lector disputationes de contingentia, item de prædesti-
natione hic seponat et procul ab hoc loco sejungat. Nos ipsos intueamur et mem-
inerimus, nos de nostra infirmitate jam loqui. Non est opus ἀεροβατεῖν et cœlestia
scrutari de modo gubernationis divinæ aut de prædestinatione. Ac providen-
dum est, ne abruantur res bonæ et utiles rixis nihil ad rem pertinentibus, quod
fieri solet, cum peregrini loci commiscentur. Ideo dicam breviter hic, quo-
modo Scriptura nos de infirmitate humanæ naturæ doceat. Haec enim
agnoscenda est, ut discamus, quare nobis opus sit beneficio Christi.
Without desiring to remove the questions of the mode of the Divine

government, of predestination and contingency from theology, we must, espe-
cially in the region of moral theology, entirely agree with Melanchthon, that
here in the Church the question is: How the nature of man is constituted; whether it
can render a perfect obedience to the will of God? We have in the foregoing chapter
already answered the question: What is the moral constitution of human
nature in its present circumstances? Holy love is absent, and unholy selfish-
ness is dominant. As by the rule of the former, the whole nature of man would
be sanctified, so vice versa the whole nature is defiled by its absence, and by the
selfishness which has occupied its place in the central-point of the person. Just
because all the nature is in need of sanctification and renewal, and the unholy
can only be sanctified by the holy, it is impossible that this renewal should
proceed from any power of the old man; on the contrary, without fresh power
from above everything remains as it was, however outward appearances may
change. It is true that one form of selfishness may conquer another, as e.g.
avarice may subdue the love of pleasure, and ambition, especially spiritual
ambition, may subdue both; but so long as no new love is poured into the
heart, the old heart remains, in and from which selfishness, in forms more or
less disguised, rules the whole life. In love, man, because voluntarily agreeing
with the absolutely free will of God and with the necessity of His law, is also

free; he who loves, and does what is good from love, has a truly free and
unconstrained will, whence the terms good will and free will are synony-
mous; while he who has no good will, but does what is commanded only
because he must, he who is either forced or forces himself, has rather a con-
strained than a free will, has more of repugnance (noluntas) than will
(voluntas); and however involuntarily aversion to the will of God may arise
(the law in the members warring against the law of the Spirit), the evil desire
nevertheless brings the man into captivity to the law of sin (Rom. vii. 23); for
he that doeth sin is the servant of sin (John viii. 34; Rom. vi. 16 sqq.); selfish-
ness is captivity to self, sin is bondage to the creature. Hence sinfulness is as
much the loss of liberty as of righteousness; just as, on the other hand, right-
eousness, i.e. the union of man with God in love, is his liberty. Human nature
affected with sin, and thereby in bonds, cannot release itself, because only the
free can liberate the enslaved; but it can be made free by redemption. The will
cannot effect this redemption, for it needs itself to be redeemed from the ser-
vice of selfishness. Sin cleaves to the self, to the personality of man; the will is
the activity of the personality, and is either as habitual willing
(complacence—dislike), the prevailing disposition of the soul itself, or as
actual willing, the fruit, the effect of this disposition, the resolve of the man, in
which his whole nature gathers itself up for action. As is the person, so is the
will; as is the nature, so is its doing; the will is the power of the person, but it
is not a power over the person; it is a fact, but not a factor of man; by his will a
man voluntarily decides on manifold acts, but he decides as he is, not as he is
not; the will of the good is good; the will of the bad is bad.
The will, as the tendency of the subject towards the multiplicity of

objects, has freedom of choice in matters of thought, will, and deed. Every
one’s own consciousness undeniably informs him, that he has in things which
are submitted to him (res rationi subjects), choice and power to do or to leave
undone what seems good to him, whence also it is within his natural power to
perform the righteousness, which is esteemed such before men (justitia operum
seu civilis), and to come up to the requirements of his civil vocation. Even the
expressions by which this righteousness is designated as not merely civil
righteousness, or the righteousness of works, but also as philosophical or
rational righteousness, as well as the famous recognition awarded to it in its

own province (Rom. iv. 2; Apology, pp. 62-64), prove, that by it is to be under-
stood not a mere external and gross legality, but, on the contrary, all those
virtues, all that virtuousness of moral action, which man—quamquam sæpe
vincitur imbecillitate naturali—can nevertheless, as shown by illustrious
examples, have or attain by the power of his natural free will.87 The same
consciousness, however, which testifies to the will that it has free power of
choice over the objectivity of its action, teaches it as undeniably to perceive,
that it has not this power over the condition of the nature or subject of which
it is the effect. It is psychologically certain, that the habitual dispositions of the
heart, which move and impel the will, can be neither produced nor done away
with by the latter. We cannot love to order; neither duty nor desire brings
forth the fruits of the Spirit, the holy dispositions of love, joy, peace, long-suf-
fering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance; neither duty nor
desire banishes from the heart the fruits of the flesh, uncleanness, hatred, vari-
ance, envy, wrath, strife. The will can govern the hands and feet and make
them do what is enjoined and leave undone what is forbidden; it can restrain
them, it can force itself, so as to prevent the evil desire or passion from pass-
ing into corresponding action, but it cannot change the heart itself, cannot fill
it with love when it is filled with hatred.88 Man has his actions in his own
hands, but not his heart, his feeling, his disposition, as every one’s own direct
experience testifies;89 the heart of the king, as of all men, is in the hand of the
87 Would that opponents perceived that if, as often happens, they understand by virtue in general only
this moral objectivity of will and deed, there is no conflict between them and evangelical truth with
regard to the ability of man in such a case. The four philosophical cardinal virtues, so far as they consist,
as acquired (acquisitæ) faculties of the will, in prudence, courage, temperance and justice of action, con-
stitute that justitia philosophica, quam ratio utcunque suis viribus efficere potest,—but, si hæc est justitia
christiana, quid interest inter Philosophiam et Christi doctrinam? Comp. the development of this subject
in the Apology, pp. 61-64. Man cannot, on the contrary, give himself the theological virtues of love, faith
and hope, but must have these given to him, and only by their power can he practise the four cardinal
virtues, in the sense in which Augustine developes them, from the principle of love, de moribus ecclesiæ
catholicæ, cxv.: Nihil omnino est virtus, nisi summus amor Dei, id est summi boni. Namque illud quod
quadripartita dicitur virtus, ex ipsius amoris vario quodam affectu dicitur. Itaque illas quatuor virtutes
sic definire non dubitem, ut temperantia sit amor integrum se præhens amato, fortitudo amor facile toler-
ans omnia propter amatum; justitia amor soli amato serviens et propterea recte dominans, prudentia
amor ea, quibus adjuvatur ab eis, quibus impeditur sagaciter seligens.
88 Potest continere manus a furto, a cæde; sed interioret motus non potest efficere, ut timorem Dei, fidu-
ciam erga Deum, castitatem, patientiam, etc.— Augsb. Conf. Art. 18.

Lord (Prov. xx. 1). It is God who creates the new heart within us (Ps. li. 12).
The heart is the habitual will, the inclination of man, from which arises the
actual will or the resolution; the former is the cause of the state of the latter,
and not vice versa.
The habitual disposition and sinfulness of the natural man is selfish-

ness. Can sinful selfishness be changed by its own will into its opposite, into
Divine Love? It is impossible to maintain such a contradiction. They who
nevertheless ascribe to man, as at present constituted, the power of fulfilling
the law by the force of his own will, can only do so by either questioning this
selfishness, or denying that perfect love is required for the fulfilling of the
law. The latter assertion was, as is well known, carried to such an extent by
Kant, that he was of opinion that love cannot be commanded, and is not a
duty, because it is not a work of the will. Agreeable as the last proposition is
with Christian truth, the denial of the duty of love is just as opposed to the
supreme commandments of Holy Scripture; and since love is undoubtedly
commanded, and that with all the heart, with all the soul, and with all the
mind, the confession of inability to perform this chief and all-comprising duty
by the natural powers of the will cannot be avoided. The endeavour is, how-
ever, made to escape this unavoidable confession, on the one hand by regard-
ing this inability as a purely natural imperfection, on the other by represent-
ing love as an ideal only in endless process of development, i.e. one unattain-
able by finite nature. Both notions are equally erroneous. Human nature was
so created to be the image of God, that is, to love, that it must and can at every
moment of its existence, in proportion to its stage of development, fully corre-
spond to its destination by perfect love, on which account every failure to do
so is sin. Selfishness is no innocent incompleteness, no created, but a sinful
property of the heart, not rooted in the nature of man, but affecting his per-
sonality. It is true that with the ever-renewed individualization of human
nature, it is propagated by inheritance, but always in such wise, that as it orig-
inated from the will of the first sinner, so too does it pa3s on into the will of all
his successors. “The cause of sin, though God created and preserves nature, is
89 Christianam mentem oportet spectare, non qualis est aperum libertas, sed num qua sit affectuurn
libertas Bædicent liberi arbitrii vim Pharisæi scholastici; Christianus agnoscet, nihil minus in potestate
sua esse, quam cor suum. —Melanchthon, Loci, a. 1521, ed. Augusti, p. 18.

the will of the evil, i.e. of the devil and the ungodly, who without God’s inter-
position turn from God; as Christ says (John viii. 44): When he speaketh a lie,
he speaketh of his own.”—Augsb. Conf. Art. 19. In this article, which follows
the 18th, de libero arbitrio, evangelical teaching censures all reference of the
origin of sin to the will of God, and decidedly attributes it to the self-will of
the creature, while at the same time it is acknowledged that God created and
preserves the nature, in which sin is inherent and upon whose life it lives, as is
pointed out by the formula: Deus concurrit ad materiale sed non ad formale
peccati. God does not stand in a relation of indifferent permission towards sin,
but where through the arbitrariness of the free creature it has made its appear-
ance, God’s holiness immediately exercises a condemning and rebuking
process upon it; when however men will no longer let themselves be rebuked
by the Spirit of God, He gives them up to the lusts of their own hardened
hearts, and condemns sin to the judgment of its own increasing corruption
(Rom. i. 28 sqq.).
The state of sin is twofold; either men go on living without the law and
the knowledge of sin, in fleshly security and lust, indifferent to the things of
God, or they live under the law, bowed down under the consciousness of guilt,
in the fear which hath torment, and in despairing so far as they cannot rely on
their own righteousness. Neither in the former nor the latter state can man rise
to true love. In the former, indeed, he feels no need of it, he does not desire it;
he has other gods, whom he loves more than the true God, who is to him an
object of indifference, nay, of repugnance, because the thought of Him dis-
turbs the lusts of the flesh and the world. This condition is the absolute nega-
tion of love, and farther removed from it than hatred and enmity. These as its
opposite are still acted upon, though in a contrary direction, by the object of
love, while indifference ignores Him, suppresses the remembrance of Him
and slights His warnings, by means of other objects of desire. No love of God,
no fulfilling of the Divine law can proceed from forgetfulness of God; unbro-
ken natural selfishness cannot love. The prodigal son, when he was in a far
country, and had wasted his substance with riotous living (Luke xv. 13),
would never in such a condition have returned to love and to a filial feeling
towards his father. He had first to be brought under the chastising power of
the law, to lose all he possessed, to learn what it was to be perishing with

hunger, and to perceive that he had forfeited his sonship by his sin, and could
now be only a hired servant (vv. 14-19). This is the second state of sinners.
They were at first without law (Rom. vii. 9); must not their fulfilling it be out of
question? Then, however, they come under the law, and the commandment in
which those live who fulfil it (Gal. iii. 12), proves not life but death to those
who transgress it (Rom. vii. 10). Not as though the law were evil; on the con-
trary, it is holy, just, and true (ver. 12), but as contrasted with it sin appears so
much the more sin, and as evil works death in this contrast with good (ver. 13)
by making a man feel to his horror, in the presence of the spiritual law, that he
is carnal and sold under sin (ver. 14). This is the conflict between the law in
the mind and the law in the members, whereby man feels in a captivity to sin,
from which he cannot deliver himself (vv. 23, 24). He then perceives the truth
of the words: The strength of sin is the law (1 Cor. xv. 56); for being imputed
by the law, it becomes so great and heavy a debt, that no man can of his own
power discharge it.
It is impossible for man in such a condition to be justified by the law,

which condemns and accuses him, he cannot fulfil it in love; for though in this
contrast the selfishness of the flesh is already under the discipline of the Spirit,
the contrast still exists by means of which the condemning law puts the whole
nature in such fear and torment, as till the discord is reconciled will suffer no
love to exist. The law condemns and separates the sinner from God, and for
that very reason cannot unite him to God in love, and man cannot, from out of
this contrast, again enter into the tie of love to God, till this the law’s sentence
of separation is done away with. He is no more worthy—as both conscience
and the law tell him—to be a son, he can no longer lift up his eyes to his
Father in heaven, but must stand afar off like a slave (Luke xv. 19). It is true,
that a wish for righteousness, a longing after it exists, but this poor wish can
as little effect and give it, as hunger can satisfy or desire fulfil itself (Rom. vii.
18, 19). The thought of the Father’s former goodness, the perception of the
love of God in creation, cannot revive love in the depressed heart of the sin-
ner, cannot reunite him with God, for the very benefits he has already
received from his Creator accuse his sin as the most criminal ingratitude, and
thus increase his misery. The more a man through the power of the law per-
ceives this, the more he feels his whole personality affected and weighed

down hy sin, the less is he able to find in it a lever for self-elevation, and the
less can he rely upon himself for power to renew himself in love and right-
eousness. When the self is taken captive by sin, the words of the apostle are
undeniably true (2 Cor. iii. 5), that we are not sufficient of ourselves to think
anything as of ourselves, but that our sufficiency is of God. And this is con-
firmed by our Lord Himself when He says (John xv. 5): Without me ye can do
nothing, i.e. bring forth no fruit for eternal life, however great the activity in
things temporal may be.
If, then, man’s inability to fulfil the law and his own destination, aris-
ing as it does, not from Divine order, but from sinful disorder, oppresses his
whole nature as a disease, it follows, that the whole man also is in need of
redemption; and as soon as he recognises and feels his suffering, he longs for
redemption with his whole nature and groans for it in pain (Rom. vii. 24), and
that not alone, but in sympathy with the suffering creation around him (Rom.
viii. 19-23). This need and longing prove a susceptibility (capacitas) for redemp-
tion, and, if man is not to perish but to attain to his destination, not only its
possibility, but also its necessity. If this inability were one ordained by God
and natural, as e.g. the incapacity of the brute for things spiritual, there would
exist neither a necessity, nor a capacity, nor a possibility of spiritual redemp-
tion. Or if, as Flacius thought, sin had become the substance of human nature,
this evil substance would equally have been devoid of a receptive need of
redemption, and the renewal of man could only have taken place by the anni-
hilation of his nature and by transubstantiation, and not by its healing and
regeneration (παλιγγενεσία ).90 But if sin is no evil substance, which it would
be Manichæan to maintain, but only a bad quality of a good substance, which,
the better it is, the more it suffers through the badness affecting it, then it is
just this suffering, this pain, which calls forth the sigh for redemption, and just
as much makes human nature capable of receiving salvation, as hunger makes
the body capable of receiving food. As true as is the saying, that grace does
not abolish but heals nature (gratia nan tollit, sed sanat naturam), so true also is
its converse, that sin does not abolish, but corrupts nature. This corruption
may amount to the extreme of obduracy, just as yielding water may be frozen
90 Comp. Concord. Form. pp. 643 and 678 below.

into ice as hard as stone, while as to its substance it still remains water, and
can be again made fluid and yielding by the warm rays of the sun, while that
which is by nature stone always remains unyielding. That which is by nature
bad and worthless cannot be corrupted, hence even corruption assumes a
good nature, which the higher its value, the more it is damaged thereby. It is
just because man’s origin and destination are Divine, that the ungodliness of
evil makes him so wretched; the misery of sin is the inverted proof of the
excellence of his nature; the depth of his fall of the height of his position. For
this very reason the acknowledgment of the abnormity and sin of human
nature involves the acknowledgment of its original and normal goodness. The
more fully and thoroughly the harm and loss of sin is perceived therein, the
more fully and thoroughly must its need and susceptibility of redemption be
consequently perceived. It was created expressly for righteousness, sin robs it
of that righteousness which it had and ought to have; the Divine image
remains though it is no longer the form, but the inherent norm, of human
nature; the destitution of nature demands restitution, and the more empty it
feels itself of the righteousness which can avail before God, the more suscepti-
ble is it of the fulness of that righteousness which grace offers, so that the
glory and the reproach of human nature are here ever united.
Hence we must reject the incompleteness and inconsistency of semi-

Pelagianism and synergism, which would mediate, or rather divide, between
those who ascribe too much good and those who ascribe none to human
nature, by maintaining that there is indeed much evil in it, but still a certain
amount of good, from which its renovation must begin. Here good and evil
are, by the dismemberment of the indivisible unity of the whole of human exis-
tence, divided and distributed according to an arbitrary scale of maximum and
minimum, so that behind the many degrees of evil, there lie some one or two
degrees of undamaged good, which are by grace to increase in quantity. This
remainder of pure good is deposited in the highest intellectual powers, in
which man justifies or whitens himself, while he blackens the rest and more
meanly gifted part of human nature, and thus as much elevates the smaller
though more exalted portion, as he depreciates the other. Such ambiguity,
however severe the judgment passed upon the worse portion, forbids the
attainment of any real and impartial humility, and however insignificant the

uncorrupted remnant may be considered, however small the unsurrendered
citadel of the great camp may be, it is still large enough for the self-love which
holds out therein. Just that which is excepted from the corruption of sin, is
thereby rendered unsusceptible of redemption, which, the more the minimum
of good is raised in the scale, is the more changed into a mere Divine support
or assistance to human ability, whose merit increases in proportion as it can
dispense with this addition. Such gradations of good are, moreover, opposed
to its pure idea, which in the perfection of love is so essentially one of quality
as to exclude quantity altogether. As the notion “straight” has no degrees,—for
that which can be straighter than it is, is crooked,—so neither has the notion
Good, on which account language refuses the word both a comparative and
superlative.
The truth, which forms at the same time the medium between
Manichæism and Pelagianism,91 is, that as the whole of human nature, as cre-
ated by God, is in its essence good and intended for the realization of the
Divine image, so also is nature, now that it is become sinful, affected with sin
from the central-point of the Ego outwards, and that nothing in it remains
unaffected (nihil sanum, nihil incorruptum 92). If the disease of even a single
member of the body, unless it is a merely slight external hurt, causes suffering
to the whole body, through the common sympathy of the members, how
much more must the spiritual disease of sin pervade the whole soul of man,
which does not consist of separate members, and from that central-point affect
the whole nature! The portion which should remain uncorrupted would be
either a good fragment removed from the vital connection of the whole,—the
soul, however, is not patched together of such pieces,—or it would be some
indifferent part of human nature susceptible, of neither good nor evil. This,
too, is at variance with its vital unity, as conditioned throughout by the central
91 Homo dam nascitur, quia bonum illiquid est in quantum homo est, Manichæum redarguit laudatque
creatorem; in quantum vero trahit originale peccatum, Pelagium redarguit et habet necessarium Salva-
torem. Nam et quod sananda dicitur ista natura, utrumque repercutit, quia nec medicina opus haberet, si
sana esset, quod est contra Pelagium, nec sanari posset omnino, si æternum et immutabile malum esset,
quod est contra Manichæum.—August. contra duos epistl. Pelagianorum, lib. iii. c. 25, ed. Bened. vol. x.
Comp. Conc. Form, de pecc. orig. p. 641: Hæc doctrina sic asserenda, conservanda atque munienda est, ut
in neutram partem, hoc est, neque ad Pelagianos, neque ad Manichæos errores de clinet.
92 Comp. Form. Conc. pp. 674 and 643—ne minimum quidem.

- point of the self; and who does not see that such a limitation of the evil in
human nature, would consequently be a limitation of the good also? It is just
because the nature is good that it has become diseased through sin, for only
that which is pure can become impure, that which is strong weak, that which
is healthy sick. Thus evil always presupposes good, nay, can only be in the
good,93 for it is the perversion of good which is to be done away by conver-
sion. The sinfulness of the whole nature proves at once the need and suscepti-
bility of redemption of the whole, and as the former is an evil so is the latter a
good, which pervades the whole,94 on which account both evil and good must
be predicated not of parts but of the whole of human nature. The conscious-
ness of this susceptibility may be suppressed in its subject by sin, it may be
enveloped instead of developed; but as long as man remains man it exists,
and the law is the means by which the Spirit of God discloses it.
Wherever by the knowledge of sin through the law the need of salva-
tion becomes a conscious want, this susceptibility becomes the desire, the will
of which St. Paul says (Rom. vii. 18): To will is present with me. This will, as
being produced in us by the pedagogy of God’s law, is already an operation
of the Holy Ghost; but the law being the innate norm of human nature, which
in its discord therewith groans for redemption, this operation still belongs to
the province of the old covenant of nature and the law. But as this refers both
pedagogically and prophetically to the new covenant, so too is this painful
longing of the old man for deliverance already a preparation for the new man.
An active renovation, however, so little proceeds from this preparation, which
in its crushing sadness is less an act than a suffering, that but for the fulness
and power of grace, man would, as St. Paul says (Rom. vii. 10-13, 24), be
killed, and not quickened by it. And if this will and desire should even attain
the intensity of the deepest craving or the greatest thirst, which, as the hart
panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth after the living God, still this burn-
ing thirst can only consume and not quench itself, unless the water of life is
brought to it. This will then cannot fulfil itself (how to perform that which is
93 Vitium non potest nocere nisi bono. — August de civit. Dei, lib. xii. c. 8.
94 Ipse dolor testimonium est boni ademti et boni relicti; nisi enim bonum relictum esset, bonum amis-
sum dolere non posset.—August. l.c. lib. xix. c. 13. Enchiridion de fide, ape, et caritate, xiii. pt. 6, p. 851:
Quid est malus bono nisi malum bonum; malum est vitiatum sive vitiosum bonum.

good, I find not, Rom. vii. 18), cannot fill its own emptiness, but must, if it is to
be an effective vigorous will, let itself be filled with new power and love by
God, who worketh in us both to will and to work (Phil. ii. 13). The deeper then
the knowledge of sin, and of inability to satisfy the demands of the law, the
greater is the susceptibility of the grace of redemption, and happy are they
that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled (Matt. v. 6).
We have thus established—and the one is the correlative of the

other—both the inability of the will of sinful man to fulfil the law, whose first
commandment is love with the whole heart, and the inability of the law to
give man the righteousness or love which he needs (Rom. viii. 3). If there had
been a law given, which could have given life, verily righteousness should
have been by the law, says St. Paul (Gal. iii. 21). But if the law cannot make
man alive in love, of what use is it? what is it to do? why was it added by spe-
cial revelation to nature, which already bore it within? It was added, says the
Scripture (Gal. iii. 19), because of sin, which had disfigured, together with
himself, the innate law or archetype of man, so that it could no longer be the
pure and true norm of his life. The objective norm of the law is necessary to
man even for the discipline and order of his external life, which effect of the
law is called its first or civil use (usus politicus). By the Divine command to do
or leave undone, sanctioned by reward and punishment, the actions and
conduct of men are morally regulated and ordered in those civil and domestic
relations ordained by God, and a prohibitory limit is set to extreme disorder.
This use of the law is of general operation upon all men without distinction,
whether believers or unbelievers, Christians or heathens. To it belong not
merely those precepts of the law which decide the action and awaken the
conscience, but also all those judicial and moral appointments which God has
established in human life, and maintained in spite of the opposition of sinful
flesh, for the preservation of His law and the realization of His will, as Melanc-
thon says, Apolog.p. 64: Vult Deus coerceri carnales homines ilia civili disci-
plina, et ad hanc conservandam dedit leges, literas, doctrinam, magistratus,
pœnas. With this natural moral and judicial province of the law corresponds
the natural ability of the will to act in such wise as the commands here in ques-
tion require, and so to attain to that righteousness of action, in other words
that civil uprightness, to which, though it does not make a man just before

God, respect is due. Spiritual righteousness does not indeed proceed from
civil respectability, but still they stand in relation to each other, and that, even
by the circumstance that the latter first receives its true inward worth (substan-
tia actuum) by means of the former. Thus external discipline and decent order
also serve as a defence and protection to the Church of God, so far as relates to
this world; and since even the invisible operations of the Holy Spirit are
united to the outward means of grace, the will of man, though it cannot
indeed produce these operations, can embrace and hold fast the means by
which the Spirit of God works upon it.95 Consequently external righteousness
has a connection ordained by God with internal righteousness, although,
apart from the latter, it is utterly barren for eternal life.
The educational activity of the law, which draws to Christ and pre-
pares for redemption, and the benefits of which are, with reference to Gal. iii.
24, comprised under the name of the second or pedagogic use of the law, is
immediately directed towards the inner life. The law cannot give life, it cannot
bestow the righteousness which avails before God, but it makes us sensible of
our need of it, by giving the knowledge of sin (Rom. iii. 20). It renders us con-
scious of the guilt, the misery, the deadly nature of sin (Rom. vii. 7 sqq.), and
thus arouses a longing for, and consequently a conscious susceptibility of,
redemption through Christ (Rom. vii. 24). Where the law has not had this
effect, the preaching of the gospel is either in vain, like the seed that falls by
the roadside, or harmful, because grace is turned into licence by unbroken
hearts. Hence the necessity of the preaching of the law for repentance and for
salvation must be decidedly maintained, in opposition to antinomianism, the
love of the gospel producing wholesome fruit in the soul only in proportion to
the requisite susceptibility produced by the severity of the law, as is mani-
fested by even those first words of the Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the
poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Those alone receive the
riches of the gospel, who are made capable of receiving it by the conscious-
95 Verbum Dei homo, etiam nondum ad Deum conversus nec renatus, externis auribus audire, aut leg-
ere potest. In ejusmodi enim externis rebus homo adhuc post lapsum aliquo modo liberum arbitrium
habet, ut ad coetus publicos ecclesiasticos accedere, verbum Dei audire vel non audire possit. Per hoc
medium seu instrumentum, predicationem nimirum et auditionem verbi Deus operatur.—Conc. Form.
p. 671.

ness of their poverty, their destitution of spiritual righteousness produced by
the law, and who, mourning over their unrighteousness, hunger and thirst for
it (Matt. v. 3-6). For the rest, not only do the commandments, but also the
judgments of God, belong to the pedagogic use of the law — those judgments
which, since the Fall and the Deluge, He, as Judge of the world, has inflicted,
and will inflict, both on a large and small scale, throughout the course of his-
tory until the last judgment, thus continually exercising the discipline of the
law by the various means of suffering, humiliation and trial, and urging men
to their Redeemer.96
Thus then our first, and predominantly Old Testament division of

Christian moral theology concludes with the prophetic, apostolic saying (Gal.
iii. 24): The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might
be justified through faith. This conclusion necessarily leads to our second, and
predominantly New Testament, division. As in the former we have theologi-
cally and anthropologically considered primal love and its contrasts, we shall
in the latter seek to understand Christologically and pneumatologically how
these contrasts are harmonized and reunited in redeeming and sanctifying
love. But as the N. T. is the fulfilment of the O. T., so, too, is the gospel, though
as yet veiled and unfulfilled, as well as the not yet fulfilled law, found in the
latter. In the N. T., on the contrary, we have the unveiling and fulfilment of
both, and thus not of the gospel only, but also of the law,97 for the Redeemer
did not come to destroy the law but to fulfil it. Hence the pedagogic use of the
law is not only transferred to the times of the N. T., to go on compelling sin-
ners to come to Christ, so long as all men have not come to Him, but the law
ever continues to be, even to the regenerate, though without force or con-
straint, because it is the love of Christ which contrains them, the doctrine and
rule of the new obedience, in which as the children of God they are to exercise
love. This is the third, called the instructive use (usus didacticus) of the law,
which consequently must both precede and follow faith,98 concerning which
96 “All that rebukes sin is of the manner of law and belongs to the law, whose special office it is to
rebuke, and to bring to the knowledge of sin.”—Conc. Form. p. 714; comp. p. 712.
97 Augustine well says: Novum Testamentum latet in vetere; vetus Testamentum patet in novo.
98 The law has this twofold position both in the Lutheran and the Heidelberg catechism. Though the
latter first discusses the Decalogue after faith, in the third section “on thankfulness,” yet the first section

twofold relation the older theology pronounced in a manner which should
put to shame the obscurity and shallowness of the modern in this province.
Comp. Conc. Form. Art. 5, de lege et evangelio, and Art. 6, de tertio usu legis div-
inæ. Of this we cannot treat at length till we get to the doctrine of Sanctifica-
tion. At present we would only once more bring forward the high position
and importance which evangelical moral theology ascribes to the moral law,
though it most decidedly maintains that neither the law nor free will can
make us sinners righteous, holy or happy, but that Christ is of God made unto
us wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification and redemption.
SECTION III. OF DIVINE REDEEMING LOVE.
CHAPTER I. OF THE REDEEMER.
GOD is Love, Eternal Triune Love, and not merely Creative, but also
Redeeming Love. While creative love does not presuppose an object, but on
the contrary produces everything from its own fulness, redeeming love or
grace finds its object already existing in the creature. This object, however, is
also its contrast, so far, i.e., as the creature has in the enmity of sin placed itself
in opposition to God. Marvellous was that absolute primal creative love,
which in deepest condescension made something, nay everything, out of noth-
ing, and continually brings forth and increases new objects of its “more than
motherly care” from nullity and the smallest beginnings. But still greater is
redeeming love, still greater is God as the Redeemer, inasmuch as He con-
quers the contradiction of Himself (Heb. xii. 3), the enmity of sin, by His
Divine love of His enemies, or grace. So far as Divine love approaches human
selfishness with offers of reconciliation, is it in its contrast therewith Divine
self-denial. God as the Redeemer, the Reconciler, abnegates, denies Himself,
also, “on the misery of man,” is expressly founded on the law. So, too, while in the Lutheran catechism,
the law in the first chief portion precedes faith in the second, still the law also follows in the third, in the
doctrine of the sanctification of God’s name, the coming of His kingdom, the doing of His will, as the
norm transferred from the duty into the will of the children of God. Thus the dispute as to whether the
law should, in the catechetical instruction, precede or follow faith, is settled by letting it pedagogically
and instructively both precede and follow it.

not as though there were in Him any falsehood or unrighteousness which He
had to deny (1 Tim. ii. 13), but that with respect to the negation of sinners, He
does not immediately assert His right and power to disown them in return,
but bearing their contradiction, meets their self-assertion with forbearance,
their arrogance with condescension, their ill-doing with benefits, their hostil-
ity with love. Nothing was antecedent to creative love; it lovingly produced
from its bosom creatures after its personal image, and rested well pleased
with its work. But this good pleasure was exchanged for displeasure, when
the created image, willing what was evil, exchanged its loving fellowship for
selfish contrast to its original; the zeal of Divine love for the welfare of its crea-
tures, became zeal against the sin which is their ruin. Its object thus enters into
a relation of opposition; Divine love encounters hostile selfishness, and this
denial, this rejection of God, is the harshest antagonism, is treason against
God, who is love, is revolting ingratitude.
Divine love reacts with holy severity against that unholy selfishness of
sinners, which is their ruin; it is angry with a righteous indignation, and this
indignation of God against evil, this severity towards it, is its essential chas-
tisement. The supreme good is the love of God, fellowship therewith, enjoy-
ment thereof in faith is blessedness, is the substance of salvation; its gifts,
whether earthly or heavenly and paradisaic, are but accidents. To possess the
Giver—as faith does—is more than to possess His gifts, is more than heaven
and earth (Ps. lxxiii. 25); if God be for us, who can be against us? All things
work together for good to them that love God. On the contrary, the supreme
evil is the wrath of God, is His opposition to His sinful creature, for if God be
against, what can be for us? and what can work for good to them who do not
love God? All is in His hand, and if that is against us, all things are against us,
even if His long-suffering has not yet set them in motion against us, even if
they do not yet strike us as chastisements. Temporal and external chastise-
ments, in the infliction of which any creature may be employed by its ruler
(Wisd. v. 18, xvi. 24), are only accidental; their substance, their eternal nature
is the holy zeal of the holy God against what is unholy, His displeasure
against what is ungodly, His rejection of what is reprobate. The absence of His
love, separation from it, is misery; for His love is the source of all life, it is eter-
nal life itself; separation from the source of life is death; corporeal death,

because the body is without the love which quickens and preserves it, spiri-
tual death, because the soul is without the love which blesses and sanctifies it,
and this spiritual death becomes eternal, ever and yet never dying death, if
the soul, after it has hardened itself against the holy God, is rejected by Him,
and forsaken by Divine love, is given up to the condemnation of tormenting
and tormented selfishness. This is the curse with which the law threatens sin-
ners; for the wages of sin is death (Rom. vi. 23); and the sting of death is sin,
but the stinging strength of sin is the law (1 Cor. xv. 56).
The law, as the primary Divine norm of human nature, is the holy and
active will of God, of which the sinner’s conscience becomes conscious, and
which is felt as God’s displeasure against sin, which imputes it as guilt, con-
demns and punishes. Sin is opposition to the law of God (ἀνομία); punish-
ment, on the other hand, is the opposition of the law to the lawlessness of sin.
This reaction of Divine righteousness against human unrighteousness is the
penal justice of God, and this—laying hold of man and penetrating his knowl-
edge, conscience, and feeling—is the perennial, the eternal punishment of evil,
while individual acts of punishment are but its temporary appearance. It is
the judgment of God against sin, nay, God the Judge Himself. If God is holy
love, which works all good and demands all love, He is also holy indignation
which restrains and resists all evil and selfishness. Deus est sua sanctitas, sua
justitia, say the old divines, He is Himself the essential reward of the pious, by
being for them (Gen. xv. 1), and the essential punishment of sinners, by being
against them. Hence it is said, Isa. viii. 13: Sanctify the Lord of hosts Himself,
and let Him be your fear, and let Him be your dread; and hence is He so often
spoken of in Scripture as the holy, the fearful God (Ex. xv. 11 and elsewhere),
and testifies of Himself as the strong, the jealous God, who visits transgres-
sion, and is called not only in the Old, but also in the New Testament, a con-
suming fire (Deut. iv. 24; Heb. xii. 29). However sedulously an easy-going
neology 99 may have tried to weaken such passages, and to criticize away from
99 I use this expression in the usual sense of the word. More strictly speaking, what is called neology is,
inasmuch as it seeks to palliate and spare the old man, a noxious paleology; while Christianity, on the
contrary, which is ever bidding us put on the new man or Christ, is the most salutary neology (2 Cor. v.
17). For the same reason does the latest “illuminism,” which would willingly bring back “Paganism
upon Germany,” purpose an enormous retrogression into that old state of things of which the apostle

sinful man the fear of God’s holy wrath, and thus to rock him in false security,
the serious truth of the testimony of the Divine law stands immoveable, and
every one who has really learned from Scripture the holiness of the living
God, must also certainly acknowledge and perceive the mighty, the burning
contrast which exists between it and evil.
This contrast, revealed by means of the law, can never be either recon-
ciled or compensated on the part of sinful man. Only vain and frivolous pre-
sumption, utterly misconceiving the momentous nature and doom of sin, can
conceive this possible. Not only must all kinds of evil consequences resulting
from sin be done away with, but itself, as enmity against God, be reconciled;
not only must expiation be made for its penalties, but the contrast between
God and man, the relation of guilt which makes everything penal to man, must
be abolished. Can this be done on the part of the guilty? Can he forgive him-
self his sins, or hide them before God? Can guilt be guiltless, can sin do that
which is holy in the sight of the holy God, as though nothing wrong had taken
place? Can selfishness be made self-denying, can it undo what is done, or
annul the law of God? Never. And as sinful man cannot make amends for his
past transgressions and their guilt, so neither can he, by his own strength,
amend his present or his future, which is based upon the bad foundation of
the past. The wild stock of human nature can, indeed, of its own inherent
power put forth various leaves, blossoms, and fruits, but unless it is grafted
with a better and nobler shoot, it cannot ennoble itself, or make a new begin-
ning. Even selfsatisfied religiousness, within the boundaries of mere reason,
was obliged to confess that it “surpassed all conception how a bad tree should
bring forth good fruit;” and the manner in which it thought itself able, by the
imperative of the law, to force such fruit, whose value depends on its being
voluntary and unconstrained, only the more proves this inconceivableness.
God and man are separated by sin, the fellowship of love between
them is annulled (Isa. lix. 2); holy love and unholy selfishness stand in opposi-
tion to each other; how is it possible that the latter, which is in all its thoughts
and acts impure, self-willed, and suspicious, should draw down the former to
its fellowship, and should again unite with it? It is the very nature of sin and
says: τὰ ἀρχαῖα παρῆλθεν.

selfishness not to love God who is love, but either to entertain for Him a
proud indifference or a slavish fear, hence it can never be in harmony with
Him. And as selfishness, wrapped up in itself, cannot of itself unfold into its
opposite, into self-denial, so neither can sinful man release himself from the
bonds of sin and enter into a fresh alliance with God.
And yet reunion with God in holy love is just the one thing which the
sinner needs, if he is not to sink in separation from Him, through spiritual into
eternal death. Hence, as no man can be his own redeemer, so too can no other
creature redeem him (Ps. xlix 8, 9). God is nearer to a man than his nearest
friend or relation, not to say any other created being. What is here in question
is the union of man with God, the Lord and Creator of his life, and therefore
no third party can or may intervene as if the thing concerned him more
nearly. No creature can or may presume to be a mediator between God and
man; no angel or archangel, however holy and powerful, can dare to be in this
case judge or reconciler. What can His angels, His servants, do for us? Sin has
separated between us and God; it is reconciliation, reunion with God their
Lord, which our soul needs; and no creature, no ministering spirit, can inter-
pose. Such interposition would but remove him farther, and at the same time
be a degradation of Him, as if He were the Creator only, and not the Saviour,
though He alone is both (Isa. xliii. 11, xlv. 21 sqq.). Even if a creature is pure as
a holy angel, or sinless as Adam before the Fall, it is so, according to its obliga-
tions of obedience and service in its creature position, chiefly for itself only,
and is by no means capable of representing as mediator either the holiness of
God, or even the guilt of man. No creature can reunite fallen guilty creatures
with God, or God with them; God alone, from whom they are separated and
by whose law they are punished, can by His grace remit their punishment and
cancel their separation; He is not to be reconciled by some second or third
party, but He reconciles the world unto Himself (2 Cor. v. 20), by welcoming
as God in Christ lost mankind with holy mercy to the fellowship of His love.
They who deny the Deity of Christ and degrade Him to a mere prophet and
servant of God, also deny that He is the Redeemer and Reconciler, and thus
abolish any kind of reconciliation, which, as surely as sin is disunion and sepa-
ration from God, can only consist in that reunion with Him which must pro-
ceed from Himself. They who think otherwise know not what sin is, nor what

reconciliation is, and either fancy with self-complacent vanity that they have
no need of it, or are, like the Jews, expecting it in the indefinite future.
Sinful humanity is unable, of its own self-elevating power, to reunite

itself with the Deity, but the Deity out of free condescending grace enters into
a new covenant with mankind. God Himself overcomes the hostile contrast to
Himself by the self-denial of holy, pitying love for the enemy; the reaction of
His love against selfishness passes over into the transaction of Divine reconcil-
iation. In the notion of this self-denial is involved also that of reconciliation,
inasmuch as the contrast of the righteousness and grace, of the holiness and
mercy of God is therein abolished, and alienated selfishness is, by a renewed
bestowal of Divine love, changed into reciprocal love; for selfishness can be
overcome only by self-denial. From eternity had it been the good pleasure or
counsel of God that fallen man should be again taken into fellowship with the
Godhead, and that the more closely, the more deeply he had fallen. The fulfil-
ment of this counsel, as a blessing to all the nations of the earth, was promised
to the seed of Abraham, which, as the people of the Old Covenant, was placed
under the discipline of the law, that by the knowledge of sin and of the dis-
union between God and man, the feeling of the need of the Reconciler might
be called forth and kept alive. Thus was prophetic preparation made for His
coming, which occurred at the period of the deepest moral degradation of
mankind, and was proclaimed by the gospel of the New Covenant to all the
world, as the highest proof of the love of God to man (Tit. ii. 11, iii. 4). “For
God so loved the world, that He spared not His only-begotten Son, but deliv-
ered Him up for us all, who, though he was in the form of God, grasped it not
as a booty to be equal with God, but deprived Himself, and took upon Him
the form of a servant, and became like men, and was found in fashion as a
man” (John iii. 16; Rom. viii. 32; Phil. ii. 6, 7). This was the mystery of godli-
ness hidden in the unfathomable depths of Divine love (Col. i. 26, 27), but
revealed when the preparatory period of the law and prophecy was fulfilled,
and to which the Christian Church, as the fortress (pillar and ground, E. V.) of
saving truth, loudly and gladly testifies: “God, who is love, was manifest in
the flesh” (1 Tim. iii. 15, 16); “the Word of life and love, who was in the begin-
ning with God, who Himself was God, became the Son of man, and dwelt
among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the

Father, full of grace and truth; for the law was given by Moses, the grace and
truth of the gospel came by Jesus Christ” (John i. 1-18; Col. i. 15-20, and else-
where).
The incarnation of God in Jesus Christ is the fundamental creed of

Christendom and the chief article of the doctrine of Divine love, and it is so
just because it is, as Scripture testifies, the very greatest act of Divine love and
grace wherewith God loved the world in Christ, even to the deepest privation
(Rom. v. 8-10; Eph. ii. 4-7). As such an act of love, it is no à priori inconceivable
transubstantiation or alteration of the Divine into the human nature, nor of
the human into the Divine; neither is it a blending or mingling of both into a
third nature; nor any physical change of either the Divine or human nature,
but it is—because thereby alone could they be reconciled — the most intimate
union of both in love. It is thus no substantial or natural unification (mono-
physitism), no identification of Godhead and manhood which would be no
reconciliation, but a loving union of their twofold being in the oneness of the
personal consciousness of the Redeemer (unio hypostatica). Love as every-
where, so here too, abolishes only the separation and not the distinction, only
the disunion not the duality, being on the contrary the alliance of the different.
The greater the contrast between the infinite Divine and the finite human
nature, the greater is the love which personally unites them in Christ. The
possibility of this personal union is based upon the circumstance, that as the
Divine nature itself is personal love, so too is the human nature, created after
God’s image, intended to be loving personality. But sin, as selfishness, having
most affected just the personality of human nature, the personal union of God
with manhood encounters this very mischief by implanting in it a new divine
principle of personality and love.
This union did not and could not take place by a human person receiv-
ing the Divine nature into the unity of its Ego. That a human subject should
have appropriated the Divine substance as a predicate, and have thus raised
himself above all his brethren into a man-god, is a notion as inconceivable as
it is unworthy. On the contrary, the Son of God, according to Scripture,
received the human nature into the unity of His person, into the fellowship of
His self-consciousness, (Filius Dei assumsit humanum naturam100 in unitatem

personæ, Heb. ii. 16). Not flesh became the Logos, but the Logos, the personal
Logos,—for an impersonal irrational Logos is nonsense,—became flesh: He
who was in the beginning with God, and who was Himself God, the only-
begotten Son in the bosom of the Father, dwelt among us, and as man mani-
fested His glory, which was a reflection of that eternal glory which He had
with the Father before Abraham was, before the world was (John i. 1, 14, viii.
58, xvii. 5; Col. i. 15-17; Heb i. 3). Non ascendit homo, sed descendit Deus, ut
consurgamus; it was not that poor, fallen man raised himself to deity, but that
the gracious God let Himself down into humanity, that He might raise it. The
Son of God became in Jesus a son of man, and not contrariwise, which it were
preposterous to suppose. The Divine nature then is, in this union, the taking,
the personifying; the human the taken, the nature into which the self-con-
sciousness of the Divine Son thought and fashioned itself, so that His ego is the
central-point both of the Divine nature which was proper to Him, and of the
human nature which He took unto Him, the latter being indeed not personal
of itself, but being so in and with the Divine nature (ἐνυπόστατος ).101 Thus is
He conscious of the Divine and human nature and of their different properties
in undivided personal unity, and is for this very reason Christ, the God-man,
and as such the one and only mediator between God and man. For neither
God alone, nor any man alone, can be a mediator, who has in such wise
100 Homine assumto Deus non consumtus.—Aug. de civil. Dei, lib. xi. c. 2. Assumsit quod non erat et
permansit quod erat, et in homine ad nos venit et Patre non recessit.—Id. Serm. 184, c. 1.
101 The most recent objections to the catholic doctrine are founded upon an utter absence of any
definite distinction between the notions person and nature, in consequence of which objectors impart
their own confusion of these notions into this doctrine, which they then represent as confused and con-
tradictory. The person is, according to the orthodox notion, that single central point, that ego of an intel-
lectual being, which unites all the radii of its sphere while distinguishing them in self-consciousness as
much from each other as from itself, and yet at the same time keeping them all united among each other
and in itself. It is true that there is no centre without a radius, nor on the other hand a radius without a
centre, still the one is not on that account the other. It is true that the reason and the will are the bright
radii of the mind, yet they are to be distinguished from that centre the Ego, which has in the reason and
the will its thought and will. The human nature of Christ is with all its radii concentric with the Divine;
the circumference as well as the radii of the two spheres are very different in extent and size; yet they
have, like the largest and smallest concentric circles, but one common centre (unitas personæ duarum natu-
rarum). Comp. Dorpatsche Beiträge zu den theologischen Wissenschaft, vol. i. p. 348 sqq.
The mere sanctifcation of the natural relation was not sufficient; for even an absolutely sanctified
human pair could only have given rise to a sanctified man, but not to the God-man.

united in Himself the contrast of Godhead and manhood, that though the dis-
tinction remains, the separation is abolished.
The God-man, as very God, as the eternal Son of the eternal Father, is
begotten of the Father out of the fulness of His love in eternity (Col. i. 15), and
as very man born in time of the Virgin Mary, in whose womb, of whose sub-
stance, the Holy Spirit of the Father and of the Son (creator spiritus), by an act
at once of creation and sanctification} formed that human nature which the eter-
nal Son took into the unity of His Person or His Ego, and pervaded with His
self - consciousness. Thus the Son of God became a holy son of man, made as
the second Adam and yet also born as the son of David from the old race,
which He was to renew. For He was neither to plant a new race beside the
old, nor to propagate the old, but being Himself grafted as a new shoot into the
old stock, to renew and ennoble it. While the first Adam, as directly created by
God, originated without either father or mother, the second, as the renovator
of the old race, was indeed without a father, but not without a mother of that
race, and was therefore as much a new original man as He was also akin to the
old human nature.102 If as son of man he had sprung naturally from a father
and mother, He would have been, like every other man, an independent
human personality, to which, as in the case of other sanctified human beings,
the Divine would only have made a near approach (Nestorianism), but not
have formed the central-point of its personal unity. Then, too, He would have
been only a natural shoot of the old stock of human nature, which could no
more have been renewed and ennobled thereby, than by a new shoot, which,
without natural connection with it, should have as it were founded a new
stock near it. A new shoot, a new bud, not grown from the seed of the old
stock, must be implanted in its bosom to produce and bring to maturity
nobler fruit from it.103 They who would strike out the article: conceived of the
Holy Ghost, horn of the Virgin Mary, from the Creed, strike at other articles
besides; they who deny the birth of the God-man of the Virgin Mary, will
102 The relation between Adam and Christ is like that between Creation and Redemption, birth and new
birth, nature and grace (Rom. v. 12 sqq.).

103 It is this which “modern science,” ignoring sin with modern levity, denies. In its views “the appear-
ance of Christ is no longer the implantation of a new Divine principle, but a shoot from the innermost
pith of Divinely endowed human nature.” But just that inmost pith, the heart, is diseased (Isa. i. 5).

always question also the pre-existence and the Deity of Christ in general, and
therefore also the union and reconciliation of God and man in Him. They who
will not leave unchallenged the new birth through creative interposition of a sec-
ond holy original man into the old human nature,104 regard Christianity in
general as only the perfecting and not as the renovation of humanity, know
only of a gradual improvement of man, but nothing at all of the new creature
in Christ Jesus (2 Cor. v. 17). Hence this article is of undoubted ethical impor-
tance to our whole apprehension of Christianity, and it ought, moreover, in
justice to be acknowledged that its catholic creed is no jumble of isolated
dogmas, some of which may be dispensed with at pleasure and others admit-
ted in their place, but an organically articulated system, of which no single
member can be abstracted without a mutilation of the whole. 105
A personal union (unia hypostatica) then of the Divine and human

natures takes place in Christ, the reconciler. Oneness of personal conscious-
ness brings about the most intimate communion of the two natures (unio et
communio duarum naturarum). Their contrasts therefore marvellously combine
and pass over into each other, but in such wise that no intermixture or confu-
sion repugnant to their respective notions takes place, but only a loving con-
nection and penetration, a union and communion. It is therefore self-evident,
that the one may be predicated of the other (John i. 14), and that what directly
belongs to one nature is by means of the common self-consciousness appropri-
ated also by the other, without, however, therefore becoming an essential
attribute thereof. On the contrary, the personal consciousness as much distin-
guishes the condition of the two natures as it unites them in love,106 just as
104 The creative is at the same time the miraculous, because it is not produced by an old existing
causalnexus, but itself produces from itself a new and higher one. The connection between the notions of
creation and of miracle is the more deserving of special investigation, the more modern criticism panthe-
istically and antitheistically rejects both creation and miracles, and also leaves no room for that freedom
whose aim in common with miracles it is, not to be determined by the natural causalnexus, but to exert a
determining influence upon it.
105 Even Dr. Strauss (Glaubenslehre, Pt. 2, p. 98) frankly points out, that the apostolic symbol must either
be entirely acknowledged or entirely dropped from “God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and
earth,” to “the life everlasting.”
106 On this unity in duality and duality in unity (unio) of the Mediator, is based the true medium and
accommodation between the one-sided contrasts of a confounding monism and a dividing dualism,
which wage irreconcilable war with each other outside of Christianity.

distinction and union are in general the functions of consciousness. Mutual
communication of properties (communicatio idiomatum) is the essence of every
alliance, of all loving communion,107 only selfishness, which would keep all
that is its own to itself, resists it, for it desires to part everything and to impart
nothing. This sacred communion of Godhead with manhood in Christ cannot
exist without the most intimate communication of their respective properties,
without the closest union of their contrasts. As a mere man, according to his
twofold, his spiritual and corporeal substance, already unites in himself the
opposite qualities of mind and matter, of the heavenly and the earthly,
although the harmony of this union is disturbed by sin, so does the incarnate
Son of God combine the opposite attributes and conditions, actions and affec-
tions of Godhead and manhood, of heavenly glory and earthly servitude, of
infinite eternity and finite time in the union of love. Hereby the Person of the
God-man would be already proved, even apart from His works, to be the
reconciling personality, through which all things, whether in earth or in
heaven, are reconciled (Col. i. 20), because all the contrasts of heaven and
earth are united, and all separation of the Divine and human done away
therein.
The reconciling incarnation of God in Christ is the greatest proof of the

holy love of God, because it is, in opposition to the selfishness of the world,
the deepest self-denial of the Supreme, who, as man, humbled Himself even
to the form of a servant. It was not merely some kind of Docetic concealment
(κρύψις) of the Divine glory which took place therein, but an actual depriva-
tion (κένωσις, Phil. ii. 7), not indeed of its eternal potentiality, which was
impossible, but certainly of its infinite actuality in finiteness. 108 The eye which
embraces heaven and earth in its glance does not, if it withdraws into dark-
ness or closes its eyelid, deprive itself of the power of vision, but only of its
wide-reaching activity. And thus did the Son of man close on earth His all-
107 A general investigation concerning that communication of properties which more or less takes place
in every combination, and the limits to which such communication can extend without abolishing the
existence of the combined substances, would be of great scientific interest.
108 It is only in the operibus ad intra that the infinite potentiality of the Godhead is in equally infinite
actuality; in the operibus ad extra, on the contrary wherein the finite is assumed and determined, a certain
voluntary self-limitation (determination) is already assumed with it. If Hamann calls even creation a
work of Divine humility, how much more so is redemption!

embracing eye, betake Himself to human obscurity, and as a human child
open it therein, as the gradually increasing light of the world (Luke ii. 52),
until He let it shine in full glory at the right hand of the Father. Not only did
the Son deny Himself by renouncing, in voluntary and gracious condescen-
sion to earthly limitation, the brightness of His glory, the sovereign exercise of
his Divine attributes, but the Father also, by resigning Him to the depths of
human suffering, without however separating Him from that eternal and
unchangeable fellowship of the Divine nature, by which He is ever united
with the Father and the Holy Spirit. The form of a servant however did not so
much consist in His entrance as Son of man upon the course of natural human
development (Luke ii. 40), as this would, apart from sin and its consequences,
have taken place in the paradisaic state, as rather in the circumstance, that He
humbled Himself in that human nature which He had assumed (Phil. ii. 8), and in
His state of humiliation patiently endured, from His birth at Bethlehem till
His death upon the cross, the servile condition of poverty and mortality, and
entered into the fellowship of all those earthly sufferings, which, because they
arise from sin, depress the soul of man and keep it at a distance from God, by
depriving it of the peace and comfort of Divine love. What can be greater
opposites than Divine blessedness and human misery, than eternal life and
temporal death, than Omnipotence and abandonment, than God and death?
In such extremity of ill it might have been supposed, would be found the lim-
its of the Divine Presence, the boundary of eternal love. Not so; it is not merely
in the heights, but in the depths also, God, whom no limits either include or
exclude, becomes man, and as such enters with holy conciliation into personal
sympathy with these our sorrows and sufferings, which therefore are not
remote from and foreign to Him, and neither remove nor alienate us from
Him, for we have not a High Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of
our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin
(Heb. v. 15), and who, though He was the Lord of glory, yet bore the cross of
pain. Truly the greatest and most adorable fact in Divine and human history
then took place, when the Godhead thus intimately consorted with its oppo-
site, and espoused poverty to glory, weakness to omnipotence, meanness to
greatness, the sufferings of time to eternity, that God might truly be all in
all.109 It is true that the Divine nature is in itself raised above all suffering, and
that no pain affected the majesty of the eternal Son (John xvii. 5); but that

majesty, in its personal union with human nature in Jesus, took upon it, in
holy self-denial, the form of a servant, and so lovingly made that which was
alien, nay, opposed to its nature, its own (ἰδιοποίησις), as really (realiter) to
experience, in the oneness of the common consciousness, the misery of human
suffering and death,110 and by so doing to sanctify it, to make it Divine, nay,
rich in consolations for all other sufferers. 111 It is the infinite magnitude of this
Divinest love, contrasted with our littleness and paltriness, which makes our
confidence weak and timid. It should, however, only the more strengthen
itself by the testimony of Holy Scripture, which gives such decided promi-
nence to the fact that the great God has always sought to prove the height and
depth of His love, by choosing the low and the small, the ignoble and the
despised things of the world, and that which is weak, to reveal Himself
therein, and thus to put to shame that which seems lofty and great and strong
to the world (1 Cor. i. 27; Luke iv. 18; Isa. lvii. 15; Ps. cxiii. 6, 7, viii. 5; Heb. ii.
16). An old Christmas hymn112 skilfully extols, in words to raise the hearts of
all who understand how compassionate self-denying love conquers and
unites even extreme contrasts, that Divine majesty which took in the bosom of
innocence the form of a child, and plunged into human suffering.
Altitudo! quid hic jaces

In tam vili stabulo
Qui creasti cœli faces
Alges in præsepio.
O quam mira perpetrasti
Jesu propter hominem,
Tam ardenter quam amasti
Paradiso exulem!
109 Hence the incarnation is no reduction of God to finiteness, but, on the contrary, an infinite victory
over the extreme contrast to the infinity of eternal love. As to how these contrasts are no contradictions
to the Deity of Christ, comp. Augustine, ad Volusianum epist. 137.
110 Thus, too, does the immortal soul, in consequence of its union with the mortal body, suffer the
pains of death, though it does not die.

111 The incarnation of God in Christ is the perfect theodicy.
112 Comp. Luther’s hymn: Christum wir sollen lohen schon, and Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christi, and other
Church hymns, whose depth of thought is not fathomed by a shallow illuminism.

Firmitudo infirmatur,
Parva fit immensitas
Laboratur, alligatur,
Nascitur æternitas.
O quam mira perpetrasti
Jesu propter hominem,
Tam ardenter quam amasti
Paradiso exulem!
But God in Christ not only made the poor properties of human nature
His own, and endured them in His state of humiliation, but also lets that
human nature share the abundant glory of His Divine properties (per communi-
cationem idiomatum). Though itself only a creature, it was nevertheless, after
the work of reconciling even the most extreme contrasts had been performed
in humiliation, raised, in consequence of its abiding personal union with the
Godhead of the Son, above all creatures in heaven and earth, to a participation
of Divine majesty and honour (Phil. ii. 8, 11: κοινωνία τῶν θείων). The activ-
ity of love is communication, its effect communion; union in love cannot exist
without mutual communication, which is proved not only by common suffer-
ing, but also by common joy. It is a highly inadequate, because a loveless
notion, to conceive of the union of the Divine and human natures as only an
association and communication with each other, a penetration of each other.
Such a spiritless and loveless relation, which awkwardly misconceives the
notion of personal oneness and the conscious life of the united natures, is
aptly parodied in our symbols by the similitude of two boards glued together.
The human nature is taken into the personal loving communion of the Divine,
and therefore does not cling to it like a heterogeneous mass, but is penetrated
by the light and life which radiate from the Divine nature, and which, though
veiled in the state of humiliation, yet shone through the form of a servant as
the glory of the Only-begotten of the Father (John i. 14; Matt. iii. 17, xviii. 1-5),
were manifested in Divine works, which were miracles only to us, but not to
the Son of God,113 and at last, in the state of exaltation, effected an imperish-
113 It cannot be too often repeated, amidst the mystic prejudices of modern culture against the miracu-
lous, that the conception of it as the supernatural is not absolute, i.e. surpassing all nature (universa rerum
natura), but relative, so that the very thing which is supernatural and miraculous to a lower nature,

able, illustrious, divine glorification of the human nature also (John xvii. 5),
the reflection of which is to glorify all His disciples (John xvii. 24). In and with
it the Son of God exercises, at the right hand of the Father, i.e. in the fellow-
ship of the Divine omnipotence (for the right hand of God does not signify a
fixed position near Him, but His all-affecting omnipotence), all power in
heaven and upon earth (Matt. xxviii. 18; Eph. i. 20-23); in Jesus Christ dwells
all the fulness of the Godhead bodily (Col. ii. 9, i. 19); He receives heaven, not
heaven Him (Acts iii. 21). Christ’s Godhead did not go into heaven, it was
already there by nature; but the God-man, the Son of man, who, because of
His union with the Godhead, comes from heaven and ascends to heaven (John
iii. 13). The ascension, as the exaltation of the Son of man, is not so much a
local removal from one place to another,114 as that exemption of the human
nature from the limitations of this finite world, which took place together with
the re-development of the unlimited Divine glory, and by reason of which it is
no longer in its measure bound to space and time, like ours below, but moved
by the Godhead, penetrates like rays of light even remote distances with freest
movement.115 What the apostle says, not of a divided, but of a whole Christ
(Eph. iv. 10), is: He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all
heavens, that He might fill all things, for which reason also every knee is to
bow in the name of Jesus. It is not with His exclusively and directly Divine
because surpassing its natural powers, is natural and non-miraculous to a higher nature. The miracles of
Christ are effects produced by the will of His higher and creative nature, which He possesses in common
with the Father; he who rejects the miracles rejects that nature also, and consequently denies that Jesus
Christ is the Lord. To the Divine nature, because it is supreme, nothing is miraculous. The sole miracle in
Christ is the union of the Divine and human natures in Him. Quomodo est contra naturam, quod fit Dei
voluntate, cum voluntas conditoris conditæ rei cujusque natura est.—Aug. de civit. Dei, lib. xxi. c. 8. How
often does the free human will intersect the laws of action of inferior natures, without therefore abolish-
ing them!
114 Comp. Repetitio corporis doctrinæ ecclesiasticæ, Königsberg 1567 (the Russian solida declaratio), fol. 37:
“The ascension is not a merely local change of place, like the foolish and childish fancy of its opponents,
which gives it no other meaning than there would be in the case of some poor bird, who, when it has
flown from the ground on to a tree, cannot at the same moment be upon the ground.”
115 Notwithstanding this metamorphosis (Matt. xvii. 2), it remains essentially identical with our nature,
just as the worm and butterfly are identical, though the one crawls and the other flies. The Divine prop-
erties become its own not substantially but by communication, even as the mirror shines like the sun, not
by its own light, but by that reflected upon it by the sun, which it reflects back, while without the sun it
is itself dark.

presence, which, because it is this, is neither mediatorial nor reconciliatory,
but with His Divine and human personal nearness, that the Mediator and
Reconciler is, according to His own good pleasure, with us always, even to the
end of the world, so that He is not withdrawn from us by the ascension, but,
on the contrary, efficaciously near (Matt. xxviii. 20). In His Divine humanity
He exercises His royal mediatorship or High-priesthood on our behalf, and
carries on His work of reconciliation until the last enemy shall be overcome (1
Cor. xv. 25 sq.). As Reconciler He communicates to us, through the means of
grace which He has instituted, the benefits of His Divine grace, makes us by
the medium of His human, partakers of His Divine nature (2 Pet. i. 4), and
admits us, under the consecrated bread and wine, into the communion of His
glorified body and blood (1 Cor. x. 16), through the Holy Supper, in which we
are to show forth His atoning death, till He is manifested in His glory to judge
the quick and the dead, and to condemn all who in their selfishness would not
let themselves be reconciled to God by Him. Therefore in the name of Jesus is
every knee to bow, and every tongue to confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord to the
glory of God the Father, God of God, and Light of Light, to whom with the
Father in the communion of the Holy Ghost (2 Cor. xiii. 13) belongs Divine
adoration for ever (Phil. ii. 10 sq.; Rev. v. 13 sq.; John v. 23). They who deny
the Deity of Christ, and regard Him after Jewish fashion as a mere man, or
after heathen fashion as a demigod or deified creature, deny also the greatness
of the Divine love manifested in the surrender of the only-begotten Son, and
thereby obscure, nay, deny the whole Divine work of reconciliation and
reunion of man with God,— a work so great and Divine, that it could be
effected neither by a mere man nor by any kind of intermediate being, but
only by Him who unites in Himself both Godhead and manhood.
In this chapter on the Reconciler, duties and commandments have not

indeed been discussed; nevertheless its contents, though much of them are
generally regarded as belonging to mere doctrine, are of a thoroughly ethical
nature. The contrast which needed the Reconciler, the discord between God
and man through sin, is a moral contrast; the reunion of the severed, the new
and sacred alliance between Godhead and manhood, the new penetration of
human nature with the fulness of most holy love, are the source of salvation
as well as sanctification for all men, and therefore belong essentially to the

Christian doctrines of salvation and sanctification, and must take an actual
place in orthodox moral theology. For all human love which is therein com-
manded, is based upon the Divine love previously offered, and reconciling
love is its chief commandment, because the reconciliation of God with man in
Christ is the chief benefit of Divine love. The communion of man with God,
without which nothing in him is good or holy, essentially depends upon the
communion of God with man in Christ Jesus.
CHAPTER II. OF RECONCILIATION BY THE PERFECT

FULFILMENT OF THE LAW, OR THE PROPITIATORY SACRIFICE
OF THE RECONCILER.
The Reconciler is our reconciliation, our propitiation (John ii. 2); He is

so by His Person, in which Godhead and manhood are united; He is so by His
work, the loving, acting and suffering, by which, giving Himself in holy self-
denial as a sacrifice (Heb. ix. 14), He perfectly fulfilled the law (Gal. iv. 4 sq.),
obedient even to the death of the cross (Phil. ii. 8); by this His obedience many
are made righteous, as through the disobedience of the first man many were
made sinners (Rom. v. 19). Disobedience is the selfish resistance of the sinner’s
will and nature to the law of God, which, on its side, as the holy will of God,
and the fundamental norm of human nature, opposes all man’s lawlessness
and resistance, condemns, imputes and punishes it. Indeed, just this displea-
sure of God, or the wrath of His law against disobedience, is, as we saw at the
commencement of the former chapter, the essential punishment of sin. This is
the conflict, the opposition of righteousness against unrighteousness, which
needs reconciliation, unless sinful man is to perish according to the sentence
of the law: fiat justitia, pereat mundus. He who obeys the law, who conforms to
its form, who is just to its justice, lives in it (Lev. xviii. 5), lives in the holy will
of God, which is pure benevolence towards that will of man which is united to
it, and beneficence towards his well-doing, just as when the case is reversed it
requites his evil-doing with evil, and is aversion to that will of man which is
discordant with it. The stream of the Divine will bears him swiftly and easily
along who follows its current, but rages and surges against him who resists it.
The blessings of obedience involve corresponding curses on disobedience

(Deut. xxviii.), the doer of the law lives by it (Rom. x. 5), the transgressor dies
by it; he dies, because selfishness, which is the foundation of all transgression,
separates his soul from the love of God, which is the cause and the eternal
source of all life. That this separation cannot be done away with by man,
sunken as he is in selfishness, that he cannot fill himself by his own volition
with the love which is the fulfilling of the law, cannot justify himself from his
guilt, nor reunite himself with God, has been already proved (compare espe-
cially the last chapter of the first division). How eternal love on its side abol-
ished the separation, how as grace it resolved on reconciliation, and, when the
fulness of the time was come, personally united human nature, and that in the
form of a servant, with itself in the Son of the Virgin, has been shown in the
preceding chapter.
In and by Him alone (not by several or many, Gal. iii. 16), are all the
families of the earth to be blessed. The union of the Godhead with the man-
hood in Jesus does not find its final object in Him, as though God had chosen
only Him as an individual, to impart to Him exclusively the fulness of His
love. No, that union is a means and Jesus the Mediator, the central-point from
which Divine light and life are to shine forth with renovating power upon all
men, who have fallen victims to darkness and death. It pleased Him that in
Him should all fulness dwell (Col. i. 19), so that out of His fulness all might
receive grace for grace (John i. 16). 116 One thing is here the condition of the
other. The intensiveness of His Person is the cause of the extensiveness of His
agency; the more the union of Godhead with manhood is concentrated in
Him, the more does reconciling and renovating power radiate from Him upon
all sinners. The doctrine of reconciliation is incomprehensible, when the Per-
son of the reconciler is misconceived, and therewith His universal and central
position, in virtue of which, as King and priestly head of the human commu-
nity, He comprises all its members in Himself (1 Cor. xii. 27; Eph. i. 22), nay,
116 The well-known assumption: “The idea is not wont to lavish its fulness on one and to be niggardly
towards others,” upon which the whole effort to resolve the concrete notion of the God-man into the
abstract notion of humanity turns, is, on the one hand, only a self-chosen protest against the assertion of
Scripture (Col. i. 19), on the other, an utter misconception of scriptural truth, which, so far from being
niggardly to others for the sake of one, concentrated all fulness in Him for the very purpose that all might
receive from His fulness grace and reconciliation. Is the sun niggardly when it enlightens the whole world
with the light concentrated in it alone?

is, as the Lord through whom and for whom all things were made, the
supreme head of the universe (Col. i. 16-18). A king, indeed, is not absolutely
an individual person, but also a general person (we), through whose goodness
and favour the whole country is as much blessed and gladdened, as evil and
calamity are restrained and punished. And this is the case in a far higher
degree with Him who, though found in fashion as a man (Phil. ii. 8), is still, as
the God - man, the universal Lord, the central head of the whole human race,
through whom all men, who stand in connection with Him as members, are to
be blessed. The pre - eminent designations, the Son of man, the Lord, the
Mediator, the High Priest, the King of the heavenly kingdom, the Head over
all, express in Holy Scripture in so decided a manner that universal majesty of
Christ’s Person, which embraces the ‘whole human race and all the world,
that only emptiness can find in them empty amplifications of human titles.
However vainly human conceit may inflate itself beside Him, it is neverthe-
less certain that the name of Jesus is above every name, that all are comprised
under Him as the Head, that He is the Lord (Phil. ii. 9-11; Eph. i. 10 sqq.).
This our Lord took upon Him, in His great and compassionate kindness
towards men (Tit. iii. 4), our servant form, entered with deepest compassion
into most intimate communion with our condition and sufferings, and was in
perfect love and self-denial obedient unto death, even the death of the cross,
on which He accomplished His world-reconciling sacrifice. To obey is better
than sacrifice (1 Sam. xv. 22 sqq.; Ps. xl. 7-9), and that just because it is the best
sacrifice, and self-denying, compassionate love is more than all whole burnt-
offerings and sacrifices (Mark xii. 33; Matt. ix. 13; Hos. vi. 6), because it is itself
the most perfect sacrifice.117 Such a most perfect sacrifice did the Reconciler
offer for the sin of the whole world (1 John ii. 2).
The notion of sacrifice (offerre) is simply that of the gift, the surrender,
117 Ubi scriptum est: misericordiam malo quam sacrificium, nihil aliud quam sacrificio sacrificium præla-
tum oportet intelligi, quoniam illud, quod ab omnibus appellator sacrificium, signum est veri sacrificii.
Porro autem misericordia verum sacrificium est, unde dictum est: benefacere et communicatores esse
nolite oblivisci; talibus enim sacrificiis placetur Deo (Heb. xiii. 16). Quæcunque igitur in ministerio
tabernaculi sive templi multis modis de sacrificiis leguntur divinitus esse praecepta, ad dilectionem Dei et
proximi significandam referuntur. In his enim duobus præceptis, ut scriptum est, tota Lex pendet et
Prophetæ.—Aug. de civit. Dei, x. 5.

the self-deprivation and presentation of what is one’s own, so that in its vari-
ous designations of propitiatoryoffering, thank-offering, covenant-offering,
love, gift, or even prayer, it always involves the notion of self-denial. The
nature of sin is selfishness, the nature of propitiation is self-denial, and the
action of self-denial is sacrifice.118 Self-denial, that is to say, for the sake of
God with reference to Him, the Lord, whose will and commands all sin
opposes, to whom we are all indebted and owe everything, and whom also
we are to serve by loving our neighbour. A merely natural, and for that reason
a limited love of man, or good nature, always mingled with a certain amount
of selfishness, may indeed perform all kinds of works of mercy, nay, even of
generosity; but if they are not at the same time done for the Lord’s sake, if
they have no reference of gratitude and duty to His love, if they are not conse-
crated to Him in pure self-denial, are according to Divine language no sacri-
fice, although in common parlance, which often calls even offerings for selfish
purposes by such a name, they may still be so entitled. 119 Religion alone gives
to all morality a sacred and consecrated character, it alone makes even the
good works of the pious sacrifices with which God is well pleased (Heb. xiii.
16).120 The sacrifice of the creatures, who in their utter dependence upon God
must fully deny themselves only with respect to Him, and adore Him alone, is
due to no created being, but to God only.
No religion, no worship is without adoration, and therefore not with-

out sacrifice.121 Every religion, inasmuch as it is a union with God in His ser-
vice, seeks to raise man out of his vassalage to self, out of his selfism. Hence
he is not only to receive but to surrender, not merely to enjoy but also to
118 From of old, sacrifice and self-denial, i.e. the surrender and resignation of self, have been synony-
mous among all nations; see Bahr’s Symbolik des mosaischen Cultus, vol. ii. Heidelb. 1839, pp. 210-215;
comp. Hegel, Religions Philosophie, vol. i. p. 158 sqq.
119 Verum sacrificium est omne opus, quod agitur, ut sancta societate inhæreamus Deo, relatum scilicet
ad ilium finem boni, quo veraciter beati esse possimus. Unde et ipsa misericordia, qua homini subveni-
tur, si propter Deum non fit, non est sacrificium. Vera sacrificia sunt opera misericordiæ sive in nos
ipsos, sive in nos proximos quæ referuntur ad Deum.—Aug. de civit. Dei, x. 6.
120 Sacrificia εὐχαρίστηκά sunt prædicatio Evangelii fides, invocatio, gratiarum action, confessio, afflic-
tiones sanctorum, imo omnia bona opera sanctorum.— Apology, p. 255 (ed. Rechenberg).
121 Comp. what Melanchthon says in the Apology, p. 260 sqq., on the juge sacrificium in the New
Testament Church also.

renounce, to offer sacrifice of what is his, and thus both to show his depen-
dence on God and his adherence to Him, and to prove his union with Him.122
As surely as religion stands in contrast with sin or selfishness, so surely does
it require sacrifice, as an act of self-denial, by which at the same time the
communion with the Godhead is to be restored. For this reason not merely
propitiatory and penitential sacrifices, but all sacrifices, however their matter
and form may differ, are of a propitiatory character, are always designed to
renew an alliance with God.123 It is one of the greatest errors of modern Illu-
minism, which in its selfishness avoids all sacrifice, to assert, that sacrifices
which, as proceeding from the deepest and most general religious necessity,
are found among all historical nations, belonged to rude superstition.124 It is
true that they, like heathen worship in general, have often been involved in
idolatry and superstition, in the adoration of the creature or of nature; but as
religion and worship are not themselves false, because there are false religions
and worships, so neither is sacrifice untrue because there are untrue sacrifices.
On the contrary, as truly as self-denial and surrender to God are the very
essence of religion, so surely does sacrifice form a part of it. Without prayer
there is no religion; and what else is prayer as the offering of our thoughts and
feelings, our mind and heart to God, but a sacrifice; and what else is sacrifice,
as a prayer expressed not only by word but also by an act, but a surrender to
God confirmed by a gift? It is true that God needs our prayers and gifts as lit-
tle, nay, far less, than a father needs the requests and presents of his child; still
He delights in them, and desires to have them as tokens of affection and of
ever-renewed attachment. The sum of the Divine law is the love of God, or,
where this is absent, reconciliation with Him; and this too is the meaning of all
those sacrifices enjoined to be offered by the law of the Old Covenant to the
holy and true God, and which by their reference to His holy will have an ethic
character, which, in the midst of much similarity, widely distinguishes them
122 “The purpose of sacrifice in general is a vital union or communion of the offerer with the Deity; and,
inasmuch as such communion is the aim and object of all religion, every kind of worship is at last con-
centrated in sacrifice.” Bähr, Symbolik, p. 263.
123 See Bähr, ibid. p. 264.
124 Comp. Bähr, ibid. pp. 271-276: “It is time to leave off giving out, that the chief and most important
thing which the ages have been acquainted with, the heart and centre of all religion, is a quite common
invention of the rudest superstition and fetishism, or at least assuming, over and above, that this great
master has now been rationally and adequately explained.”

from the predominantly physical character manifested in the sacrificial wor-
ship of the pagan religions of nature.125 The whole burnt-offerings which
were daily offered signified constant and entire surrender to God the Lord,
while the sin- and trespass-offerings atoned for individual offences, and the
thank-offerings referred by thanksgiving, praise and vow to gifts and benefits
either received or supplicated. The connection of sacrificial repasts with the
latter directed attention also to that communion with our fellow-men, which
is brought about by communion with God, so that the love of our neighbour,
as well as the love of God, found its consecrated expression in the sacrificial
worship (comp. Deut. xii. 12, 18). The importance of the sacrifice consisted,
however, not so much in the actual value of its objects, as in the spiritual signi-
fication connected with them. In animal sacrifices, their life, their soul, their
heart was offered with the blood, in meat - offerings, the nutriment of life;
generally signifying and exhibiting that the mortification of flesh and blood,
the surrender of heart and life, or self-denial for the sake of God, was neces-
sary to communion with Him.126 That sacrifice has besides a more general, a
propitiatory meaning, is self-evident; its connection also with him who offers
it is especially symbolized by the laying of his hands upon the victim,
whereby he manifests it to be his, and, as it were, transfers himself to it. In
offerings, too, in the wider sense of the word, in the gifts of the first-fruits,
drink-offerings, tithes, etc., that which was offered represented the entire sub-
stance of him who brought it, which was thus consecrated and declared to be
the property of God. Every sacrifice, as renouncing ownership and denying
egoism, is either a proof, an expression of love (as the thank-offering), and
presupposes the communion of love, or is intended to restore by atonement
the communion interrupted by sin, and to institute a new alliance.
125 See Bähr, ibid. pp. 265-268. Bähr’s very meritorious, thoughtful and instructive work on the Mosaic
worship is affected in its remarks on sacrifice by the author’s old antipathy to the doctrine of substitu-
tionary satisfaction, which he persistently rejects, even when it encounters him as the obvious conse-
quence of his own premisses. The defects in his work resulting therefrom are pointed out in Kurz’s
forcible Das mosaische Opfer, ein Beiträg zur Symbolik des mosaischen Cultus, Mitau 1848. If, however, Bähr’s
opposition is to a certain amount justified in his more judicial and penal than theological and ethical
treatment of the doctrine of satisfaction, it could have been wished that the latter aspect had been more
urged against him by Kurz than the former.
126 Sacrificium visibile invisibilis sacrificii sacramentum, i.e. sacrum signum est.—Aug. de civit. Dei, x. 5.

The only atoning sacrifice for sin and selfishness which is just and
adequate to the holy love of God, the sacrifice of the heart, of which the sev-
eral acts of sacrifice are but shadows and figures, is the perfect self-denial, the
complete self-surrender of man in obedience and patience, in the doing and
suffering of the Divine will. Sin is self-will opposing the will of God, which
again opposes it, and this sharp contrast, expressed and carried out by the
law, is the punishment of sin, is the judgment of self-will. Entire submission to
this judgment, the willing endurance of the Divine punishment, i.e. of the
righteous reaction of the holy will of God against the unrighteousness of self-
ishness, the surrender of all repugnance to the chastisement and dispensations
of God, the resignation of all self-love and self-pleasing, unreserved submis-
sion to the obedience of God’s commandments, and humble readiness to serve
our brethren, in short the perfect love, which is the fulfilling of the whole law,
which surrenders and offers to God, in both suffering and active self-denial, the
whole heart, the whole soul, the whole mind, this is the only sacrifice which
satisfies God who is love, which casteth out fear (1 John iv. 18), which
inwardly reconciles and unites man to God. This sacrifice must be realized not
only in the beneficent activity of love, but chiefly in the suffering of ill and the
patience of death. In Paradise, indeed, perfect love was to fill the soul of man
and to show itself by action; for where there is no sin, there are no ills, and
therefore neither suffering nor death, which is the wages of sin. The reaction
of the Divine holiness against sin is manifested in ills. The welfare of man is as
much connected with his well-willing as ill is with his ill-willing. Ill is to man
that which is against his will and towards which he feels aversion. Since, then,
the will of sinful man is selfish, God lets things go against his will, inflicts ill
as a counter pressure against the pressure of sin, that ill which is both a pun-
ishment and restraint, both a chastisement and a remedy for selfishness. Man,
who opposes the will of God, must now suffer the opposition of that will
against his, not only internally but also externally, in the ills inflicted on him.
Human life having become selfish in all its functions and endeavours, in all its
imaginations and desires (Gen. viii. 21), must experience the opposition of its
self-assertion, must suffer annihilation or death. All men indeed must suffer
and die, and no sinner can escape punishment. One thing, however, must be
noted, viz. that suffering and death, that mere punishment and its endurance,
are not in themselves atoning. Punishment is nothing else than the energy of

the contrast of the holy and righteous will of God with all that is unholy and
unrighteous; it is this energetic contrast itself, and cannot therefore be its
atonement or its abolition. Punishment is a sentence, an act on the part of the
law, and therefore effects only what the law effects, which neither forgives nor
atones for sin, but on the contrary judges and condemns it. Such a sentence
does indeed produce in its execution so painful a knowledge and sense of sin
and of its opposition to the law of the spirit, that man feels his misery and
sighs for deliverance (Rom. vii. 23 sq.); but such pain and discord cannot pos-
sibly bestow upon him the comfort of reconciliation and the joy of deliver-
ance. The law and its correction bring death to the sinful soul (Rom. vii.
10-13), but do not quicken it, and cannot give it new life, new love (Gal. iii.
21): love alone and not punishment can amend, punishment can indeed strike
down that which selfishly inflates itself against God, but cannot erect what it
has struck down, cannot build up, ἡ ἀγάπη οἰκοδομεῖ (1 Cor. viii. 1). Punish-
ment maintains the inviolability of the law, by repelling the attacks of selfish-
ness, and thus procures it external satisfaction, it may even produce or extort
external improvement of behaviour, and act as a schoolmaster to bring men to
Christ, but it has no power to effect the renewal of mind and heart by the
Holy Spirit; punishment and the law are quite incapable of reconciling the
soul with God, both on the contrary work wrath (Rom. iv. 15).
Not punishment, but sacrifice atones; but punishment becomes sacrifice

not by being merely endured, however great, but by being submitted to with
self-denial, with full surrender to the will of God. A criminal does not propiti-
ate even the judgment of man, by suffering the punishment inflicted on him
by the law; on the contrary, if he suffers with an indignant and stubborn
spirit, the indignation against him remains; it is not till he acknowledges his
guilt, and with the sacrifice of his self-will fully submits to punishment, that
his suffering calls forth compassion and propitiates the judgment of man. So
long as punishment does not become sacrifice by willing acquiescence in self -
denying obedience to the law, its endurance does not inwardly satisfy, and for
this very lack of satisfaction it does not cease; for the contrast of the divine
and human will continues, and therefore also the punishment, which, as we
saw above, is the energy of this contrast. When this contrast is once kindled, it
is not self-extinguished (Mark ix. 44), it is not abolished by itself, but is, on the

contrary, ever intensifying in its unappeased and increasing solicitation.
Hence the condemnation of sin is by its very nature eternal, its fire, its worm
is ever devouring, because it never has enough; without expiation there is no
end of sin or punishment, without sacrifice no expiation.
The expiation of sin or selfishness consists in self-denial. Suffering and

death are the wages of sin, its punishment and its antidote; selfishness is
indeed repressed thereby, but not expiated. It is only expiated by self-denial in
suffering and dying, by the sacrifice of self, by the surrender of its will, in
submission to the Divine punishment, in obedience to the Divine will. This is the
sacrifice which atones for sin, fulfils the law, satisfies the righteousness of God
and is well-pleasing to love. It is true that obedience in general, and especially
active obedience, is an acceptable sacrifice, but such a sacrifice as, apart from
the guilt of sin, is already the absolute and unceasing obligation of man,
whose fulfilment of the law satisfies for the time then present, but does not
atone for transgressions in the past nor expiate existing guilt. In the joy of
independent effort without the sadness of suffering and renunciation, without
mortal wounds, obedience is the pleasant and dutiful sacrifice of childlike
submission and gratitude, but it is no atoning sacrifice for the deadly evil of
sin. It is true that obedience, as the surrender of a man’s own will to the
Divine will, is by its very nature, like life itself, one and undivided, and is only
like this distinguished in its manifestations as either acting or suffering. Both
manifestations are, like the corresponding conditions of life, inseparably
united, and take place not only after and with, but also in each other, receptiv-
ity and spontaneity, action, passion and reaction, constantly conditioning and
producing one another. But while in doing what is good the human will is
always and even spontaneously congruous with the Divine will, in suffering
ill, which is the wages of sin, on the contrary, it must patiently submit and
surrender itself, for which reason it is in the obedience of suffering that self-
denial is first perfect. Hence only a sacrifice of suffering, which should bear the
consequence and punishment of sin even unto death, could be a complete
atonement and satisfy the holy will of God.
Where is the man, where is the sinner, who should be in a condition to

offer such a holy atonement? who can find one pure where none is pure?

where among the selfish is the absolute submission, the pure self-denial?
where among the disobedient the perfect obedience? They do indeed endure a
multitude of ills, they do indeed suffer the punishment of evil, the curse of
sin; but where in all the repining and misery of suffering humanity are we to
find the comfort of reconciliation? This deep ocean of torments has no bottom
of peace. Sorrow weeps, pain groans, misery howls, but without thereby tran-
quillizing or alleviating itself. However great then the suffering, there is no
satisfaction, no expiation therein, the worm of death dies not, and that
because the sting of unexpiated sin will not let it rest, for the sting of death is
sin, and the strength of sin is the law, which ever unappeased accuses and
condemns. It is not the necessity of punishment but the freedom of sacrifice,
not unwilling suffering but willing obedience, not the renunciation of external
possessions but of that which, while all else which a man has is but a gift
which he has received, may truly be called his own, viz. his self-will, this it is
which satisfies the law. But it is just this renunciation which is lacking to sin-
ners in their selfishness and wilfulness. Their suffering, as well as their doing,
is either unwilling under the constraint of the law, or self-willed according to
their own selfish choice and purpose. This self-will assumes the form of sacri-
fice in all self-invented service of God, in asceticism and mortifications, into
which those who enter in voluntary humiliation are vainly puffed up in their
fleshly mind, and in self-righteous pride (Col. ii. 18), although the constant
repetition, accumulation and increase of such exercises abundantly proves
their insufficiency. And where, as under the Old Covenant, atoning sacrifices
were offered according to the law, there on the one hand the mind of the
offerer was, by reason of the fear of the law and the sting of conscience,
gloomy and unpurified, and on the other the object of the sacrifice was but
imperfect and shadowy. The transaction itself, too, was chiefly of an external
and figurative nature, and therefore without inward essential value before
God; for the law had the shadow of good things to come, not the substance of
the good things themselves (Heb. x. 1). By reason of this imperfection, as the
context of the passage shows, these sacrifices had to be continually repeated,
without ever being able to suffice (Heb. x. 1, 2). The sacrifices themselves were
insufficient, because only animal life was offered up externally and typically;
the priests were insufficient, who, being themselves sinners and needing to
offer for their own sins also (Heb. x. 4, 7-27), could not, because they were

neither innocent nor unstained before God, be mediators or sureties for the sin
of the people, nor present by their own self-denial and virtue a pure offering
of themselves to God. Priests and sacrifices were therefore heterogeneously
separated, and the sanctuary, in which the symbolical sacrifices took place,
was also only symbolical and external, where the unclean were sanctified to a
purity which could only legally point to the good things—as yet future to the
law itself—of a perfect righteousness before God, — a righteousness only to
be brought about by the perfect Priest and Mediator, who was at the same
time the perfect sacrifice.
Christ came to be a High Priest of good things to come, and by a

greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is to say, not of
this world, neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood,
entered in once into the holy place, and obtained eternal redemption; for if the
blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer, sprinkling the unclean,
sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of
Christ, who, through the Eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God,
purge our conscience from dead works to serve the living God (Heb. ix. 11-14;
Rom. iii. 24 sq.; Eph. i. 7, v. 2; 1 Pet. ii. 24; 1 John i. 7, ii. 2)? Christ alone—as
testified by the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures, and among them especially
by the Epistle to the Hebrews, which with profound spiritual intuition unites
the Old and New Testaments—Christ alone is that Mediator between God
and man, that King of righteousness and peace (Heb. vii. 2), who, because He
is no mere man, but God and man in one Person, is therefore not after the law
of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life, an atoning High
Priest (Heb. vii. 15-17).127
Certainly only He who is Himself infinite, and bears within Himself the
power of an endless, an imperishable life, can transfer Himself into finite and
transitory life, and annul by expiation the discord between the one and the
127 Revera unicum tantum in mundo fuit sacrificium propitiatorum videlicet mors Christi, ut docet epis-
tola ad Hebræos.—Apolog. p. 254 sq. Cætera quæ dicuntur sacrificia ad similitudinem fiunt veri sacrificii.
They are therefore partly but imitamenta, partly prædicamcnta venturi unius verissimi sacrificii, cujus
peracti memoriam celebrant Christiani sacrosancta oblatione et participatione corporis et sanguinis
Christi.—Aug. cont. Faustum, lib. xx. c. 18.

other; only He who is holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners,
and higher than the heavens, though He humbled Himself in Jesus to the
earthly form of a servant, only this God-man can be the High Priest who rec-
onciles and unites God and man, who infinitely surpasses those many mortal
priests of the Old Covenant, who, according to the law, needed daily to offer
first for their own sins and then for the sins of the people, for the law of the
Old Covenant makes men high priests who have infirmities; but the word of
the New Covenant, the Son eternal and perfect, who once offering up Himself, has
by one offering for sins for ever perfected them that are sanctified (Heb. vii.
22-28, x. 11-14). Certainly every soul, who does not in frivolous or arrogant
self-sufficiency reject the idea of a mediator and sacrifice, must acknowledge
that in Christ alone these ideas, which lie at the foundation of all the religions
of the old world, find their true fulfilment, that beside Him all other priests
and sacrifices are but shadows, who cannot give life in God, because they are
themselves without it, that He alone, the Son of God and Son of man, is our
peace (Eph. ii. 14). No man—for all men as sinners, are themselves in discord
and disunion—can reconcile God; but God was in Christ reconciling the world
unto Himself. As a taper of earth to the sunlight of heaven, so are all human
attempts at expiation without Christ to reconciliation through Him, the Son,
the eternal, perfect, Only-begotten of the Father, who, by the power of His
infinite love, again raises fallen finite creatures to communion with God. How
wretched are they who, after the rising of this pure and heavenly luminary,
insist on keeping to the dim lights of earth; and how unhappy are they whose
minds, negative towards all else, and only affirmative of themselves, not only
extinguish these lesser lights, but also refuse to enter into the light of this great
sun, and therefore remain in chilly darkness!
Infinitely great, perfect and eternal is the High Priest of the New
Covenant, and equally great is His sacrifice; for He sacrificed Himself and
offered His own blood (Heb. vii. 27, ix. 12, 13, 25, 26) when He had deprived
Himself and humbled Himself even to the death of the cross. It is in this
respect an unimportant question, whether the union of the Son of God with
human nature itself belongs to His self-deprivation, or whether this depriva-
tion is only to be predicated of that form of a servant which He took upon
Him. The latter assertion is intended to prevent the present union of the

Divine with the glorified human nature in Christ’s state of exaltation being
regarded as a humiliation of the Son of God; and while conceding the justice
of this, it must still not be overlooked, that even in the state of exaltation this
union is still no oneness of nature, but only and always a union proceeding
from grace. 128 As far, however, as not the being, but the becoming man of the
Son of God is concerned, it began with His assumption of human nature in
the form of the poorest of children and servants (ἐν σαρκί), whence His self-
deprivation and humiliation begin also with this assumption itself. The very
notion of sacrifice is, as we have seen, that of deprivation or self-denial. How
infinite then the sacrifice, when the Infinite deprives Himself of His infinity
(non potentia, sed actu, οὐ κατὰ κτῆσιν ἀλλὰ κατὰ χρῆσιν) in the human nature
He assumes, when the Son, who from eternity is equal to God in the glory of
the Father (Phil. ii. 7; John xvii. 5; Heb. i. 3), deprives Himself in Jesus of His
form of glory, and takes the form of a servant, and becomes in this servile
form voluntarily obedient to the law, which is given for sinners, and fulfils it
with most holy love, not only in act, but more especially in suffering, obedient
and patient even unto death, which is the wages of sin, nay, even to the death
of a malefactor! Though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor (2 Cor.
vii. 9; Matt. viii. 20); though He might have had joy (for the joy that was set
before Him, E. V.), He endured the cross, despising the shame (Heb. xii. 2);
though He was the Son of God, yet learned He obedience by the things which
He suffered (Heb. v. 8). By these and similar antitheses does Scripture, does
the Lord Himself (Matt. xi. 27-29, xx. 28, xxvi. 53 sq.; John xiii. 13 sq.) denote
the depths of privation to which He descended from the heights of Divine
glory, to complete at the lowest grade of the state of His humiliation His all-
perfect sacrifice. Truly he who reflects upon the infinite majesty belonging,
according to the word of God, to that essential Word, that eternal Son, who
was in the beginning with God, and Himself God and Creator (John i. 1 sq.),
and whom all are to honour as they honour the Father (John v. 23), and then
sees this King of Glory dying upon the cross, and languishing under the feel-
ing of the deepest privation, nay, of the forsaking of God, to that moment
when feeling the death - chill He exclaimed: It is finished, must stand in ador-
128 Cum ad naturam Dei non pertineat humana natura, ad personam tamen unigeniti Filii Dei per gra-
tiam pertinet humana natura, et tantam gratiam ut nulla sit major nulla sequalis.—Aug. tractat. in Evang.
Joh. lib. x.xxii. c. 4.

ing silence before the power and greatness of that sacrificing love, with which
the Father so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son for it, and
with which Christ loved us and gave Himself for us as a sacrifice on the cross
(Eph. v. 2). The greatness of Christ’s sacrifice embraces heaven and earth, for
heaven and earth are His kingdom, but He surrenders them and devotes
Himself to a poverty that has not where to lay its head (Matt. viii. 20). From
the perfect fulness of Divine light and life (Col. ii. 9), down to the dark waste
of human death, from heaven to hell, from the highest pole to the lowest
depths,129 does the greatness of Christ’s world - reconciling sacrifice extend.
The sacrifice of Christ is as holy as it is great; for as exalted as is the

Divine majesty of the eternal Son, so deep is the self-denying love with which
He humbled Himself to human suffering, and the very greatness of this hum-
ble and ministering love is also the holy greatness of the sacrifice.130 Divine
love is holy in itself, and in all its works in creation it diffuses the fulness of its
gifts; nay, the whole realm of nature, so far as it is not desecrated by sin, is its
holy place. In Christ Jesus, however, is its holy of holies, and that not merely
because in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily (Col. ii. 9), but
still more because He veiled the splendour of this fulness in the obscurity of
holy poverty, renounced as High Priest the halo of Divine glory, and assigned
that body in which dwells the fulness of the Godhead to sacrifice on the cross.
Holy is the Lord in His glory, but holiest of all in the form of a servant; for
renunciation surpasses possession, and wealth is not so great as its surrender,
nor is the loftiness of self-assertion so sublime as the lowliness of self-denial.
He who is Lord of the law becomes subject to it (Gal. iv. 4); the ruler of men
becomes their servant, the giver of life surrenders His life for them, for the Son
of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a
129 When the remark was recently made, surely only in jest, that the condescension of the Son of God
would have been still deeper if He had taken the nature of an animal, of a worm, not only is it ignored
that only human nature was susceptible of such assumption, because man was made in the image of
God, and that only man as a sinner was in need of redemption, but the fact is entirely overlooked, that
the higher human life stands above animal life, just so much the deeper is its suffering.
130 They are greatly mistaken who suppose that Jesus, as a mere, a poor man, would be a more effective
moral example than Jesus the God-man, for they entirely lose sight of the fact, that in the former case the
poverty being natural and necessary, that which is morally greatest in Christ, viz. His self-surrendering
and self-sacrificing love, and the depths of His self deprivation and denial for us, entirely fall away.

ransom for many (Matt. xx. 28). He, the Lord of Glory (1 Cor. ii. 8), the Prince
of Life (Acts iii. 15), became obedient even to the death of the cross. The Divine
will is holy in itself, the human is so in obedience to the Divine. The Son of
God, assuming with human nature a human will, constantly subordinated it
in love to the Divine will, and sacrificed, as Son of man, His creature will to
the ever holy will of the Father, which imposed the cross upon Him (Matt.
xxvi. 39 sqq.). Obedience, as we have seen, is better than sacrifice, because, as
the offering up of our own will, it is the best sacrifice. He was obedient unto
death, even the death of the cross (Phil. ii. 8); this denotes not only the lowest
depth of His humiliation, but also the highest pinnacle of His merit, or the
completion of His sacrifice, which was presented when His state of humilia-
tion began, and consummated when it concluded Consummated, for in His
elevation on the cross, in His submission to death by public execution, in His
suffering the extremity of penalty, was completed that offering of self-denying
obedience, of which the apostle says: Though He was a son, yet learned He
obedience by the things which He suffered (Heb. v. 8). Not suffering in itself,
but obedience and patience, i.e. the offering up of His will in suffering, is satisfac-
tory, is expiatory, is that whereby what is otherwise only penal, becomes sacri-
ficial suffering. It is for this reason that the apostle gives such special promi-
nence (Heb. x. 5-10) to obedience to the Divine will in the offering of the sacrifice
of Jesus Christ, and infers the atoning power of His blood from the fact that
He, through the Eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God (Heb. ix.
14), that St. Peter also esteems the blood of Christ to be so precious, because it
is the blood of a lamb without blemish and without spot (1 Pet. i. 19). It is with
refined and striking significance that the Almighty Son of God is in His quiet
endurance and meek obedience called the Lamb of God, and it is as this Lamb
of God that He takes away the sin of the world, and turns the curse into a
blessing. When Scripture calls Him also the Lion of the tribe of Judah, it
thereby designates His lamblike disposition as the deepest self-denial, and it
is for this very reason that He is so holy and that the atoning blood of this
Lamb is so precious. The suffering of death completed the sacrifice of that
most holy obedience, which gave a priestly consecration to the whole suffer-
ing life of the Son of God in His state of humiliation, and which, both by the
endurance of ill, of the wages of sin, and by the performance of good accord-
ing to the will of God, by the well-doing of holy love (John iv. 34), proved

itself to be the complete fulfilling of the law. For Christ came to fulfil the law
(Matt. v. 17), and it was by the satisfactory fulfilment, not by the annulling of
its holy commandments, that He would redeem from its curse.
It is not, however, written only that obedience, but also that mercy is bet-
ter and more acceptable than all other sacrifices (Matt. ix. 13), and hence the
perfection of Christ’s sacrifice consists not only in the holiness of His obedience
to the Father, but also in the abundance and greatness of His mercy towards
man. And the mercy of this High Priest and sacrifice is just the fact, that what-
ever He suffered or did in the form of a servant, He suffered and did not for
Himself, but for us, for sinners. He gave Himself for us, an offering and a sacri-
fice to God for a sweet-smelling savour (Eph. v. 2; 1 Tim. ii. 6); He loved me
and gave Himself for me (Gal ii. 21). He redeemed us from-the curse of the
law, being made a curse for us (Gal. iii. 13); He bore our sicknesses and took
upon Him our infirmities. He was wounded for our transgressions, and
bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and
by His stripes we are healed (Isa. liii. 4, 5; 1 Pet. ii. 24); He came not to be min-
istered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many (Matt. xx.
28; John x. 15); He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live
unto themselves, but to Him who died for them and rose again (2 Cor. v. 14,
15). It was for us that He suffered, for us that He died, for us, and not for
Himself, that He offered Himself as a sacrifice. He ministered in His state of
servitude not to Himself, but to us; He took it upon Him not for His own sake,
but for ours; He sought not His own, neither honour nor reward for Himself,
when He laid aside His glory; it was us, the lost, that He sought; it was our
salvation that He sought in our misery, into deepest sympathy wherewith He
entered with world-embracing consciousness as the mediator between God
and man, who in His body and His soul felt and sympathized with the mortal
pains of both man’s body and soul, that He might be a merciful and faithful
High Priest to atone for the sins of the people (Heb. ii. 17 sq., v. 15). It is just
through His mercy, which both suffers the ills of others and imparts to them
its good, that He is the atoning High Priest, who, sacrificing Himself, takes
upon Him the guilt of the world, and imparts to it His innocence. That Jesus
did not offer His great and most holy atonement for His own sake, because in
Him was no sin, no selfishness to atone for, needs no special proof, for it

results as an axiom from the notion of His Person. With equal necessity it fol-
lows, as Himself and His apostles testify, that He offered this infinitely great
sacrifice for the sinful world, for all men lost in selfishness, and therefore for
each individual sinner. The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep is His
testimony concerning Himself (John x. 12); the bread which I give is my flesh,
which I will give for the life of the world (John vi. 51). For their sakes I sanc-
tify myself, that they also may be sanctified in the truth, are His words in His
High-priestly prayer, which give us a clear view of His priestly and substitu-
tionary action and suffering for us. Every earthly priest, indeed, was obliged,
as himself a weak and sinful man, to offer sacrifice first for his own sins, and
then as himself absolved for the sins of the people (Heb. vii. 27); but the Son
eternal and perfect, holy and undefiled, who had no sacrifice to offer for His
own sin, was, as the eternal Priest and Mediator, the Shepherd and Bishop of
souls (1 Pet. ii. 25), all the more able to offer all, the whole sacrifice of Himself,
for the sins of the people only. Christ’s sacrifice was so much the more perfect,
i.e. so much the more self-denying, the less it was for Himself and the more it
was offered for us; and it was by reason of this very perfection of love (John
xv. 13), this merciful surrender for others, that it was also substitutionary. The
satisfaction of Christ was not self-sufficient, but substitutionary; and it was so
not merely through the will of the Father, but also through the compassion of
the Son, which induced Him not to keep His abundant merit for Himself, but
to bestow it on needy man. What the slaves of sin should have done, but
could not by reason of the very tyranny of sin (Rom. viii. 3), viz. offer the sacri-
fice of perfect self-denial, this Jesus did in full perfection, not for Himself, but
for sinners, out of that holy compassionate love, which is one with the Divine
love with which the Father surrendered Him. God is for us, Christ is our
Christ, and His righteousness our righteousness, through the love whereby
He imparts to us sinners and appropriates to our faith Himself and all that is
His; it is for His sake that we are righteous before God and assured of the love
of God, by virtue of which we are able to overcome every hostile contrast
(Rom. viii. 31-39). He sacrificed our sins in His own body on the tree (1 Pet. ii.
24), nay, sacrificed ourselves to God, in that He suffered for our sins, the just
for the unjust (1 Pet. iii. 18). The God-ordained atoning substitution cannot be
more clearly expressed, than in the words of the apostle (2 Cor. v. 21): He hath
made Him to be sin (a sin-offering) for us, who knew no sin, that we might be

made the righteousness of God in Him; and ver. 14: If one died for all, then all
died.
The doctrine of the vicarious satisfaction of Christ is one and the same
with that of His world-reconciling sacrifice, only with the distinction, that in
the former conception of the notion the juridical element, in the latter the theo-
logical and ethical is more prominent. The one does not, however, exclude the
other; on the contrary, they are united in what the older theologians called
jurisprudentia divina, in which, as also in Holy Scripture, only the holy is the
just. As soon, however, as the juridical side, or the judicial relation between
God and man, is chiefly accentuated in the doctrine of reconciliation, the theo-
logical and ethical idea of sacrifice is apt to be lost sight of, and satisfaction to
appear as only the discharge of a debt and a penal expiation, furnished or
borne vicariously by a surety, or even by the judge himself. In this case it is
rightly demanded—because any mitigation would be a surrender of
justice—that the satisfaction should not merely be some arbitrary amount of
punishment inflicted for the sake of example, or one only regarded as suffi-
cient by connivance (per acceptilationem), but that it should provide a complete
or a higher equivalent for the infinite guilt of the læsio majestatis divinæ perpe-
trated by sin, from which, then, the necessity that such satisfaction should be
rendered by the God-man is further inferred. Certainty sin, as the negation of
the Divine, and the opposition of the human will, or as God-denial and self-
assertion, continually self-propagated, involves infinite guilt, just as, on the
other hand, the righteousness, which avails with God, and which no sinner
can produce from himself, involves infinite merit. The question here, how-
ever, is not merely quantitative concerning the greatness of the guilt or merit,
but, on the contrary, qualitative, and concerning their moral substance and
estimation. The meritorious satisfaction of Christ by no means consists only in
the greatness of its extent, or in the greatness of the penal sufferings endured,
but chiefly in the depth also of the self-denial, or of the obedience and compas-
sion, with which He as the Lord was subject to the law, and endured the
penalty which we had incurred, giving Himself as a sacrifice for the whole
world. His vicarious, atoning sacrifice is proved to be such, not by the penalty,
not by the curse, though these were in the highest degree and to the greatest
extent laid upon Him, but by the willingness with which He bore them. They

who were crucified with Him also bore the curse and the penalty, but they did
so without thereby redeeming even themselves; and what mere penalty in a
lower degree does not effect, viz. expiation, it cannot effect in the highest, for
which reason also the pains of hell being unable to expiate, to satisfy, are eter-
nal. The atoning satisfaction in Christ’s sufferings, the feature by which they
are raised from a satispassion to a satisfaction is the sacrificial, is the surrender
of the Divine and human will in the obedience, the patience, the sympathy of
the suffering, which is the wages, the penalty, the curse of sin. It was thus that
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, when He was made a curse for
us, it was by willingly taking the curse upon Him like a sacrificial lamb (Isa.
liii. 7), that He changed it into a blessing for us. It was not, as we have seen,
the mere suffering, but the Divine patience in suffering, that makes Jesus the
Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. A sinner can himself suf-
fer sharply and grievously, but cannot satisfy by his suffering, because this
Divine, loving, lamblike disposition is lacking. The perfect atonement is the
perfect fulfilling of the law as appointed, not to the just in peace and joy, but
to the sinner in cross and suffering even unto death, as it has not been ful-
filled, nor can be sufficiently fulfilled by any, but as it is fulfilled by Jesus in
infinite perfection and self-denial even to the death of the cross. It was not as a
mere surety or discharger of our debt, but as the High Priest, who in holy love
bears His people upon His heart, and bears their sins as their sacred atoning
sacrifice, that Christ is the Redeemer.
If then the satisfactory character of the atoning or High-priestly act of

the Lord consists in that holy and compassionate love, wherewith He resigned
for us the throne of God and descended into the very lowest depths of self-
deprivation, obedient even to the sacrificial death of the cross, it follows, that
while certainly the satisfaction of Christ was completed or finished on the cross,
yet that as the perfect fulfilling of the law, both in doing and suffering, it goes
through the whole human life of the Son of God. As the righteousness which
avails before God, it does not consist in isolated, passive, or active moments,
not in individual sufferings, or individual acts, but in the continuity and per-
fection of that self-depriving love, which devotes itself entirely to God and
man, which, the more actively it pities the sinner, and the more patiently it
suffers from the hostility and feels compassion for the ruin of sin, the more

does it surpass all sacrifice and burnt-offering (Mark xii. 33). It is therefore an
inadmissible abstraction to attribute satisfaction only to the death, or to the
sorrows, or to the suffering obedience of Christ. There is no twofold, but only
a single obedience of the will, which manifests itself inseparably in doing as
well as in suffering. Suffering can as little be confined to dying, only as acting
can to living only, for both are intertwined throughout the whole life, from its
commencement to its close. Hence the Form of Concord testifies with perfect
correctness, p. 696 sq., “that the whole Christ as the God-man is our righteous-
ness, and that His whole perfect obedience, which He rendered to the Father
for us, from His sacred birth till His shameful death, is that most perfect satis-
faction and atonement for the human race, which is sufficient to the eternal
and unchangeable justice of God revealed in the law.” The indivisible union
of the suffering and active obedience of Christ is rightly and aptly inferred by
Gerhard, loc. iv. § 323: Quia passio ejus fuit activa et actio passiva. It is but one
and the same Divine and human love, which sanctifies both the deeds and
sufferings of His state of servitude, which is active in suffering by bearing and
forbearing, and suffering in action by compassion and sympathy.131
They who place the satisfaction of Christ exclusively in the climax
131 Gerhard expresses himself at greater length, and in his usual very instructive and accurate manner
on this subject, and defends the truth against the onesided attack on the active obedience of Christ, pro-
ceeding from Piscator (as subsequently from Töllner), in the Loci theol., loc. xix. § 55 sq., where he even at
first says: Quamvis in compluribus Scripturæ dictis morti et effusioni sanguinis Christi redemtionis opus
tribuatur, id tamen haudquaquam exclusive accipiendum, ac si sancta Christi vita ab opere redemtionis
per hoc excludatur, sed ideo illud fieri existimandum, quia nusquam illuxit clarius, quod nos dilexit ac
redemit Dominus, quam in ipsius passione, morte ac vulneribus, et quia mors Christi est velut ultima
linea ac complementum, τέλος, finis et perfectio totius obedientiæ, sicut apostolus inquit, Phil. ii. 8. Quid
quod plane ἀδύνατον est, activam obedientiam a passiva in hoc merito separare, quia in ipsa Christi
morte concurrit voluntaria illa obedientia et ardentissima dilectio, quarum prior Patrem cœlestem, pos-
terior nos homines respicit. Comp. especially the profound work of Dr. Philippi, der thätige Gehorsam
Christi (Berlin, 1841). The ample treatment in Dr. Baur’s die Christliche Lehre von der Versöhnung (Tübin-
gen 1838) is of far more value for the history of doctrine than for the doctrine itself, the doctrinal criti-
cism of the author being infected by the fundamental error of Strauss, viz. the resolution of the concrete
notion of the God-man into the abstract one of the race, with which also the ethic content of the doctrine,
which consists in the power of personal love, is essentially affected. I take this opportunity of remarking,
that it is a mistake to attribute to me the valuable essays in the Evang. Kirchenzeitung on the doctrines of
redemption and satisfaction (p. 679), from whose author a reply to a review of Baur’s work is much to be
desired.

which His sufferings reached in death, limit not only its extent, but its effects.
By thus laying stress solely upon His vicarious endurance of penalty, they
make redemption in general refer only to the penalty, and not to the guilt, of
which punishment is but the consequence, and whose notion itself is far more
comprehensive. It is just because we have failed to render to God active obedi-
ence, the fulfilling of His law, in other words, righteousness, that we have
incurred suffering obedience, or punishment. Hence His law is always accus-
ing and condemning us; it leaves us no peace, but keeps us always under His
wrath, from which we can only be delivered by the abolition of that relation of
guilt, which is eo ipso penal, and, when consciously experienced, the essential
punishment of sin. But the guilt which has incurred penalty, and with it the
penalty which guilt has incurred, can only be forgiven by the guilt of our non-
fulfilment of the law being forgiven, and the penal relation of guilt being thus
entirely abolished. Now both these kinds of forgiveness of guilt assume, unless
the law is to be thereby destroyed, its satisfactory fulfilment, which just con-
sists in that One obedience which exhibits the whole life as free from guilt,
righteous and pure, in action and suffering, until death. To say that the impu-
tation of the active, makes the suffering obedience superfluous, is a vain objec-
tion, which suffers from a false partition and abstraction of the twofold obedi-
ence, and entirely overlooks the circumstance, that righteousness without suf-
fering can as little atone for unrighteousness, as suffering without righteous-
ness.
They who maintain that Jesus owed obedience to the whole law, or at
least to its positive side, on His own account, and could not therefore suffice
as priest and victim for others, misconceive His Divine human personality,
ascribe in Nestorian fashion an absolute independence to His human nature,
and hence also an absolute obligation to fulfil the law given to men and sin-
ners. They thus entirely disregard the fact, that the subservient human nature
was borne in voluntary humiliation by the sovereign Divine nature, and that
therefore as the incarnation and human existence of the Son of God, so also
His doing and suffering as man in the form of a servant was, a subjection
which He willingly incurred. Hence Jesus, the Son of man, though as com-
pletely as willingly obedient to the law, is nevertheless by reason of His per-
sonal oneness with the Son of God, also Lord of the law, Lord of His own life,

as it is written: The Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath day (Matt. xii. 6, 8;
comp. xvii. 25-27), having power as no other man had, to lay down His life
and to take it again (Matt. xx. 28, xxvi. 53 sq.; John x. 18).
Just because Jesus Christ is the God-man, who, though highly exalted
as Lord and God, yet bears upon Him in deepest condescension and compas-
sion the nature of man, that He may minister to him, and as High Priest and
King of humanity devotes Himself to represent it, is He its Redeemer, who
offers the whole sacred merit of His human life, from birth to death, as that
perfect and all-sufficient sacrifice, which ever avails (Heb. x. 12 sqq.) for the
sins of all to whom it is imputed, and who appropriate it by faith. The Son of
God is given by the Father and gives Himself as a sacrifice for the world, so
that it may be justly said, that God Himself furnishes the sacrifice, that by His
grace He reconciles the world unto Himself (2 Cor. v. 19). But, on the other
hand, it is quite as correct to say, that the sacrifice is offered to Him that He
may be reconciled with the world, that only for the sake of that sacrifice is His
holy anger exchanged for holy favour. For all sacrifices offered to Him He
furnishes the gifts, we do but offer Him that which is His own; even the sacri-
fice of prayer is well-pleasing to Him only when it is effected and kindled
within us by the Holy Spirit. That only is the true sacrificial fire, which com-
ing down from heaven ascends thither again. And this too is the case with the
highest of all sacrifices. God gives the Son to man, and the Son on His part
gives and offers Himself to the Father, depriving Himself as Son of man of all
His Divine glory, and obedient as man to the will of the Father even to the
endurance of the sinner’s death; and this most perfect of sacrifices also is as
much attributed to believers as it is presented by them in faith. God is the
Reconciler who reconciles the world unto Himself, and Himself unto the
world, by both willing and effecting the work of reconciliation in Christ; but
He is also the Reconciled, after the work has been completed and the satisfac-
tion made. As long as the sacrifice is not complete and the law of self-denial
not completely satisfied, the reconciliation is also incomplete, the accusation
of the angry law, the demands of the unsatisfied will of God remain. The
demands of God’s righteousness cannot pass over into the impartation of
Christ’s righteousness till this has been completed. God can only forgive sin
by forgiving Himself nothing, by Himself bearing what He forgives, and

Himself performing what He commands, as Jesus did in His form of servant.
It is only after the law is completely fulfilled that its non-fulfilment is for-
given, only after the sentence is executed and the sacrifice consummated, that
justification takes place. Not till the most complete self-denial had in Christ’s
death and passion victoriously encountered the most wilful, and in His rejec-
tion most daring self-assertion of sin;132 not till the curse had been borne
amidst blessing and interceding (Luke xxiii. 34; Isa. liii. 12), and the most holy
sacrifice thus completed, was the perfect peace of reconciliation introduced,
all strife ended and all wrath appeased (Heb. x. 19 sqq.). The holiness of God
which condemns the sinner, and the mercy which atones for him, are con-
trasts which do not mutually negative or blunt one another, but which, when
their difference is composed by means of Divine self-denial in the vicarious
satisfaction of Christ, are united in most holy love, and perfectly reconciled in
His atonement.
The sacrifice of the New Covenant, with which Jesus Christ as the High
Priest and Head of mankind atones for all His members, was consummated
by Him on the altar of the cross. After it was completed in deepest self-depri-
vation, it was accepted by the Father, and crowned by the resurrection of Jesus
from the dead. This was followed by His exaltation to the right hand of the
Father, whereby He entered into that invisible sanctuary, as our High Priest
for ever, who represents us both here and there, applies to us the blessing of
His all-availing merits and intercedes for us (1 John ii. 1; Rom. viii. 34; Heb. vi.
20, vii. 25, viii. 1-19, ix. 24, x. 12-14). Thus His state of exaltation is the glorifica-
tion and perpetuation of the work of redemption, which He effected here
below, in the imperishable efficacy of which Jesus is ever present with His
Church not as a distant and departed, but as an ever present mediator, even to
the end of the world (Matt. xxviii. 20). Hence too it is said (Rom. iv. 25), that
He was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification, for
the Divine acceptance of the atonement was as necessary to our justification as
was its offering (comp. Rom. viii. 34; 1 Cor. xv. 17). The consummation and
glorification of His work on earth is followed, in the power of the Holy Spirit,
by the diffusion of its blessings among the nations, the appropriation of His
132 Judas, Caiaphas, Herod, Pilate, the soldiers, represent not merely themselves, but also all sinners in
general in their different forms.

sacrifice, the dispensing of His merits, the communication of His righteous-
ness and grace, by the means of grace prescribed by Him in the fellowship of
His Church; for, as it is written: Thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise
from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should
be preached in His name among all nations (Luke xxiv. 46, 47). This leads us
to the following chapter.
CHAPTER III. ON RECEPTION INTO COMMUNION WITH THE

RECONCILER THROUGH THE HOLY SPIRIT’S MEANS OF
GRACE IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
As the Priest-King of mankind, representing His people and sacrificing

Himself in holy love, Jesus has atoned for all their sin. In Him dwells, besides
the fulness of Godhead (Col. ii. 9, 10) the fulness of manhood, and therewith
also fulness of grace and redemption through His righteousness, through His
blood (Col. i. 19, 20). Of this His fulness are all His people to receive grace for
grace (John i. 16; Eph. iii. 19). United to Him and through Him to the Father,
they are all to be partakers of His glory, and the love wherewith the Father
loveth the Son is to dwell in them, and He in them (John xvii. 20-26). This is
not due to themselves; no man, no sinner can claim such a share in what is
Christ’s; all are, on the contrary, utterly unworthy of it. They who through sin
have severed themselves from communion with God, cannot of their own
wisdom and power replace themselves in it. Man cannot and must not of his
own power, by his own spirit, appropriate the treasures of Christ; it is, on the
contrary, the love and grace of God, it is the Spirit of God Himself that com-
municates, that appropriates them to him, and thus receives him into the
communion of these benefits. Such communication of the fulness of Christ’s
grace, takes place by means of the instruments prescribed by, and proceeding
from Himself, the word and sacraments. By means of these the Spirit of the
Father and the Son produces in souls the faith which receives the communica-
tion, and the love which responds to it, and thus organizes the Church of His
believing people, the Church animated by the Holy Spirit, and united both
through communion with Christ the head, and through the communion of its
members with each other in faith and love (Eph. iv. 15, 16). The ascension of

Christ, His entrance into the glory of the Father, is no forsaking of His people;
He does not leave them orphans (John xiv. 18 sqq.); on the contrary, the Com-
forter, the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of truth and love, who testifies of Christ, and
fits His disciples to be His witnesses (John xv. 26 sq.) by giving them a mouth
and wisdom, who by the preaching of the gospel calls, gathers, enlightens,
sanctifies the Church of Christ on earth, who keeps them with Christ in the
one true faith, i.e. incorporates them into a holy community, a spiritual body,
whose head is Christ—this Comforter comes forth from the Son now again
received into the glory of the Father, from the Son who is in the Father and
from the Father who is in the Son through the union of most perfect love (John
xvii. 21 sqq.). As already in the kingdom of nature, the operation of the Divine
Spirit proceeds from this eternal communion of the Father and the Son, and
causes the spiritual union of the manifold world with God, so in the kingdom
of grace or the Church does it proceed not merely from that eternal union, but
also from that reunion whereby the incarnate Son, having effected here below
the reconciliation of man with God, again exalted Himself to the right hand of
the Father (Heb. i. 3). The outpouring of the Holy Ghost immediately after the
exaltation of Christ, which completed the reconciliation and glorified the
Reconciler, the exaltation whereby His human nature also was received into
the communion of the Divine glory, is the result of the completed work of
redemption, the reconciling fulness and saving and sanctifying power of
which are now to be diffused among men, and borne by the Holy Spirit to
penetrate to all nations, that all may be gathered from their dispersion and
separation, in the unity of the Sphit, to their One Lord, God and Father (Eph.
iv. 3-6; Matt. xxviii. 20). It is expedient for you that I go away, says Christ
(John xvi. 7) to His disciples, for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come
unto you. The Holy Ghost as the Comforter comes only in consequence of the
Son’s departure to the Father, now consummated by death and resurrection, a
particular agreeing with the general presupposition of the second article of
the Creed by the third; for the work of the Holy Spirit is just the glorification
of Christ’s work in the world, the diffusion of the fulness of grace dwelling in
Him (John xvi. 14 sqq.). The central unity and fulness of salvation must be
achieved in Christ, before it overflows in the circumference of communication
and communion through the Holy Spirit, who unites the community of saints,
forms the universal Church, and maintains its association in faith and love by

the word and sacraments. Not till His earthly work was accomplished, was
reconciling plenipotence in heaven and earth (Matt. xxviii. 18) given to the
God-man, through whom all that is in heaven and earth is to be reconciled
(Col. i. 20). Hence not till then was it said: Go ye into all the world and preach
the gospel to every creature, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Ghost (Matt. xxviii. 11). How essential a consideration
of the operations of the Holy Spirit in the holy, i.e. moral community of the
Christian Church is to a Christian moral theology, is self-evident.
I. The word which was given by Himself is the chief instrument of His
operations. The Divine word is neither an empty sound nor a dead letter, nor,
as it were, only a mechanical means, which the Holy Spirit makes use of as a
merely external occasion for His internal and direct operations. It is an organic
means, organized by the Spirit Himself, and penetrated by His sacred truth
and love, and for that very reason penetrates with Divine power into our
spirit, which, in consequence of its Divine likeness, is receptive for the Divine
word, and capable of responding thereto. It is not the letters, not the single
words that are inspired, for then the alphabet, which contains all the letters, or
a biblical lexicon, in which all the words of the Bible are registered, must be so
too; but the organism of the word, the vital association of its parts for a holy
purpose, is inspired by God. Hence, too, the Theopneustia adheres neither to
the written nor oral form of the word, but to the spirit of the men, who, after
receiving the testimony of the Holy Spirit, spoke or wrote the word. It was not
another Holy Spirit from Him who still animates the true Church, and impels
its faithful servants, who lived in the prophets and apostles. The distinctive
character of their inspiration consisted only in this, that in their case the Holy
Spirit testified in an original and creative manner, and hence effected that
documentary canonical testimony of His word which lays down principles,
while, since the foundation of the N. T. Church, the testimony of the Holy
Spirit works only by preserving and diffusing, and therefore always by means
of that original word of the prophets and apostles completed in the N. T., and
must ever have its only authentic, i.e. its written form for a canon. Holy Scrip-
ture is that collective organism of the Divine word, in which the multifarious-
ness of the first witnesses of the Old and New Testament and the fulness of
the primary words and deeds of God are, as the foundation of both Testa-

ments, interwoven into a documentary text of fundamental testimony, which
proves by its own indwelling power (vis intrinseca), that all Scripture given by
inspiration of God is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction in righteousness, because it makes wise unto salvation through
faith in Jesus Christ (2 Tim. iii. 15, 16). To Him give all the apostles as well as
all the prophets witness, that, through His name, whosoever believeth in Him
shall receive remission of sins (the gospel), and that He is the judge of quick
and dead (the law) (Acts x. 42, 43; John v. 39, 46; Luke xxiv. 27, 44).
This organic conception of Holy Scripture, according to which Moses

and the prophets, the apostles and apostolic men, who, inspired by the Spirit
of Christ, wrote it, are regarded as members ministering to the Head which is
Christ, alone duly estimates it. The more full of vitality an organism is, the
more various will be its members; all the members have not the same value,
are not equally necessary, have not the same fulness of spirit, some stand in
nearer, others in more remote relation to the head and heart; still they are all
united by one breath of life, they all serve one soul. Very dissimilar are the
members of Holy Scripture, the individual works which form the Bible, the
control of the Holy Spirit does not pervade all with equal energy. The more
decided the drawing of the Spirit to Christ, who is the end of the law, the
clearer and the more powerful the testimony to Him as the achiever of the
gospel, the more intense the inspiration, which nevertheless extends also to
those more remote regions of Holy Scripture, which only indirectly refer to
the central-point.133 If we take the very obvious view of Holy Scripture which
regards it as a temple of the Holy Spirit, we may and must distinguish in it
parts, which form the Holy of Holies, others which form the Holy Place, and
others again which belong to the court of the temple. Truly it is one Spirit
which combines all the parts of Scripture into a higher unity, but the one
Spirit manifests Himself in different gifts, partly by uniting and consecrating
the diversity of natural endowments for the service of God, partly by Himself
133 Luther aptly remarks in a discussion on faith, in opposition to (Walch, Part 19, p. 1750) those who
are wont to argue against the perfection of the Redeemer or the redemption from passages of Scripture,
and especially passages from the law: If our opponents press Scripture against Christ, we press Christ
against Scripture. We have the Lord, they the servant (the law); we the Head, they the feet or members,
over which the Head has authority or preeminence.

working in different degrees and manners, but always for the common object
of edification in Christ (1 Cor. xii. 4-11).134 Hence the influence of the Holy
Spirit is shown in the historical books just by that deep tranquillity and self-
forgetting objectivity of statement, which restrains all subjective expression,
whether of astonishment at or justification of, or even of pity for the actors
(e.g. in the history of our Lord’s Passion); while in the prophetic writings, on
the contrary, inspiration manifests itself by the deepest and most powerful
mental emotion. And as various and yet harmonious as are the sacred writ-
ings, so various and yet harmonious are the influences of the Holy Spirit
produced by means of them upon the minds of their readers, who, through
the written word, enter into direct communion with the mind of the original
witnesses, and thus come into contact with, and are affected by, the original
energy of the Holy Spirit. The Bible is at the same time the text-book of the
typical book of nature, which first receives its correct meaning, interpretation
and application by the word of the Holy Spirit, just as the warnings of the
Spirit in human history first obtain from Scripture their true and clear signifi-
cation. It is in their light that we everywhere perceive (as Heinrich Müller well
defines it) the preaching love of God.
But as all religion essentially depends upon the mutual relation of God
and man, and God’s holy action towards sinful man consists either in con-
demning and punishing his sin or in atoning for and blotting it out, and thus
in either bringing into prominence or abolishing this contrast, so too is this
multiplicity of Divine spiritual effects reduced to two, viz. to that of the law,
which is the substance of the Old, and that of the gospel, which is the substance
of the New Covenant.135 By the law, the idea of which was developed in our
first division, and which is the Holy Spirit’s manifest and active will (Spiritus
sanctus est viva lex), He effects and renews the conscience of man, i.e. the con-
134 Christ is the central-point of all the rays of Holy Scripture; it is, to be brief, Christus scriptus. For this
reason, the material and the formal principles of the Evangelical Church are, in the deeper view of them,
combined.
135 In hæc duo opera distribute est universa scriptura. Altera pars Lex est, quæ ostendit arguit et con-
tendit peccata; altera pars Evangelium, hoc est promissio gratiæ in Christo donatæ, et hæc promissio
subinde repetitur in tota scriptura, primum tradita Adæ, postea Patriarchis, deinde a Prophetis illus-
trata; postremo prædicata et exhibita a Christo inter Judæos et ab Apostolis sparsa in totum mundum. Et
exempla (the histories) similiter ostendunt has duas partes.—Apologie, p. 170; comp. pp. 94 and 60.

sciousness of that will, which, when the will of man is contrary thereto, brings
as the Divine counter-will, the contrast of God and man to knowledge, and
makes the uneasiness of this contrast alarmingly sensible by continually accus-
ing and condemning its sin and guilt (lex semper accusat et damnat peccatum).
The law, as the will of the Holy Spirit in man, would ever have his whole soul,
his whole heart, his whole mind filled with the fruits and virtues of the Holy
Spirit, especially with holy love; and where it finds instead the unclean spirit
of selfishness and the fruits of the flesh prevailing, it punishes such a desecra-
tion of the human spirit by restlessness and torment of conscience, opposes
with all severity all resistance to the Holy Spirit, and excites, but does not
appease, a pedagogic craving for reconciliation and renewal. This agency of
the Holy Spirit through the law, which is rooted in the Old Testament, which
awakens by internal and external leadings a discouraging consciousness of
deepest deficiency and guilt, and produces the fearful and sorrowful feeling
(contritio) of alienation from God, is felicitously designated (Apolog. p. 170;
Conc. Form, p. 712), His strange activity (opus alienum), while it is His own
work (opus proprium) as Comforter to impart grace and redemption from the
fulness of Christ, and to effect sanctification and reunion with God.
This impartation and appropriation take place through the gospel of

Christ. The gospel stands in contrast to the law, for it does not command but
offers, it does not require but gives, it does not restrain and threaten but
releases and blesses, it does not judge and condemn but justifies and makes
happy. This contrast is, however, based upon a higher unity, which is per-
fectly realized in Christ, who is the fulfilment of both the law and the gospel.
The same sacred content unites the Old and New Testaments, and forms the
substance not only of the law but also of the gospel. Just that perfect love, that
sufficient righteousness, that complete offering of self-denial which the law
commands, the gospel offers us in Christ; Evangelium dat quod lex jubet.136 The
law requires of us love to God, the gospel bestows God’s love to us, which He
sheds abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost (Rom. v. 5); the law imputes to
us the guilt of our sin, the gospel imputes the merit of Christ’s righteousness,
and appropriates to us His all-sufficient sacrifice, which surpasses all the sacri-
136 Fides impetrat, quod Lex imperat. Faith acquires what the law requires.

fices required by the law. Thus the gospel meets all the claims of the law; it
redeems from its bondage, not by its abolition, but by that most perfect fulfil-
ment (Matt. v. 17), which the Redeemer Himself effected for sinners whom He
desired to redeem, and whom He receives into the participation of His grace
and righteousness, just by the word of the gospel. The effects of the grace of
the Holy Spirit through the gospel are, that we, through His word of promise,
are admitted into communion with Christ, made sharers of all His benefits
and of His atoning sacrifice for us, receive forgiveness of sins, and, being justi-
fied by faith from all guilt, have peace with God and access to the Father as
joint-heirs with the Son, filled by the Spirit with holy and childlike love (Rom.
v. 1—5). Hence the gospel is also called the power of God unto salvation to all
that believe (Rom. i. 16). The word of the law and of the gospel, as a twofold
(or two-edged, Heb. iv. 12) instrument of the Holy Ghost, includes the power
of binding and loosing, in other words, the power of the keys (potestas clav-
ium). The keys of the kingdom of heaven (Matt. xvl 19), a kingdom which is
not of this world, designate no earthly dominion, no ruling power, no legisla-
tive or administrative authority committed to men. The kingdom of heaven is,
in contrast to the kingdoms of this world, which are as much severed as
united by natural ties and selfish interests, the incorporate communion ani-
mated by the Holy Ghost of the redeemed members with Christ their Head,
the sole King and Lord of His kingdom, and at the same time its High Priest,
so that in Him dwelleth all fulness of righteousness and grace. The keys of
this Divine kingdom are self-evidently the means of opening it, or of reception
into this communion with Christ, and the dealing with these keys forms no
dominion (imperium), but a service (ministerium), a stewardship, a door-
keeper’s office. But as a key opens, so does it also close, it uncloses the door
but also locks it, it loosens but also binds, the keys of the kingdom exclude as
well as admit, they release from that curse of sin which separates us from the
communion of God, but they also confirm it. The law is that binding key
which excludes us, because of sin, from communion with God; which imputes
our sins to us, which binds their guilt upon our souls, banishes us for their
sake from God’s presence, and does not admit us into the kingdom of heaven
until it is satisfied. The gospel, on the other hand, is the loosing key, by which
the curse of sin is removed for Christ’s sake, its pardon bestowed and the
kingdom of heaven, i.e. gracious communion with Christ and through Him

with the Father, opened. The power of the keys is based on the word of God,
which alone has the right and power to bind the souls of men, to bind and
unbind, and it exercises this power not merely when generally preached, but
more definitely and specially by that application to individuals,137 which
works either by the accusation and condemnation of the law, or by the absolu-
tion and grace, and then again by the obligations of the gospel. No human
word, but the word of God alone, is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of
the heart (Heb. iv. 12). This power of the keys is entrusted by the Lord, by and
with His word, to the community of those who confess Him, i.e. to His
Church, and indeed first and chiefly to His original and first called confessors,
the apostles (Matt. xvi. 16 sqq., xviii. 18, xxviii. 18-20; John xxi. 20-23), through
whose preaching and ministry in the power of the Holy Ghost the congrega-
tion of believers is to be gathered in and the Church edified. The Church itself
is not merely to represent the community of the redeemed, or the kingdom of
heaven, but is also to form, enlarge, extend it, for which reason it includes not
only those already redeemed and sanctified in its sanctuary, but those yet to
be redeemed and sanctified in its forecourts, and upon these it is to exercise,
by both permitting and withholding in due succession, the office of the keys.
Thus, too, it exercises that salutary correction and discipline, which are actu-
ally given with the word of God as a power and effect of the Holy Spirit (2
Tim. iii. 16). Hence the power of the keys is that chief matter of Church author-
ity, to which all other rights and duties of Church government must as neces-
sary inferences, or means, or accidents, be subordinate. It is correctly defined
by the Confession of Augsburg, Art. 28, as the Divine authority, “to preach the
gospel, to remit or retain sins, and to administer the sacraments.” The primal
source and fulness of this authority of the Church is the Lord Himself, who, in
virtue of His power in heaven and on earth, gives commandment to preach
the word, to dispense the sacraments, and to observe His precepts in the name
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and promises His Church
to be ever present as Head of the body all the days, even to the end of the
world (Matt. xxviii. 18-20).
137 It is just on account of the applicatio ad singulos, which is characteristic of the notion of the sacrament,
that absolution is, in the Apologie, p. 200, reckoned a third sacrament. Recent Church doctrine corre-
sponds with this, inasmuch as it always enumerates three means of grace, viz. besides the two sacraments
specially the word, of which absolution is an applicatio ad singulos.

II. The Holy Sacraments.—The notion of a sacrament can be only exhib-
ited with evangelical clearness in its relation to the notion of sacrifice.138 What-
ever is given or surrendered to God or for His sake, especially the heart and
will, is a sacrifice. As the whole law is comprised in the commandment of love,
so too is it summed up in that of sacrifice or self-denial. As, on the other hand,
the promise of love essentially belongs to the gospel, so too does the sacrament,
which, in contrast with the sacrifice, is a gift of Divine love, an offering of God
to man. Melanchthon well says (Apolog. p. 126): “The worship of the law is the
offering of our gifts to God; the worship of the gospel, on the contrary, is the
reception of God’s gifts.” The sacraments are sacred acts which God transacts
with us, not we with God, and in them He does not impose upon us an office,
a service, or a state of obligation (holy orders, matrimony), for this, though
combined with promises, is still of a legal nature, but imparts to us those bene-
fits of His redeeming grace which faith receives. It is true that this impartation
already takes place through the Divine word of the gospel, with which corre-
sponds on man’s part the word of prayer, whether it consist of thanksgiving
for benefits received, or supplication for those to be received. But that faith
may the more decidedly and surely appropriate them, their communication or
bestowal takes place also in the concrete form of the sacrament by sensible
and visible signs, which were ordained by Christ Himself as the vehicles of
His supersensuous gifts, as evidences of the Divine good-will towards us
(comp. Augsb. Art. 7). Hence the sacrament is also aptly called, Apolog. p. 200
sq., the visible word, or the visible sign of the invisible grace. But not only is the
sacrament distinguished from the word by visibility and more sensible con-
creteness of form, but also by its special reference and actual delivery to each
individual to whom it is administered, while the preaching of the word is
more general or addressed to the whole congregation, and lacks the definite-
ness of the sacramental actuality. To this it is essential not merely that the
word of grace should become visible in the sign, but also that the connection
between the promise of grace and the sign should rest upon Divine institu-
138 Sacramentum est opus, in quo Deus nobis exhibet hoc, quod offert annexa promissio; contra sacrifi-
cium est opus, quod nos Deo reddimus. — Apolog. p. 253. The whole section of the Apology: Quid sit sac-
rificium et quæ sint sacrificii species, is the more deserving of attention, in proportion as the notion of
sacrifice, and with it that of a sacrament, has been recently obscured.

tion, because it is only thereby that the sign, which is otherwise only a figure
or type of grace, becomes its actual vehicle. The symbolical definition: “A
sacrament is a visible rite, which has a Divine command and with which a prom-
ise of grace is combined,” simply combines the constituent marks of the notion
of a sacrament. The first two, the visible rite and the Divine injunction, are,
however, common to the sacrament and to those sacrifices, which were
ordained by God in the Old Testament as visible customs; hence the element
peculiar to the former consists in that gospel promise or communication of
grace, the instrument of which the sacrament was instituted by the Lord
Himself to be, that we might thus be received into the communion of His bene-
fits, and also eo ipso into His Church.
The sacrament is however most intimately connected, in this its evan-

gelical peculiarity, of being a Divine offering to us, with the sacrifice, which is
demanded by the law and offered to God. In the covenant sacrifices of the Old
Testament there was, beside the offering made to God, the sprinkling of the
people with the blood (Ex. xxiv. 8; Heb. ix. 19 sqq.), whereby the sacrifice as
offered for the people was appropriated to them as a propitiation. The altar
itself too was sprinkled with blood, to signify the renewal of communion
between him for whom atonement was made and the sanctuary. The sacrifi-
cial feast too connected with the sacrifices—especially the peace-
offerings—represented the communion of the offerers both with God, to
whom the sacrifice was offered, and with each other.139 The sacraments of the
New Testament are in such wise connected with the sacrifice of the New Tes-
tament, with the one all-comprising sacrifice of the eternal High Priest, that
they appropriate it to us as offered for us, place us in communion with it,
plunge us into its fulness, cause us to possess and enjoy it, sacramentum est sac-
rificii distributio. Hence the administration of the sacraments is actually rooted
in the High-priestly agency of Christ, and belongs to the priestly ministry of
the clergyman, in which the special care of souls is also inherent. The founda-
tion upon which the sacraments rest, the power upon which they draw, the
treasure which they dispense, is the sacred merit of the sacrifice which Christ
accomplished on His cross and communicates at His altar to His people (1
139 1 Cor. xi. 18 sqq.; comp. Bähr, Symbolik des mosaischen Cultus, Part II. p. 272 sqq.

Cor. x. 16 sqq.).
From this first effect of the sacraments, whereby they place us in

communion with Christ, the Head, the second naturally follows, viz. our recep-
tion as members into communion with His Church and the creation and con-
firmation of this human connection by the bond of that Divine communion.
Sin as selfishness has rent not only the bond of love with God, but also that
with man, and grace purposes to renew not merely the former, but also the
latter through the reconciliation in Christ. Hence the sacrament as a means of
grace is not merely a pledge of the grace with which we are loved, but also a
bond of the love wherewith we should love one another (1 John iv. 11), and
signifies and causes not only union with Christ, but also with His Church, of
which He is the High Priest. From this relation, which is not so much legally
enjoined as graciously offered in the sacrament, arises the evangelical obliga-
tion of gratitude and service, of self-surrender and the new obedience, which
are all based as a counter-offering upon the most holy atoning sacrifice of
Christ’s love and obedience even to the death of the cross. From all this it is
self-evident that the sacraments have not merely theistic and dogmatic, but
still more an ethic purpose and significance.
All these marks of the notion of the sacrament meet only in Baptism
and the Lord’s Supper, and they are most closely connected with the sacrifi-
cial death of Christ. This is the case also in absolution, which follows as an act
of Divine grace upon man’s repentance and confession, but yet forms no
proper sacrament, because it is combined with the means of grace, the word,
as its special application. Ordination does not impart reconciliation itself, but
only consecrates to the office (ordo) which preaches reconciliation; matrimony
does not admit to a state of grace, but to one of marriage, which appertained
to the Old Covenant of nature and was indeed hallowed but not instituted by
the New Covenant. Confirmation, which belongs rather to the third than the
second article, is only a subjective corroboration of the objective covenant of
grace based upon the sacrament, and leads from the first to the second sacra-
ment.
I. Holy Baptism plunges the baptized into communion with Christ’s

redeeming sacrifice, for as many as are baptized into Jesus Christ are baptized
into His death, are buried with Him by baptism into His death (Rom. vi. 3 sq.;
Col. ii. 12). Baptism as the sacrament of regeneration of the old man to the
new, of the natural man to the spiritual, necessarily involves both the killing
of the former and the quickening of the latter. But this killing can as little pro-
ceed from the natural, selfish life of the old man, as the quickening of the new
from this killing. Both are only possible through the power of the death and
resurrection of Christ, in which man receives a share, and with which he
enters into communion, in holy baptism. The Lord’s death and passion, by
which in deepest self-denial He accomplished His world-reconciling sacrifice,
was designated by Himself as that baptism of blood which He was fearful to
be baptized with (Luke xii. 50;140 comp. Matt. xx. 22), where the cup of which
He is to drink is mentioned in conjunction with this baptism, in which double
designation of His sacrifical death by baptism and a cup, there is an obvious
reference to the two sacraments. Truly those depths of suffering into which
the Son of God was plunged for us, when He gave Himself for a sacrifice, are
the real, the primal baptism which cleanses us from all sin (1 John i. 7). The
baptism of the Lord in Jordan, to which He submitted to fulfil all righteous-
ness, baptized Himself also into His death. The transaction in itself was by no
means a fulfilment of all righteousness, especially as it was not enjoined in the
law, but the meaning and substance which it prefigured and entailed was the
fulfilling of all righteousness by the obedience of Christ, even to the death of
the cross. For could our Lord’s baptism have signified less than ours? Surely
not. As then Luther says of our baptism (Walch, Part 19, p. 28): “Baptism and
the sign or sacrament of baptism is to fill all that we live, because delivered
from all else we are devoted to baptism alone, that is, to death and resurrec-
tion,” it is also certain, that that of Christ, as the initiation, involves at the
same time the completion of His work, that it points especially to His suffer-
ing and death, as His coming up out of the water does to His resurrection,
which is then followed by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the glorifica-
tion of the Son by the Father. 141 If then there is contained in our Lord’s bap-
tism a consecration and introduction to His death, His resurrection and His
140 How am I straitened till it be accomplished!—E. V.

141 Comp. Rom. i. 4: Declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by
the resurrection from the dead.

glorification, what else can our baptism, received in His name, be than a plant-
ing together into the communion of His sacrificial death undergone for us and
of the glory that followed? (Rom. vi. 5). Of course we are not baptized into our
own sinful death, as He, our Head, was into His own most holy death, but we
are baptized into His, which, because all righteousness is fulfilled in Him,
founds the alliance of a good conscience towards God (1 Pet. iii. 21), by justify-
ing us from all unrighteousness through the forgiveness of sins which is its
result. Not single portions however but our whole life even until death is to be
entwined in the fellowship of His death and the victory of His life, so that
from the beginning to the end and to the beginning again of our life, all is justi-
fied through faith in the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, sanctified in
love through the Holy Ghost and blessed with the hope of the glory, which
the Father in heaven will give to the children of His grace (Tit. iii. 4-7). Hence
as at our Lord’s baptism He descended into and again ascended from the
water, while the Holy Spirit of promise hovered over Him and the loving
voice of the heavenly Father echoed around, so do we as members of the
Head stand in holy baptism in His place, and are baptized in the name of the
Father to the adoption of sons, in the name of the Son to justification through
Him, and in the name of the Holy Ghost to sanctification by Him. And as the
Divine communion of love, which was manifested at Christ’s baptism, was
not on that account a momentary, but an eternal one, so too is our baptismal
covenant in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the love of God the
Father and in the fellowship of the Holy Ghost (2 Cor. xiii. 13) to extend over
our whole life. Hence too “everything which in this life contributes to mortify
the flesh and to quicken the spirit belongs to baptism, and the more severely
we suffer until death, the more are we conformed to our baptism, and thereby
also to the image of Christ” (Luther, ibid.). Thus baptism is the seal of our elec-
tion by God the Father through sanctification of the spirit unto obedience and
sprinkling of the blood of Christ (1 Pet. i. 2). This latter, this communication
with the sacrifice of Christ through sprinkling, which is analogous to the
ancient sacrificial ritual, is more exactly represented by the rite of sprinkling
in baptism, than by the rite of immersion, which more points to the being
buried with Christ, while it is not so much the grave as the blood of Christ,
which is the source of our salvation.142 At any rate what our Lord says (John
xiii. 10) of the feet: He that is washed, needeth not save to wash his feet, but is

clean, must apply still more to the head, so that the pouring of water thereon is
sufficient for the matter of the sacrament, and anything more seems unneces-
sary for the spiritual washing by the word (Eph. v. 26).
If, then, incorporation into the fellowship of the royal High Priest, who
loved us and offered Himself for us as a gift and sacrifice (Eph. v. 1), and thus
brought about our fellowship with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is the chief
purpose of the sacrament of baptism, it necessarily follows that it also incorpo-
rates us as members into the Church, of which He is the Head and Lord, and
which just through the communion of His Spirit is His Church and body. This
reception into the communion of the Christian Church takes place on the part
of God by the communication of His heavenly treasure, which is the common
possession of the Christian Church, and on that of man by the fact that the
baptized is offered to God, by the love of Christian members of the Church
and spiritual guardians (parents and sponsors), for the reception of baptism
and for admission into the communion of Christ and of Christians. This two-
sidedness of the sacrament should be well observed. It makes it both an obla-
tion on the part of man and an admission and communication on the part of
God, through whose grace alone this offering is well-pleasing. The Confession
of Augsburg in Art. 9 of Baptism aptly expresses this in a few words: “Pueri
sunt baptizandi, qui per baptismum oblati Deo, recipiantur in gratiam Dei.”
The redeeming and sanctifying effect of holy baptism is the necessary

result of its notion and purpose. The appropriation of the redeeming work of
Christ atones for all that is sinful and hostile in man, abolishes by forgiveness
the ban which separates a being infected by sin from the holy love of God and
heals the deep corruption of human selfishness by the depth of divine love
and self-denial of which it makes man a sharer. Certainly no more salutary
antidote to original sin can be conceived than that sacrament, which trans-
plants the old man out of his thraldom to self into the communion of Christ,
and requites with good whatever of evil cleaves to him from his natural birth
142 Blood and water correspond; what blood is to the human body, water is to external nature; the life is
in the blood, the Spirit broods upon the waters; blood is water reddened by the fire of the life and the
spirit The baptism of water and blood, the baptism of the Spirit and of fire are internally connected;
there are three that bear witness, the Spirit, the water and the blood (1 John v. 8).

from the first Adam, by communicating to him the righteousness of the sec-
ond, and vanquishing the old curse with new blessings. The contact of the
new-born human life with the Lord’s sacrificial death gives, and alone can
give, it holy consecration; for without communion with Christ everything
human is unholy, but through this communion in holy baptism, man is conse-
crated before God and receives that priestly character, in virtue of which he
shares as a Christian the royal priesthood of Christ, and is reckoned among
His holy, His peculiar people (1 Pet. ii. 9). It is in virtue of the Divine word a
sacred washing, which sanctifies and purifies the baptized to a new and spiri-
tual life in the Church of the Lord (Eph. v. 26 sq.), a washing of regeneration
which is effected objectively by water combined with the word of God and
sanctified to be the instrument of communion with the sufferings of Christ,
and subjectively by the Holy Ghost, who sheds abroad in our hearts both the
love of Christ, wherewith He loved us even unto death, the faith which
becomes conscious of it, and love to Him in return (Tit. iii. 5 sq.; John iii. 5 sq.,
viii. 38 sq.). The objective act of baptism, which, as the first communication of
Christ to the baptized, founds in the life of the flesh or of the natural man the
beginning of the new life in the spiritual communion of the Lord and of the
blessings of His grace, appertains to the moment of its administration, while
its subjective use extends throughout the whole life. The baptismal act resem-
bles the planting of a seed, or the insertion of a germ, the act itself appertain-
ing only to a definite period and forming only a beginning, from which a new
development of life continuously proceeds and ever extends both in time and
space. Birth and new birth are parallel to each other; just as the whole natural
life springs forth from that first commencement of birth, without any repeti-
tion of it, and flows on therefrom for ever, so does the new birth from Christ
begin in baptism, and continue as life in the communion and inheritance of
His benefits for ever (John iv. 14). And as the former brings into the world not
as it were one portion of the man, to which the other portions are to be subse-
quently added, but a whole man, who has not afterwards to receive but only to
develope all the powers of soul and body, so does baptism give entire salva-
tion in Christ to the whole man, who has only with the development of con-
sciousness to become progressively conscious of it, as his own possession by
faith. A child is incapable of appreciating its earthly possessions and inheri-
tance, nay, even the love of its parents, still it possesses these benefits and

grows up under their blessing and into the consciousness of them, attaining at
its majority the full use and possession of all its property. There is indeed, so
long as he is a child, no difference in many respects between the heir and a
servant (Gal. i. 4 sq.), and yet there is every difference, inasmuch as the former
is lord of all, and will come into full possession at the time appointed by the
Father. Similar to this is the difference between the baptized child, to whom the
Divine adoption and inheritance are already allotted, though it cannot as yet
duly estimate their value, and the unbaptized, who is still a stranger to the
covenant of promise, and who is therefore either still in a state of mere nature
or under the Old Covenant of the law. Not that Divine grace may not be
already destined for him in the counsel of God, but that it is not yet bestowed
upon and communicated to him, and therefore not at present, but only at a
future time, effective. Hence his state is still a pre-Christian one. He is des-
tined to be a child of God and may also be legally prepared by the pedagogy of
the law for adoption; but he cannot be evangelically brought up as a child and
heir, who has only to learn the true value and use of the possessions already
bestowed upon him by the grace of God. The motives of love, gratitude and
responsibility for the salvation already received, cannot co-operate in his life,
because salvation has first to be received, grace has not prevented, but has to
follow. They who receive the covenant seal of holy baptism, already belong to
the New Covenant in Christ’s blood, although they are by no means therefore
faithful to it. They, on the other hand, who have not yet received this pledge
and who therefore have not yet obtained, in conformity with the Lord’s ordi-
nance, the appropriation of the benefits of His death and resurrection, still
belong to the Old Covenant, which indeed gives the reversion of the New but
not this itself.
Just as generation and birth are not merely the beginning, but also the
principle of that natural life, which shoots forth in the bosom of family affec-
tion, so too is baptism, as the being grafted into Christ, the principle of all
Christian life, and of its education and development, on which account too it
must be regarded as the principle of Christian life or morals. That which is
specific in Christian life consists in the self-denial of love, which conquers the
selfishness of sin. What else is baptism but, first, the appropriation of self-
denial, or of the atoning sacrifice which the love of Christ offered for our

sakes; and, secondly, the obligation resulting therefrom, of denying ourselves
for His sake, of being His own in love and obedience, of living under Him in
His kingdom, in His Church, and of serving Him in righteousness? It is clear
that the principle of Christian faith and practice is comprised in this correlated
appropriation and obligation, Dat Dominus quod jubet; He first gives us abun-
dantly out of His fulness that self-denial resulting from love which He
demands; baptism immerses us in the holiness and purity of His baptism of
suffering, and thus becomes itself a source of our sanctification and purity; the
sacrificial death of Christ, into which we are baptized, producing in us the
mortification, i.e. the self-denial or sacrifice of the old man. As from our natu-
ral birth onwards all that is in us is pervaded by the impure principle of self-
ishness, so from our new birth onwards is all, on the contrary, to be penetrated
by the pure principle of self-denial through faith in Christ, all our actions,
conduct, and suffering to be sanctified and renewed by baptism into His
death, so that the more complete the self-denial, especially in suffering and
dying, the more complete also will be the power and effect of baptism in us.
On this account holy baptism not only signifies, but when faith spiritually lays
hold of its full meaning, also brings to pass “that the old Adam in us should
be drowned by daily repentance, and die with all his evil lusts; and that, on
the other hand, the new man who lives in righteousness and purity before
God for ever, should daily be developed.” The act of baptism is the spring of
Christian living; the water which Christ gives becomes in us a well of water
springing up into everlasting life (John iv. 14). How lamentable, how detri-
mental then is it, that this holy sacrament, which is to be a constituent part of
the entire development of Christian life, should for the most part be so little
valued! It is not so much the want as far more the contempt of this sacrament
which entails condemnation — for when it is innocently lacking, grace may
subsequently impart it, or in some other manner compensate for it, while by
contempt for it grace itself is despised. Hence many of the baptized, who
through unbelief do not value their baptism, turn it, as unworthy communi-
cants do the Lord’s Supper, not to their salvation, but to their condemnation.
For he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not,
though he may be baptized, shall be damned (Mark xvi. 16), for he himself
transforms Christ, whom he rejects as his Redeemer, into his Judge.

From what has just been said, the lawfulness and duty of infant bap-
tism is to be inferred. It is worthy of note that dissension on this subject, when
it has been, or is now again, brought forward, is by no means confined to the
persons to be baptized, viz. to whether these should be adults only, but
extends also to the notion and nature of baptism itself. The opponents of
infant baptism insist that only adults should be baptized, because they
entirely misconceive the nature of the sacrament, for they do not regard it as
that objective communication of the Lord’s sacrifice to us, which He Himself
ordained, that implantation into the fellowship of His own baptism completed
in His death and resurrection, that foundation and principle of life in Christ,
upon which an awakening, or already awakened faith, grounds its assurance
of possessing salvation in Him, upon which love is ever building itself up in
height and strength, while deriving purification and sanctification from the
already received washing of regeneration. On the contrary, they insist on
making baptism only a washing of the already regenerate, who whether
through the direct influence of the Holy Spirit, or the general means of grace,
the word, are already believing and sanctified, and therefore think they have
received the pledge and seal of their election otherwise, before baptism and
without it. As then this is to say that baptism is not itself the means of com-
mencing the state of grace or regeneration to Divine sonship, but that this has
previously taken place, it loses its sacramental significance and efficacy, and
retains only the figurative meaning of an external ceremony, which repre-
sents, in a supplementary manner before the eyes of men, that which has
really already taken place. Hence it becomes not so much the pledge and bond
of spiritual communion with Christ, as, on the contrary, a mere token of
church-fellowship. At most, the spiritual effect ascribed to it is perhaps the
strengthening of an already existing state of grace, in short, that which it is the
object of the Lord’s Supper repeatedly to produce. Thus the specific feature of
the sacrament of baptism, which consists precisely in laying a foundation,
implanting a germ, is forfeited. Now, the less this sacrament is seen to be a
means and act of grace, and the more it is regarded as only representative, or
even prefigurative, of what has already happened or may still happen to a
man, the more stress will there be laid upon the typical exhibition; and while
the sacrament is emptied of its substance, the form of total immersion will be
the more urgently insisted on. This will perhaps be demanded not for the sake

of the promise, but for that of obedience, and the sacrament of grace thus
perverted into an enjoined work, whose chief use is to serve as an outward
mark distinctive of Christian or regenerate men. It has from the beginning
been characteristic of fanaticism to exalt itself in proportion as it lowers the
means of grace, and to transfer to its own fancies that value of which it
deprives them, by debasing them to mere shadowy figures of the present or
the future.
The sacrament of baptism is neither a mere representation of previous,

nor a mere prefiguring of subsequent Divine or human spiritual effects, but it
is the first actual investiture with the benefits of the Redeemer’s baptism of
suffering, through whose reconciling grace the forgiveness of sins, and,
together with deliverance from the powers of darkness, the love of God the
Father, and the inheritance of eternal life in the communion of the Holy Ghost
are assured and appropriated to us. It is true that as the Old Testament pre-
cedes the New, so may repentance which the law produces, and a believing
desire for the grace and forgiveness to be expected, precede baptism. But the
fulfilment of this desire, and consequently the actual state of grace and son-
ship, begins in any case with the act of baptism, of which a life in this state is
the result. To develope the whole life from childhood to death as a Christian
life in the communion of the Redeemer, who was holy from childhood to
death, is the purpose of infant baptism, which must be the vital source of a
truly Christian training. The whole life as a natural or carnal one is affected by
sin and selfishness, which grow with its growth; hence its whole course, from
its beginning to its end, is to be justified and sanctified by that grace, which by
means of baptism precedes its development. The case is just the same in the
natural life, where it is not the succeeding, but the preceding love of parents,
which promotes its development in a manner which the child subsequently
learns to understand and appreciate. And as the weak, helpless, needy child is
most in need of parental love to keep it from perishing, so does it most
urgently need Divine grace to prevent its being lost.143 It is baptism which
seals this to the child, whose need is just as great as its spiritual receptivity is
as yet small; but to measure the objective benefits which it receives with life,
143 See my article on Infant Baptism in the Prussian Provinzialkirchenblatt, 1840, Part 4, p. 256 sqq., which
appeared separately as a popular Gespräch von der Kindertaufe, Königsberg 1841; published by Schulz.

in proportion to its subjective consciousness, would be an entire perversion.
Life does not rest upon the basis of consciousness, but consciousness upon the
basis of the life in which it rejoices; so, too, baptism does not rest upon the
basis of faith, but faith upon the basis and content of baptism, of which it
becomes conscious, and the infinite greatness of which it has the longer, the
more deeply, to live into. Baptism is not administered because there is faith,
but that there may be faith; faith must of necessity be added to baptism, but
need not necessarily precede it; it must be added to it, certainly not at the
moment only of baptism, but throughout the whole life. There is no need of
rebaptizing, not even when the spiritual life has sunk to a state of apparent
death, but there is need of rebelieving,144 and for this the Lord’s Supper pro-
vides Divine strengthening. Confirmation, to which the evangelical Church
attributes no independent sacramental significance, has its rightful impor-
tance in the fact of its forming the connection between the first sacrament and
the second. For by bringing to man’s full and penitent consciousness the con-
tent of baptism, and his relation thereto, and by renewing his confession of
faith and his vow, it prepares him for his first reception of the sacrament of
receiving the body and blood of the New Testament. It is the period, the time
appointed by the Father, when the heir, hitherto under tutors and governors,
is to come into full possession of the property assigned to Him (Gal. iv. 3). The
blessing which Anabaptists expect from the baptism of an adult, the Church
dispenses, without depriving children of infant baptism and their Christian
condition, by confirmation, which consecrates them for their first communion.
The will and promise of the Lord is: Suffer little children to come unto
me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven, which is the kingdom of the Father,
of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. From this undeniably arises the right and
duty of infant baptism. Gross misconception alone can so separate the prom-
ise from the previous command, as to make the kingdom of heaven already
due to children by nature, even without their coming to Christ, while, on the
contrary, it is just Himself who, of His grace, promises it to their absence of
self-assertion. If then baptism is not expressly mentioned when the Lord took
the children in His arms, caressed and blessed them, the necessity of their
144 Comp. Luther’s letter of 1528 to two pastors on rebaptism, in Walch’s edit. Part 17, pp. 2643-6691.
Ibid. p. 2689.

baptism may nevertheless be inferred, because it is the way, prescribed by
Him to His Church, for children to be brought to Him, that He may assign to
them the kingdom of heaven. So long, indeed, as He was visibly present on
earth, there was direct communion between Him and His people, and conse-
quently no need of the intervention of a sacrament for communion with Him.
But when His immediate presence was withdrawn, He put the sacraments, as
it were, in its place, that by their means, and with and under them, He might
be near to His Church and communicate Himself to it till the end of the world.
If then we now all enter into the kingdom of heaven and come to Christ, only
by the means of baptism, and He commands the children to come to Him in
His kingdom, it follows of necessity that they are to be baptized, unless
against His word we would keep them from Him and from His blessing. A
church of adults must however have been first founded, and guardians and
sponsors must exist, to bring the children to Christ, and to bring them up in
His nurture and admonition. Hence, when a church is to be founded, instruc-
tion must by all means precede, and the baptism of adults follow, an order
observed not only by the apostles, but also by missionaries at all times. But
when fathers and mothers of families have become believers, been baptized
and received the spirit of the Lord, their children may forthwith be baptized,
for the promise is to them and to their children (Acts ii. 38 sq., xvi. 15, 33).
With respect then to this difference between a church to be founded and a
church already founded, instruction both precedes and follows baptism, as is
manifest in the passage concerning the institution of the latter (Matt. xxviii. 19
sq.). To infer from Mark xvi. 16 that faith must necessarily precede baptism, is
as foolish as to assert that it only saves before baptism, while it really invari-
ably does so after baptism.145
II. Of the Lord’s Supper.—The connection of the Lord’s Supper with the
atoning sacrifice of Christ is so evident, even in the simple and sublime words
of its institution, as to make any detailed proof unnecessary. The Lord’s Sup-
per is nothing else than the dispensing and appropriation, ordained by Christ
Himself, of His body which was sacrificed and His blood which was shed for
145 The whole subject, which has, by means of the appearance even among ourselves of the modem
Baptists, been again agitated in the Church, is excellently discussed, and the orthodox view inculcated in
Dr. Martensen’s work: die Christliche Taufe und die baptistische Frage, Hamburg und Gotha 1843.

us. It was instituted in the same night that He was betrayed, immediately
before the accomplishment of His most holy sacrifice. This connection shows
that the chief object of the Lord’s Supper is not so much the impartation of
communion in the life of Christ in general, as rather of communion with His
sufferings in particular, in other words, the appropriation of His sacrifice; for
it was not His flesh and blood merely, but the body which was broken, and
the blood which was shed for us, that is here given us. It is true that at the
time of the institution the sacrifice was not accomplished, but had yet to take
place; the institution however ordained the Lord’s Supper, not for the
moment then present, when Christ Himself was still visible, but for the long
future, in which the invisible presence of His offered body is to be received by
His Church in remembrance of Him. If then to the sacrament of baptism
which, as we have seen, also places us in the communion of the sacrificial
death of Christ, is added the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, which does the
same in a still more impressive manner, we see, first, how much depends not
only on the accomplishment of the Lord’s sacrifice, but also upon its commu-
nication, without which it would be of no avail to us, and hence how indis-
pensably important are the sacraments to our salvation. Secondly, that the fact
of the same transaction being done in another manner besides, nay, beyond
baptism, gives to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper its specially eminent
value. The specific feature in baptism, as above discussed, consists chiefly in
the circumstance, that as the sacrament of the first consecration (sacramentum
initiationis), it lays the foundation of the new life which originates from the
death of Christ. Baptism as the sacrament of regeneration has somewhat of a
creative nature; the new creature in Christ Jesus begins here, hence it does not
necessarily assume that some kind of commencement of the Christian life
already exists, and is therefore administered even to children quite under age,
not because they already are, but that they may become believers. If, then, baptism
is the actual means of the creation of the new life, the Lord’s Supper, on the
other hand, as the sacrament of feeding on Christ, is that of its preservation,
and of necessity presupposes baptism.146 Christ is both Creator and Preserver
of the Christian life by the living power of His word and sacraments, which
both unite us with Him and maintain this union. The closest and most inti-
146 The first sacrament is, as it were, the womb from which we are born, the second the breast at which
we are nourished.

mate union takes place in the Lord’s Supper. The bread which we break is the
communion of the body of Christ, the cup which we bless is the communion
of the blood of Christ (1 Cor. x. 16). Baptism is more a mere touching with the
presence of Christ, a sprinkling with His blood; the Lord’s Supper, on the
other hand, sinks His presence into us, by giving the inner man the sacred
sacrifice of His body and blood to feed on.
The notion of the Holy Communion is essentially connected with that

of Divine Love, its mystery is a mystery of love. Communion and communica-
tion belong to the nature of love, which imparts and surrenders, while selfish-
ness retains. All the high mysteries of the Christian faith are summed up in
one, in the mystery of love. Their incomprehensibleness depends not so much
upon logical or metaphysical difficulties, as far more upon the fact, that the
love of God is greater than our narrow hearts, straitened as they are by self-
ishness (1 John iii. 20), and therefore cannot be apprehended by us in all its
magnitude. The more our hearts are enlarged by the Holy Spirit to compre-
hend the love of God (Rom. v. 5), the more credible do these mysteries
become, the more do they lose their strangeness, and the more familiar are
they to the loving spirit which perceives their truth in love. The mystery of the
Divine Trinity becomes luminous through the perception, that as truly as God
is perfect love, so surely does He perfectly impart Himself, and therefore does
not enclose all His glory in a single solitary Ego, but has His being and life in
the eternal communication and communion of the Father, of the Son and of
the Holy Ghost. The mystery of the Divine Incarnation has its foundation in
that compassionate love, which receives the manhood into the communion of
the Godhead, and enters into communion of natures and communication of
properties with it. The objections raised against it are only those unbelieving
doubts of the greatness and power of Divine love, which cannot confide in
that depth of condescension, self-deprivation and self-surrender, and that
fulness of communication which the doctrine of the God-man exhibits. Upon
this doctrine is based that of the holy communion in the Lord’s Supper; for the
circumstance that Christ therein receives the communicants into the commu-
nion of His body given for them, essentially presupposes, that in Him the
human nature is received into the communion of the Divine. It is so received
for the purpose of bringing to pass the communion (communio) of Godhead

with manhood, which takes place for all men only through their Redeemer,
the God - man. As such however he must communicate Himself to all, that all
may have their share in Him. He would not be able to do this unless His
human nature were pervaded by the Divine, and thereby so spiritualized,
refined and transfigured, that, united with the Divine nature, it can be com-
prehensively present to mankind, impart itself to its members as the means of
their communion with God, and thereby form them into the body of Christ. It
was love which moved the Father to give up the Son to the human state of a
servant, and to institute, moreover, the most intimate communion of the
Divine with the human nature; it is love which moves the Incarnate Son to
give Himself to His fellow-men, to enter into the communion of His body and
blood with them, and thereby to impart to them of His Divine fulness (Eph.
iii. 19). The Lord’s Supper presupposes that sacrifice of deepest love and self-
denial, which was accomplished on the cross, as the most perfect offering to
the Father, and is itself again an offering not indeed to God, but to men, who
need reconciliation and reunion with God. Everything here breathes of love,
everything aims at union, communion, communication.
When the fulness of the time was come, the world-redeeming sacrifice,
valid to all eternity (Heb. ix. 26 sqq.), took place on the cross, Christ entered
once by His own blood into the Holy Place, to appear before the presence of
God for us (Heb. ix. 12, 24); but it is just because this is for us, that the commu-
nication of the sacrifice offered for us is continually taking place. This sacrifice
is not in the Lord’s Supper offered anew to God as a propitiation, but, on the
contrary, proffered to us, that we may in faith appropriate it as our reconcilia-
tion with God. Necessary as it is to our salvation, that the Father should have
given the Son for us, and again that the Son should have offered Himself to
the Father, it is equally so, that the Son should give Himself to us, and this
takes place in the Lord’s Supper. He gave, He sacrificed His body and soul,
His flesh and blood, for the life of the world, and He gives us this sacrifice to
feed upon, that we, abiding in Him, as He in us, may have eternal life (John vi.
51-56).147 The pledge, the bond and means of this communion with Christ,
which gives us pardon, life, and happiness, is that sacrament of His body and
147 In this passage, the spiritual feeding on Christ no more excludes the sacramental, than, in the pas-
sages which treat of the institution of the sacrament, the sacramental excludes the spiritual.

blood which He Himself ordained.
It would be impossible for the elements of bread and wine to be of

themselves the means of this communion, unless consecrated by the word of
the Lord, they had themselves been previously received into this communion
(1 Cor. x. 16). It is not the Lord’s Supper which first makes the absent Christ
present, or recalls the past Christ to our memory. As truly as He is the God-
man, the Reconciler, the same yesterday and to-day and for ever, so surely is
He no past or absent man to the Church, which forms His spiritual body. Nor
is He present to her only as God, separated from His manhood now relegated
to the distant regions of heaven (for this would not be that presence of a media-
tor which is what we need), but he is always and everywhere as Jesus Christ
with those who are gathered together in His name, i.e. His Church, to the end
of the world (Matt. xviii. 20, xxviii. 20). Personally, as the concrete God-man,
as the Mediator who unites Godhead with manhood, and who unites man-
hood with Godhead, and so glorifies it, He is actually present to all the mem-
bers of His Church as the Saviour of His body (Eph. i. 23, v. 29 sq.). By Him is
all separation to be done away, are all things in earth and heaven to be recon-
ciled (Col. i. 20); wherefore all power is given unto Him in heaven and on
earth, and in Him dwells all the fulness (Col. i. 19, ii. 9) with which he fills all
things in the heights and the depths, according to His good pleasure (Eph. iv.
10).148 Not as though there were a local extension of His human nature
through all the spaces of heaven and earth, which ought not to be predicated
even of the Divine nature, but that intention, unrestrained by those earthly
limitations of space, which do not belong to the essence of His glorified human
nature, to be present where He will, and where He has promised. 149 The con-
148 Form. Conc. p. 786: Perniciosem errorem esse judicamus, quando Christo juxta humanitatem majes-
tas illa derogatur. Christianis enim ea ratione summa illa consolatio eripitur, quam e promissione de
præsentia et inhabitatione capitis, regis et summi sui pontiticis haurire poteraut. Is enim promisit, non
modo nudum suam divinitatem ipsis præsto futuram, quæ nobis miseris peceatoribus est tanquam ignis
consumens aridissimas stipulas, sed ille ipse, qui cum discipulis lucutus est, qui omnis generis tribulationes
in assumta sua humana natura gustavit, qui ea de causa nobis, ut et hominibus et fratris suis, condolere
potest, se in omnibus angustiis nostris nobiscum futurum promisit, secundum eam etiam naturam, juxta
quam ille frater noster est, et nos caro de carne ejus sumus.
149 Form. Conc. p. 787: Rejicimus, quod humanitas Christi in omnia loca cœli et terræ localiter expansa
sit, quod tamen ne divinitati quidem tribui debet. Quod autem Christus per divinam omnipotentiam

secration of the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper do not first effect the
presence of Christ in His Church, but in virtue of His word and will, the
earthly elements are appointed to be the visible vehicles of His invisible pres-
ence, whereby its supersensible nature is imparted in a sensible concrete form
to corporeal man. As truly as the supersensible soul of man has a sensible
body, by means of which it communicates itself, so surely must every commu-
nication of the supersensible which he receives be rendered in some sort sensi-
ble to him. Even the communication of ideal thoughts takes place only by
words and signs (in, with and under them), is effected only through the
medium of mouth and hand, of eye and ear. As the objects which surround a
blind man, though invisible to him, are not on that account only ideally but
really present, so too is the Lord’s presence, though invisible and supersensi-
ble to our senses, not on that account a merely ideal, but a real presence,
which is imparted to us, and its impartation is brought about in the sacrament
by the communion of the consecrated bread and wine. For bread and wine,
food and drink, the elements of all corporeity are, through the words of the
Lord: This is my body, this is my blood, so received into the existence and
nature of His glorified corporeity, into the communion of His essential pres-
ence, that, surrounded and pervaded thereby, they likewise appertain to the
body and blood of Christ, contain their supersensuous though real substance,
and consequently truly communicate and appropriate to us the Christ who
was sacrificed for us. Red-hot iron is not only itself fire, but also communi-
cates fire, though still remaining iron. There is here neither a change of nature
nor an enclosure of the fire in the iron. It is not a transubstantiation of the
bread, not an inclusion of the body of Christ therein, which makes it the body
of Christ, but assumption into the communion of His nature. Such reception is
quite in accordance with the analogy of faith. As the incarnation itself
involves neither a change of the human nature into the Divine, nor even an
inclusion of the former in the latter, but consists in the reception (assumtio) of
the human nature into the communion of the Divine (Filius Dei assumsit
humanam naturam in unitatem personæ), so is there also, in the Lord’s Supper,
suam corpore suo, quod ad dextram majestatis et virtutis Dei collocavit, præsens esse possit, ubicunque
voluerit, ibique inprimis, ubi suam præsentiam illam, ut in sacra sua coena, in verbo suo promisit, hoc
ipsius omnipotentia et sapientia optime efficere potest, sine transmutatione aut abolitione veræ suæ
humanæ naturæ. The essence of the human nature does not consist in its earthly dimensions.

through His mercy, a taking of the earthly elements into the communion of
His nature, that they may be the medium of His communion with His people.
As St. John (1 John iv. 8) with profound truth says: He that loveth not,
knoweth not God; so also may it be said of the Lord’s Supper: He that loveth
not, knoweth it not. It is, as we have already remarked, unbelief in the great-
ness of Divine love, which misconceives and diminishes those Christian mys-
teries, which are great just through the abundance of the love displayed in
them. Just as all that lessens the Divine majesty of the Person of Christ or the
depth of His condescension, and degrades the ever-present Christ, to a past
and absent one, is a diminution of Divine Love, so too is all that lessens the
fulness of the content and benefits of the Lord’s Supper, and lowers its reality
to mere symbolism. To present to another an image or likeness of oneself is
indeed a token of affection, but a very small one in comparison of bestowing
one’s own presence as a bond of love and friendship. If Christ, when He with-
drew His visible presence from His disciples, had bequeathed to them in the
testament before His death only an image, a shadowy outline of Himself, how
infinitely great would have been the loss, not only of His first disciples, who
had been in direct communion with Him, but still more of all subsequent dis-
ciples in after times! For these would have been referred only to the shadow
instead of the substance, though it is just in the N. T. that the shadows give
place to the substance of good things, and that a constant and real communion
with the true High Priest and sacrifice is to take place (Heb. x. 1). It was just
this which Christ, in the same night that He was betrayed, desired to bring
about for all subsequent generations of Christendom, for the whole future of
His Church until His coming again, by instituting the holy sacrament of the
communion of His body and blood. Besides, if bread and wine were to be
only an image and similitude of Christ during His departure from His
Church, how poor, how little symbolical would they be as such, how far infe-
rior to a picture or a crucifix, and how unseemly would it be to devour and
destroy such symbolical mementoes directly after receiving them, instead of
preserving them under frame and glass, perhaps in a liburium, for a lasting
memorial! It is a strange contradiction that just those who lay special stress
upon the prohibition: Thou shalt not make to thyself any image or likeness,
should especially insist upon making bread and wine into a mere image and

likeness of the body and blood of Christ.
The Lord’s Supper is not that kind of commemorative feast, in which

by our memory, wherein without it He abides, we merely think Christ out of
the past behind us, or the heaven above us, into the insignificant bread and
wine; but, on the contrary, one in which He reminds us of Himself, of His
nearness not of His remoteness, of His presence not of His absence. And this
presence is not, as it were, only indefinite and abstract, reminding us but
vaguely of His existence, but one concretely definite, through its objective
connection with bread and wine, imparting itself inwardly, and thereby pro-
ducing the most affecting remembrance and closest appropriation of Christ
offered for and offering Himself to us. The bestowal of His presence, commu-
nion with Him, and not a symbolical representation, is the main object of the
sacrament; hence bread and wine are not symbolical figures, but forms of
communication, means of communion of the body and blood of Christ, as St.
Paul says (1 Cor. x. 16): The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the
communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the
communion of the body of Christ? Not likenesses and not glimpses, but giv-
ing and receiving is the transaction of the sacrament, which takes place for a
remembrance of the Lord’s sacrifice made for us, and to be by us appropri-
ated. Take, eat, this is my body, which is given for you, wherefore it is said:
They which eat of the altar are partakers of the altar (1 Cor. x. 18); and this
partaking of the sacrifice of the altar is, like that of the sacrament of the altar,
which dispenses the sacrifice of the cross, not figurative or imaginary, but
actual and effective. They who desire to feed on Christ only in effigie, because
the feeding on Himself seems to them to be, according to Capernaitic ideas,
something dreadful, do not consider, that if the sign is to signify His massive
earthly body, the feeding upon it in figure is also extremely repulsive. But if it
is not so much the sensible palpable mass of His earthly body as, on the con-
trary, the aethereal substance of His glorified body which is in question (1
Cor. xv. 44 sqq.; Phil. iii. 21), every grossly carnal or horrible notion is got rid
of, and there remains only a feeding of love, which, instead of presenting any-
thing harsh or disagreeable, has rather the fervent tenderness, with which a
woman nourishes her child with her flesh and blood, from her maternal
breast. If any one should fancy it unseemly that the mouth should be the sensi-

ble instrument of the supersensible communication, he must also regard it as
unfitting in general that the soul should have a body, and, in particular, that
the speaking mouth and hearing ear should be the sensible gateways, by
which the intellectual thoughts issue from and enter into the mind of man by
means of speech. And as words, if not understood or not believed by any one,
and as far as he is concerned barren, are nevertheless neither untrue nor void
of meaning, so neither is the sacrament, which is founded on the word of the
Lord, made untrue, void of substance, or unimportant by the little or no faith
of those who dispense or receive it. On the contrary, it is and remains what it
is, however its results and blessings may vary in proportion to the receptivity
and due preparation of the communicants. The unworthy recipient too eats
and drinks his own condemnation, just because it is so high and holy a thing
against which he sins, because he does not discern the Lord’s body, while if
his unbelief could make it ordinary bread, it would be impossible that so great
an offence should be committed against it.
Worthiness for receiving this sacrament consists in a state of receptive-

ness for it. A worthiness which would bring to the sacrament the righteous-
ness and sanctification to be received therein, and esteem itself deserving of
the benefits to be dispensed from the altar, or even suppose it offered service
and glory to God by celebrating the Lord’s Supper, is quite out of question. As
Christ did not become incarnate for the sake of just men, who need no repen-
tance, so neither did He institute for their sakes the sacrament of His body
and blood, but for theirs, who feel themselves destitute of the righteousness
that avails before God, and who, being separated from Him by sin, long for
reconciliation and reunion with Him. True worthiness consists far more in the
consciousness of unworthiness, than in that of worthiness. They whose right-
eousness is deficient, those from whom Christ is absent, but who are seeking
Him, who is Himself the truth and the life, who hunger and thirst after right-
eousness, are, because the most receptive, also the most worthy guests at that
feast, at which we have not to offer or to bestow, but to receive what is offered
to and bestowed upon us. Receptiveness is produced by self-examination (1
Cor. xi. 28) according to God’s commandments, and the conviction of and
contrition for sin arising therefrom, but the inward reception takes place
through faith in the content and appropriating promise of the sacrament, in

the given for you, shed for you. The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is, as the
most intimate communion of love and life with the Mediator, the central point
of Christianity. The confession, which precedes it, is nothing else than a con-
centration of Christianity for each individual communicant, for its nature is on
the one side repentance and faith (Mark i. 15), conviction and confession of
the sin with which on the part of man repentance is occupied, and on the
other side, on the part of God, absolution and justification through the word
of the gospel which faith appropriates, and whose actual sealing it then
receives in the sacrament. Thus the great and sacred work of a sinner’s conver-
sion and justification before God, of which we shall treat more largely in the
next chapter, takes place objectively through the word and sacraments, and
subjectively through faith.
CHAPTER IV. OF THE APPROPRIATION OF THE

RECONCILIATION, OR OF THE JUSTIFYING LOVE OF GOD AND
OF FAITH IN THE SAME.
Theology, as sacred science or moral theology, may be also rightly

called the science of the conscience, the conscience being the seat of sacred or
religious knowledge. As the doctrine of the sinless state of man united to God
in love and peace, it is the doctrine of the good conscience, which is nothing
else than the knowledge or consciousness of this good state. Again, as the
doctrine of the sinful state of man at variance with God, it is the doctrine of
the evil conscience, which is the knowledge imputing this state. Finally, as the
doctrine of salvation and reconciliation, it is the doctrine of the healing of the
evil, and the renewal of the good conscience, which is the living law of God
within us. Since love is the fulfilling of the law, a good conscience is the con-
sciousness of its fulfilment thereby. They who mutually love have a good
conscience towards each other; an evil conscience, on the contrary, is the con-
sciousness of enmity against the law of God, against one’s neighbour, against
oneself, a hostile discord of the consciousness aptly depicted by St. Paul in the
Epistle to the Romans, chap. vii. Justification is really the restoration of a good
conscience, the justification of its unrighteousness, the reconciliation of its
opposition to the law. The evil conscience is the imputation of unrighteous-

ness, justification is the imputation of righteousness. It is through the con-
science that sin becomes guilt, for guilt, as we saw above, p. 91, is imputed sin.
Sin is whatever is opposed to the law of God, but where and so long as the
law and opposition thereto have not entered the consciousness, is. become
conscience, sin is not regarded, in other words, is not imputed (Rom. v. 13): I
had not known lust (i.e. had no conscience about it, did not impute it to
myself) except the law had said, thou shalt not covet (Rom. vii. 7), and ver. 14:
We know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. This is that
knowledge of conscience by which sin is imputed, i.e. known as guilt; for
through the known law (i.e. conscience) is the knowledge of sin, and this
knowledge is at the same time a sentence, a judging knowledge, which
ascribes or imputes to man all that opposition to the law of God originating
from him, and condemns it as unrighteous. Justification, as a sentence of
acquittal, as a judicial act (actus forcnsis) of the gospel, in contrast to condemna-
tion by the law, can only be rightly apprehended by him, who knows the
inward moral forum of the, conscience. It is there that the thoughts accuse or else
excuse one another, and the accusing thoughts hold their own, until the
Divine peaceful thought of justification stills their accusations.
Justification, as the absolving, acquitting verdict of God, includes both

the non-imputation or forgiveness of sin (Rom. iv. 7, 8; 2 Cor. v. 19) and the
imputation of righteousness (Rom. v. 18); for what is not unrighteous is right-
eous, as much as what is not diseased is healthy. The righteousness which is
imputed, and which annuls the imputation of sin, can only be that sole right-
eousness which avails and is sufficient before God, the righteousness of
Christ, His all-availing, all-sufficient sacrifice, the communication of which is,
as we have seen, effected by means of His word and sacraments. By that sacri-
fice redemption was accomplished, the law fulfilled and satisfied; justification
is the application to individuals of what was done for all, the communication
of the universal atonement to sinners condemned by the law, the appropria-
tion of Christ’s merits to the guilty, the imputation of His righteousness to the
unrighteous, who with contrition and repentance desire deliverance from
their unrighteousness. It takes place sacramentally by sprinkling with the sacri-
fice of Christ and feeding thereon in baptism and the Lord’s Supper; and ver-
bally in the act of absolution, by the application of the word of the gospel to

individuals, or the declaring them righteous (clavis solvens).
This notion of justification has been unjustly opposed as inactive, and

as consisting only in an external declaration or action, because its active con-
nection with the conscience, whose occupation is really to judge and impute,
and therefore by no means merely external and only superficially affecting the
inner man, has been misconceived. On the contrary, its imputations, its accusa-
tions cut to the heart; the effects of its condemnation are deadly (Rom. vii. 10);
and these effects depend upon that word of the Divine law, written in the
heart or anew spoken to it, which is a power of God to make sinners unhappy
through the burden of their guilt. The gospel of justification, on the contrary,
which annuls the consciousness of guilt and puts righteousness in its place, is
the power of God to make all who believe in it happy. As truly as the con-
demning law is a voice and effect of God in our heart, so surely is the justify-
ing gospel also such a voice and effect in our soul, producing therein as much
peace, comfort and rejoicing, as the law excites of their opposites. 150 The impu-
tation of sin as much takes place through the word of the law, as forgiveness
does through the word of the gospel. The forgiveness of sin abolishes the impu-
tation of sin, and therewith the relation of guilt on man’s part and that of
wrath on God’s. For the wrath of God, which is revealed (Rom. i. 18), is just
that energetic contrast of the law of God to all that is contrary to God, which
has entered the conscience, and is consequently the imputation of guilt and
the condemnation of sin, which is as opposed to God as God is to it. This
wrath of God is the real, and without forgiveness, the eternal punishment of
sin. The forgiveness of sin, however, not only negatives this imputation, not
only so abolishes wrath as to introduce a negative or indifferent condition, but
gives salvation in place of the abolished perdition, peace in that of anxiety,
love in that of wrath. As after the first sin no indifferent state of man was
introduced, but an abnormal, a corrupt one, so contrariwise, righteousness
reappeared upon the abolition of unrighteousness, complacence upon that of
150 Impii et securi homines non vident, non legunt scriptam in corde sententiam legis. In veris doloribus
ac terroribus cernitur hæc sententia. Est igitur chirographum (Col. ii. 14) ipsa contritio, condemnans nos.
Delere chirographum est tollere hanc sententiam, qua pronunciamus, fore ut demnemur, et sententiam
insculpere, qua sentiamus, nos liberatos esse ab illa condemnatione. Est autem fides nova illa sententia,
quæ abolet priorem sententiam et reddit pacem et vitam cordi.—Apol. p. 169.

displeasure, happiness upon that of unhappiness; whence it is rightly said
that, when there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and happiness. For in
place of the wrath which had become manifest and operative in the con-
science, is the love wherewith God loved us and sent His Son to be the propiti-
ation for our sins (1 John iv. 10), and when His reconciling and reconciled love
enters, a new spirit of life breathes, and the heart begins to feel the blessedness
of that Divine love, from which no hostile power can any more separate it
(Rom. viii. 35 sqq.). The condemning effects of the law are operations of the
Holy Spirit, whose holy will powerfully reacts in us as law and as conviction
of our unholy lawlessness and law-resisting sinfulness. Nor are the comfort-
ing and justifying effects of the gospel any less the gracious operations of the
Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Redeemer, who has satisfied the law to
comfort and purify, and to give, instead of a fearful, an uncertain conscience, a
new and assured spirit (Ps. li. 12-14). By the law He testifies to us the wrath of
God against sin; by the gospel and His sacraments, the fulness of love and
grace, which for Christ’s sake forgives sin, restores the forfeited sonship, and
with it the inheritance of eternal life. The same Spirit bears witness to our
spirit that we are the children and heirs of God, i.e. that we now and for ever
possess His fatherly affection, again bestowed on us in the Son, which is both
the supreme good and the greatest goodness. With most profound psychologi-
cal truth does St. Paul (Rom. v. 1-5) describe the whole internal course of justi-
fication, as it extends its gracious blessings to the present and the future. In
the last verse he makes the foundation of all peace in believing, all patience,
all assurance of hope to be the fact that the love of God (wherewith He loved
us, 1 John iv. 10) is shed abroad in our heart by the Holy Ghost, which is given
to us. The Holy Ghost is Himself eternal, Divine Love, and His communion is
eternal life, is salvation.
The external, juristic view of justification, which conceives of it as only

an objective verdict on the part of God, and of its consequence on the part of
man as only a remission of external punishment on condition of faith, can no
more be granted, than that merely juristic view of the atonement as an expia-
tory penalty, which misconceives the essentially ethic idea of sacrifice. Cer-
tainly justification, inasmuch as it abolishes, in virtue of the Divine grace and
love, the imputation or guilt of sin, and imputes the merits of Christ’s right-

eousness, is a verdict of God’s grace, which however, like the verdicts of con-
science, penetrates into the heart; but it is at the same time also an Operation of
God’s grace, which pervades and fills the soul with the love wherewith it is
loved by the God of grace, an operation of the Holy Spirit, who bears witness
to our spirit that we are the children of God (Rom. viii. 16).
Thus it really is the reacceptance of the sinner into the fatherly love of God,
of which he is conscious through faith (Gal. iv. 26), and consequently an aboli-
tion of punishment, inasmuch as separation from the love of God through sin
is the essential punishment. Accidental or accessory temporal penalties are
not abolished by the gracious act of justification, they only cease to be evi-
dences of Divine rejection, and become means of chastisement and healing,
the Lord chastening every son whom He receiveth (Heb. xii. 5-9). Justifying
love gives us sonship, and receives us into God’s family; but the relation of
Father and child does not exclude but include discipline and chastisement. To
stand as a child under fatherly discipline and chastisement, is infinitely better
than to be a stranger or a bastard without it (Heb. xii. 8). Hence in justification
the only question is to regain the one supreme blessing, the love of the Father
in the Son, and then to accept weal and woe from His hand, and according to
His pleasure, with childlike obedience.
It is a confusion of notions when, for the sake of giving inwardness to

the notion of justification, it is mixed up with that of sanctification, and the
latter made to be also the former. Justification is no more a merely outward
act of God, than sanctification is a merely inward one. The essence of both is
love, that of justification the love of God towards man, that of sanctification
the love of man towards God. Justification does not and cannot come forth
from the heart of man; the sinner cannot justify himself, it must come to and
into him, it has its origin outside of him, in God; it flows from Him from the
sanctuary of His compassionate love, of His grace, which loves even His
enemy (causa efficiens); it proceeds from the Mediator from His perfect right-
eousness (causa meritoria); it is appropriated through the means of grace (causa
instrumentalis). Thus it certainly comes to man from without, but not to remain
external to him. On the contrary, being received by faith (causa apprehendens),
it enters into his inmost heart, and diffuses through his whole being the con-

sciousness and feeling of reconciling love, of forgiveness of sins, of peace with
God, of happiness in God. It is, so to speak, the in-breathing of Divine love, an
inward effect produced from without; while sanctification, on the contrary, is
the out-breathing of this love, an outward effect produced from within.
Justification is the reception of the love wherewith we are loved; sanctifi-

cation the giving of the love wherewith we love; the former is the credit, the
latter the debit of the Christian life; let us love Him, because He first loved us.
See 1 John iv. 10-19, where the apostle states most clearly the distinction and
connection of the former and the latter love, and shows that sanctification in
the love wherewith we love and fulfil the law, of necessity presupposes justifi-
cation and reconciliation in that love wherewith we are first loved. Certainly
there is as inseparable a connection between justification and sanctification or
the righteousness of faith and of life, as between the reception and reflection
of light, or the inhaling and exhaling of air. Still the one is not the other, for
though they are not separated, they are yet very decidedly distinct; and justifi-
cation can by no means be based upon any kind of presupposition or inter-
mingling of sanctification. For neither can the reception of light be at the same
time its reflection, nor does the sun illuminate a mirror because its light was
first reflected therefrom; on the contrary, light must always illuminate a mir-
ror before the latter can reflect it; a man must always inhale before he can
exhale, must receive before he can give. Plants cannot grow up towards heaven
till after they have received rain and sunshine from heaven, and a tree does not
bring forth the best and noblest fruits of its crown till it has been ennobled
and has drawn up power and sap with its roots. A good tree is known by its
fruits, but it is not the fruit that makes the tree good, but the tree the fruit.
Indeed, if it sucks up no nourishment it is but a dead tree, upon which the
blessings of heaven descend in vain, and which, because it brings forth no
fruit, is hewn down and cast into the fire. Still the fruit is not the cause but the
consequence of its growth, and it grows not because it brings forth fruit, but
that it may bring forth fruit, just as remedies and medicines are given to a sick
man, not because he is better, but that he may be better. We are not justified
because we have done or are doing good, because we are sanctified or right-
eous, but that we may be sanctified, and when we are sanctified we do good.
For a good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which

is good (Luke vii. 15), and the heart only becomes good by the justifying grace
and redeeming love of God being shed abroad in it by the Holy Ghost (Rom.
v. 5, viii. 16; Ps. li. 12), it is justifying faith which purifies hearts (Acts xv. 8, 9);
without it they are and remain impure, and the impure in heart will never see
God.
Justification is no act of man, but an act of God, a bestowal of His love

and grace upon us, an appropriation of the righteousness of Christ, a recep-
tion into the communion of His endless blessings. On the part of man, nothing
can be given or done, either previously or subsequently to this perfect gift of
God, which can be regarded as in any way worthy of it, or as its supplement
and necessary completion. The notion of justification excludes all addition,
and like that of justice admits of no increase, either on the part of man or even
on that of God. For as a justice which could be more just would be no justice,
so too would a justification which could be more perfect be but an imperfect, a
defective justification, i.e. no justification. A forgiveness of sin which was not
entire and full, which did not forgive every sin, would be a partial retention of
sin, and could therefore give no peace to the conscience. Only two things, and
those connected with each other, are required on the part of the man, to whom
perfect justification is gratuitously given by God out of pure grace, viz.: 1st,
receptiveness for it, and 2nd, its reception, both which, far from implying his
own doing or giving, are rather the opposite of these.
1. Receptiveness arises from the non-possession of what ought to be pos-

sessed, and in this case from the recognised want of the righteousness which
avails before God, and from the painfully felt need and desire for such right-
eousness to satisfy this want. It has therefore a twofold aspect, it is both defec-
tive and affective, consisting both in a feeling of want and a longing for satis-
faction. This receptiveness, which we have seen is ineradicable in human
nature, has its roots in the creation of man in God’s image, in the righteous-
ness which was pleasing in His sight. But it may lie close shut up therein by
the deadly pressure of sin, as the germination of a plant is checked by the cold
of winter, or choked by the luxuriant growth of weeds. Hence if man is to be
converted from unrighteousness to righteousness, it must be aroused, set free
and brought forth, just as the ground, though in itself receptive for the good

seed, needs tilling and ploughing before it can receive it. This is done by the
holy influence of the law of God, which, as the Divine fundamental type of
human nature, reimpresses its character upon him, strictly inculcates the
commandments and judgments of God in the acts and sufferings of life, and
thereby brings to luminous consciousness man’s contrast to his original
image, his apostasy from God, his opposition to His will, and the restless dis-
cord of his whole existence (Rom. vii. 23). The gnawing, burning uneasiness of
this disunion of the Divine and human spirits has the effect of destroying the
opposition of the latter, breaking the obstinacy of its self-will, and crushing
the heart with sorrow (contritio). This condition has as much grief as anxiety,
and now the one feeling, now the other prevails.151 It is the grief of lost love,
of lost peace, it is a sadness as of one bereaved, of one who has lost father or
mother. But it is not simple grief; it is, on the contrary, mingled with that
painful feeling of guilt which, driven by the accusations and sentence of the
law, trembles at and fears the judgments of God, and would, without the
comfort of justification, pass, as anxiety of conscience, into the terrors of
despair, as we see in the case of Judas. The more deeply the want of righteous-
ness before God is felt, the more penitent sorrow for sin fills the heart with
anxiety, the greater is the longing for justification, the more heartfelt the
desire for peace of conscience, for the mercy of God, and therefore the more
lively is the receptiveness for it. Without this developed receptiveness it cannot
be received.
The contrition then, or penitence in which receptiveness is developed,

is the necessary prerequisite of man’s conversion from sin to grace, or of the
regeneration of the old man to the new. Hence the call to repentance must
always precede the proclamation of the gospel, just as John the Baptist pre-
ceded the Saviour. The old man must be slain by repentance through the law,
before the new man can be born again through faith in the gospel. But the life
of the new cannot arise from the death of the old; on the contrary, death can
work only death, and no new life can proceed from it without the influence of
grace from above. Contrition only makes a man receptive for the grace of justi-
fication, but does not and cannot effect it. No more than hunger, though it can
151 Veri terrores, veri dolores animi.—Apol. pp. 169, 188.

make one receptive of its satisfaction, can therefore satisfy —for without food
it increases—can repentance, however much it may hunger and thirst after
righteousness, make righteous, or even worthy of justification. It is just the
painful consciousness of unrighteousness, and therefore exactly the opposite
of the comfortable consciousness of justification; it is the trembling feeling of
unworthiness before God, which excludes all worthiness and therefore also its
own, and consequently gives man no support upon which he may lean. It is
humility, to which all self-consciousness must be alien and remote; self-humil-
iation, which is opposed to all selfexaltation; self-negation, behind which no
self-assertion must lurk. The self-negation must in contrast to natural selfish-
ness be full and entire, before grace, by means of complete justification,
deposits the abundance of its treasures in our poverty and emptiness, its all in
our nothing (as having nothing and yet possessing all things, 2 Cor. vi. 10). It
must be distinctly denied, in opposition to all Pelagianism, i.e. all self-right-
eousness, not only of action but also of suffering (for contrition is suffering),
that there is anything meritorious, anything worthy of grace or effecting it, in
repentance. It is, on the contrary, only that stirred and quickened receptive-
ness for grace, which, if it does not receive what it longs for, attains to no
regeneration, but consumes itself. As soon as it is made an effective cause of
grace, something artificial and affected is introduced into its suffering, 152 and
the feeling of pain is associated with a reflection upon it and an estimation of
it, which are opposed to its true nature. There is no assessing of penitential
weeping, and self-reproduction therein as in a mirror corrupts it, self-counted
tears count for nothing with God.
However great and violent the grief and indignation felt by repentance
for sin may be, it is not exactly the degree of its severity, which makes a man
most receptive for grace. The degree of anxiety experienced for a single mis-
deed may be very great, but the more heavily the single fault presses, the
more guiltless may appear the rest of the life, which is often placed in a fairer
light by its very contrast to the one dark spot, or which thinks to compensate
for the bad by other good actions. A man may often judge himself very
severely before the self-instituted tribunal of autonomy, and e.g. condemn his
152 True penitence non est activa contritio, seu factitis et accereita, sed passiva contritio, conscientiæ cru-
ciatus, vera cordis passio et sensus mortis.—Art. “Smalcald,” p. 320.

sensuality by the self-legislation of his reason. But in such tribunals the self-
appointed judge exalts himself in one aspect, just as much as he abases him-
self in another, and looks with as much complacence on his reason, as he feels
displeasure against his sensuality. Hence with all this excitement of the
inward contrast no genuine contrition, susceptible of converting grace, takes
place, because in the midst of its displeasure self still exalts itself, nay often
asserts itself the more in one direction while denying itself in another. A man
may even grieve very bitterly, that he is not better or in more favour with God
and man than he is, and yet his grief be only wounded pride, or dissatisfied
self-complacency, or sensitive vanity. Genuine, even though less acute, contri-
tion only exists, where a man does not so much autonomically judge himself
(for as judge he is not under the law), as rather let himself and his whole action
and character be judged and reproved by the law and Spirit of God. There is
then nothing in man which is not judged by Him. From the circumference of
his sensuous to the central forces of his spiritual nature, and to the very centre
of the ego, does that sacred judgment extend, which finds innocence nowhere,
but taxes everything from the centre outwards with sin and guilt. The whole
indivisible stream of life, both in its length and breadth, is then perceived and
felt to be darkened and defiled. There is nothing that can stand before the
judgment of God as righteous or justifying, but the whole man must fall down
before Him as a guilty sinner and God alone be justified (Rom. iii. 4).153 Only
the complete mortification of the old man makes susceptible of entire renewal,
that which will not die in him cannot be born again. A man must be entirely
condemned to become capable of being entirely pardoned, everything in him
must go through the ethic process of penitence, in which all must be given up
for lost before the law, that all may be regained by the grace of Christ, which
saves the lost (Luke xvii. 33, xix. 10). There can be no joy in heaven over any-
thing which self-righteously supposes it needs no repentance, for that remains
averted from God, which thinks it need not be converted to Him. All who
153 Hæc pœnitentia non est partialis et mutilata, qualis est ista actualium peccatorum, nec etiam est
incerta, qualis ista est. Non enim disputat, utrum sit peccatum vel non peccatum, sed totum prosternit et
affirmat, universum et merum esse peccatum quoad nos, et nihil esse in nobis, quod non sit peccatum
sive reum.—Art. “Smalcald,” p. 327. The whole section de falsa pamitentia Pontificiorum involves at the
same time a refutation of the cognate rationalistic views. Comp. my article on the relation of Rationalism
and Romanism, Heidelberg, Mohr, 1825.

would be wholly converted to God by His grace, must deny all selfishness
and turn entirely from themselves. Nothing but a contrition, which entirely
and always penetrates the whole man, is thorough receptiveness for the recep-
tion of complete justification through faith.
2. The reception of the justification, which is given to the penitent

through the word and sacraments of the Lord, takes place and can take place
only through faith. Justifying faith is first of all only the laying hold of justifi-
cation, the acceptance of justifying love, which, offered by the promise of the
word and sacraments, can in no other way be appropriated than by faith.154
The love wherewith we love, we have and feel in our hearts; but the love
wherewith we are loved, which is in the hearts of others for us, and of which
they assure us by word and deed, we can no otherwise appropriate and pos-
sess, than by faith in the promise of word and work, than by confiding resigna-
tion to the love, which therein makes advances to us. All fellowship of love
includes loving and being loved, the first, the love proceeding from the sub-
ject to the object, is no matter of faith, but of direct feeling and consciousness;
but the being loved, the love set upon the subject by the object, can only be a
matter of faith. Love and faith are therefore correlative as the active and pas-
sive, the giving and receiving of love. Love is a matter of feeling, and this
becomes conscious desire; being loved is a matter of faith, and this becomes
conscious feeling, and thus love in return. Hence because it necessarily
involves both the amare and amari, there is no fellowship of love without faith,
and therefore also no fellowship of souls, which consists in this very bond of
love, and hence without it no heart-happiness in general. For no soul is happy
in and by himself, but only in loving communion with others. He who
believes in no love wherewith he is loved is unhappy, and goes about like a
criminal, who thinks himself hated by all. This is true even of merely human
relations; all happiness among men depends on the love, which is given,
received and returned by means of faith. Nothing makes men happier and at
the same time better than betrothed and conjugal love, parental and filial love,
but only through faith; for without it a onesided love, loving only without
being loved again, or without believing in the return of love, is but the more
154 Promissio et fides correlativa sunt, nec apprebendi promissio potest nisi fide.— Apol. p. 129. Justifi-
catio fit per verbum et verbum tantum fide apprehenditor.

unhappy. Friendship and companionship, the love of country, the love of
one’s neighbour, all depend on fidelity and faith. And everywhere we can but
say, that the amount of love, which man receives from his infancy onwards, is
far greater than the amount of that which he gives, and consequently the hap-
piness of his life consists more in the former (in faith) than in the latter. In the
province of human benevolence it is indeed more blessed to give than to
receive (Acts xx. 35); but what can man give, which he has not first received
from God, and how could he love in general, unless he had been first loved?
Nay, it is the case even among men, that love presupposes faith, that all fel-
lowship, all joy of souls exists through it, and how much more must it be so in
the alliance of man with God!
There is no appropriation of the love wherewith God, who is essential

love, loves us, but by faith (1 John iv. 16): We have known and believed the
love, that God hath to us; comp. ver. 10: (Justifying) Love does not consist in
our loving God, but in His loving us and sending His Son to be the propitiation
for our sins. The reason that there is no happiness in man’s connections with
his neighbours without love and faith is, that in his alliance with the Nearest
and Highest, with God, all happiness consists as in love, so in faith. Love is
the union of spirits; how then can the soul of man be in union with God, who
is Spirit and Love, in any other way than by knowing and believing His love?
Creation is the revelation of the creative love, which “made man in the image
of God;” faith receives it when it confesses: “I believe in God the Father.” But
sin, which seeks only its own, loses this love and separates man from God,
like a lost child. Therefore faith cannot again lean on that creative love, which
has been requited with ingratitude and disobedience, but hesitates in doubt
and despair, until redeeming love approaches it in the Son, whom the Father
has sent to be a propitiation for our sins. We have seen in the foregoing chap-
ters, how great and holy is this love of the Father and the Son, how infinite the
propitiatory sacrifice it brings, how self-surrendering all its acts and suffer-
ings. Justification is the appropriation of this love on the part of God, the
impartation to us of the sacrifice offered by Christ for us, the forgiveness of
our sins through the imputation of His righteousness. It pours forth upon the
poor sinner a fulness of love and grace, and bestows upon him a wealth of
heavenly gifts through Christ. His poverty has nothing to give, nothing to

bring; it has only to take what is offered, to receive what is given, and it takes
and receives through faith. Faith is the hand, the mouth of the soul. The hand
does not procure the gift which is offered, but only takes it; the mouth does
not prepare the food, but only eats it. And so, too, faith does not objectively
produce justification,155 which flows only from the fulness of Christ; but it is
its subjective, conscious appropriation, without which its objectivity is as
much in vain as food which is unpartaken. He who believes does not first gain
the love which makes him happy, but only appropriates it and holds it fast in
his consciousness; he who does not believe is not on that account rejected for
the first time, but only remains under the wrath of the law, till he believingly
surrenders to love (John iii. 36). It is not then for the sake of faith, or on its
account, but through faith and in it, that man becomes just before God and
happy in His love, the supreme good which overcomes all evil and death
itself, which in this world and the next temporarily and eternally glorifies
itself in him whom it loves, and makes him glorious in the fellowship of
Christ (Rom. viii. 31-39).
As appropriating (as putting on, Gal. iii. 27) Christ, justification places
the sinner in the closest communion with Him, and receives him into the fel-
lowship of His sufferings, as well as into the glory that is to follow. Into the
communion of His sufferings, of His death, for it makes us partakers of His
whole painful sacrifice, nay, of His body and blood given for us, and while
healing us by His wounds, it at the same time also wounds us in a salutary
indeed, but yet in a deeply painful manner, so that we, as members of that
“bleeding Head so wounded,” feel with Him the penalty, which was laid on
Him that we might have peace.156 It baptizes us into His death, of which it
155 Quoties nos de fide loquimur, intelligi volumus objectum, scilicet misericordiam promissam. Nam
fides non ideo justificat nut salvut, quia ipsa sit opus per sese dignum, sed quia accipit misericordiam
promissam.—Apol. p. 70.
156 Comp. the extract from a contemplation of the Passion hy Anselm of Canterbury, in his life by
Hasse, Leipzig 1843, p. 201 sq.: “How do Thy sufferings, O Lord Christ, torture my conscience, how do
Thy wounds burn in my inmost soul! For it was indeed I, who mingled that bitter cup of which Thou
didst drink. It was my breaking of the law, for which Thou didst atone, my debts, which Thou didst pay.
My transgressions caused Thy death, my misdeeds, Thy wounds. Oh, woe, woe that my sins required so
bitter a death for their atonement! But wonder upon wonder, that where sin abounded, grace did much
more abound. Because man was bound to pay but could not, He appeared for him who alone could pay,

imputes to us not only the merits, but the guilt — for our sins were guilty of it
— and the sufferings of our life even until death, if suffered in believing and
loving fellowship with Christ, are confirmations of that baptism (Rom. viii.
17). But after immersing us in His sufferings, it also receives us, as the above-
cited passage shows, as His fellow-heirs into the fellowship of His glory (comp.
Rom. vi. 4 sqq.). In consequence of His death, in virtue of His testament, we,
as delivered from the curse of sin, enter as children of God into the fellow-
heirship of His possessions (Heb. ix. 15 sqq.), into participation in His Eesur-
rection, Ascension, and glory at the right hand of the Father (John xvii. 24). As
what was ours became His—for He bore our sins and shame —so does what
is His—His righteousness and glory—becomes ours, for He is Himself ours,
has united Himself with us as the head with the members, which are both
divinely afflicted by His sufferings and divinely gladdened by His glory (1
Cor. xii. 26 sq.). It is faith, which is the means of making us conscious of this
fellowship of life and love; through faith the member receives the stream of
blessings from the Head in spiritual and heavenly possessions, which only
faith apprehends. Faith alone opens the heart to receive the supreme good, the
love of God, the love wherewith the Father loves the Son, and in Him all who
are His, and with it the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, who proceeds from the
Father and the Son, the indwelling of God Himself, for God is Himself love
(John xv. 23). I pray not for them only, says the Son to the Father (John xvii.
20), but for them also which shall believe on me through their word, that they
all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be
one in us, that the world may believe that Thou has sent me, and hast loved
them as Thou hast loved me; and I have declared unto them Thy name, and
will declare it, that the love, wherewith Thou hast loved me, may be in them
and I in them. By the love wherewith God loves us in Christ, He dwells, Christ
dwells in us; but we receive and possess the love wherewith we are loved
only by faith; wherefore St. Paul also says (Gal. ii. 20): I live; yet not I, but
Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith
of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me. Faith, being the
reception of the Holy Love of God, is also the reception of the Holy Spirit, and
therefore of God Himself into the human soul, which thus becomes happy
but was not bound—the Word was made flesh—and God spared not His own Son, but gave Him up to
death for us all! Oh the grace of Him who gave up; oh the love of Him who died!”

and has eternal life.
For by faith it not only receives this supreme good, but possesses and
enjoys it (fruitur Deo) for ever. Justification is indeed a gracious act of God,
which takes place through the word and sacraments, and must be appre-
hended and conveyed to the heart by faith. But this act is no isolated transac-
tion, confined merely to the moment when the promise is offered and laid
hold of. On the contrary, as love in general exists not merely in the moments
when it is promised, but also both in will and deed, before and afterwards, so
too is the justifying love of God active, not merely in the moments of absolu-
tion and communion, but is continually providing for its objects, forgiving
them the sins still present in them, and giving them righteousness, peace and
joy in the Holy Ghost, which sinful man is always needing without being able
to obtain them from his own resources. The position occupied by man
towards God is not that of receiving gifts from Him from time to time only,
and then dealing with them at his own pleasure, without meantime having
any need of God. On the contrary, when once the light of life has risen upon
him, he is in continual need of its rays, and can never dispense with the love,
by which he was born and born again, for his preservation and growth. And
the less so, because, though born again, there is still in him so much of the
corruption of the old man, which must be gradually, though in the body of
this death, it can never be entirely healed, by the constant fostering care of the
Divine mercy. The ever needed growth of this process of healing and sanctifi-
cation would come to a standstill, and therefore retrograde, if by any means
the state of health, or of righteousness, should be regarded as so sufficient, as
to require no more justifying grace. Then even though the brightness and
beauty of the image of Christ had already been imprinted in the new man, it
would immediately be obscured by the breath of self-complacency, which, as
is well known, is the first step towards a fall. And if a man know nothing
against himself—yet must he not therefore justify himself—for He that jud-
geth him is the Lord (1 Cor. iv. 4), must not seek his peace and glory in him-
self, because this would be a denial of his Lord. If ever there were to be a per-
fect Christian life on earth, it could not or would not know itself; the pure in
heart see God and not themselves, for God is greater than the greatest human
heart (1 John iii. 20), and he that dwelleth in love, through faith, dwelleth in

God and God in him (1 John iv. 16). In short, since grief for his own deficien-
cies must ever remain,157 man can never do without justifying grace, and
must ever live by faith in the love, wherewith he is loved by the Father in the
Son, and whereby God dwells in him as his Redeemer and Comforter. There-
fore, though sorrowful, he is always rejoicing; though poor and weak in him-
self, he is yet rich and strong in God; and though having nothing in himself,
he yet possesses all things (2 Cor. vi. 10); for he has God (God for us, Rom.
viii. 31 sq.) by faith, and enjoys by faith, grace, comfort and the peace of God,
which passes all understanding, because it is not based upon human wisdom
and righteousness, but upon the unfathomable love of God, which is shed
abroad in no human heart by itself, but by the Holy Ghost (1 Cor. ii. 19 sq.).
Faith thus receiving, becoming conscious of and enjoying the love of God and
God as love, makes happy and cannot but make happy, and nothing else can;
for as certainly as there is no happiness without God, so certainly is there
none without faith, by which we become conscious of God and of His love,
and dwell in Him and He in us.
It is true that so long as we walk in this dark valley, faith is often with-
out the feeling and enjoyment of the love of God, and that the delightful con-
sciousness of fellowship with the Redeemer and of the possession of His grace
and righteousness is often repressed by the conflict and the grief around and
within us, by the restlessness and impurity of the flesh, by the tribulation in
the world (John xvi. 33), and by the enemy and accuser in the soul. If then
faith were based only on itself, or should seek to rest upon its own peace or
happiness, it would soon be overwhelmed and pass over into doubt and
despondency. It is so powerful, because, ever and again reaching beyond all
that is human and subjective, it objectively grasps and strengthens itself upon
that whereon it was first founded, viz. the Divine word and sacraments.158 On
these must faith stand, even when it cannot feel and cannot see; nay, it must
157 Hæc pœnitentia in Christianis durat usque ad mortem, quia luctatur cum peccato residno in carne
per totam Vitam.—Art. “Smalcald,” p. 327.

158 De præsentia, operations et donis Spiritus sancti non semper ex sensu, quomodo videlicet et quando
in corde sentiuntur, judicari debet aut potest; sed quia hæc sæpe multiplici infirmitate contecta sunt, ex
promissione verbi Dei certo statuere debemus, quod verbum Dei prædicatum et auditum revera sit
ministerium et organon Spiritus sancti, per quod cordibus nostris vere efficax est, et operatur.—Form.
Conc. p. 672.

against and beyond all natural feeling and external sight believe in the word,
deny the earthly appearance by the heavenly truth, resist both the stubborn-
ness and cowardice of the heart, and conquer all the anxieties of life and death
by the power of the unchangeable word, which changes things according to
itself, not itself according to them. This must be the immovable ground of its
assurance, which is so necessary a property of justifying faith, that the less it is
present, the less does faith justify, and the less is it itself. An unassured faith is
just so far an unassured, uneasy, restless conscience, and does not make
happy, but unhappy. Where (as in the Tridentine decrees 159) the assured con-
fidence of justifying faith in Christ is rejected as inanis Hæreticorum fiducia with
an even only Pelagian consistency, and doubt of salvation in Christ is on the
other hand commended, it is evident, that the objective ground of salvation in
Christ is made inferior to the subjective disposition and self-qualification of
man, and the light of the gospel darkened by the shadow of man, instead of
penetrating through it by the light of grace. In the seriousness of the conflict
doubt but too easily succumbs to despair, which only faith abiding upon the
objective foundation can surely conquer. St. John’s is a great saying (1 John v.
4): This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith; but this great
victory presupposes also a great conflict, in which faith, stedfastly relying on
the Divine word, which contradicts the hostile world, must conquer both its
inward and outward opposition, denying what it affirms, and affirming what
it denies, opposing consolation to affliction, peace to anxiety, righteousness to
sin, life to death, salvation to condemnation. This conflict of faith is excellently
depicted by St. Paul, who had fought it out in all its severity (2 Tim. iv. 7 sq.),
and come off victorious (Rom. viii. 3 7). In all however we are more than
conquerors through Him who loved us (i.e. by believing in His love); comp. 2
Cor. iv. 8 sq.: We are troubled on every side, but not distressed; we are per-
plexed, but not in despair, etc. It is faith which, in the midst of adversities,
triumphantly maintains this courageous but (so 2 Cor. vi. 9 sq. and Ps. lxxiii.
23: Nevertheless I am continually with Thee, etc.). Thus must faith, holding fast
God’s word and continuing in prayer, which ever renews and increases the
soul’s receptiveness, fight through manifold trials and temptations to victory
and peace in the light of God, giving to Him and not to itself the glory: Thanks
159 Canones et Decreta Concilii Tridentini, Sess. vi. cap. ix.

be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor.
xv. 55).
From all this we see, how greatly they are mistaken who think justify-
ing faith an easy matter, and that justification is thereby made too easy. On
the contrary, as renouncing one’s own sin as well as one’s own righteousness,
it involves the deepest self-denial and only gains the victory by a continual
struggle against the temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil, who
always seeks his own (John viii. 44).160 At the same time it is evident, that this
justifying faith is something very different from what is generally called faith,
and designated as a lower and uncertain degree of knowledge, and also from
an acquaintance with, and credence of scriptural or ecclesiastical doctrines in
general. For among these are many, such as the justice of God and the judg-
ment, etc., which make the soul not happy but unhappy (Jas. ii. 19), because in
them God appears not for but against us. Justifying faith, a faith which makes
happy, is not abstract or general,161 but concrete and special faith,162 by which
the sinner receives for himself the redeeming love of God in Christ, is assured
of the forgiveness of his sins, and rejoices in the hope of eternal life in God, in
God who is for him, with him, and in him. This faith certainly has in it the
element of knowledge, and indeed that of both God and self;163 but this
knowledge, which concerns the greatness of sin and grace, and is therefore of
ethic purport, really belongs to the province of the conscience; the approba-
tion which the soul gives to it, the confidence with which it resigns itself to its
object, and the peace which it receives being matters not so much of cognition
as of heart and will, as St. Paul says, Rom. x. 10: With the heart man believeth
160 Hæc non discuntur sine magnis et multis certaminibus. Quoties recurrit conscientia, quoties sollici-
tat ad desperationem, cum ostendit aut vetera peccata, aut nova, aut immunditiem naturæ. Hoc chi-
rographum non deletur sine magno, agone, ut testatur, quam difficilis res sit fides.—Apology, p. 134.
Comp. Luther, Walch, Part 19, pp. 67 and 833; Part 8, p. 2012. Our opponents think faith an easy thing;
but how high and difficult a matter it is, I know well and so do others who try it in earnest.
161 Credere evangelio non est illa generalis fides quam habent et diaboli, sed proprie est credere remis-
sionem peccatum, propter Christum donatum.—Apology, p. 168.

162 Hæc fides specialis, qua credit unusquisque sibi peccata remittis propter Christum et Deum placatum
et propitiem esse propter Christum, consequetur remissionem peccatum et justificat nos.—Ibid. p. 168.
De hac fide speciali litigamus.—Ibid. p. 172.
163 Hæc fides est vera cognitio Christi et utitur beneficiis Christi et regenerat corda.—Apology, p. 68.

unto righteousness. Hence, then, justifying faith, or the righteousness of faith,
is by no means a low degree of knowledge or of theoretic perception, to which
it bears a relation differing not in degree but in kind. To view faith only as
knowledge (notitia), and indeed as imperfect obscure knowledge, and then to
give precedence over it to a higher gnosis, and co-ordinate rank to other
virtues, that it may justify, is the very error so clearly and distinctly refuted by
evangelical confessions, that the return of these Romish misunderstandings,
wherewith recent times and philosophy have overloaded us, could scarcely
have been feared in the Evangelical Church. Melanchthon admirably brings
forward the ethical character of faith as well as of repentance, Apology,p. 125:
“As the terrors of sin and death are not merely thoughts of the understanding,
but also anxious emotions of the will, which flees from the judgment of God,
so too is faith not merely a knowledge in the understanding, but also a confi-
dence in the will, i.e. a willing and receiving what the promise offers, viz.
reconciliation and the forgiveness of sins.” 164
The contrition, which kills the old man, and the justifying faith, which
quickens the new man, the former produced by the law, the latter by the
gospel, operating together and mutually conditioning each other, are the
causes of the great moral act of the regeneration or conversion of sinful man.
The old man, which is to be renewed, neither does nor can do this act, but
only suffers it to be done in him by grace operating (gratia opercms); as soon
however as he has thereby obtained new powers, he actively co-operates by
them for the growth of his new life (gratia co-operans). No life is self-produc-
ing; but when produced, though still needing nourishment and strength from
without, it works also from within, for its further development. Nothing but a
want of judgment could here say, that if conversion is no work of man, he
only occupies the relation of dead material to it, and that it cannot be required
164 Comp. p. 103 in the excellent section of the Apology, de dilectione et impletione legis: Illa virtus justifi-
cat, quæ apprehendit Christum, quæ communicat nobis Christi merita, qua accipimus gratiam et pacem
a Deo. Hæc autem virtus fides est; nam, ut sæpe dictum est, fides nou tantum notitia est, sed multo
magis velle accipere ea, quæ in promissione de Christo offeruntur. Est autem et hæc obedientia erga
Deum, velle accipere oblatam promissionem, non minus λατρεία quam dilectio; vult sibi credi Deus, vult
nos ab ipso bona accipere et id pronuntiat esse verum cultum. P. 126: Cultus Evangelii est, accipere bona
a Deo; econtra cultus Legis est, bona nostra Deo offerre, nihil autem possumus Deo offerre nisi antea
reconciliati et renati.

of him. It is not required of him that he should himself do it, but it is that he
should suffer it, that he should not close himself against the Spirit of God, but
should let Him produce a new life in him, by the word of God. He that hath
ears to hear, let him hear (Rom. x. 17; Gal. iii. 2). It is indeed one thing to
receive life and quite another to give it; but to say, that he who receives life is
to occupy only the relation of dead material, which is neither susceptible of
life nor receives it, is foolish and presupposes a deficiency of thought concern-
ing the relation of receptivity and spontaneity in the province of life. This defi-
ciency, unfortunately, is oftener met with in the region of theology than in
that of natural science,165 or misunderstandings so great and so obstinately
embraced by self-righteous legality would not be found. Everything in this
saving doctrine depends on kindling new life, setting in motion new powers,
bringing forth new fruits; and all this may very effectively take place, if it is
derived not from the deadness of the old man, itself in need of quickening, but
from the eternal source of life and fulness of love, from God. Irrationality,
which fancies itself so rational, thinks it is a doctrine impotent, inactive, and
barren of good works, although just the men who have most decidedly taught
it, a Paul, a Luther, have wrought the mightiest deeds and done the greatest
works. Deus agit ut homo agat, says Augustine; God does not work in man that
man may not work, but that he may work aright in the strength of God, in
whom he can do all things, that he could not do of himself (2 Cor. iii. 5; Phil.
iv. 13).
The principle of regeneration, its productive commencement, is given

in Holy Baptism. Its development would, in a normal Christian Church life,
advance in gradual progression together with the natural life. In consequence
165 There is no need of even natural science to perceive, that a creature is not therefore dead or inactive,
because it did not create or generate itself. Compare Luther’s excellent discussion on regeneration,
Walch, Part 19, p. 1745 sqq., Theses 66-71 of the first discussion: It is impossible to be justified by works,
because it is impossible to be born by our works; but our works are, on the contrary, so to speak born
from us. P. 68: By the same Spirit, who begot us of His own will by the word, are we called righteous, a
new creature and the beginning of the creation of God (Jas. i.). 69: Who can bear this blasphemy, as
though our own works had begotten us, or as though we were the creatures of our works? 70: “We
might then change the saying of the prophet into, It is we that have made ourselves and not God Him-
self (Ps. c.). 71: It is just as blasphemous to assert that man is justified by his own works, as to say, that
man is his own Creator or Father—Qui creat, recreat, qui fecit, refecit.—August. Serm. 176, c. 5.

however of the manifold disorders and disturbances in the Christian course of
life, it is mostly connected with its epoch-making turning-points, which are
fertilized by the second sacrament. Contrition and faith are always the two
chief factors, from which must constantly proceed, as their product, sanctifica-
tion and renewal of life in new love and new obedience. Sanctification results
from regeneration, as necessarily as love in return from love, so that wherever
sanctifying love is not manifested in the life, justifying love has certainly not
penetrated the heart. Just because the new obedience is the necessary result of
conversion in repentance and faith, it is not its co-efficient, and is not regarded
as their third co-ordinate element, but as their integrating result.166 The more
love faith has received, the more it also gives; and it is the more active in love
to God and man, the more love and grace are active in it. Hence its activity is
not the cause of justification, but, contrariwise, appropriated justification is
the cause of its activity; just as improvement in a sick man’s condition is not
the cause, but the effect of his cure. That justification and sanctification, faith
and works, must of necessity be united, cannot be a subject of dispute
between evangelical and non-evangelical Christians; the only question is, how
they must be united. The answer of evangelical moral theology is decided
that: Good may not be presupposed in man without a principle, which would
be both unpractical and unscientific, but must be produced in him from a living
Divine principle. All Pelagianism is a presupposition of goodness, and this is
not presupposed, but begotten by Christianity. Hence too the gospel alone,
especially the doctrine of justification, is the productive principle of both a
new ethic life and a new science of ethics, which rejects the self-complacent
assumptions connected by the old science with the old man, and derives from
Christ and from faith in Him a new creation, a new form of life (2 Cor. v. 17).
The more decided the assumption of any kind of good previous to justification
as a ground and prerequisite thereof is denied, the more decidedly and abso-
lutely does it become itself that cause of good, which brings forth virtues and
166 Constat pœnitentia proprie his duabus partibus. Altera est contritio, seu terrores incussi conscientiæ
agnito peccato. Altera est fides, quæ concipitur ex evangelio seu absolutione et credit propter Christum
remitti peccata et consolatus conscientiam et ex terroribus liberat. Deinde sequi debent bona opera, quæ
sunt fructus pœnitentiæ.—Confess. Aug. Art. xii. Comp. Apol. p. 165: Nos constituimus duas partes
pœnitentiæ, videlicet contritionem et fidem. Si quis volet addere tertiam, videlicet dignos fructus pœni-
tentiæ hoc est mutationem totius vitæ ac morum in melius, non refragabimur.

good works as active consequences and fruits; and the more completely faith
depends upon free grace and the perfect sacrifice of Christ, the more complete
also will be the grateful love and self-sacrificing sanctification it produces.
Only freely receiving produces freely giving (Matt. x. 8), only self-denying
faith self-denying love, which, in contrast to the selfishness of sin, is the
source of all sanctification and fulfilment of the law. The unadulterated doc-
trine of justification, which, in contrast to extra-Christian and manoriginated
morality, lays down the supreme good—Divine love—as the foundation and
principle of all good, and not merely as its object and aim (finis bonorum), is
therefore of the greatest importance, nay, occupies the position of a principle
in evangelical Christian ethics. Dominus dot quod jubet, what He requires from
us He has first given to us; let us then love Him, for He has first loved us. All
that has here been discussed—the connection of faith and love, of justification
and sanctification, of the work of God and our works—is summed up very
clearly in the words of the apostle (Eph. ii. 8-10), which, as introducing the
following, also conclude the present division of the doctrine of Divine love:
“By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift
of God; not of works, lest any man should boast; for we are His workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus unto good works, for which God hath before prepared
us (which God hath before ordained, E. V.), that we should walk in them.”
PART SECOND. OF DIVINE RENEWING, OBEYING

AND PERFECTING LOVE.
SECTION I. OF DIVINE RENEWING LOVE.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
BY grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the
gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast; for we are His workman-
ship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before
ordained, that we should walk in them.” With this passage of Scripture our

division on justifying love concluded, with it also we begin that on sanctifying
love; for it forms the transition from the former to the latter, and clearly shows
that justifying grace in Christ does not presuppose our works, i.e. the agency
of our virtues, just because it produces them in a creative manner; and that
justification cannot be derived from the old man and his deeds, but only from
Christ, because it is to bring forth the new man, who walks with new love in a
new life. Sanctification and renewal are the product, and therefore cannot be
the producers, of justification. If any man be in Christ (be received into the
communion of the Redeemer and of His righteousness), he is a new creature,
who has not created himself, but is created in Christ Jesus unto good works;
the old has passed away with its wrath; lo, all has become new in redeeming love,
which produces sanctifying and renewing love (2 Cor. v. 17). The new birth,
no less than the natural birth, presupposes generation, which in the wider
sense forms part of its notion; while in the narrower, justification is that which
generates, and sanctification, as the new life, that which is born. Both, justifica-
tion no less than sanctification, are effected by the Holy Ghost, who, as He is
in the Godhead the bond of unity and love between the Father and the Son, is
also the bond of love between God and man, between Christ and the Chris-
tian. It is through Him that that constant and, so to speak, intimate indwelling
of the Father and the Son, promised to the loving and beloved soul, and cer-
tainly to be distinguished from momentary influences, takes place (John xiv.
23, xvii. 26). The holy love of God produces in the soul that love to God,
which is the mother of all the Christian virtues, or fruits of the Spirit (Gal. ii.
20, v. 22). It is selfevident that the gracious love of God to us is no work of
ours, but neither is our believing love to Him a product of our natural will,
but of that love of God wherewith He first loved us, and of His Spirit, which
bears witness to our spirit and inclines our heart and will towards Him.167
They who call the love, which is shed abroad in the heart and penetrates the
whole soul, the work of our will, forget that love in general, though it works,
is yet no work produced by our will, being, on the contrary, the producer of
all good will. Through it our heart will become willing and inclined to all
good, and independently co-operate with new power, so that the work of sanc-
tification is performed neither by God’s Spirit and grace alone, nor by man’s
167 Nulla est enim major ad amorem invitatio quam prsevenire amando et iiimis durus est animus qui
amorem si nolebat impendere, nolit rependere.— Augustine, de catechiz. rudib. 7.

spirit and will alone, nor even by both one with the other (synergistically), but
rather by both united, so that everywhere the truly human is vitally pene-
trated by the Divine.168 In this case then the old rule holds good, that grace
does not destroy, but heals nature,— make it whole (gratia non tollit sed sanat
naturam),—the notions wholeness and holiness being nearly related. It does
not suppress the activity of the natural powers, to which, on the contrary, it
gives new animation. It does this not by mere support and assistance, with
which it only supplements their diseased weakness,169 but by the new health,
with which it so fills them that they are no longer in need of crutches, but act
independently in that strength of God which has become their own, as the
Psalmist says (Ps. lxxi. 16, xxvii. 1): “I will go forth in the strength of the
Lord.” This united action of God and man is witnessed to by the apostle in the
apparently contradictory saying (Phil. ii. 12 sq.): “Work out your own salva-
tion with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you to will and to
work according to His good pleasure;” comp. Phil. iv. 13: “I can do all things
through Christ, which strengtheneth me.”170
It is the very nature of love, that, though the special quality of the heart,
it is not set upon itself, but upon another, whom it loves, and that what
belongs to him belongs to it, and what belongs to it belongs to him. Hence it is
not the part of love, but of selfishness, to think anything of itself, or to act as of
itself (2 Cor. iii. 5). Love will, on the contrary, confess to God that our suffi-
ciency is of God. Where this is misconceived, where sufficiency and virtue are
ascribed, not to God, but to himself, a man leaves the bond of love, and conse-
quently that of holiness, which consists in the penetration of the human by the
Divine, and, where the former is separated from the latter, disappears. The
good becomes un-good, unholy, ungodly when and so far as it is not per-
ceived to come from God, but attributed to the merit of the creature. The lov-
ing acknowledgment, that all good is an effluence and influence of the alone
168 Revera tunc per virtutem Spiritns sancti co-operari possumus et debemus. —Conc. Form. ii. p. 674
(Rechenb.); comp. the same, p. 680: Voluntas jam renata in quotidianis pœnitentiæ exercitiis non est
otiosa, sed in omnibus operibus Spiritus sancti, quæ ille per nos efficit, co-operatur.
169 Quasi homo conversus una cum spiritu sancto eo modo co-operaretur, quemadmodum duo equi
simul una currum trahunt.—Ibid.

170 Comp. Harless, Christliche Ethik, 4th ed., Stuttgart 1849, § 23, p. 97 sqq.

good God, is itself an essential element of the good, which in every province
of life must prove itself such by fulfilling the first commandment, to give
glory to God alone, and to love Him more than itself. From the very circum-
stance that we must love Him with all the heart, with all the soul and with all
the mind, it necessarily follows, that not only all our being, but all our action
must, to correspond with the law of God, be animated and decided by Divine
love, and that where and when there is a deficiency of this love, a defect exists,
through which what was otherwise naturally good becomes defective. This is
the reason why a goodness which is without God has no value before Him,
why a morality which is without religion, a self-prescribed righteousness
without faith (the justitia philosophica of the symbolical books), finds no recog-
nition within the province of the Church, and why whatsoever is not of faith
is sin before God (Rom. xiv. 23). Itefore him, the holy God, not a merely
abstract and therefore defective morality, but, on the contrary, a holy, i.e. a
religious morality, consecrated by a believing relation to Him, in other words,
sanctified by Divine love (justitia spiritualis scu cordis), alone avails. In short, as
the theological morality, which proceeds from God, teaches, what is pure and
good in man is from God, and what is not from God is not pure and good.
Philosophical morality, on the contrary, which starts only anthropologically
and autonomically from man as the creator of his works, regards his right-
eousness as really the work of his reason and will (justitia rationalis sen liberi
arbitrii). Such self-created uprightness may indeed be highly esteemed in the
province of external life,171 but to regard it as pure and sufficient, is to exclude
Christianity,172 whose holy ethic, not of human, but of Divine origin, is really
based upon the theology of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This difference
between human and Divine, or Aristotelian and Christian ethic, was so clearly
perceived by the Reformers in their ethic opposition to the Pelagianism and
Rationalism of their days, that the deviation from evangelical truth never in
modern times showed itself greater, than in the renewed gross misconception
of this difference between an anthropological, philosophical, and a theologi-
cal, Christian morality, or in the obliteration of the contrast between a right-
171 Comp. Apol. p. 64 (Rechenberg): Libenter tribuimus justitiæ rationis suas laudes.
172 Si haec est justitia Christiana, quid interest inter philosophiam et Christi doctrinam. Si justificari
possumus per rationem et opera rationis, quorsum opus est Christo aut regeneratione? Nihil intererit
inter justitiam philosophicam et Christianam.—Apol. pp. 61, 62.

eousness which impure man can of himself effect, and a righteousness which
God’s pure grace effects in him. And where the distinction has not been
entirely given up, and some amount of justice has been done and honour
allowed to Christianity in the matter of morality, it has still been for the most
part supposed, that we owe to it only the confirmation or the extension of
philosophical morality,173 or perhaps some sort of better assistance to the
natural power for good. This would make the difference at most one of degree
or quantity only, and Christianity merely a praiseworthy addition to the natu-
ral human. But the difference is, on the contrary, a contrast of principles. In
philosophic ethics man is the principle of his self-righteousness and the
author of his own good, and God only co-operates with, or supplements, or
rewards his efforts. In evangelical, theological morality however, Divine love
is the productive principle which fills a believing man with new, pure love
and Divine life, in virtue of which he now does works which are wrought in
God, and which, the more they are the result of Divine love, the less they have
of human merit and the more of genuine Divine value. We now proceed to the
consideration of sanctifying love, as in the first place purifying.
CHAPTER I. OF PURIFYING LOVE.
Faith both receives the holy love of God in justification, and brings
forth the love of man, which sanctifies, by first of all purifying the heart from
the impure dominion of selfishness (Acts xv. 9). That with this, which cleaves
to the central point of the soul, to the ego, the whole heart and mind of man is
interwoven, needs no further proof, and that this selfishness cannot purify
itself, nor this selfish being deliver himself from himself, is undeniable. As
surely as selfishness, and with it all sin, springs from the ego, i.e. from what is
173 Audivimus quosdam pro concione Aristotelis Ethica enarrare. Vidimus extare libellos, in quibus
conferuntur quædum dicta Christi cum Socratis Zenonis et aliorum dictis.—Apol. Ibid. It is just the same
in our days; comp. the excellent remarks of Hundeshagen, der deutsche Protestantisimus, p. 20 sq., on
Humanism and Rationalism in the times of the Reformers. It is there very lucidly shown, that this
Rationalism just then flourished most in Italy and Rome, and that the opposition of the Reformers was
frequently just the same as that of rationalistic and evangelical theology at present. See also on this affin-
ity, my contributions to the defence of evangelical orthodoxy (Heidelb. 1825), which in many other
points no longer satisfy me.

most especially the creature’s own, so certain is it that love, which combines
ego with tu, man with his fellow-man and with God, is of higher, of Divine
origin. The loveless cannot make for himself a pure, a loving heart, surpassing
himself, but the Creator alone, who is love, creates this heart, creates love,
pure love (Ps. li. 12). Even natural love, the love of husband, parents, children,
down to the love of one’s country, is not a feeling manufactured by man (the
more it is so the less sincere it is), but created by God in the heart. And where
this feeling, which releases man from himself and unites him to his neighbour,
has died out in selfishness, it is the same God (qui creat, recreat) who reani-
mates it, and where it is corrupted by the impure lusts of self-love, purifies
and sanctifies it by the renewing power of that love to Himself, the Holy One,
which subordinates to itself and thereby duly orders all other love; for what
else is virtue, Christian virtue, than duly ordered love?
The purification of the heart by believing, self-denying love, is thus no

human work or merit, and that for the reason already mentioned, viz. that
love in general is not such, but, on the contrary, a good gift of the alone good
God; nay, His best gift, for He is Himself love, and what better can He give
than it, than Himself? It was by inspiring him with love, which is the Godlike
life of his soul, that God created man in His own image (comp. Div. I. of Pri-
mary Love), and it is by inspiring him with grace, or reconciling and sanctify-
ing love through the Holy Spirit, that He renews that image and banishes the
impure spirit from his soul. Not then the free, or properly the unfree, because
sinful, will of man (liberum arbitrium), but Divine love alone can purify the
human heart from that ungodly selfishness, which is its original sin. The will
can restrain its grosser outbreaks, for the hand and foot and mouth of man are
in its power, and it can constrain them to rightness of action (justitia operum),
and resolve upon the performance of good works, but it cannot make its
unrighteous heart good and righteous (comp. Augsb. Conf. Art. 18). False
love, i.e. selfishness, is only overcome by true love, i.e. the love of God; the
unclean spirit yields only to the Holy Spirit, which equally sheds abroad in
man’s heart the love with which God loves him and the love with which he
loves Him again. Thus alone is sin, which is just the impure love rising from
the source of the selfish ego and overflowing the whole nature, expelled. It
cannot be washed clean in its own impure flood, cannot be baptized in itself,

but must be baptized in the holy death of Christ. Just so far as any maintain
the purification and renewal of man by himself, do they deny his old impu-
rity. They by no means solve the problem in question, viz. how the impure is
to become pure; for they either deny the impurity or maintain the irreconcil-
able contradiction, that purity may arise from impurity. The selfish ego is
impure, and has cooled down and congealed into itself, and with it the whole
nature is diseased and emaciated, and the more it seeks, the more it loses itself
and perishes in itself. But when despairing of itself it perceives and accepts in
faith the love, with which the Son of God compassionately loved it and died
for it, then selfish coldness begins to melt, through the warmth of such pure
love, into surrender to the Lord, and in this melting it is purified. Now the ego
lives no longer in itself, whence flows all impure life, but in Christ and Christ
in it, and the erring creature now finds, not in itself, but in the Redeemer, the
true centre of its life, and the living source of all purification. Such is the
nature of regeneration in Christ, whereby not so much the substance or
nature, as rather the subject or human personality is renewed, a new ego
implanted which bears the consciousness of its life’s foundation, not in self-
love, but in the love of the Redeemer. It is thus that St. Paul describes it in that
glorious passage, Gal. ii. 20, comprehensible to all, who know the nature of
love, incomprehensible to the egoist, who loves only himself. This is that not-
living and yet living, that death and resurrection of the ego in the love of
Christ, of which the great apostle says from his inmost experience: “I Hve, yet
not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live in
the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Without
this faith there is no regeneration, no new creature, but everything remains in
the selfish state of the old Adam. The love of Christ, wherewith He loves us,
and in which we live by believing, and that wherewith He is loved by us in
return, and in which we live by loving, is renewing, purifying and sanctifying.
The love wherewith He loved us, wherewith the Father gave Him and He
gave Himself for us, is the holy love of Divine self-sacrifice, which, when it is
perceived and received by faith, unlocks the fast-barred nature of selfishness,
penetrates into and enlarges the narrowed heart, and forgiving all its enmity
against God, and making it taste His kindness, overcomes its former ill-will by
conciliating goodness. There is nothing purer, nothing holier, than this love,
this grace, with which the Son of God left the hosom of the Father and

descended into the depths of His sacrificial death for enemies who deserved
death themselves, and then also seeks to enter, with the redemption He has
obtained, and so to dwell in the hearts of sinners, in whose place He stood,
that His death may be their death, His life their life; for if one died for all, then
all died; and He died for all, that they who live should not henceforth live
unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again (2 Cor. v.
14, 15). The moral, the sanctifying, because self - immolating power of our
Lord’s vicarious offering consists in its transposition of Himself into us and us
into Him; its placing of His pure nature in the place of our impure nature, 174
and, by this translatio personæ, this transference of the Divine personality into
the human, and of the human into the Divine, together with the mutual
communication of properties, of guilt as well as of righteousness, its conver-
sion of the sinful ego of man into another, which dies to itself in Christ, and
rises again to a new life through faith, as the apostle says in the above-quoted
passage: I live, yet not I, etc. This is the mystery of the new birth in the Spirit.
Where the gracious, self-imparting love of Christ flows into the soul, it is
washed, baptized in purity, and saved and sanctified by faith in the Beloved,
who gave Himself for it that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the wash-
ing of water by the word (Eph. v. 26). For Holy Baptism into the death of the
Lord already pours out upon us the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of
God the Father and the communion of the Holy Ghost. This is its intention,
which it also fulfils in those who grasp by faith the fulness of its blessing, on
which account the apostle also calls it the laver of regeneration and renewing
of the Holy Ghost, which the mercy of God shed on us abundantly through
Jesus Christ our Saviour (Tit. iii. 5, 6). It is clear from this passage, that from
baptism onwards, the pure Divine love, wherewith we are first loved, and
which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, who at the same time
produces faith in it, is first assumed as the principle of the sanctification,
purification and renewal of our nature. This love is consequently not some
transitory property or abstract disposition of God towards us, but, being one
with the Divine nature, is its gracious entrance into and indwelling in the
human soul, is the presence in us of the Holy Ghost, who proceedeth from the
Father and the Son. The words with which our Lord concludes His prayer to
174 Comp. on this γλυκεῖα ἀνταλλάγη, the Epistle to Diognetus, c. ix.

the Father (John xvii. 26): I have declared unto them Thy name, and will
declare it, that the love wherewith Thou hast loved me may be in them and I
in them; and the kindred passages in John xiv. 23 and elsewhere, of making an
abode with the believer, plainly show that an inward contact, a penetration of
the human by the Divine (unio mystica), is here meant, which, effected by the
personal union of the Godhead and manhood in Christ (unto hypostatica), sanc-
tifies and purifies human nature, and renews therein the image of God. God
dwells, Christ dwells in man, and man in Him, by love, not as though any
mingling or identification of the Divine and human natures took place, for
this would not be love, whose essence always consists in the union of the dis-
tinct. They remain diverse and essentially different as the created and the
uncreated, and yet are made like and united by the fervour of love and its
return. It is not from afar, but as indwelling (immanent), that the Holy Spirit
of the Father and the Son bears witness to our spirit, that we are the children
of God.175 Thus is the spirit of man consecrated and anointed by the Holy
Ghost, without whose consecration all human contrivance and effort, how-
ever civilised or moral, are nevertheless ungodly, selfish, profane and impure;
while with His unction, on the other hand, every action of man acquires a
priestly character. The ethic is unholy, and therefore brings no healing, no
wholeness, which does not proceed from the Holy Spirit, through whom
alone the personality of man, received into the love of the Divine Persons, is
purified from selfishness.
The impure affections of selfishness (concupiscentia) are, as has been

shown (Div. I. on the Doctrine of Sin), of three kinds. It is that root sin, which,
in contrast to the righteousness which consists in duly ordered love, is disor-
dered love, the love of the world above God, of the creature more than the
Creator. As false self-estimation or over-estimation of the subject, it becomes
ambition in all its forms, from petty vanity to great pride; as over-estimation of
the object it becomes covetousness, from the imperious lust of conquest down
to niggardliness and cringing; and as over-estimation of the circumstances of
the subject as conditioned by the object, it becomes love of pleasure in all kinds
of disorderly and impure lusts. The greater the disorder, the greater also is the
175 The Conc. Form. p. 698, rejects as an error: quod non Deus ipse, sed dona Dei duntaxat in
credentibus habitent.

opposition between its forms, or rather its deformities, of which one is ever
pressing into the place of another, while the peace, which can only result from
order, is never attained. Thus the will is incapable of driving out these evil
spirits by which it is itself influenced. On the contrary, an impure affection
yields only to a pure one; only humility can cleanse the heart from pride.
With respect then, first, to pride or ambition, this form of selfishness

rests upon the self-exaltation of the ego, which seeks its own glory and not the
glory of God, and desires, in opposition to the first commandment, to be itself
lord and master, by its own reason, power and righteousness. The more self-
satisfied and self-complacent it is, the more it displeases God; its self-praise is
abhorrent; its self-love suffers no other love to thrive; ambition is quite captive
to selfseeking, and the ego cannot release itself from such selfimprisonment. It
is however released, as soon as it receives by faith that free love with which
the Son of God, and in Him the great God Himself, abased Himself even to
human meanness and poverty, and sacrificed Himself for it to make it His
own.176 When this humility and this self-sacrifice of Divine love is believed in,
all the pride of the ego is surrendered to it. Only they who do not believe it, or
will not hear its word, can resist this humble and therefore deeply humbling
power of the love of Christ. It is because it is so hard to him to surrender, that
the natural man often so long resists or evades it, until it is too strong for him,
and all his pride has to bow before the condescending majesty of the Lord.
Where is the glory of the flesh before the eternal Word, who became flesh, and
from the manger onwards both veiled and manifested His glory in the form of
a servant? Who would dare to set up his merits in the presence of such fulness
of grace, and what other righteousness has any value here, but the humble
righteousness of the forgiveness of sins for his sake, but justification through
faith in Him? We are justified without merit by His grace, through the
redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Rom. iii. 24)—this it is which brings down
all pride, not in the hard, discouraging, crushing manner of the law, but in the
176 Augustine incomparably says: Quas ita laudes caritati Dei dicamus, quas gratias agamus? Qui nos
ita dilexit, ut propter nos fieret in tempore, per quem facta sunt tempora, ut homo fieret, qui hominem
fecit, crearetur ex matre, quam creavit, portaretur manibus, quas formavit, et in præsepi muta vagiret
infantia verbum, sine quo muta est humana eloquentia. Vide, o homo, quid pro te factus est Deus; doc-
trinam tantæ humilitatis agnosce.—Serm. 188 in natal. Dom. (Opp. ed. Bened. tom. v.)

gentle manner of the gospel, which, while it humbles, also elevates, and while
it kills the old man, also quickens the new. Arrogance, self-complacence, van-
ity, conceit, envy are crushed by the cross of Christ, as soon as a man believes
that it was erected for him, and that the Lord of glory bled on it for him. The
blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin, even from pride, for it was for this
very sin, this chief sin, that it was shed in the humiliation of the Son of God,
which was so profound just because the pride of man, which it expiated, had
so highly exalted itself. Thus does Divine humility abase human pride, and
that not only by the holy greatness of its example, but still more by the com-
passion with which it took upon it the guilt of this pride and bore its sentence
of death. The royal Head, covered with blood and wounds, suffered the deep-
est shame, and the Lamb who bears the sins of the world bore pride also on
the cross; all lofty heads must then be bowed down. The Lord having in His
condescension walked on earth not to rule but to serve, and to give His life a
ransom for many, changes by His Holy Spirit all desire of ruling in His faith-
ful servants into humility, i.e. serving love. It is true that the consciousness of
sin and guilt is an intrinsic element of humility in sinful man, but this grace is
by no means based only upon conviction of sin, but essentially also on the
perception of the relation of the creature to his Creator and Lord, which is just
what sin misconceives, nay, is based in general on the nature of love, inas-
much as this lives for and serves not itself but others. Hence it filled the first
man until he gave audience, not in obedience, but in selfglorification, to the
vain temptation “to be as God,” and he lost it when he rebelled, however
painfully conscious he afterwards became of sin and separation from God.
The good angels are humble as ministering spirits, so are children, over whom
they rejoice, and whom we are to resemble (Matt. xviii. 4, 10).177 The sinless
second Adam was full of humility in His form of a servant (Matt. xi. 29), and
the higher and greater He Himself was, and the greater the love with which
the Son of God and the Lord became the servant of God, obedient even to the
death of the cross, the deeper was His humility.178 Certainly then humility
cannot be said to decrease in man with the decrease of sin; the humility of fear
and trembling may indeed do so, but not that of love and self-surrender,
177 Pia humilitas eat sancta infantia.—August. Serm. Opp. tom. v.

178 Eum certe humilem non iniquitas, sed caritas fecit.—August. de sancta virginitate 38, Opp. tom. vi.

which increases with the increase of love. The humility of the regenerate is,
like that of the Lord and of His angels, by its very nature ministering love. It is
this because it loves, above all, the Lord, whom one cannot love without serv-
ing and giving himself to Him, who gave Himself for us. Justly does a modern
poet say, that looking at its great preeminence, there is no other liberty than
love. We feel, indeed, that it rules us, makes use of us; the pride of self-con-
sciousness resists such rule, and either will not acknowledge it, or does so
reluctantly, till love conquers, and the humility of willing service works,
though far more submissively than unwilling service, at the same time free
and not servile, like the latter. The service of love, because less selfish, is also
far humbler than that of fear. In presence of the Redeemer’s glory there is no
other relation for the redeemed than that of ministering love, of pure humility,
which knows no other glory than His, which feels cured of consuming ambi-
tion and happy in the Lord. The soul’s unhappiness is just this, that having
turned from God, she has lost, and is therefore without a master; and, left to
her own will, is driven hither and thither, now defiant and now again terri-
fied, until she has found one where she did not seek Him, in the Son of God
on the cross, who, though her Lord, has not commanded, but wooed and won
her by the power of His suffering love,179 to be His own, to live under Him in
His kingdom, and to serve Him in loving humility, without which there is no
happiness. Hence there is no cure, no healing, without the Lord, because He
alone can cure the pride, through which the fallen soul ever falls more deeply
the higher it would exalt itself, until the humility of Divine compassion again
raises it up, by humbling and at the same time making it happy. 180
As ambition is the chiefly personal, so is covetousness the chiefly objec-

tive form of selfishness, into which second form the former easily passes as
proud, far-soaring thirst of power, and also sinks as defiling avarice, which is
the very narrowest concentration of selfishness. The opposite of covetousness
is imparting love, hy it alone can the human heart be cleansed from that unlov-
ing passion, which desires the gifts of God for itself alone, would have the
179 Mortalis venit, ut mortuum quæreret moriendo.—Augustine.

180 See Aug. Serm. 188 in natal. Dom. (Opp. tom, v.): Tanturn te pressit humana superbia, ut te nun pos-
set nisi humilitas sublevare divina. Ibid. de catechiz. rudib. 8 (tom. vi.): Magnus tumor noster majore con-
traria medicina sanatur; magna est enim miseria, superbus homo, sed major misericordia, humilis Deus.

good things, which are but for a time, for its exclusive possession, and, pro-
vided it may gain the world, cares not for the loss of the soul. To this belongs
that service of mammon (Matt. vi. 24 sqq.) which cannot be united with the
service of God, which will not suffer Him to rule alone, or even at all, in the
soul, and therefore stains it with idolatry and ensnares it into a heathenish
dependence upon the creature, which it serves instead of being served by it.
Nothing can release a soul, set upon its possessions, from the bondage into
which it is sold to this world’s goods, but the ransom, the redemption of Him,
who did not avariciously grasp at being equal with God, but deprived Him-
self and became poor for our sakes, that we through His poverty might be
made rich. The riches of His imparting love, justification through grace, the
peace of God, the participation of eternal salvation and life, which He
offers,—these heavenly possessions, received and grasped by faith, allay the
longing and thirsting of the soul for that supreme good, for want of which it
seeks to satisfy itself with those earthly goods, which, instead of satisfying, do
but increase its desires. Nothing but the filling of the soul with the true and
pure good can cleanse it from its false endeavours after false goods; only the
possession of God can free it from that passion for possessing, which the
whole world cannot appease (Ps. lxxiii. 25). Nothing then but faith, since it is
the possessing of God and receives the communication of His love, can
purify the heart from covetousness. And this it does not only negatively, but
also positively, the reception of the imparting love of God producing also at
the same time the imparting love of man, the love with which he relaxes his
selfish hold upon the gifts of God, and freely and willingly ministers to others,
as a good steward, of the manifold grace of God (1 Pet. iv. 10), the gifts he has
himself received. He who has experienced mercy will now show mercy, not
unwillingly, but with cheerfulness (Rom. xii. 8). This he proves by works
which are the opposite of unmerciful avarice, especially by doing good and
communicating, by the care of the poor and sick, by alms-deeds (ἐλεημοσύνη)
in the comprehensive sense of the word, as including also spiritual gifts and
assistance, with constant reference to his merciful Lord (Matt. xxv. 35 sqq.).181
There is no response to His compassion but that which we exercise towards
the poor and suffering, whom He by His compassionate suffering represents.
181 Ei damus, qui dedit, quod demus. Christus dat de Cælo, accipit in terra. Donat et eget. Eget Chris-
tus, quando eget pauper.—August. Serm. 38, 42, tom. v.

The avaricious has no neighbour, his fellow-man is an alien to him. The love
of one’s neighbour only exists where the sufferings of a fellow-man touch the
heart as if they were its own, where compassion suppresses its selfishness and
avarice (Luke x. 37).
But the heart of the justified man must be purified not only from
avarice as the objective, but also, thirdly, from the love of pleasure as the cir-
cumstantial form of selfishness. This takes place through faith, which, receiv-
ing the righteousness of the Lord in the Holy Ghost, participates not only in
His condescending and imparting, but also in His renouncing love. The oppo-
site of enjoyment is renunciation or abstinence.182 There is a self-pleasing love
which seeks only its own, the longer its quest, the greater and more impure its
zest. The love of the Lord who suffered for us was anything but a self-pleasing
love, it was love self-renouncing, down to the lowest depths of deprivation,
obedient even to death on the cross. Though He was the Son of God, yet
learned He obedience by the things which He suffered, renouncing dominion
and all its glory, and shedding, in the form of a servant, tears of suffering and
compassion (Heb. v. 7, 8). He, the Lord of the world, had not in it where to lay
His head, He renounced His own will for obedience, His own possessions for
poverty, and repelled every temptation to selfish enjoyment (Matt. iii.). Not
that He lived a human life in appearance only. No, as the children were par-
takers of flesh and blood, He likewise Himself took part in the same. 183 He ate
and drank as a real man for the nourishment of His body, and not only sancti-
fied every enjoyment by thanksgiving and blessing, but also renounced every
impure and merely self-aiming enjoyment, and walked in the flesh only to
offer it to God in holy discipline and in the service of love. It was not for His
own sake that He offered this sacrifice of renunciation, it was not His own
guilt that He desired thus to expiate, not to earn a merit of His own, as certain
ascetics, of whom indeed renunciation, but not renouncing love, may be predi-
182 Comp. August. de continentia lib. Opp. tom. vi. c. 7: Non expugnat concupiscentiæ malum nisi
continentiæ bonum.
183 In the above-quoted work, Augustine most decidedly refutes the notion, that the flesh, the body or
sensuousness, is in its nature bad and to be mortified, c. 20: Non mala est caro, si malo caret, id est, vitin,
quo vitiatus est homo, non factus male, sed ipse male faciens; ex utraque enim parte, id est, et anima et
corpore, a bono Deo factus bonus, ipse fecit malum, quo factus est malus.

cated, for this only exists where the renunciation is for the sake of others, not
of self. This was the case with the Lord, who emptied Himself for the sake of
poor sinners. The cross of Golgotha is the very climax of His self-renouncing
love,184 it was there that He sacrificed Himself, that He gave His body and
shed His blood for the remission of sins. “With this His most holy sacrifice He
sprinkles His people in baptism, and gives it them to feed on in Holy Commu-
nion. They who receive it in faith, and thus feed upon the sacrificing love of
their God, must be cured of carnal love of pleasure; it is the cross that kills it.
Selfsurrender produces self-surrender, and sacrifice a sacrifice in return; what
the commandment could not do, the love of the Lord does, who, depriving
Himself for my sake, moves my heart to renounce for His sake the lust of the
flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of lifa The inscription of the Ecce homo:
I did this for thee, what dost thou do for me? is inscribed ineffaceably on the
heart. Only belief in love crucified for us185 gives chastity the power to crucify
the flesh with its lusts and desires, and to present the body a living sacrifice,
holy and acceptable to God (Rom. xii. 1). That which apart from Him was self-
torturing, gloomy, Manichæan asceticism, becomes in loving imitation of
Christ a wholesome and purifying discipline and a fellowship in suffering,
which, though it causes pain, heals and has, in the midst of bitterness, a
sweetness of its own, as an old hymn says:—
Dulce mihi cruciari

Parva vis doloris est
Malo mori, quam foedari
Major vis amoris est.
For this purpose then did the salutary and chastening grace of God
appear, that we, in virtue of the pure love, which it produces, might deny
184 Comp. Sckenkel, die religiosen Zeitkämpfe, Hamburg and Gotha 1847, p. 450 sq. The conflict of our
times must decide between the Christian principle of self-sacrifice and the modern one of selfishness. In
Christ Jesus Himself the former was personally and historically fulfilled. His life and death was the
greatest sacrifice, and His love consists in renunciation and denial; the symbol of this principle is the cross.
185 See the excellent saying of Ignatius in his Epistle to the Romans, chap. 7: “My love is crucified, and
there burns not in me a fire that loves matter, but there flows in me the living water which inwardly
says: Come to the Father.”

ungodliness and the worldly lusts of love of pleasure, avarice and ambition,
and live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world (Tit. iii. 12). The
more thoroughly the power of purifying love works, the more deeply does
man perceive his impurity, and penitently confess it, as St. John says (1 John i.
9): If we confess our sius, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This is the promise of the gospel, which,
because so much of the impurity of the old corrupt nature still cleaves to us,
must be continually realizing its power and truth in us, and upon which St.
Paul grounds the exhortation, that seeing we have such a promise, we should
cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in
the fear of God (2 Cor. vii. 1). We are to perfect holiness not only in the love,
but in the holy fear of God; for as soon as we begin to seek it, the contrast
between evil and good, purity and impurity, being made more decidedly
apparent, and therefore the responsibility and damnableness of sin increased,
the thought of falling back again and becoming captive to it, or defiled with it,
cannot but excite within us a greater fear than any former entanglement
therein. How shall I do this great wickedness and sin against God? Such is the
expression of a cleansed and sanctified man’s fear of God, a man who, amidst
enticements and temptations within and without, perseveres in holiness and
perfects it. Certainly such perseverance and perfection can only come to pass
in virtue of continuing grace (donum perseverantiæ) and the co-operating will,
which as sanctified keeps itself and the whole man faithful in purification and
active diligence, and strong in the Holy Spirit, fights the good fight against the
impurity of the flesh to the end (2 Tim. iv. 7). As often as it yields through
weakness or cowardice to impure lusts, it is chastened, but if it fights faith-
fully and boldly, it wins the crown (2 Tim. ii. 5).
CHAPTER II. OF UNITING LOVE.
Purifying love, in proportion as it overcomes the selfishness which sepa-

rates, becomes uniting love. It is the nature of love in general to unite, and as
our God, who is Love, is the one God, He is for that very reason also the unit-
ing God, and would have men to be united in love both with Himself and
with each other. And as in Himself He is distinguished into three Persons and

is yet One in the one nature of love, so too the variety of created beings does
not separate the allembracing oneness of His love. On the contrary, it is just
this love which produced both the multiplicity of the creatures and their asso-
ciation and unity, and is the ground of all harmonious order in variety in the
universe.186
That man was made first for union in personal love with God, is
already implied in the notion of the Divine image, and is expressed, as the
Divine will concerning all human beings, in the first commandment to love
God with all the heart, with all the soul and with all the mind. That man was
made secondly for personal union in love with other human persons follows,
as the Divine will, not only from the second commandment to love his neigh-
bour as himself, but also from his appointment for marriage and family, as
these are rooted in his birth and inherent sexual nature. Religion and marriage,
the sacred alliance of man with God and of man and wife, both coming forth
even from creation, as constituent of human nature, and sanctified by Divine
command, are those fundamental bonds of human society, by which it is ever
entering into new combinations and is organically combined for dominion
over the earth in the service of God.187 This organic structure of this bond is
the result of difference of sex and of those other natural distinctions among
men, which are intended for mutual completion, both in physical and psychi-
cal respects, none being by nature equal to another, while all are more or less
similar. The family is that primitive state, 188 based neither on human inven-
tion nor appointment, but upon Divine institution, order and subordination
(honour thy father and thy mother), in which the rulers are beforehand already
given to descendants, and certainly not appointed from beneath.189 With the
family, which is an organism not of equal but of differing members, is com-
186 Ordinate temperature partium, pax omnium rerum, tranquillitas ordinis, ordinata concordia, comp.
August. de civit. Dei, xix. 13.

187 Compare the discussions, abounding in truth and intellect, of Stähl, in the first division of the second
vol. of his Philosophie des Rechts nach geschichtliche Ansicht; also Book ii. sec. iii. on the Family.
188 This is perceived also by Dahlmann, Politik, § 3. The state is primitive. The primitive family is the
primitive state, every family viewed independently is a state.

189 Comp. the development of the fourth commandment, Catech. maj. p. 439 sqq., and Luther, Walch,
Part 3, p. 1654: Here is the first government, whence all other governments and powers originate; also
Part 4, p. 2652 sqq.

bined by birth, kinship and inheritance, as also by alliance, agreement or sub-
jugation, and especially by a common tradition of religion and duty, various
connections of superiority and subjection, which ever more and more extend
and establish the sphere of the family, with the possessions and property on
which it is based, under the power of parental heads. Thus already existing
and directing rulers are ever presupposed, who are always older than their
subjects, and though often conditioned, yet by no means first set up by them.
The real basis of the notions of the race, the tribe, the nation, is common
descent, community of Father-land, as also common parentage is always mani-
fested by oneness of viother-tongne. Fatherhood, monarchical authority, every-
where appears as that which is primarily constitutive of human society and
association. A church or parish (Gemeinde) is not, like a flock, an aggregate of
heads, a certain number of inhabitants, but a union of families with their
heads and retainers under common authorities, with a common sanctuary
(church and school). Of combinations of such human communities, which
were not artificially constructed, but grew up conformably with Divine order,
is formed according to the will of God, by a development which is both natu-
ral and spontaneous in a historical and lawful manner, amid peaceful or war-
like circumstances, the state in its narrower or broader extent, and its legal
institutions. This, the largest circle, with its uniting and ruling centre, includes
and regulates not only all the smaller family circles and local communities,
but also many larger fellowships, classes, and callings, 190 and affords space
and superintendence to the most varied associations and corporations, both
for material and intellectual objects and for artistic and scientific pursuits. 191
Each of these circles, which mutually limit and complete each other, has its
customs, its privileges and its heads, and is thereby incorporated into the
organism (constitution) of the whole, whose members are dependent on the
sovereign authority, in other words on their legitimate ruler, but who on their
part also limit him by their privileges, so that no unlimited power, no despotic
absolutism, whether of individuals or pluralities, takes place. Hence states
may, according to the natural, historical, and religious peculiarities of the
races and tribes composing them, fashion themselves into different forms of
190 Comp. Stähl, ibid. Book iv. sec. 1 sqq.

191 Comp. Rothe, theolog. Ethik, Book ii.: The several circles of the moral community, pp. 1-99 and
100-145.

government. These, however much they may differ, have nevertheless equal
right within their different realms, just as the different peculiarities and
endowments of individuals have in a small circle. Hence it is an unhistorical
and falsely doctrinaire proceeding, to regard one form of government as
normal for all nations, although the monarchical is undeniably the nearest to
the Divine primitive type. The view, grounded upon repeated observation of
human nature and history, of the Divine institution and historical organiza-
tion of the state, proves its truth even by the circumstance, that all the factors
regarded as constitutive of the state by the different onesided theories, find
their partial acknowledgment, as actual moments in the course of its develop-
ment, and the formation of its judicature and constitution, while they cannot
be recognised by science as original autonomic founders, but have also, like
the hypothesis of the social contract, been long ago rejected as such. It must
therefore be regarded as an intellectual retrogression, nay revolution, in mis-
conception and denial of all history and its right, and of all natural superiority
and inferiority, without which order cannot exist, to found the state anew,
according to the groundless theory of the sovereignty of the people, upon the
inorganic number of its inhabitants, original electors, or aborigines, 192 and in
disregard of all differences of quality to entrust sovereign decisions to the
quantitative preponderance of mere numbers or taxpayers, a state of things
which subjects justice and law to the caprice of the stronger majority, and
despotically sacrifices the rights of the weaker minority. This is the unjust
state of revolution, the state of force of the mischievous year 1848, which
denied the religion of redemption, and which if it had been fully carried out,
could certainly in no respect be called a Christian state, and so far as hea-
thenism still designates a religion, might even have laid claim to the title of
heathen. It is the atheistic, the godless state, which would give up conscience
as well as religion. But Divine justice is stronger than all the force of human
injustice, and will, as experience shows, ever and again overcome it.
It is not our intention in this place, where only the ethic outlines of
evangelical moral theology are to be given, to enter into a political discussion
on the formation and constitution of civil and political relations. This only
192 This is in fact not a broad but an extremely narrow and exceedingly onesided foundation, which is
also not essentially improved by a property qualification.

must be insisted on, that as surely as man is created by Divine love, so cer-
tainly is he intended for the association of love, and that consequently love
and its fidelity are the original and permanent moral ties of all human society.
These are ever and again generated from the sacred and venerable soil of reli-
gion, marriage and the family, and they incorporate individuals into the
organism of the whole, and that by no means in merely fraternal equality,193
but in all those gradations, which correspond with the original members of
the family. However variously then these dispositions may be modified,
according to the variety and degree of individual position, alliance and call-
ing, they are everywhere essential to the origin and permanence of all human
society. For this is always founded upon the fact, that man does not live for
himself only, but in, with and among his neighbours, in other words that they
live for each other, and this is the nature of love and fidelity. Now it is just as
certain that selfishness has with sin everywhere penetrated human nature and
dissolved and in many ways broken the fidelity of love towards God and
man, nay, has substituted indifference and burning hatred for its uniting
kindness, and has thus affected and endangered all human ties in their inmost
source. As sin separates man from the Lord his God, so too does it from his
human superiors and neighbours; and as with love the freedom of his alliance
with God retires and he now becomes subjected to law, so too is it with the
freedom of the marriage tie and of family union, for the maintenance of which
not merely the freedom of love, but the bondage of subjection is now needed
for self-willed members. He that doeth sin is the slave of sin, and all the slav-
ery in the world, whether in the home, the Church, or the state, is of this ori-
gin. Hence with the fall, which originated through the undue exaltation of the
woman, is presupposed her subordination to the will of the man, and all other
subordination and the power of the ruler against the refractory are conse-
quently enhanced. Disobedience and rebellion being everywhere combined
with sin, a power of compulsion and punishment is everywhere conceded to
superiors, and rulers bear the sword, on account of justice and of God, for the
punishment of those who, resisting them and in them the ordinance of God,
do evil (Rom. xiii. 2 sqq.). The main object of this sovereign power is to main-
tain inviolable the Divine ordinance, its justice and law, against the opposition
193 It is the fundamental falsehood of the French Revolution to substitute equality for liberty, and thus
to deprive all that is above the level, of its liberty.

of the evil and the tyranny of the unjust. It is true that the just administration
of this supreme power is a benefit even to sinners, and that punishment, by
externally restraining their rebelliousness, has a preserving and an ameliorat-
ing effect, since impunity would make them still worse. But such legal
restraint of the lawless has as little the effect of inwardly improving them as
the law itself, which indeed brings a man to the knowledge of sin, chastises
and rebukes him, but does not create a new heart, a new love within him. On
the contrary, it works wrath by reason of mutual displeasure (Rom. iv. 15). To
this must be added that the superiors who administer the law are, as well as
their subjects, affected by human sinfulness. As therefore selfishness excites
the latter to resistance and rebellion, so do these frequently oppose them with
the reaction of oppression, and this action and reaction, with their harsh fric-
tion, prevent the attainment of freedom and true union, and on the contrary
affect or threaten all human associations, so far as they are not still kept
together by Divine power and grace, with the curse of discord and dissolu-
tion. Such is the perverse condition of all human society in the absence of that
reconciling and uniting love, which arises only from faith in the gospel.
It is the grace of reconciliation, which appeases the animosity of selfish-

ness, it is redemption, which releases from the oppression of these ties and
delivers from the constraint of the law without destroying it. On the contrary,
it gives new and free authority to its obligation by uniting love, and effects a
willing and harmonious fulfilment of its commands in the various depart-
ments of life. The distinctions of life are ordained of God, who has formed the
organism of the family, as also those of the Church and the state, of naturally
differing members (comp. 1 Cor. xii. 14 sqq.), and has made the human race to
consist of the many members of various nations and tribes. That distinctions
should have become separations and divisions, that variety of powers should
have broken out into hostile oppositions, and that free alliance should often
have been converted into enforced vassalage, is the consequence of sin, which
is enmity against God and against one’s neighbour, and has introduced the
shrillest discord into the harmony of the world. The gospel of reconciliation
and of the forgiveness of sins breaks the hostile violence by the might of grace,
which we have seen to be God’s love of enemies; it repels the accuser by
annulling the accusation of the law, whose righteousness is fulfilled in Christ,

by absolution; it extinguishes the wrath of violated justice and unexpiated
guilt by Divine mercy, everywhere disarms hostility by the love of the Media-
tor, and dispenses from its abundance of grace peace on earth and goodwill
towards men. The love, which arises from faith in the gospel of the forgive-
ness of sins, is a forgiving and compassionate love; having received forgive-
ness and mercy, it is also inclined to bestow them; the petition: forgive us our
trespasses as we forgive them tliat trespass against us, unites God and man in the
bond of reconciliation. Forgiving love is uniting love, it abolishes hostile separa-
tions, it joins those who were for want of love severed, and it brings it to pass,
that those, who could not or would not bear, now forbear one another in love,
and that with all lowliness and meekness and with long-suffering (Eph. iv. 2),
because the believer always feels himself borne with by these virtues in the
grace and patience of Christ. From such Christian love, resting not on the ties
of nature but of the Spirit and of grace, the unity of the Spirit in the bond of
the peace of Christ increases (Eph. iv. 3), a bond which tightens afresh the ties
of nature when they are relaxed, restores them when they have been broken
through, and while sanctifying yet far surpasses them all, obliging and bind-
ing every man to love his neighbour.
Let us then consider first the Christian family.194 The natural family
depends in its connection upon the distinction of man and wife, of parents
and children, who are referred to each other by their need of affection and of
the supply of their wants. That original lie of all-upsetting revolution, that all
men are by nature equal, is refuted by a glance at the family, whose collective
members are naturally unequal and superior or inferior to each other, and
that by Divine right, because God has so ordained. But right is strict and
earnest, and becomes hard through the hard-heartedness of its possessor, and
the wilfulness of those subjected to him, and the more natural affection is
overcome by selfishness, the greater is the friction between them. Family life
has its natural basis in the sphere of creation, and its legal ordinance in that of
the law (the second table of the commandments). But neither nature nor law is
able to make a thoroughly united family life wellpleasing to God and sup-
ported by a higher peace. This can only flourish where nature has been healed
194 Comp. Harless, Christliche Ethik, Stuttgart 1849, § 51 sqq.: The fundamental forms of earthly God-
ordained association for the confirmation of Christian virtue.

and law mitigated by grace. It was a deeply significant saying which St. Paul
addressed to the jailor at Philippi (Acts xvi. 31): Believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ and thou shalt be saved and thine house; and it is moreover pleasing to
see in this narrative how the jailor, the man of strict justice, becomes a child of
grace and rejoices with his whole house that he has become a believer in
Christ (Eph. v. 23), and feels himself united in higher love with his prisoners,
though they still remain in his custody. The husband is the head of the wife
and the master of the family, and remains such, after becoming a believer in
Christ; but after devoting himself to Him, receiving grace from Him, and
owing all that he is or has to grace, it penetrates even his rightful authority
and mitigates its stern nature by that spirit of meekness, which the apostle
requires from all who are spiritual (Gal. vi. 1). While the natural carnal mind
is always full of either dejection or arrogance, the spirit of grace, on the con-
trary, inspires not only gentleness, but the meekness with which one bears
another’s burden, and so fulfils the law of Christ (Gal. vi. 2), who though the
Lord of lords is yet meek and lowly of heart (Matt. xi. 29). That from such a
Christian head of a family a new spirit would go forth upon all its members
and bless and sanctify the whole house, even if it had before been a prison,
with the power of redemption, cannot be doubted. In the first place, the natu-
ral, and therefore so often loose and dishonoured, bond of marriage becomes
a spiritual tie, ennobled, established and sanctified by the power of pure
Divine love. As the Divine should be reflected in all that is human, so in the
relation of the husband to the wife, the relation of Christ to the Church, with
which, through the union of the Divine with the human nature, He has
become one body (Eph. v. 25-31). Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also
loved the Church and gave Himself for it. What dignity is assigned to the
husband in Christian marriage, and at the same time what devotion, what
sovereignty and what ministering love! As in Christ the form of glory is
united with the form of a servant, so too in the Christian husband should be
exhibited the master of the wife and of the household, who rules while serv-
ing and serves while ruling. He is to love his children as members of his body;
to live, to work, to suffer for them, as the Lord offered up Himself for His sub-
jects. And as Christ is the King and Priest of His people, so too should the
kingly and priestly character be combined in the father of the family (Rev. v.
10) by his not only presiding over and ruling, but also by his offering himself

for it, representing and blessing it, and by his care for the souls as well as
bodies of his children. Where the royal and priestly offices are thus combined,
the prophetic, the office of instruction, even that salutary rebuke which pro-
ceeds from a parent cannot be absent; that all things, power, love, instruction
and discipline may work together to bring up the little community of the fam-
ily to please God and increase in wisdom, age and favour both with God and
man. It is at this point that the Christian school, in which the teacher fills the
place of the father, grows up out of the Christian family. When the Scripture
says (1 Cor. xi. 3), that the man is the head of the woman, but that Christ is the
head of the man and God the head of Christ, it thus teaches that husbandhood
and fatherhood do not originate from flesh and blood, but are to be referred to
the power of God, as Supreme Head. This power manifests itself in Christ as
Divine grace, of which the man being a partaker communicates it in love to
the wife, as a fellow-heir of the grace of life (1 Pet. iii. 7). Where man and wife
feel themselves thus united in the grace of their common head, they love one
another in Him with that sanctified affection, which has a better foundation
than an appreciation of their mutual human and defective worth, they forgive
one another’s faults, bear one another’s burdens, and remain whether in joy or
sorrow as constant in their love as in their faith in Him, who first loved them
and gave Himself for them, that He might sanctify them. The wife remains
subject to the husband for the Lord’s sake, but for this very reason hers is no
longer the subserviency of a maid-servant, but the voluntary subjection of a
wife (Gen. iii. 16), whose will being in accordance with that of her husband
lives to and serves him. The wife fulfils her high destination in humility and
love, and the more she as a Christian woman humbly confines herself to her
own sphere of operations, the more is she exalted by the Lord, while they,
who in their desire for emancipation exalt themselves and intrude themselves
into the councils and occupations of men, are hastening towards their certain
abasement.195
Where man and wife united in love to Christ remain in the covenant of
His grace, and have also had their children admitted into this covenant by
baptism, it naturally follows that neither natural licentiousness nor the con-
195 Compare die Aufgabe und das Leben des Weibes im Licht des Evangeliums, from the French of A. Monod,
Stuttgart 1849. The model of Christian womanhood is the Virgin Mary.—Apol. p. 228.

straint of the law, which only provokes unto wrath and excites bitterness
(Eph. vi. 4), will prevail in their education, but that grace which brought salva-
tion, and which appeared for children also in the child Jesus, teaching that,
denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously
and godly in this present world (Tit. ii. 12). The: Suffer little children to come
unto me, must always be the fundamental law of Christian education, which,
when once it is transferred, with the school, from the service of Christ to that
of the state only, is degraded to a secular level.
But as the grace of God which brought salvation appeared in the form
of a child to children, to illuminate their world, so too did it appear in the
form of a servant, to all masters and servants, to unite both in His service, and
to incite the former to lenity and the latter to free and willing obedience (Eph.
vi. 5-9). Thus is domestic service ennobled, and becomes free and well-pleas-
ing to God in a Christian family, in which all subordination is both regarded
as of Divine ordination, and then again equalized upon a higher stage by
Divine grace. The commandment, which is the foundation of all earthly pros-
perity, the first commandment with promise: Honour thy father and thy
mother that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest live long upon the
earth—is, together with its promise, happily fulfilled in the united life of the
Christian family. On the other hand, wherever parents and masters are not
held in honour in the fear and love of God, and husband and wife do not love
and honour each other, no earthly prosperity, no enduring welfare in families,
and therefore in communities and in the state, can exist. It is only well with a
country when it is well with families; no constitution can keep the state
together where marriages and families, freed from the ties of religion and
duty, have no longer any internal support; social life can never nourish where
domestic life is destroyed.
The Scriptures of the New Testament establish, and the history of Chris-
tian mankind in every country proves, that Christianity has created a married
and domestic life such as antiquity did not and heathenism and
Mohammedanism do not know. It is true that the Middle Ages, in their over-
estimation of celibacy and monasticism, unduly lowered the dignity of Chris-
tian family life and therewith of the state; but it was only the more exalted

again by the Reformation. It is a very carnal view of the Reformation to regard
it as giving greater licence, and as intending, especially by the dissolution of
the laws of celibacy and monastic vows, to provide a freedom which should
give more space to the flesh, while on the contrary it desired only that liberty
(Gal. v. 15) in which one serves another by love. Luther’s noble sermon on the
liberty of a Christian man (Walch, Part 10), clearly shows, that he only recog-
nises that as Christian liberty, which is not only raised above all things by
faith, but is also “subject to every one” in love. If then the Christian family
appears throughout as a union, in which one serves another in love, unmarried
life is on the contrary manifestly a state in which a man, independent of the
nearest ties of affection and far more at liberty and free from anxiety, lives and
cares only for himself, and therefore loves less and is less loved, than one who
is involved in the mutual duties and love of family life. It cannot therefore be
denied, that this latter condition, ordained as it is of God, and whose spiritual
bond is love and fidelity, honour aud obedience, is a more perfect school of
Christian self-denial, humility, meekness, patience and the other virtues of
love, than the isolated condition of a single self-concentrated man. It is not as
a more difficult and therefore a holier state that St. Paul recommends it (1 Cor.
vii. 26), but because in the present necessity it was accompanied by fewer
troubles and anxieties, and these he desired to spare the disciples (ver. 28).
Hence higher praise is due to this state only when it does not narrow, but
enlarges the heart, when, in consequence of the extraordinary influence of the
Holy Spirit, a larger abundance of holy love impels a man not only beyond his
own solitariness, but also beyond the family circle, and beyond the restrictions
of the ordinary spheres of life, voluntarily to devote himself to the service of
the Lord in some exceptional manner, whether in home or foreign missions,
and thus unhindered by other cares or duties to belong directly and entirely to
Him (1 Cor. vii. 32). 196 When however these high gifts and callings of the Holy
Spirit are absent, that Spirit, who in such a case creates by the ardour of His
love true purity and chastity of heart, and where besides, celibacy is not in
any way necessary or a duty of obedience, but on the contrary a self-chosen
and then mostly a self-righteous isolation of selfishness, and only too easily
betrayed into impurity, it is far inferior in dignity to the God-ordained state of
196 Christus aut Paulus non laudant virginitatem ideo quod justificet, sad quia sit expeditior et minus
distrahatur domesticis occupationibus in orando, docendo, serviendo.—Apol. Confess. August. p. 243.

matrimony. The latter is justly called in comparison therewith a holy state, for
it was instituted by God as a seminary for the human race in the bond and
service of faithful love, 197 and consecrated by the gospel to be a type of the
union of Christ with the Church, as St. Paul shows, to the honour of the mar-
riage state, when, glancing at the profound mysteries of Divine love, he traces
back to this sacred origin both the incarnation of the Son of God and the copu-
lation of husband and wife (Eph. v. 22-32).
This Christian dignity of marriage and the family was transferred from
the obscurity into which it had fallen, and replaced in a clear and favourable
light by the Reformation and especially by Luther, as even his opponents
must confess. There is a special moral sanction in his transposition of the halo,
hitherto chiefly hovering over monastic life, to the insignificant forms of
domestic life and knowing how with deep Christian feeling to transfigure its
meanest works and services, if performed in faith and in obedience to the
Divine call, into services rendered to God. The explanation of the fourth
commandment in the larger catechism is in this respect classic. So too in other
places, especially in the Hauspostill, comp. e.g. on the gospel of the marriage at
Cana (Walch, Part 13, p. 371): “Marriage might well be called a troublesome
condition, for it has trouble and labour enough, if thou, God’s creature,
shouldst lose sight of His blessing, institution and word. Learn therefore, that
one can serve the Lord at home and need not undertake anything unusual.
For a father, who rules his family in the fear of God, and brings up his chil-
dren and dependants in the worship and knowledge of God, in discipline and
respectability, is in a happy and holy condition. Nor need a wife, who attends
to the eating and drinking, the rubbing and bathing of children, seek any
holier or more godly condition. Man-servant and maid-servant too, when they
do what their masters bid them, are serving God. And if they believe in
Christ, they please God much better, by even sweeping rooms or cleaning
shoes, than the praying, fasting, attending mass, and whatever else is boasted
of as high acts of worship, of all the monks.” Melanchthon’s writings too on
the evangelical confession, bring forward in several places the holy dignity of
both the Christian domestic condition and the institution of the state (thus
197 Christus vocat conjugium conjunctionem divinam cum ait: quos Deus conjunxit, Matt. xix. 6.—Ibid.
p. 242.

Augsb. Conf. Art. 16): “The gospel requires us to maintain the state and the
family (politiam et œconomiam) as institutions of God and to practise love in
such institutions” (comp. the 26th and 27th Art. and the Apology on this sub-
ject, pp. 210, 217, 285). How much Christian family life has since the Reforma-
tion been elevated according to these maxims, and what progress Christian
education in particular has made in alliance with the Church, is abundantly
shown by history. It also furnishes however sad proof in more recent times,
that with the increasing laxity of religious feeling, the moral bonds of human
society even to that of the family, are being gradually relaxed and also of late
frequently destroyed. The tendency of these days to break with all past his-
tory, and their antichristian efforts to divest marriage and the family, the
school and the state, i.e. every human association, of its Christian dignity and
Divine consecration, to deprive them of their religious sanction in general,
and to reduce them, at least for public life, to a merely secular or natural char-
acter, are deeply to be deplored. This profaning spirit seeks to degrade the
sacred tie of married love to an optional civil contract, the family to a kind of
conventional association, the school to an institution of secular prudence and
the state to a mere social compact. This desecration of all the bonds of human
society demoralizes as well as unspiritualizes them, for only external or civil
righteousness (justitia civilis) is left to them, and this without inward right-
eousness (justitia spiritualis) is devoid of all higher sanction and inward sup-
port, and cannot therefore be a foundation for earthly, and still less for heav-
enly prosperity. To make human conditions ungodly is to deprive them of all
that higher spiritual truth, which is at the same time their true poetry, and to
leave them only the flesh of materialism and the commonplace prose of util-
ity; so that compared with the vulgarity of this latest phase of secularism, if it
should become general, the honourable conditions of pagan antiquity would
certainly deserve the preference.
The profanation of the Christian family stands in a relation of interac-

tion with that of the Christian state, which we have secondly to consider. The
Christian state is not merely one which has a general religious foundation,
such as all states have had down to those of the most recent times, which are
devoid of any foundation, but it is that state in particular which acknowledges
the main fact of human history, viz. the fact of the redemption of mankind by

Jesus Christ. Without a common religion, the political society lacks all higher
sanction of both its moral and its judicial character. For where morality and
law are not founded upon the holy and righteous will of God, they have no
firm support against any kind of energetic human arbitrariness, because when
man settles upon a system of laws, he but too easily unsettles it. Only through
the commandments of God written by the finger of God on tables of stone and
on the heart: thou shalt not kill, nor commit adultery, nor steal, do the rights
of the person, of the family, of property become so sacred, that the lust of
human arbitrariness cannot violate them without committing sacrilege. Where
legislators make no account of the law of God, they may indeed bring to pass
all kinds of temporary human maxims, after the manner of ephemeral consti-
tutions, but will certainly achieve no fundamental laws, upon which a state
and realm may be permanently based. Recently the attempt was made, in
sceptical blindness, to set up a new German Empire without Christianity, and
it has already come to nothing. Christianity, the origin of European civilisa-
tion, offers to the state far more than the universal foundation of Divine right
and law. For it is not like Judaism or Mohammedanism, a religion of law con-
tained in commandments, but it is the religion of grace, the gospel of redemp-
tion. It does not so much command love as offer and bestow it, even that infi-
nite love and grace, with which God so loved the world, that He delivered His
only-begotten Son into the misery in which mankind had sunk, that He might
deliver them therefrom. The condescension of the eternal Son of God from the
throne of His glory even to the death of the cross for sinners, is that power of
love, which reconciles and unites heaven and earth, and exalts the meanest
child of man as far above his poverty as the Son of God abased Himself to it (2
Cor. viii. 9). However much human dignity may be boasted of, it is every-
where deeply degraded in the province of the natural man and the unchris-
tian state by the rule of selfishness and the bondage of sin, with all its destruc-
tive consequences to both communities and individuals. And if it is true, that
every man has his price, for which he sells himself to the devil, it is also true,
that there is a more costly price at which he is again redeemed from his
bondage, that costly ransom of which the apostle says: Ye were not redeemed
with corruptible things as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of
Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. It is this price which,
while it makes even the poorest sinner the Lord’s freeman (1 Cor. vii. 22), also

gives him his value before God and His dignity before men, while however
wretched and suffering his condition may be, the Lord ennobles it with His
dignity and represents it as His own in the judgment, saying: That which you
did to one of the least of these my brethren you did unto me (Matt. xxv. 40).
There is but one genuine emancipation of man, and that is redemption by Christ,
which makes the slaves of sin the free children and servants of God. It does
not thereby abolish those differences and subordinations among the members
of human society, which the law regulates and protects; but it does overcome
selfish separations and hostile contrasts by the free power of that uniting love,
which originates from faith in the one Redeemer, and produces by the con-
sciousness of both common sin and common grace, a salutary equalization
before God and that compassionate love, which strives to comfort the poor
and suffering, and to raise up the humble and oppressed. Again, he who
occupies the highest position in society, the ruler, is reminded that he must
not arrogantly attribute it to his own merit and dignity, but humbly to the
grace of God. Hence too it is the excellent custom of Christian princes, accord-
ing to apostolic example (1 Cor. xv. 10), to confess themselves to be such by
the grace of God, a title which at the same time warns them to exercise not
merely justice, but grace also. Only the Christian state, which acknowledges
the truth of the gospel of the kindness and love of God (Tit. iii. 4) is the truly
human state.
Where Christianity as the gospel of redemption has become the faith of

a people, a different kind of domestic life, and consequently a different and
more kindly social and political life, will be formed, than is possible where
men are united with one another only in the province of natural life, or by the
restraints of law. The natural is the selfish man, and in associations based only
upon natural motives individual becomes common selfishness, which settles
into races, ranks, guilds, and even castes, united by common interests, exclud-
ing all who do not belong to them, and but too readily treating them with
oppression and hostility. The law does indeed restrain and regulate the vari-
ous and often intersecting selfish tendencies, by limiting one by another, and
encountering their violent or criminal exactions with its power; but no law can
expel, eradicate, or even diminish selfishness itself in human souls, and all its
bonds can neither produce nor supply the place of the bond of uniting love.

The law is everywhere only the old covenant, which restrains externally and
servilely, subdues the natural licence in which flesh and blood finds its liberty,
but does not inwardly and freely unite those whom it restrains, nor really join
high and low. As men are constituted, there prevails everywhere in civil soci-
ety, so far as it has become devoid of faith, either only Egoism, i.e. the despo-
tism of the individual, or the general despotism of the law; and in the latter
case civil liberty, with respect to the arbitrary power of the former, rests only
upon the universal power of the latter, according to the saying of a celebrated
statesman (Casimir Perier): La liberté c’est le despotisme de la loi. But neither
the selfish despotism of the ego, nor the heartless despotism of the law, is
capable of animating society from centre to circumference, and freely and spir-
itually maintaining the vital connection of its component members. The coali-
tions of individual interests are ever and again dissolved by the unceasing
influence of the selfishness, which only maintains them so long as it feels satis-
fied thereby, but afterwards unscrupulously exposes its associates to the
battue chase of individual competitions, and consequently to bankruptcy, as
modern free-trade gives sad and abundant testimony. In like manner constitu-
tional laws restrain and keep selfish society together externally, only until the
hostility, which is fermenting within, rebels and explodes. It is then with
increased difficulty again pressed into other forms; these however, the same
substance remaining, experience the same fate, as the history of modern revo-
lutions, which are successively devouring themselves, sufficiently shows. In
revolutionized states liberty has so frequently been assumed to consist only in
the dissolution of all natural ties and corporative associations, that the far
more selfish interests of individuals have everywhere taken the place of the
former class interests. Hence though many may have risen to be wealthy
master manufacturers or landowners, yet others have in their atomistic isola-
tion only sunk the lower, and from this internal dissolution of society has
grown up the gigantic evil of the proletariat multitude, who lead only a
monadic and nomadic existence in the midst of the civilised state. To escape
this unfortunate laxity, and to put a new sociality in its place, has been
attempted by such projects as those of communism and socialism, which are
remedies far worse than the disease they are meant to cure. For if associations
of this kind are to be realized, those natural ties of the family and of property,
which are founded upon God’s institution and commandment, and which

have as yet been maintained in spite of social dissolution, must first be
destroyed, and the new society then new formed out of their fragments,
according to its own maxims—a procedure which would suppress all truth
and freedom of association, and sacrifice all the peculiar rights of personality.
Property, which actually depends upon the God-ordained peculiarity of
human personality, and comprehends the share of possessions allotted thereto
to be managed according to law and duty, has, as is well known, been in the
course of these errors declared theft. This is however vice, versa only an
avowal, that the principle of this modern socialism is theft of property, and it is
evident how far removed this is from the principle of love, which, as surely as
it has to prove itself by giving, necessarily presupposes possessing, and as cer-
tainly as it is a self-surrendering connection of different personalities, also
holds sacred and inviolate the rights of property of each.198 Communism, like
every invasion of rights and plunder of property, which even Cabinets and
Chambers have absolutely no right, by arbitrary resolutions, to allow to them-
selves or grant to others against the prohibition of God, is a reaction against
egoism and mammonism, in which one devil is driven out by another, the self-
ishness of those who desire to possess using against the selfishness of those
who do possess, a force which abolishes not their unjust arbitrariness, but
their just possession, and makes it an unlawful property which does not flour-
ish. Certainly much selfishness, with its manifold injustice, was in all respects
already dominant in those states, in which the selfishness of the governed
violently revolted against the power and property of the governing. But just
as certainly have modern revolutions always brought forth still greater, more
discontented and more disunited selfishness, and relaxed still further the
ancient bonds of society. During their course this radical sin of humanity has
risen to everincreasing supremacy, and when once it has by indifferentism
stripped off from states and rulers the sacredness of their former Christian
character, it will have left very little remaining of the sacredness of property
and the family. It is a delusion, as deplorable as it is monstrous, to be always,
in spite of ever-repeated experience to the contrary, imagining that fresh revo-
lutions and transformations of the outward fashion of the state can effect
improvements, so long as the same principle of corruption, the old hereditary
198 Compare on the communio rerum and the tenere proprium the apology on the 16th Art. of the Confes-
sion of Augsburg, pp. 215-217, and p. 287, de votis monasticis.

sin of selfishness, only turns up again with new and greater pretensions.
“When will the deluded statesmanship of the politicians of the day perceive,
that moral renovation is the only deliverance from ruin for either nations or
individuals, and that this is only possible by a return to the gospel, for Christ
alone is master of the old Adam? The gospel is as much the source of uniting
love, as it is the support of penal justice, and these are both essential elements
of the vitality of the state.
For the gospel of grace does not abolish the law of righteousness, but,
on the contrary, establishes it (Rom. iii. 31). Its principle indeed is love, which
upholds and keeps together all things, the state included; not merely natural
love, but the holy, sacred, all - compassionate love, which flows from the heart
of the Redeemer, who can feel even for the needy multitude (Matt. ix. 36). The
rule of love distinguishes Christian from heathen states, as also from those
whose religion is only the law but not the gospel. The sway however of law
and of its righteousness, so far as social relations are concerned, belongs essen-
tially to the nature of the state, and if the gospel of redemption in any wise
destroyed the righteousness of the law, without fulfilling or satisfying it,
Christian love might appear to be in conflict with the legal justice, which it is
the duty of the state to administer and protect. This appearance has also pro-
duced the opinion, that the principle of forbearing love and that of penal jus-
tice were incompatible, and that hence the Church, which represents the for-
mer, and the state, which represents the latter, must be separated from each
other. It is quite true that there is between the Church and the state a great
difference, which forbids their being confounded with each other,199 for the
former has chiefly to cherish the righteousness of the heart, to proclaim the
gospel, and to preach faith, hope, patience and love, while the latter sees prin-
cipally to the righteousness of works, protects civil liberty, administers the
law and bears the sword against evil - doers. The state commands in the name
of the law, the Church entreats in the name of Jesus; the state is great by rul-
ing, the Church by serving (Mark x. 42, 45). So too are husband and wife essen-
tially different, and have different vocations, but it would not be inferred that
199 See Augsb. Conf. Art. 28. “That this difference however is not to lead to a separation of Church and
state, is sufficiently obvious from the circumstance, that it is just the Reformation, which has placed the
dignity of the state, as a Divine institution, in the clearest light.”—See Apol. de ordine politico, p. 217.

they ought therefore to be separated, or the communication of their properties
to be annulled, or that justice and love, severity and meekness, strength and
gentleness are incompatible, instead of, on the contrary, mutually needing
each other. To this it must be added, that the gospel does not abolish but estab-
lish the law, for it by no means represents only the principle of compassionate
love, but also with holy severity that of righteous judgment. The world’s
Redeemer is also its Judge, He came not to destroy but to fulfil the law (Matt.
v. 17); the completeness of His redemption depends on the completeness of
the satisfaction rendered to the law by His sacrifice of perfect obedience even
to the death of the cross. The grace of the gospel remits sin, but remits none of
the holiness of the law. Love and justice are in it indissolubly united. That sen-
timental weakness, which has of late extolled itself and been extolled as Chris-
tian love, is alien to it. So too is that enervated humanity, which would do
away with all strict discipline and serious punishment, that tenderness, or
cowardice, which, esteeming temporal life as the supreme good, can no longer
endure capital punishment and fears to expiate, according to Scripture, even
murder by the shedding of blood; while, on the other hand, it feels no scruple
at incarcerating a sinner tortured with an unappeased conscience till death.
How much such faint-hearted humanity has relaxed the morality of the mod-
ern world, and at the same time increased its immorality to a licence, which
desires impunity for even the most shameless and terrible excesses, is proved
in the most humiliating manner by contemporary history. The gospel of grace
is founded on the blood of Christ; chastisement was laid upon Him, that we
might have peace; He is the King of Peace, but at the same time King of Righ-
teousness (Heb. vii. 2). In Him was manifested the righteousness as well as the
mercy of God, for God hath set Him forth to be a propitiation through faith in
His blood, to offer the righteousness that avails before Him, for the forgiveness
of sin, that He might be just and justify him who is of faith in Jesus (Rom. iii.
25, 26). Not love simply, but holy love is the fundamental principle of Chris-
tianity; in it are love and justice combined, and in this combination lies the
salvation of the world. Justice and love —Christianity alone manifests these
principles in their perfection and in their union. They are the firm foundation
and the true bond of human society, which, where they withdraw, sinks into
either licence or bondage, and only, where they rule, exists in well-ordered
and just liberty. Only that body politic which recognises Christianity as its

soul is healthy; only the Christian state is the just, because the moral state, in
which justice and love, obedience and liberty, severity and kindness are com-
bined. The unchristian is, on the other hand, also the immoral state, ibr either
it is governed only by the power and cunning of natural selfishness, or it is
forcibly held together by the power and discipline of law; but the bond of
love, which makes good and free, which redeems and sanctifies, is absent, free
and true obedience fails, and the nobility of a godly disposition is lacking. It is
true that heathen states, like the Roman, before they knew Christianity, before
the gospel was acknowledged in them, had their recognised law, their pater-
nal justice; and honour is due to them for the praiseworthy deeds done in
them.200 But dishonour and not honour is due to those who, after confessing
Christianity, either deny this confession or so cast it in the background as to
place Judaism, which as a denial of the gospel is antichristian, on the same
level as Christianity. This is a sad relapse. Ancient heathenism did not reject
Christ, it only did not as yet know Him, but Judaism not only crucified Him,
but the Christ who is glorified and adored by Christendom is still continually
rejected in its midst. To make this sharpest of religious contrasts, this contra-
diction so deeply engraved in history, that the Jews have no history in com-
mon with us — to make this a thing indifferent is to adopt a principle greatly
tending to the detachment of the state from the Christian Church—is to make
religion in general a matter of indifference to modern states, which the more
they sink to the service of material interests, and forfeit the higher moral
potentialities and guarantees, as well as the strength, of uniting love, are
advancing at the greater disadvantage towards a dreaiy future. 201
Nevertheless the state, even though the number of its Christian inhabi-
tants were less than it is, cannot, if it has still a conscience, maintain an atti-
tude of indifference towards the Christian Church, which has brought it up,
but must either love it with a good conscience, because it promotes the virtues
of love and fidelity which are essential to the state also, or must hate it with an
evil conscience, because it rebukes the sins of the state and its potentates. Still
200 Comp. Aug. de civit. Dei, lib. v. cap. 18, on the great deeds of the Romans, which should put us to
shame, if we do not do as much for the kingdom of God, as they did for their earthly kingdom.
201 Comp. Stähl’s excellent article: “der Christliche Staat und sein Verhältniss zu Deismus und
Judenthum,” Evang. Kirchenz. 1847, Nos. 64-68.

less can the Church be indifferent towards the state, which, whether friendly
or hostile, it is always bound to love, to pray and to work for. It was so com-
manded by the apostles (1 Tim. ii. 1 sqq. and elsewhere), at a time when Chris-
tians under the heathen state were regarded as sheep for the slaughter (Rom.
viii. 36). Indifference between Church and state, which are “both to be hon-
oured as God’s highest benefits on earth” (Augsb. Conf. Art. 18), is impossi-
ble; persecution ought not to exist; a union of their two natures, and a mutual
communication of their properties, without confusion or transformation of
one into the other, is the right relation. It is true that this is made difficult by
the variety of Christian confessions to which the subjects of the same state
adhere, and by which it is prevented from uniting solely with one. Since the
Reformation, however, the oecumenical confessions of the universal Church
are the basis of all the separate confessions,202 and upon this all the Christian
states of Europe may regard themselves as still united, as branches of the
common trunk of ancient Christianity. From this common trunk, with its liv-
ing roots, are ever shooting forth tendencies of uniting love, which encircle as
brothers in the faith all who believe in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
and bow the knee in the name of Jesus. All treaties between Christian states
are concluded in this good faith. This is the eternal and immovable founda-
tion, other than which can no man lay. The loosening of the European states
from this foundation, which has hitherto borne their history, their laws, their
life, would entail their internal, and thus also their external dissolution. For all
must fall that falls away from God; but the Rock of Christ will remain, and on
it even that which has fallen may be rebuilt by repentance.
Upon it is founded, thirdly, the Christian Church, and the evangelical

Church especially glories in this, to the exclusion of any other foundation,
though her glorying has been obscured by erroneous doctrines, and still more
so by false brethren. The Church, into which we were born by Holy Baptism,
is the congregation of those who are united, or ought to be united, not chiefly
by the material ties of consanguinity or country, but by the spiritual bond of
faith and of the love arising therefrom. Just because sin has destroyed the
202 Breves et categoricæ; confessiones, quæ unanimem catholicæ christianæ fidei consensum et confessionem
orthodoxorum et veræ; ecclesiæ amplectuntur, ut sunt symbolum Apostolicum, Nicænum et

Athanasianum.—Conc. Form. Epit. p. 571.

union of the natural man not only with God, but also with his neighbour,
must this union be restored in a higher order by the grace of redemption.
Jesus in His compassionate love had and chose to die for all men, that He
might gather together the children of God that were scattered abroad (John xi.
52). The uniting power of His love prevails over all that separates man from
man. As it creates within the natural associations of the family and the state
more intimate unions and more spiritual friendships than these, so too does it
surpass all the limits, which nature or law or nationality, language and cus-
tom have drawn, and attracts and invites from east and west, and even from
the ends of the world, into its sacred communion (Matt. viii. 11). The con-
sciousness of the union of all natural differences and separations in the love of
Christ comes forward with the greatest clearness in the apostolic writings,
especially Gal. iii. 28: here there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond
nor free, there is neither male nor female; but all are one in Christ Jesus (comp.
1 Cor. xii. 13 sqq.; Eph. ii. 14 sqq.). The more sharply and distinctly the old
principle of the hostile separation of different nationalities is amidst the min-
gling of populations, again showing itself in the movements of the day, the
more needful, but also the more humiliating, is the exhortation to the union of
Christian nations under Christ their Head. The love which unites in Christ
must not be hindered by difference of nationality, of condition or of sex, but
all must be united under Him who is the Head and Lord of all mankind, the
royal High Priest and Redeemer of the whole race. Not that these differences
are to disappear in our union with Christ; on the contrary, so far as they are
ordained of God, they are to remain, and to form not separated contrasts, but
only different members, all fitly joined together and compacted in the organ-
ism of that spiritual body of Christ which is His Church (Eph. iv. 15, 16). Such
a union is equally opposed both to the hostile severance and to the confused
levelling of natural or intellectual distinctions. Such revolutionary equalism
and communism, the result of envy and plunder, is as decidedly condemned
by the Church, as those oppressions or selfish boastings of the different
members of the community, which are ever and again breaking forth from the
same cause. Nothing is in this respect more instructive or worthy of considera-
tion, chiefly by the spiritual community, —the Church,—but then also by
every moral society, than the connected 12th and 13th chapters of the First
Epistle to the Corinthians. In the former is pointed out the diversity of gifts,

offices and powers, which proceed from the one Spirit, Lord and God, and
form one spiritual body with various members, like the natural body, whose
very different members God has so blended, that there is no schism in the
body, whose members so care for one another, that if one suffer all the others
suffer with it, and if one be honoured all rejoice with it (vv. 4-27). The apostle
then, after again bringing forward the gradations of offices and gifts in the
Church, and closing with an exhortation to desire earnestly the best gifts,
passes on with the words: Yet show I unto you a more excellent way, to his
noble commendation of love, without which all offices, gifts and powers,
however high or great, profit nothing, while it is itself, in all its manifesta-
tions, the all-uniting bond of perfectness. All is indeed united in God, and
God is love, to whom the faith, hope and love of men cleave.
It is true that this wonderfully beautiful description of love—which the

tongues of men and angels are unable adequately to praise, which far sur-
passes all mysteries, all knowledge, all the faith and all the deeds of man, and
yet at the same time condescends to the deepest gentleness, humility and
patience—is chiefly a description of the love of God, or of God Himself in
Christ, and through Him in Christians. By this love, wherewith they are loved
and love, they are with all their variety still one in Christ, all members of His
body and of one another. It is by and in this holy love, that the Church lives
by and in God (1 John iv. 16) as the community of saints; the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost keeps it in
close embrace throughout all times and places. The Christian state too, and
the Christian family, should serve the Lord in love; but their basis is in the
realm of nature, their service indirect and chiefly concerned with various
human and earthly circumstances. It is the great and important service of the
working days, which is chiefly imposed on them; and though labour is itself
worship, it still has to struggle so fiercely with the thorns and thistles in the
field of this world, and to be so occupied upon its often impure soil, as not to
come off without damage and uncleanness and manifold secular distractions.
It is the Church which gathers Christians from secular distractions to the sanc-
tuary, and, relieving them from the daily yoke of labour, unites them for the
direct solemnization of that pure worship, which, through faith in the gospel
of the love of God in Christ, is a sacred offering of love brought by God to

man and by man to God through the God-man. In the province of the Church
and its worship, uniting love is one and all, the beginning and ending, the
principle, means and object. That on which everything here depends is the
reconciliation and union of man with God and with his fellow-man. Hence the
apostle sums up the whole duty of the preacher’s office in the one petition: Be
ye reconciled with God; and grounds this petition of Divine love upon the
fact, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, that He gave
Him to be an atoning offering for our sins, and communicates to us in Him the
righteousness which avails before God. The central point, both of Christianity
and especially of Christian worship, which finds its climax in the holy com-
munion of Christians with Christ, is that reconciling love, which unites all
hearts with God and each other. Reconciliation is based upon the great and
perfect sacrifice of love made by God in Christ, and offered to all who believe
in Him, that they may in return give Him their hearts, and, united by His love
as members of His body, may, with Him, their High Priest, exercise their
priesthood in common worship. As then the worship of the Christian Church
essentially rests upon its priesthood in Christ, so too does it upon the idea of
sacrifice, without which there is no priesthood and no worship, and which
everywhere demands, that man should devote himself to God, and presup-
poses, as in the sphere of the gospel, that God devotes Himself for man. Unit-
ing love is perfected in devotion and sacrifice. God being Holy Love, His ser-
vice is a service of love, just as the service of love is also (Jas. i. 27) that of
God.203 The worship of the Church is concentrated in the communion of the
sacrifice of Christ’s holy love, which on the Divine side is communicated
(sacramentally) to the Church both by the sacrament itself and by the preach-
ing of the gospel, and on the human side (sacrificially) is received and
responded to with thanksgiving, prayer and praise. This is the perpetual sacri-
fice (juge sacrificium) in the worship of the New Testament, as the Apology of
the Confession of Augsburg well expresses it in the excellent section de Missa
(especially: quid sit sacrificium et quce sint sacrificii species, p. 253, ed. Rech.). The
central point is and remains the one and everlasting atoning sacrifice of Christ
203 Hence Augustine justly observes, that the whole sacrificial worship of the Old Testameut typically
signifies the heart’s offering of love, de civit. Dei, lib. viii. c. 5: Quæcunque igitur in ministeris tabernaculi
sine templi multis medis de sacrificiis leguntur divinitus esse præcepta, ad dilectionem Dei et proximi
significandam referuntur; in his enim duobus præceptis, ut scriptum est, tota Lex pendet et Prophetæ.

(unicum in mundo sacrificium propitiatorium, videlicet mors Christi), which in
Christian worship is surrounded by eucharisic sacrifices, such as: sacrificia
laudis, prædicatio Evangelii,fides, invocatio, gratiarum actio, confessio, afflictiones
sanctorum, imo omnia bona opera sanctorum.204 Of all these actions is com-
pounded that one great and true sacrifice, which the Christian Church, while
always, as the body of the Lord in the communion of the members, giving and
uniting herself through her high-priestly Head to God, is perpetually
offering.205 These views are quite in conformity with Scripture. St. Peter
summons the priestly race of Christians to this spiritual act of sacrifice (1 Pet.
ii. 5). The Epistle to the Hebrews (xiii. 15) expressly mentions the sacrifice of
praise and confession in connection with our Lord’s sacrifice on Golgotha,
and then adds also (ver. 16) that of mercy and doing good, which, though in a
feeble form, is to the present day connected with Christian public worship.
With respect to the preaching of the gospel, the Eucharist is not to be cele-
brated as a remembrance of Christ, without the Lord’s death being shown
forth (1 Cor. xi.; comp. Rom. xv. 16), where apostolic preaching is called a sac-
rificial ministering of the gospel of God, that the heathen might be an offering
acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Ghost. St. Paul, too (Phil. ii. 17),
speaks of the sacrifice and service (λειτουργία) of our faith; and there as well
as in 2 Tim. iv. 6 calls his sufferings in this service a being offered up. So, too,
when he proceeds from a statement of the mercy of God and of the righteous-
ness of faith to moral exhortation, he comprises the entire Christian life in the
notion of sacrifice and Divine service: I exhort you therefore, brethren, by the
mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable
to God, which is your reasonable service (Rom. xii. 1).206
Thus in the New Testament also, which is the truth and completion of
the Old, is there a lively interpenetration of faith, love and life, and of the
whole worship of Christians by the ethic fundamental notion of sacrifice. This
204 Verum sacrificium est omne opus, quod agitur ut sancta societate inhæreamus Deo.—August. de
civit. Dei, lib. viii. c. 6.

205 Comp. Augustine, ibid.: De vero perfectoque sacrificio. Hoc est sacrificium Christianorum: multi
unum corpus in Christo. Quod etiam Sacramento altaris fidelibus noto frequentat Ecclesia, 1 Cor. x. 16
sqq.
206 Comp. on prayer and sacrifice, Rothe, theolog. Ethik, Book i. § 238, p. 370, and Book ii. § 412.

again has its full truth in the perfect notion of holy love, which the more com-
pletely it devotes or sacrifices itself, the more is it sanctifying and reconciling,
purifying and uniting. This vital and fundamental thought, by which the evan-
gelical worship (as proved by the passages quoted) is at the same time very
decidedly distinguished from the Mass,—that service of works, which per-
verts a sacrifice of thanksgiving into an atonement,—has alas been more and
more cast into the background in the evangelical Church, in proportion as,
through the onesided predominance of the doctrinal interest instead of union
in faith, love and thanksgiving (Eucharist), the inculcation of the pedagogic
and didactic object of public worship has become in the course of years more
prominent. It had consequently, until the recent revival of the liturgical ele-
ment, dwindled into mere preaching, often mere moral preaching, and was
therefore so dependent upon the individual personality of the clergyman, that
the spiritual importance of the congregation in Protestant worship, which
often consisted only in a passive hearing of the words of man, was almost
entirely destroyed. For in such sermon-hearing where one spoke for all, and
often out of his own mind, the congregation frequently took no more part
than in hearing Mass, and were only kept awake as in one case by the bell, so
in the other by the bell of the alms’ bag (Klingbeutel). In fact, self-righteous,
moral preaching, in which “profound silence was observed concerning the
righteousness of faith” (Augsb. Conf. Art. 20), would have been as great a
matter of abhorrence to Luther, as selfish, hypocritical Masses in a corner
(Winkelmessen), 207 the former as well as the latter being opposed to the faith by
which alone we are justified, because it is only thereby that we lay hold of the
sacrifice of Christ and become, by surrendering to it, reconciled and united to
God as members of the body of Christ. That the preaching of the gospel, or the
notion of evangelical faith, excludes that of sacrifice is an erroneous opinion,
207 Silent Mass, which, even when there are auditors or spectators in the church, precludes not only by
the use of Latin, which might at all events be learnt, but still more by the low mumbling of the celebrant,
the possibility of intelligent and conscious participation, and thus becomes an act of private devotion on
the part of a priest, communicating only with himself, has something so selfish in form and so contra-
dictory to the notion of a communion service and a service of communion, that it may justly be said of it
(1 Cor. xiii.): Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and know all mysteries, and have not
charity (which communicates what it says and thinks), I am become a tinkling cymbal. In fact, it is the
tinkling bell and not the priest’s voice, which shows what is taking place. It can but damage the Romish
Church to leave such an abusus Missæ unreformed.

already sufficiently refuted by the above quoted passages (Phil. ii. 17 and
Rom. xv. 16). It is true, as the Epistle to the Hebrews so clearly shows, that the
worship of the gospel of reconciliation annuls the expiatory, sacrificial wor-
ship of the law, and tolerates no kind of adoration, which presumes, to the
dishonour of Christ’s sacrifice and merits, to offer our own merits and worthi-
ness, or to present our possessions as means of reconciliation with God. The
worship of the gospel consists essentially in appropriating the gracious bless-
ings of God, and faith is a worship, which, laying hold of the benefits
offered,208 and dying to sin in penitent self-denial, shares and takes part in the
perfect sacrifice and eternal priesthood of Christ in communion with Him, the
Head. Faith is the bond of union with Christ, whereby the soul receives His
grace and all its blessings, nay, partakes in Holy Communion of the communi-
cation of His nature and His sacrifice for us, and it cannot receive these great
gifts of God, without the fire of human love being immediately kindled by
Divine love, the sacrificial flames of praise and thanksgiving arising, and
heart and life becoming devoted to the Lord, confessing Him in word and
work and praising Him even in suffering and sympathy. All this, as essen-
tially connected therewith, belongs to the “sacrifice and service of faith;” and
hence the Apology, ibid., not only designates faith also as a sacrifice, but also
combines with it, in the same notion, both what it presupposes, viz. the
preaching of the gospel, and its effects, viz. adoration, thanksgiving, confes-
sion, the works of love and the sufferings of the pious. All are parts of the
Christian’s sacrifice of himself, his heart and life, in which he devotes himself
to God, serves his neighbour and unites himself to both by love, which is the
fulfilling of the whole law and also of the prophets. Faith is the subjective cen-
tral point of union of this worship of God which fills up the whole life, as
Christ is its objective central point of union. The most real combination of the
objective and subjective, the actual and personal union of the Lord with His
believing people, takes place in the Holy Communion and Eucharist. As the
Divine communication (communicato cum communicantibus) it is essentially a
sacrament, wherein the Lord unites with His Church, and its members also
unite with each other, but the notion of the uniting sacrament does not exclude
208 Fides est λατρεία, quæ accessit a Deo oblata beneficia. Cultus et λατρεία Evangelii est accipere bona
a Deo; econtra cultus Legis est, bona nostra Deo offerre et exhibere. Nihil antem possumus Deo offere
nisi antea reconciliati et renati.—Apol. pp. 69 and 126.

but include that of the uniting sacrifice. For the fact that the Lord offers Him-
self for us, and graciously gives Himself to us, must again have the conse-
quence of our thankfully (eucharistically) offering and giving ourselves to
Him. And as He gives and appropriates Himself to us as our uniting Head, so
too have we to appropriate ourselves to Him as His members. This is effected
by our abandoning and mortifying our selfish ownership and lovingly trans-
ferring and devoting, i.e. offering ourselves to Him as His possession. Thus it
comes to pass, that while we are all partakers of the one bread, which is the
communion of the body of Christ, we, who are many, become one body,
namely, the body of the Lord, and thus also enter as priests into the commu-
nion of His sacrifice, which perpetually avails in the eternal sanctuary; for
they who eat of the sacrifices are (partakers with the altar, E. V.) in the com-
munion of the altar (1 Cor. x. 17, 18). The altar, as the holiest place of the sanc-
tuary, is the place both of the sacrament and sacrifice, of the offering and the
communication, of the oblation and benediction, of reception in faith and
devotion in prayer; it is the table of the Lord, plentifully furnished with the
offerings of love and its return.
There can therefore be no doubt that, in the evangelical sense also, all
Christian worship—which like Christianity in general aims at the union of
man with God and with his neighbour, and therefore culminates in the holy
communion, appears in and with it as the eucharistic offering of the New Tes-
tament. This the Church united to the Lord as His members is perpetually to
offer here below, therewith consecrating itself to Him as His possession, for
His imperishable memorial, till He shall visibly return in His royal and high-
priestly glory. Then will He, as He once in His humiliation completed on
Golgotha His sacrifice of reconciliation, so also perfect on the summit of His
glorification the sacrifice of thanksgiving. For He, the Eternal Son, will then,
after the destruction of the last enemy and the expulsion of all that is irrecon-
cilable, as the Lamb of God, who has taken away the sin of the world, in such
wise present and subject Himself and His reconciled and renewed world to
the Father, as an offering of praise and thanksgiving, that God as all uniting
love, happily triumphant in all, will be all in all (1 Cor. xv. 24-28). Then will
the Lord’s high-priestly prayer be perfectly fulfilled in the glorious and com-
plete union of the Godhead and mankind (John xvii. 21-24).

There will not be lacking egoists, who, disliking the notion of sacrifice
in general, will esteem this doctrine of sacrifice, without which the notion of
uniting love and therefore that also of Christian worship is incomplete, as a
suspicious approximation to Romish doctrine, because, in entire contradiction
to the view of the Reformers, they regard as evangelical, that which is merely
in opposition to Roman Catholicism, and not that which is in harmony with
Apostolic Catholicism.209 Would that they might learn from St. Peter (1 Pet. ii.
5-10), that true building up into a spiritual house of God consists precisely in
offering up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, and
that without such no one can claim to belong to God’s priestly people, whose
High Priest is Christ. The Apology of the Augsburg Confession210 does not
scruple, in harmony with the Fathers of the Church, to call the Lord’s Supper,
the perpetual offering of the New Testament, because it is there viewed not
merely as the isolated ceremony, but in its whole connection with the preach-
ing of the gospel, faith, invocation and thanksgiving.211 There is no religion in
209 Comp. the confirmation of our view in Harless’ Zeitschrift für Protestantismus und Kirche (18 B. iii.
Sept. 1849) Aphorismen über die Abendmahlsliturgie, p. 179 sqq., where “the sacrificial nature and import
inherent, as well as its specially sacramental character, in the sacrament of the altar” is brought forward,
and it is lamented that, amidst our just opposition to the erroneous notion of the Mass as a propitiatory
sacrifice, “the true and genuinely evangelical eucharistic notion of sacrifice has not received due theoret-
ical and practical recognition.” Nothing is more historically authenticated, than that the Lord’s Supper
“was Divinely instituted to be an offering of the Church as well as a sacrament.” —P. 180.
210 Comp. Höfling’s articles, which appeared in succession from 1839 to 1843, on the teaching of the
most ancient among the Fathers, concerning sacrifice in the life and worship of Christians.
211 Facile patimur, Missam intelligi juge sacrificium, modo ut tota Missa intelligatur, hoc est ceremonia
cum prædicatione Evangelii, fide, invocatione, gratiarum actione; nam hæc simul conjuncta sunt juge
sacrificium Novi Testamenti—Apol. l.c. p. 260. Comp. on the words of Institution, J. C. Rodatz, in the
Zeitschrift für lutherische Theologie und Kirche, 1843, p. 25 sq.: “The Catholic doctrine of the Lord’s Supper,
or of the Mass, has not infrequently been condemned by us in a onesided manner. The expression that
the Mass is a propitiatory offering, is certainly unscriptural and in more than one respect inappropriate;
yet originally it can hardly have denoted anything else, than that it is Christ sacrificed as an atonement
for our sins, His body and blood, which are administered to communicants in the Lord’s Supper (a thor-
oughly scriptural thought, entirely in agreement with the words of institution); and that on the other
side the Church receiving and celebrating the Holy Supper, offers itself with vows, praise and thanks-
giving to God, to live and die to the Lord. When further it was not merely taught that the Church, cele-
brating the Lord’s Supper, dedicated herself as a sacrifice to God, but also offered a sacrifice to God in
Christ, in His body and blood, brought Christ Himself as an offering to the Father, the thought originally
involved in this was only, that the Church, supplicating and confidently expecting the forgiveness of

general without sacrifice, i.e. without surrender to God. The religions of law
everywhere require atoning sacrifice; the gospel, as surely as it is an
announcement and proffer of the love and greatest benefits of God, demands
the thank-offering or Eucharist, which unites in the closest manner to Christ
sacrificed for us, and combines the members of Christ into one body with Him
in faith and love (1 Cor. x. 16 sq.). This has from the beginning been the view
of all Christendom, which has only acknowledged as genuine members of
Christ and of His Church, partakers of the Lord’s Supper. He who thinks dif-
ferently, who separates himself from the communion and worship of Chris-
tians, bursts the bond of uniting love, which joins them to Christ and to His
Church, and thereby excommunicates himself. Such an one, so long as he
perseveres in this state of excommunication, is no longer a living member of
the Church, and, not fulfilling the spiritual duties of a member, has no claim
to corresponding spiritual privileges in the Church. Nothing but actual
communication with Christ, the Eternal High Priest, gives a share in the gen-
eral priesthood, and only he who has this consecration can be a presbyter in a
Christian Church, and exercise presbyterial (priestly) influence upon the
preservation of Christian piety, morality and discipline, first in his own family
and then in the church. So, too, if the Church is to maintain its Christian char-
acter, and not to dispense mere parochial assistance, such persons only are
qualified for the loving offices of the Diaconate, or for the care of the sick and
poor in the Church, as are, like the first deacons (Acts vi. 3), filled with the
Holy Spirit of love and wisdom, and impelled by Him to the active worship of
visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction and keeping themselves
unspotted by the world (Jas. i. 17).
We have here reached the point at which, in the doctrine of Divine unit-
ing love, we come in contact with the constitu- of the Christian Church and
congregation. The German evangelical Church not esteeming any of its histori-
cal forms as of Divine necessity, we need not enter into the disputed question
as to the superiority of the episcopal and consistorial, or the presbyterial and
synodal forms, which moreover by no means exclude, but rather complete
sins from God, appealed in faith from the Holy God to the sacrifice of Christ appropriated in the Lord’s
Supper. Subsequently such expressions were certainly used in a superstitious sense, and the Catholic
doctrine of the Lord’s Supper was disfigured by a mass of sufficiently known errors.

each other. These questions are, especially as their replies depend very much
on historical dates, more of a judicial than an ethic nature. Each of these
forms, even the best authorized, if pervaded by a spirit of selfishness and
ambition, is pernicious to the Church, while on the other hand either, if filled
by the spirit of uniting and ministering love, brings her prosperity. Above all
things therefore is it now needful to oppose that arrogant spirit of the age and
of the world, which, reacting against former authorities, strives, in the Church
as well as in the state, to incorporate itself and to gain the supremacy in repre-
sentative forms and elective bodies. The great popularity which this effort has
obtained, because it is acceptable to carnal liberalism, testifies against it and
will only too soon be exchanged for its opposite, when the principle, here
alone valid though little pleasing to the flesh, is asserted, that in the whole
province of the Church everything depends not on ruling, but on serving, and
that all privileges are enjoyed on the condition of difficult and sacred duties. It
is the unchangeable Church law of Him who founded His Church when He
was in the form of a servant, that the height of power therein depends upon
the depth of service, and that all church government must also be Church ser-
vice (Matt. xx. 25-28).212 And like the Lord, were also His apostles, who as
servants of Christ nowhere set up a paramount authority, an imperium, but
only desired to exercise a service, a ministerium (1 Cor. iv. 1 sqq.), and that not
of constraint but of the love which sacrifices itself for others (διακονία
καταλλαγῆς, 2 Cor. v. 14 sqq.). It is true that authority is committed to them,
not indeed by the flock to which they are called to minister, but by the Lord of
the Church, to whom all power is given in heaven and earth, through their
fellow-servants in His Church,—to bind and to loose on earth and in
heaven,—to bind by the holy law of God, and to loose by the gospel of the
Redeemer, which they are to proclaim,—and to make a covenant between
God and men by the holy sacraments, which they are to administer (potestas
clavium). But with this official authority, combined as it is with the word of
Christ, and which was, by the laying on of hands in ordination, conferred
upon the public office of bishop or preacher for the Church of the Lord, they
were not to rule over the flock, but to minister for its benefit in the name of the
Saviour, who came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His
212 Comp. Gaupp, practische Theologie, Part 1, Berlin 1848, p. 41.

life a ransom for many. He has set bishops to feed the Church of God, which
He hath purchased with His own blood (Acts xx. 28). They are to be the ser-
vants of the Church, not that the Church is their master or authorizer, for this
on the contrary the Lord alone is, who sends them, according to the order of
His Church, to minister to the flock for His sake (2 Cor. iv. 5), and gives them
authority to be in His stead the messengers of His reconciliation and the bear-
ers of His peace. And all this is not of men but of God, who was in Christ rec-
onciling the world uuto Himself and hath committed to them the ministry of
reconciliation (2 Cor. v. 18 sqq.). The love of Christ is to constrain them to this
ministry of reconciliation, that love of Christ which is to animate all who
believe in Him, and to unite them in all their variety, as incorporate members,
to His spiritual body, under Him the Head, from whom the whole body fitly
joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according
to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the
body to the edifying of itself in love (Eph. iv. 16). This apostolic statement,
corresponding with the above-mentioned particulars (1 Cor. xii. and xiii.),
comprehends the foundation and essence of the constitution of the Christian
Church, whose value and truth depend upon its uniting the variety of gifts,
offices and powers in the spirit of Divine love, whereby each becomes a
member of another and serves him, and the whole body with the gift, which
he has received, as a good steward of the manifold grace of God, to His glory
in Christ Jesus (1 Pet. iv. 10 sq.; Rom. xii. 3 sq.). This variety of the members,
which in the ancient Church came forth especially in the Episcopate, Pres-
byterate, and Diaconate, may be more or less developed; one or another may
fall back undeveloped, there may be a deficiency of gifts and powers, but still
if only those which exist are pervaded and united by the love of Christ, the
Church is in a far better condition, than if they were present in greater abun-
dance, and not united in the right spirit, but separating through selfish
motives and setting up divisions. The highest gifts and greatest deeds then
lose their value (1 Cor. xiii. 1-3), while the less become great through love,
which the less it seeks its own is the more precious in God’s sight.
In opposition to an age which, ruled by fanatical selfishness, has

everywhere broken up the organic membership of classes as such in human
society, dissolved the old brotherly associations of those of like vocation, and

is striving to transform state and Church into conglomerates of Epicurean
atoms, it is needful to maintain decidedly the fact, that they do not consist of
mere masses and numerical aggregates, but that their stability depends upon
those classes or orders of life and its callings, which God has from the first
ordained for the maintenance, protection and enlightenment of the human
race. These essential and fundamental orders are in their most general out-
lines the working, military and teaching classes, represented by the paternal,
the magisterial and the ecclesiastical authority, and which, by organically act-
ing upon and within each other, promote the different interests of the three
great provinces of life, the family, the state and the Church. It must be evident
to all, that the family is both itself a little community and also participates in
the life of the larger communities, in that of both the Church and the state, as
these do in that of the family, and that the father is not merely the maintainer,
but also the ruler and pastor of his family. It is equally certain that the state,
down to the town and the village, does not consist of the masses of its inhabi-
tants, but of the families, congregations (Gemeinde) and associations com-
prised in it, whose natural rulers it concentrates in various manners in its
higher and more general authorities. It can do no otherwise, and it is at the
same time its deepest necessity to combine firmly, in higher, freer and more
general union, with the religious community out of which it first partly
arose,213 and, like the family, to let all its laws and ordinances be consecrated,
ennobled and sanctioned thereby. All historical states, down to the non-states
of revolution, have ever been animated by this endeavour, an undeniable tes-
timony to the internal necessity of such union. So also the Church has not
received mere troops of unconnected individuals, but has drawn within the
circle of her influence not only individual souls, but also their connections,
ways of life and circles of affection, so far as these were of an ethic nature, in
order to redeem them from the service of sin and selfishness, which prevailed
213 This has been twice the case e.g. with Old Prussia, first as the state of a Catholic order, and secondly
as a Protestant dukedom, and more or less with all the German states of mediseval or modern times. The
history of Germany and the history of the Western Church are so inseparable that for a thousand years
Christian and German were regarded as synonymous terms. It is indeed hard that the rulers of modern
states, after having enriched themselves with the possessions of the Church, should now in return
deprive it also of the last remains of its thousand-year-old immunities, by taxing ecclesiastics and the
small remaining estates of ecclesiastical communities.

in them, and to give them their due rank and subordination in the kingdom of
God. Hence not only are individuals of the working and military classes
members of the Church, but these classes themselves, the family and married
class with its various ramifications, and the magisterial class, with the conse-
cration of the power committed to it by God, are incorporated into the
Church, as Divine ordinances, which each in its way have to serve the sacred
purposes of God in Christian love, and to share in both the royal and the
priestly office of Christ. To rule the Church by human power as little becomes
them214 as it does the learned class, and neither the despotic commands of
rulers nor the resolutions of majorities among members of the Church can
hold good against the word of God and the creed of the Church, which is
based upon it. To this no member holds the relation of master and maker, but
all occupy the position of ministering and maintaining organs (Matt. xxiii.
8-11). Hence it is the duty and privilege not only of the learned, but of the two
other classes, to take care that the stability of the Church, with respect both to
the maintenance of its pure creed in the worship and customs of its members,
and to its rights and possessions in general, is unviolated and undiminished.
Members therefore, not only of the clerical, but also of the magisterial and
domestic classes, belong to the synodal representation of the Church. Accord-
ing to Reformation principles concerning the ecclesiastical importance and
Christian dignity of these two classes, which were depreciated by the Romish
Church as absolutely secular, and in contrast asserted by our older divines to
be, together with the clerical class, the ordines hierarchici, their right in the
Church follows as a necessary consequence. It is true that the rights of the
ruling class have, in consequence of the historical concatenation of events in
the evangelical Church, been asserted in a manner which has only too much
outweighed and suppressed those of the clerical aud still more of the domes-
tic class, and has thereby but too frequently secularized both itself and the
Church. But to trace back on this account the participation of the ruling class
in Church government, and therefore also the union of Church and state, only
to temporary necessity, to attack it as an impropriety to be done away with,
and to oppose to its former preponderance an equally onesided preponder-
214 For the state to rule the Church is as unevangelical as for the Church to rule the state, or as the min-
gling and identification of both. Comp. Augsb. Conf. Art. 28. On the contrary, their difference is as much
to be maintained as their union.

ance of the clerical order, or indeed of the mere demos, can by no means be
justified, and must tend to the great injury of both the Church and the state.
The Church, if consistent with the greatness of her mission, cannot but claim
to exercise a real influence upon the state and the family and therefore upon
education, and a corresponding influence in the Church is equally due to
these provinces, by co-operation in their proper spheres for the maintenance
of her truth, the promotion of her discipline, and the protection of her spiri-
tual labours and works of love. A sound and good form of Church govern-
ment exists only where, as well as the learned class to which the service of the
Church is specially commended, the military and working, in other words the
ruling and domestic classes, are so represented in the Church and in its syn-
odal unions, that any selfish encroachment of one class is balanced by the
counterpoise of the others, and where these three Divine ordinances condition
and assure, in harmonious co-operation, upon the foundation of the Divine
word and the Church’s creed, the propagation, furtherance and establishment
of the kingdom of God. This can only be done by self-denial, without which
there is no following Christ in general, and therefore no following Him in the
special office or class. The attempt to reconstitute, organize and unite the
Church, by new synods chosen according to arbitrary proportions from num-
bers, and apart from these foundations and organic elements or without them,
as ordained and given by God, is a procedure belonging to the extravagances
of the brain-sick year 1848, whose folly might be ridiculed if their destructive-
ness were not matter of lamentation. Constituent assemblies in the very
changeable region of the state have already so proved themselves destituent
(destituerende), that the attempt to transfer them to the sacred soil of the
Church might seem an insanity, which could not be expected from a theolo-
gian.215
215 It is highly questionable whether the editors of the Zeitschrift für die unirte Kirche (?) can still pass for
theologians, after having placed in their preface (1851), at the head of their principles, which can scarcely
be distinguished from free Church (freigemeindlichen) ones, the following explanation of the doctrine of
justification. This marvellous statement is as follows: We will continue to assert the evangelical axiom of
justification by faith alone in its full strictness and in all its consequences; i.e., we will continue to take
our decided stand upon the principle of religiousness, and to abstain from all dogmatism, whether of a
speculative or a judicial nature, whether that of confessionalism or of the consensus and of fundamental
truths.

These classes or class arrangements of God, in which Christians are to
exercise uniting and serving love,216 would suffice for the preservation of the
Church in ordinary and well-ordered conditions, but are insufficient when
either the first planting or founding of the Church, or its reconstitution when
decayed, or its reorganization after falling into distress or disorder, is in ques-
tion. It is then that the need of the extraordinary mission occurs, whether of
foreign missions for the extension of the Christian Church beyond its present
external limits, or home missions for its revival within them. It is the sacred
law of uniting love desirous of comprising all under the one headship of the
Lord, which makes the care of both foreign and home missions the duty of
Christians. Christianity must not let itself be confined, like the religions of
antiquity, by national or local limits, but as the bond of union between all
mankind must spread over the whole earth, and, according to the Lord’s
express command, be preached to all nations. The Church is unfaithful to Him
and to herself if, forgetting the duty of missions, she confines her efforts to
herself, and extending her love of her neighbour only to her own neighbour-
hood, more and more narrows it, a course of action which but too easily leads
to the maxim that every man is his own neighbour. The wide circle of love
encloses the narrower circle in its large-heartedness, so that the support of
foreign missions will never be detrimental but on the contrary advantageous
to the promotion of home charities, while the narrower circles are but too
inclined not only to exclude the wider, but also more and more to narrow
themselves. Hence the Church, whose Divine mission extends, even under the
most restricted earthly circumstances, to the end of the world (Matt. xxviii.
20), must strive, with never-ceasing love, to spread the preaching of the gospel
and the blessings of Christianity into those heathen lands, where its light has
not yet shined. Genuine universal love to man is proved not by that convenient
indifference, which thinks it may pronounce them blessed in their natural
barbarism, without the gospel, but by that self-sacrificing labour, which
brings them the gospel and its saving blessings. Such love, which finds its
brethren not only at hand but far off, will never rest till the world-embracing
promise of the Lord, that there shall be one flock under one shepherd, is ful-
filled. Nevertheless, as surely as the existing Church has her regular and offi-
216 Evangelium postulat in talibus ordinationibus excercere caritatem.—Confess. Aug. Art. xvi.

cially-ordered circle of operation within her legally prescribed boundaries, so
certainly do foreign missions belong not to her ordinary, but to her extraordi-
nary vocation. Hence her official authorities will indeed always take a lively
interest in them, but they will have the more to abstain from any legal pre-
scriptions concerning them, the more the free impulse and special vocation of
a love for the brethren extending beyond the boundaries of home, and ready
to make extraordinary sacrifices, must be depended on for the promotion of
the work. It is therefore quite in accordance with the nature of the case that
free associations should be formed, laying down their own rules in accor-
dance with general Church principles, and that missionary houses should be
founded, supported by the prayers and offerings of the faithful, to educate
missionaries, and to send them out under the consecration and blessing of the
Church, into the dark regions of heathenism, that the light of the Lord may
arise upon them (Isa. lx.). The great orders or brotherhoods of former times
show how great a need for such associations, besides the usual Church offi-
cials, existed in the earlier centuries, and what great sacrifices were made for
the objects of the Church. They also prove that such associations must indeed
be free, though they need not therefore be loose combinations, but that they
may, on the contrary, be held together in firm union by the self-denying
power of devoted love, according to self-imposed rules, and that the more this
is the case, the more also will they effect. It is certainly true that the self-right-
eousness, often cleaving to their performances, their frequent obscurations of
the pure doctrine of the gospel, and unjust misconceptions of the regular offi-
cial class, have often dimmed their value before God. Yet to depreciate them is
least of all becoming in the modern despisers of Christian association, who,
without furnishing or sacrificing, doing or suffering anything for higher spiri-
tual purposes, are yet deeply plunged in the Pelagian self-complacence of
rationalistic illuminism. It is matter of rejoicing, that in recent times the indis-
pensable necessity of Christian association, not merely for the purpose of mis-
sions to Jews and heathens, but also for all the other objects of Christian love
and mercy, is again recognised, and has striven for its satisfaction by the for-
mation of societies sometimes of far-reaching aims and often accompanied by
very praiseworthy results. It cannot however be mistaken that these societies
are for the most part but very loosely or even not at all connected with the
Church, and have but a very lax and irregular organization. The spiritual asso-

ciations of antiquity were inclined to the restrictions of vows of often exagger-
ated strictness, but these on the contrary favour a convenient and unre-
strained laxity, from which nothing great or powerful can proceed. In any
case we have, in this department, still much to learn, especially so far as moral
earnestness, the obligation of rules, and extent of sacrifice are concerned, from
our forefathers and fellow-Christians of the Romish Church, and far more
reason for shame than for self-exaltation.
This applies particularly to the operations of the Inner Mission, to works

of mercy towards the poorer members of the Christian community, who are
destitute of daily food both for soul and body, and who must starve and per-
ish unless assistance is given them. How the Lord had compassion on the
multitude, who had no shepherd, and supplied first their spiritual and then
their material wants, feeding the hungry in an extraordinary manner, is
related by all four evangelists, in the miracle of the loaves and fishes, as an
example to us. This His compassionate love must never die out in His Church.
There was a special almoner and reliever of the poor in the apostolic college,
and as, according to the saying of Christ, we shall always have the poor with
us, as well as the sick and weak, widows and orphans, a constant guardian-
ship both spiritual and temporal of all these is a necessity for the Christian
Church. This was provided for in the primitive Church at Jerusalem by the
appointment of deacons, and immense endowments have in the course of
ages been devoted in the Christian Church to such charitable objects. Of the
greater part of these endowments the Church has been in recent times
deprived, or they have been applied to a fund for a secular relief of the poor,
which cares only for the body and not for the soul also. It is, on account of the
unchristianization of the state, more than ever a sacred duty, not only most
carefully to preserve all that yet remains of both ecclesiastical establishments
and customs and of Church property in funds for the poor, hospitals, legacies,
estates, but also to give fresh animation to the task of applying them and to
elevate the operation in question, as Church work, from the mere care for the
body to efficient care for souls, without which it forfeits its Church character
and becomes merely parochial.217 But even the best ordered guardianship on
217 The maxim of Vincent de Paul must essentially apply to the Christian and Church care of the poor,
viz. that all care for the body is in rain, unless care for souls and spiritual assistance are combined with

the part of the Church by its proper organs, of whom there is everywhere a
deficiency, would not suffice in the great extent of poverty now existing, and
can least of all do so in these our days, when the dissolution of almost all
former corporate unions has produced a frightful mass of poor and isolated
proletarians, who only too much resemble sheep which have no shepherd and
are perishing in the wilderness. The experiences of the present have suffi-
ciently shown, that no material means at the disposal of the state, not to say
the Church, are capable of relieving their necessities, sunk as they are in mate-
rialism and egoism; while a care directed solely to their temporal needs can-
not be demanded of the Church in general. So long as society attains to no
organic membership of classes, all the care of the Church can only reach iso-
lated individuals among these wandering sheep, and the value of that care
must be estimated not by the amount of relief bestowed, but by the greatness
of the love, which is shown to the unconsoled and unloved misery of the poor,
who are left to themselves and therefore forsaken. The extinction of Divine
and human love in their hearts is that spiritual death, from which they must
be saved, not chiefly by the material means of life, but by the means and
proofs of Christian love, which can release them inwardly from the curse of
selfishness and reunite them with God and men. However atomistically dis-
solved and selfishly reduced to fragments may be the condition of our nation,
which for that very reason is in many respects no longer a genuine nation, but
only a multitude, the greater, the more immense is the task placed before unit-
ing and delivering Christian love, in the midst of the general disorder.218 But
all the more certain also is it, that the extraordinary need requires extraordi-
nary assistance, and that the existing ordinary means and official organs of
the Church are by no means sufficient for the present wants of the Inner Mis-
sion, but need further reinforcement and co-operation. From this they will the
less have to fear injury and to hope for success, the more they succeed in bring-
ing the auxiliary powers into active connection with Christian Church life and
preserving them therein, by means of the appointed clerical officials. Already
have the most pressing objects of this mission been met by the formation of
it, as is almost always proved by the ill success of merely secular care for the poor, and the increase
rather than the decrease of poverty thereby. Admirable, too, is the saying of Elizabeth Fry, that the soul
of care for the poor is care for souls; see also the very suggestive work of Merz, Armuth und Christenthum.
218 Comp. der deutsche Protestantismus, etc., 3rd edition, Frankfort 1850, p. 491 sqq.

various new associations, with larger or smaller circles of operation and com-
prehensive arrangements, among which the house of the brethren in the
rauhes Haus at Hamburg and the Deaconesses’ Institution at Kaiserswerth,
under whose beneficial influence the large royal institution of Bethany at Ber-
lin, and many other houses devoted to offices of mercy have sprung up, may
he specially mentioned as signal proofs of the strength of compassionate love,
which yet prevails in the evangelical Church. What has been already effected
and what has still to he done in this sphere, where and how it is to be under-
taken as the task of the Church, and what has already been undertaken in the
name of the German evangelical Church, needs, in place of any further detail,
only a reference to the Denkschrift an die deutsche Nation über die innere Mission
der deutschen evangelischen Kirche, by Wichern, the highly respected father of
the above-named house of brethren, and to its continuation in the Fliegenden
Blättem. Let us trust with its author in the Lord our God, that He will hearken
to the cry arising from the deep and extraordinary needs of both soul and
body in these our days, and pour out again, by the Holy Ghost, a fulness of
His pitying love, which shall mightily impel His believing people to works of
mercy. Then may we confidently hope, that, as in the days of the first love of
Christendom, followers of Christ will arise, who will in the extraordinary ser-
vice of its mission renounce not only the inordinate evil, but the ordinary
good things of this life, for the sake of devoting themselves the more free from
care, the more fully and unreservedly as poor preachers and brothers to the
poor, being also ready in case of need (διὰ τὴν ἐνεστῶσαν ἀνάγκην, 1 Cor. vii.
26) to decide upon the celibate condition, 219 to renounce a family life of their
own, and cheerfully to sacrifice their possessions, their own will and their
own life also (Mark viii. 35), for the self-denying service of the Inner Mission,
in brotherly union with its other servants.220 It would be a humiliating evi-
dence of the poverty of the evangelical Church, if the love of Christ, which
springs from faith in the greatness of His sacrifice, could not produce, when
and where necessary, as great offerings of self-denial, as a love not always free
from self-righteousness and selfish notions has often produced in the Romish
Church. The orders of Sisters and Brothers of Mercy, in whom any illusion
219 To such cases applies: Non æquamus conjugium et virginitatem, Apol. de conjugio sacerdotum, p. 249,
and p. 243: Virgiuitas donum est præstantius conjugio.

220 So Rothe, theolog. Ethik, Book iii. p. 424, though with a preponderance of the secular element.

about their own merit is entirely eclipsed by their self-denying ministries of
love to suffering humanity, still present an unattained model for the work of
the Inner Mission among ourselves. Would that it were given to our Church
to shine as brightly in the pure fire of love, as in the clear light of truth.
According to what has been said, it is very certain, that for the amendment of
our deeply disordered and corrupt condition, and for the healing of our des-
perate wounds, we stand in need of the largest measure and greatest gifts of
purifying and uniting, of healing and sanctifying love from the abundant
grace of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. For this then let us make our
earnest petition.
SECTION II. OF DIVINE OBEYING LOVE.
CHAPTER I. OF ACTIVE AND OBEYING LOVE.
LOVE is the fulfilling of the law when, as the law, i.e. the ideal of man
requires, it fills the whole heart and soul and mind, i.e. the whole man. It is
self - evident that the law and its object, the ideal and the real man, would
then be congruent, and the latter no longer live under the law as inadequate
thereto, but in the law as fulfilling it. Just so far as the will of man and the
requirements of the law are in congruity, is he no longer under the law (1 Tim.
i. 9), but acting in voluntary agreement with it; and such a will being sancti-
fied and good and conformable to, and one with the Divine will, needs no
longer the impulse of the Divine command. On the contrary, not only know-
ing, but willing itself to be one therewith, it freely and without any constraint
fulfils the command from the very instinct of indwelling love, from that
inward necessity, which in love is identical with freedom. This is the law put
in the heart and written in the mind (Jer. xxxi. 33; Ezek. xi. 19) (spiritus sanctus
et viva lex). With respect then to the first and greatest commandment of the
law, viz. to love God with all the heart, with all the soul, and with all the
mind, it is very certain that beyond this there can be no higher degree of per-
fection, that to surpass the commandment is impossible, and that the notion of

a merit exceeding it (meritum superabundans s. supererogatorium) not exactly
enjoined, but only recommended, is utterly inadmissible. On the contrary, the
duty of perfect love, as that wherein the Divine image in man consists, is not
only the duty of all alike, but there is moreover, as surely as all are sinners
and come short of the glory of God, no one man who perfectly fulfils it, in
whom perfect love has cast out all fear and all selfishness, so that he dwells
wholly in God and God in him (1 John iv. 16-18), and the law therefore is no
longer over, but only in him. So far as man does not abide in perfect love, and
therefore not in the fulfilling of the law, so far is he still outside and under it,
and is, even after he is born again, continually brought by it to the knowledge
of the sin which still cleaves to him, and at the same time led anew to Christ,
the source of all grace and love. Thus the psedagogic use of the law remains
even for the regenerate, in whose hearts purifying and uniting love already
prevails, so long as they are not fully penetrated thereby, but still affected by
selfishness whether in its coarser or more refined forms. The law must still
preserve even the sanctified man in the fear of God, and in that abasement,
whereby he is exalted, because God gives him higher grace, must keep him
from the pride, whereby he falls, because God resisteth him. This is the abid-
ing relation of the law to the heart, to the constant disposition of man, i.e. to
the habitual righteousness or unrighteousness which fills his heart with the
affections of either love or selfishness, and which manifests and proves itself
or becomes actual, according to the greater or less uniting power of love, in
those firm and constant (habitual) human associations, the Family, the State,
and the Church.221
This leads us in the present chapter from the contemplation of love as

abiding in disposition and association, to its contemplation as acting in
thought, word, and deed, and to that of its relation to the Divine law. Love as
a disposition is an habitual volition, a well-wishing, which by the constant
tendency of the will forms virtuous character in man. From the habitual pro-
221 As these constant dispositions form the virtues of man, so do his permanent associations based upon
them (ordinationes divinæ, bonæ creaturæ Dei, Apol. p. 215) his possessions, and his activity with respect
thereto is determined by his duties. Although then theological ethic also has its doctrine of virtue, prop-
erty, and duties, it does not seem appropriate to force it into these forms, which have chiefly sprung up
in another soil.

ceeds the active volition, which is conditioned in a twofold manner, subjec-
tively by the impulse to activity belonging to the life of love, objectively by the
incitement of real or ideal objects, and which becomes deed or work (acttis,
opus) by a resolve of the will directed thereto. By his activity man as subject
grasps the world of his objects, which offers him inwardly and outwardly an
immeasurable and infinitely varied field. The question then is, whether we
should make the moral regulation of human activity dependent solely on the
impulses of the true love which fills the heart, so that it should be enough to
say: habe caritatem et fac quidquid vis—love and then do what thou wilt. This
question must be answered in the negative. Subjectively indeed the rule is
correct, because to love aright is to have a right will, and he who has this
needs only to carry it into execution. But since it belongs to ethic, especially
theological ethic, to regulate not merely the human subject, but also all com-
munion and interaction of subjects and objects according to the all-embracing
will of God, right will cannot be determined merely according to the subjec-
tive sanctification of a man, but also according to the right ordering and truth
of the objects to which it actually refers, and it is just these objective determi-
nations which take place through the Divine law. If we remember how easily
impure influences, affecting also his objective judgment, may be mingled,
often unconsciously to himself, by the false subjectivity of selfishness in the
love of the subject or in his heart, we shall be the less able to commit the action
of even the holiest man to the subjective guidance alone of his own will sancti-
fied in love, and must always maintain that the holy and unchangeable will of
God, or the Divine law of Holy Scripture, is the binding rule and standard of
action. But even apart from these disturbing influences of sin, and supposing
men to be as the children of God, filled with and impelled by pure love, they
would not on that account be all equal to each other, and consequently would
not all have the same acts to perform. On the contrary, as the Church of the
saints is not a mere number of them, but forms the many and variously
membered body of Christ, to which belong members united in equal love but
of very different activities, so, even without any schism of sin, mankind
would have formed communities or corporations, in which varied interactions
would have been allotted to different sexes, races and ranks, as incorporate
organs, and definite superiority and subjection necessarily assigned to them.
Appointed rules for the household are indispensable to the best family, if with

even the best intention disorder is not to ensue, and, while the most active
love would urge the members of the family to contend for the more difficult
and greater offices, fidelity in small things is not to be overlooked. The rules
of God’s family are the Divine law as written upon the two tables of the Deca-
logue. By these rules of the Almighty Master of the family, who assigns us our
places and makes us stewards of His manifold gifts, each has to measure and
order his doing and leaving undone in the obedience of love. By them is deter-
mined the motive and extent of duty; only what is done conformably with
duty according to these rules of the Divine will, has for itself the pure testi-
mony of the Divine approbation. Not what seems good to the loving heart,
not what it chooses, at whatever amount of sacrifice, is therefore sure of the
Divine approval, for in self-chosen sacrifice, the greater it appears the more
may self-will and with it self-righteousness be latent. Obedience is better than
sacrifice, is the better and greater sacrifice, because it is that of the will, and it
is one which may more frequently be offered in small and lowly than in great
and elevated service. The first duty of man is always the fulfilment of his
duty, however insignificant the matter it concerns. It is obedience which gives
to the acts of Christian love and to works of faith, however great or small their
matter may otherwise be, their greatest value before God.
In Jesus Christ no other advantages or merits avail, but only faith

which worketh by love, and this working of love proves itself to have sprang
from faith, by the very circumstance that it does not follow its own devices,
but remains in the believing obedience of the Divine word and will, and there-
fore takes the law of God as its standard of duty. It is this authority of the law
as a standard for the active love of believers, which is, as we have seen, its
third use, tertius or didacticus usus legis, to which, by reason of its importance
to evangelical moral theology, the Form of Concord has devoted a special and
instructive section (the 6th Epit. p. 594, and Sol. Decl. pp. 717-724), thereby
disclaiming for the evangelical Church everything of an anomian and antino-
mian nature. With reference thereto, the new and active love arising from
faith is also very accurately called by the Church the new obedience (nova obedi-
entia), and a distinction thus drawn both between the old disobedience of sinful
man to the law, and the old obedience which he renders to it, not in the will-
ingness of free love, but only in slavish fear. The new is also, as becomes the

children of God, a free obedience, and in this notion of free obedience is har-
monized the contrast of freedom and law of a state of redemption and
bondage so irreconcilable to the natural man. The very virtue of the holy and
glorious angels does not consist in the free elevation of their dominion, but in
the willing humility of their obedience (Heb. i. 14).222 It is the Redeemer,
however, who furnishes the loftiest example of new and free obedience, and
also the deepest proof of the importance of the law for even the redeemed
children of God. For though He was a son, yet learned He obedience by the
things wlrich He suffered (Heb. v. 8), and was obedient unto death, even the
death of the cross, and His righteousness was the most perfect fulfilment of
the law (Matt. v. 17). Thereby He redeemed us from the curse and constraint
of the law, that we might, like Himself, fulfil it in the free obedience of love,
and thus perform the commandments of God in a manner well-pleasing to
Him.
The performance of the Divine commands, whose correlates are human

duties, is appointed for all men in general by the Divine law, which involves
also the universal vocation of all to holiness, according to the image of God
and of Christ. The fulfilment however of the Divine commands and of human
duties is also appointed in particular according to the special vocation which a
man has received as a member of human society, and is to fulfil according to
the will of God. The most general innate severance in the human vocation is
that of sex, for every human being is created either man or woman, whence
the whole race is divided into the male or the female half, each of which has
its special, as well as its general human duties. Upon this innate characteristic
depends with mutual special modifications the vocation to the married and
domestic condition, as well as to family duties in general in their wider or
narrower extent. The calling of the father of a family includes those of the
ruler and priest, which were, upon the further development of human society,
formed into special offices and classes. 223 The ruling class involves the voca-
tion or office of governing, legislating, judging, and punishing (usus politicus
legis), in behalf of which the executive power of the sword is placed in the
222 Sicut sancti Angeli promtam et per omnia spontaneam obedientiam præstant. —Conc. Form. ibid. p.
719.
223 E parentum potestate omnes aliæ; propagantur et manant.—Catech. maj. præe, iv. p. 439.

hand of rulers, on whom especially duties and cares, differing from those of
subjects, are enjoined. The clerical calling and class includes not only the office
of the priesthood and of spiritual instruction in the narrower sense, but, since
all science and art originally proceeded from religion, and are in their highest
relations to be traced back thereto, has also developed into the general intellec-
tual vocation of the teaching class, on which that cultivation of the heart and
mind of man, by which he rules the material world, is incumbent. Within the
province of these three God-ordained classes or Divine orders (ordinationes
divinæ)224 lie the ordinary callings of men, in which they are to serve God and
man, and to exercise love. These are the class of good works (Tit. iii. 8) (Stände
guter Werke, Ger. Ver.; honest occupations, Rev. Ver.), in which the apostle
desires that believers should be found, after reminding them in the beginning
of the chapter to be subject to principalities and powers, and ready for every
good work. For truly good works are just those which the Christian performs
with love and faith, in obedience to his calling. And it makes no difference to
the intrinsic goodness of the work, whether this calling is a higher or a lower,
a ruling or a serving one in the order of human society. It is not upon the
greatness, the splendour, or the importance of a work that our estimation of
its moral worth must depend. On the contrary, it is fidelity in the fulfilment of
the duties of the calling, the humility of obedient love, which ennobles and
sanctifies it, however insignificant its outward appearance. It is one of the
chief excellences of evangelical ethics, to have laid the chief moment in the
doctrine of good works, not upon the value of the deed, but upon the obedi-
ence of the doer, which may be shown in the least as well as in the most
important actions, in leaving undone as well as in doing, to have given to
small acts of obedience precedence over great but self-chosen works, and to
have rated the faithfulness of the will more highly than its power. Under the
influence of ethic principles which had their roots rather in rationalistic than
in Christian soil, and which the more they favoured a Pelagian self-righteous-
ness were the more decidedly opposed by the Reformers,225 it had come to
pass that higher moral worth and merit were attributed to self-chosen and
selfeffected works, just in proportion as they seemed difficult and extraordi-
224 Comp. Luther’s grosses Bekenntniss, Walch, Part 20, p. 1378. The holy orders and true foundations
instituted by God are these three: the priestly office, the marriage state, the secular government.
225 Comp. Melanchthon’s excellent deduction in the Apologie de justificatione, p. 61 sqq.

nary. Beside these, the unpretending works and duties, imposed by the respec-
tive callings of the three chief classes and their daily fulfilment, failed to
receive their due appreciation and were disregarded as commonplace and
secular, so that these three sacred orders, as Luther calls them, were placed, as
imperfect conditions, far beneath the monastic orders as states of higher per-
fection. What food was thus furnished to self-righteousness and self-love, and
what uneasiness of conscience must have been felt by Christians who found
themselves in these comparatively despised classes, is very easily seen, and is
often dwelt upon in the writings of the Reformers. Ou the contrary, it is
delightful to find how they, and especially Luther, restored to sacred dignity
and honour those classes upon which stand, according to God’s order, the
Family, the State, and the Church, how they ennobled works of obedience
done in the service of the divine calling, so that even the common soldier, 226
the domestic servant, the poor nurse girl (misera puellula, quæ infanti in cunis
posito sedulo servit, Catech. maj. p. 482), and children, cannot but feel them-
selves elevated in the dignity of a calling pleasing to God, and in the obedient
performance of its duties, which, though mean and despised in the sight of
men (apud homines levissima et contemtissima), are yet pleasing and precious to
God because of their faithful and loving obedience (grata et pretiosa opera, Cat-
ech. maj. p. 433).
The doctrine of the calling, by which general obedience to the law is

defined as that of special service in the kingdom of God, is of great importance
to the right understanding of obeying love, in other, words, of obedience,
which is loving, and therefore as free as it is faithful. Evangelical ethic,
unfavourable to all self-will, requires in every good work obedience to the
Divine will. Hence it cannot admit that distinction of scholastic morality
between legal commands and evangelical counsels, which makes the com-
mands to be necessarily binding on all, and the counsels to contain only hints
or directions for those who, by the choice of their own will, propose to attain a
higher degree of perfection, and therefore take vows of celibacy and poverty,
and subject themselves to special ascetic rules. This distinction nourishes the
delusion of a righteousness or perfection, which not only fulfils but surpasses
226 Comp. Harless, alt. Ethik, § 48: the preservation of the soul in the earthly calling, § 48.

the commands of God and the duties they enjoin, and which, left to man’s free
will, is to prove both a merit on his part and a claim to a higher reward. This
is to obscure the gospel of the justification of the sinner through the grace and
perfect righteousness of Christ, and to deprive man’s virtues and works of
that humility of love, without which, however great and extraordinary they
may be, they profit nothing before God (1 Cor. xiii. 3). What is true in this dis-
tinction is, that, while the law of God is the same for all men, and is in its high-
est requirements come up to by no one, not to say surpassed, the callings of
men, in which they are actively to practise love and obedience, differ, and
therefore demand different works from them, and that an extraordinary call-
ing may also demand extraordinary works. The special calling, as well as the
general law, depends upon the will of God, who determines it either by a
man’s birth, parents, and superiors, or indicates it by his gifts, talents, and
inclinations, or by providences, and the leadings of events and circumstances.
It is true that man’s will also concurs herein, not as merely determined or let-
ting itself be determined, but also as actively sharing in such determination,
and deciding on a certain calling, so that it may then be said that a man has
chosen his calling. This will always be the case where the Divine indication to
any particular calling appears less decided, and where the Divine will, which
is to be obeyed, must first be inquired after and sought out, and the reasons
for or against the proposal maturely weighed. But however the choice of a call-
ing may be influenced by one reason or another, it must always be regarded
as the resolve or decision of obedience to the recognised will of God, never as
a self-vocation or selfchoice, following only its own fancies and seeking only
its own. For then man would appear not only as his own master, but, since
every calling exerts influence in the collective organism of human society, or
in the constitution of the kingdom of God, as its master and orderer. This
would be an act of usurpation, opposed both to the first commandment and
the first article of the Christian faith, and in contradiction to the notion of the
creature. Man does not autonomically bind himself, but is bound. God, the
creator of all natures and powers, and the giver of every good gift, is alone the
Lord who appoints to man his stage of service in His kingdom on earth; in
other words, as master of the house, apportions to him his calling and duties.
He indeed requires also the consent of the human will, because free service in
His kingdom is alone pleasing to Him. He makes use too of human instru-

ments and authorities, whom He has made the officials of His kingdom, both
to carry into effect externally, and to fashion and sanction officially, the differ-
ent vocations and obligations. But however many differences of administra-
tions, diversities of gifts, and diversities of operations there may be, there is
still but one Lord, one Spirit, and one God, who worketh all in all (1 Cor. xii.
4-6); for He is love, active love, which embraces and provides for all, and is by
its abundant goodness the cause of all good works. It gives and works all
good gifts and powers; not only those which the ordinary needs of the house
of God constantly require for the teaching, military, and working classes, but,
as shown by the above-quoted passage, such extraordinary gifts and super-
natural powers also, as are needed for special missions in the kingdom of
God, in proportion to the existing necessity. They whom God has thus gifted,
He then calls and obliges by the special motions of His Spirit to such unusual
missions and prominent services in both Church and State, and thus assigns
to them other duties, and makes greater claims upon them than those to
which they are subject, who fulfil ordinary callings in the Church’s more
peaceful times. These claims, then, founded on special vocations, are no
longer Divine counsels which may be followed or not at choice, but com-
mands of the Lord, and obligations laid on men, to which obedience must be
rendered, if those whom they concern are generally subject to Him. It is thus
that Melanchthon (Apol. p. 287) argues, in opposition to the doctrine of evan-
gelical counsels, from the very example, quoted by his adversaries, of the
young ruler, by showing that the perfection required from him by the Lord
(Matt. xix. 21) consisted not so much in the material surrender of his property
as in obedience, the following to which the Lord called him. “Perfection con-
sisted not in the mere renunciation of his goods,227 but in what Christ added
to this: Come and follow me.” An example of obedience in a vocation (obedien-
tial in vocatione) is set before us, and as vocations differ, that of the young ruler
is not that of all, but concerns peculiarly the person with whom Christ is
speaking, and is no more to be imitated by us, than the call of David to the
kingdom, or the call to Abraham to offer up his son. Calls are personal, and
vary as employments do according to times and persons, but the example of
obedience is universal. It would have been his perfection if this young ruler
227 Sinamus Philosophos Aristippum prædicare, qui magnum auri pondus abjecit in mare.—Ibid.

had believed and obeyed this his call. And the perfection of each of us consists
in obeying his call in true faith.
Thus evangelical ethic, with faithful consistency to the evangelical prin-

ciple of faith, perseveres in everywhere placing the perfection of active love in
perfect obedience to that Divine will by which we are bound, in other words,
in the fulfilment of duty. And although it has been very careful to point out
that this perfection is indeed attainable in even the ordinary callings and gen-
eral arrangements of domestic and public life, it has by no means miscon-
ceived the fact, that there are besides, in consequence of God’s special gifts
and callings, unusual and extraordinary missions, spheres of operation and
modes of life, to which pre-eminent value must, with respect to the corre-
sponding peculiar needs of the kingdom of God, be attributed. Of such special
classes of good works, together with good works in general, we have already
treated in a former chapter, and shown how much they are needed at the
present time. Special and glorious promises are also given to them, not as
though they were the conditions of any higher degree in the state of grace and
justification before God, or could in this respect lay claim to any kind of merit.
No human work of any kind can do this; good works do not produce grace,
but on the contrary presuppose it; a man must have received forgiveness of
sins, and become a child of God by grace, before he can do the works of a
child in the obedience of love. But, though grace in Christ and the state of
sonship are alike for all the children of the family, the children nevertheless
differ widely from each other, both with respect to their gifts and powers, and
consequently to their works and performances, their doing and suffering. And
as with respect to the faults and defects of children discipline and punishment
vary, while the state of sonship remains the same, so too is this the case with
the encouragement and reward which the Father promises and hestows, with
respect to their virtues and performances. The labourer is worthy of his hire,
and he that soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly, while he that soweth
bountifully shall reap also bountifully, and God will reward every one accord-
ing to his works. Decidedly, therefore, as the evangelical Church denies any
merit in good works, with respect to the grace of justification, it yet accords to
them, in consequence of God’s gracious promise with respect to earthly and
heavenly rewards, a meritoriousness228 such as is in every well-ordered fam-

ily awarded to children, who willingly and obediently prove their love and
gratitude, according to the variety of their gifts, tasks, and works. The external
lot of the children is often different, but the blessing of sonship is for all, who
do not forfeit it by unbelief; for it is one Christ who was offered for all that
believe in Him, and one God, who by way of both promise and command
says to all without distinction, I am the Lord thy God.
From the speciality of the call, by which the many different forms of
active obedience are conditioned, let us now turn to the universality of the
Divine commands, which appoint, and to all alike, the doing and leaving
undone of obeying love. It is essential to obedience to hearken to the word of
Him who commands, and it is above all those ten words or commandments of
the God of revelation, which form in Divine imperatives the summary of the
moral law, and the chief norm of that love to God and man which is the fulfill-
ing of the law.
[Here follows in the original a second chapter of this second section, in

which each commandment of the Decalogue is separately and copiously dis-
cussed. This it has been thought well to omit, both because it has already been
briefly treated of in chap. iii. sec. 11 of the first division of this work, and
because the subject is one which has already received ample attention in many
recent publications.—Tr.]
SECTION III.
CHAPTER I. OF THE PATIENCE AND HOPE OF LOVE IN

SUFFERING AND DEATH.
228 See Apology, p. 96: Docemus bona opera meritoria esse non remissionis peccatorum, gratiæ aut justi-
ficationis (hæc enim tantum fide consequimur), sed aliorum pæmiorum corporalium et spiritualium in
hac vita et post hanc vitam, quia Paulus inquit 1 Cor. iii. 8: unusquisque recipiet mercedem juxta suum
laborem Erunt igitur dissimilia præmia propter dissimiles labores. At remissio peccatorum, similis et
sequalis est omnium, sicut unus est Christus et offertur gratis omnibus, qui credunt, sibi propter Chris-
tum remissa esse peccata.

DIVINE Love is the ideal fulfilling, the Divine Christ the real fulfilling
of the law. He satisfied it as it is set before sinners, by both active and passive
obedience, by both doing and suffering enough. He fulfilled it, that we, hid-
den beneath the wings of His perfect righteousness from the condemnation of
the law and justified by faith, might have peace with God and (priestly) access
to the grace wherein we stand, and might with praise and thanksgiving
rejoice in hope of the future glory that God will bestow. And not only so, but
we rejoice also in tribulations, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and
patience experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed,
because the love of God is shed abroad in our heart by the Holy Ghost, which
is given to us (Rom. v. 1-5); and the geuuine prayer of patience and hope in us
works in the name of the Lord and in the power of His perfect prayer.229 And
what shall separate us from this love of God? Shall tribulation, or distress, or
persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written (Ps.
xliv.): For thy sake we are killed all the day long, we are accounted as sheep
for the slaughter; nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors
through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to
come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate
us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. viii. 35-39).
Let this apostolic shout of victory go before us in our consideration of the dark
valley of suffering and death.
The most holy obedience of our Lord, becoming most holy patience in
His suffering, is the all-sufficient sacrifice, which, as Mediator and High Priest
of the human race, He offered in perfect fulfilment of the law, to atone for the
guilt of its non-fulfilment, to redeem from its curse without destroying it, to
pardon all sin without in the slightest degree forfeiting His holiness, but on
the contrary maintaining it immutable under the dispensation of grace. If then
the law is not abolished, but re-established by the gospel, if even when its
righteous sentence of condemnation is exchanged for a gracious absolution,
229 As the ten commandments are a standard for active, so is the Lord’s prayer a standard for suffering
obedience, to which also the corresponding tones found in the high-priestly prayer, the prayer in Geth-
semane, and the seven words on the cross refer.

this is only done at the price of a perfect satisfaction, is it not evident, that
though the law ceases indeed to condemn God’s redeemed children, it neither
ceases to bind them to the practice of active, nor to the discipline of passive
obedience? Not that thereby becoming righteous and the children of God they
are thus to obtain justification, which they have already received of grace, but
sanctification, of which they are to attain by the growth of regeneration a con-
tinual increase, and in which they are to be ever more and more established
and strengthened. It is a necessary and beneficial consequence of the invio-
lable truth of the Divine will and law and of the honour and dignity of the
family of God, that the education of His children should be a serious and strict
one. And the more so in proportion to the greatness of the mercy, by which
they have been received into the household of faith. Far be the thought,
savouring as it does of the laxity and listlessness of the doctrine of indulgence,
that the pardon earned by the sacred blood of Christ should relax the strict-
ness of obligation to active obedience to the commands of the Decalogue, that
the favoured condition of adopted children in the house of the eternal Son,
who Himself learned obedience by the things which He suffered, should
exempt His brethren on earth from the severity of wholesome chastisement
(Heb. xii. 6-8), and from the necessity of passive obedience in great patience for
their sanctification and perfection. On the contrary, the exceeding greatness of
that Love, which atoned for their disobedience by suffering, renews and
redoubles the obligation to obedience, which already lay upon them as crea-
tures and servants of God, even according to the old man, and which they
now can and ought to render with new love and thankfulness as children. The
very greatness of the sufferings which the Beloved Son, who as man was also
the Lamb of God, bore for their sins, constrains them to new hatred of the sins
whereby they have offended Him, and to willing and patient submission to
the sacred and wholesome discipline, whereby they are to be healed and puri-
fied from them. It is true that Christ has redeemed us, has released us from
the bonds of our ruin, of our debt, but only to bind us the more firmly to
Himself, to make us His debtors. For now that we are freed from the service of
sin, we are become servants of righteousness, to which we are to yield our
members, that they may be holy (Rom. vi. 18 sq.). Christ is the Way, the Truth,
and the Life; He leads us to eternal life, to the glorious liberty of the children
of God; but they are greatly deceived who would make the way broad and the

gate wide, and flatter themselves that they can follow Christ without self-
denial and patient bearing of the cross. He endured the cross for us, to recon-
cile us to God; He did and suffered all for our salvation, not that we might
have no more to do, still less no more to suffer, but that in sacred fellowship
with Him we might do the more and suffer the more willingly and patiently. It
cannot but be that Christianity, the more it gives in love, the more also it
should require in love, that the Christian who receives a new heart, should
take upon himself far deeper and greater duties of active suffering and sympa-
thizing love, than the non-Christian who lives only to himself, and would
rather spend his days on earth in joy and pleasure, than bow beneath the cross
on which is inscribed, love and suffer.230 As love makes a man happy in earthly
respects also, although it does not lessen the pain and grief appointed him in
his life below, but rather increases them by his sympathy with those of his
loved ones, so too does the gospel of the love of God in Christ make us happy,
though it bids us enter the kingdom of heaven by following Him through
much tribulation. Look to the Virgin, how the sword pierces her heart; stabat
mater dolorosa juxta crucem lacrimosa, and yet all generations call her
blessed. No Christianity without the cross, no salvation without pain, no
comfort without tribulation; in the world ye shall have tribulation, says
Christ; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.
We must then acknowledge that Christianity does not lessen but

increase both the duties and sufferings of its believers on earth, and need not
therefore be astonished as at some stange thing (1 Pet. iv. 12), that the godly,
who are in this persent evil world always in the minority, should have more
to suffer in it than the ungodly, though these too have their own troubles here,
and will at last have to undergo, and that without grace, the penalty of death.
On the other hand, however, Abel, though a man of grace, suffered a violent
death. How much too did the holy patriarchs suffer during their earthly pil-
grimage; how full of trouble and labour was the life of Moses, although he
was the friend of God! Into what depths of trouble David was plunged, is
witnessed in heart-moving terms in his psalms of lamentation. It often cut him
and Job231 and other prophets (Jer. xii. 1 sqq.) to the heart, that the godly
230 Comp. Lieben und Leiden der ersten Christen, by Dr. Erdmann, Berlin 1854.
231 Comp. Hengstenberg on the Book of Job, in the Evang. K. Zeitung, 1856, No. 16 sqq.

should have so much to suffer. Asaph acknowledges in the beautiful 73rd
Psalm how he had wellnigh stumbled in his vexation at the envious, when he
saw the prosperity of the wicked in this world, while the godly were plagued
every day; and though he acknowledges that the former often suddenly per-
ish and come to a fearful end, it still grieves him at his heart, that his folly
cannot understand the dark ways of God. Nevertheless he continually cleaves
in faith to Him, who leads him according to His hidden counsel, and joyfully
confesses, if I have but Thee there is nothing in heaven or earth that I desire
beside Thee. Thou, O God, art the strength of my heart, and my portion for
ever (Ps. lxxiii. 25 sq.). Great too was the faith and patience of those Old Tes-
tament saints, who during their suffering life of pilgrimage comforted them-
selves with the promises, although they only saw them afar off (Heb. xi. 13).
How much more then should we, who have seen their fulfilment, take to heart
as disciples of Christ and in the fellowship of His sufferings, the saying of His
apostle (Jas. v. 10 sq.): Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in
the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience.
Behold, we count them happy that endure. Ye have heard of the patience of
Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of
tender mercy.
The end of the merciful Lord upon the cross, this most tragical moment
of the world’s history, in which all human sufferings were concentrated on the
head of the God-man, that head so marred and wounded—that end so dread-
ful yet again so consoling, gives us in the New Testament a new beginning to
the wisdom, which teaches us more and more to understand the deeply tragic
character of human history, from the death of Abel to the last judgment, and
rightly to estimate suffering. 232 That moment, in which the Lord of life, in
boundless compassion tasted death for every man, rent the thickly-folded veil,
through which the High Priest, who bore the sins of the world, entered with
His own blood into the Holy of Holies, offering Himself as the slaughtered
Lamb with infinite patience for the infinite guilt of sin, to all-holy Justice. It
was as the bearer of that guilt that He suffered fulness of sorrow in both body
and soul, “from the poor manger to the bitter cross,” upon which, reckoned
232 Compare on this subject the excellent locus in Melanchthon’s Locis theologicis, ed. a. 1543 sqq., de
calamitatibus et cruce et de veris consolationibus.

among the transgressors, He bowed His thorn-crowned head in sacrificial
death. Surely He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows, He was wounded
for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. His sufferings were so
great and heavy, because the burden of the sins which He bore was so great
and heavy. Here then, upon this sun-bright summit we see intensively con-
firmed all that the history of the Old Covenant and of the whole ancient world
has extensively taught of the fall of man; viz. that the evil of suffering is con-
nected with the universal evil of sin, and that the billows and waves of suffer-
ing are of such depth in the world, because the rebelliousness of sin rises to
such a height against God. The vastness of suffering, which Adam’s race in all
its branches not only suffers but also co-operates with him in causing, is cor-
relative with the vastness of the sins which it not only commits but also suf-
fers. Doing and suffering evil are the inseparable active and passive of this
verbum irregulare. Sin itself, however active, when it excites or is excited, is still
a suffering, a morbidly active passion, which creates first indeed lust but then
suffering, and because it separates body and soul from the God of life must at
last suffer death. For because by disobedience and disorder it degrades the
originally godly life of man to the ungodly, the holy to the animal life, it is
subjected by such degradation to the natural law of perishableness, which
prevails in all animal and vegetable life,233 and must perish in death to rise to
new life. Yes, all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man like the flower of
grass; the grass withereth, and the flower thereof fadeth (1 Pet i. 24; Isa. xl. 6
sqq.). How sad that the life of man and all his glory on earth are forfeited to
death, that the memento mori resounds even throughout his comedies, nay in
the midst of his triumphs, not only by means of warning words but of warn-
ing sufferings, which are the forerunners of death; for the flowers of even the
most blooming wreath fade and fall but too quickly. Christ, the heavenly
King, who bore the sin of the world, plunged into its sufferings and despised
its glory; the earthly king of Israel, who gathered all its glory around his
crown was Solomon, great in power, wealth and fame, shining in wisdom and
knowledge above all the kings of the earth (1 Chron. ix. 29), and made illustri-
ous by the most dazzling productions of art, beauty and magnificence (Eccles.
233 Si natura humana non fuisset aversa a Deo, mansisset in ea vigor vivificus a Deo inditus naturæ
humanæ, nec computruissent homines ut poma, ut flosculi, ut pecudes. Sed postquam amisit integri-
tatem, materia languidior facta pomorum et pecudum naturæ similis esse cœpit.—Melanchthon, l.c.

i. and ii.). And he, the possessor of all that the natural man, at the climax of
prosperity, can desire, only utters in the Book of Ecclesiastes a profounder
sigh, that all is vain and transitory and full of trouble and sorrow. Moses too,
the man of God, in the 90th Psalm refers, with sacred seriousness, all this
mortal frailty of human life and its productions to its deep foundation: Thou
carriest them away as with a flood, they are as a sleep, like grass which
groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth and groweth up, in the evening it is
cut down and withereth. For we are consumed by Thine anger, and by Thy
wrath are we troubled. Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, our secret
sins in the light of Thy countenance. Before this holy countenance, which pene-
trates with the consuming glance of a judge all secrets, sinners cannot but
wither and die, for before His judgment no sinner can be justified (Ps. cxliii.
2); all are guilty of death. This is what St. Paul sums up in the decisive words:
The wages of sin is death (Rom. vi. 23). For mortal sickness with all its pains
and terrors has reached all sinners from Adam downwards (Rom. v. 12), so
that death did not spare even the only-begotten Son, who in merciful inno-
cence took all guilt upon Himself and bore and expiated its guilt upon the
cross. Consequently it is upon the ethic connection of suffering and death with sin,
that the pathological doctrine and wisdom of the Church places the greatest
weight.
Philosophy, i.e. the wisdom of the natural man without the light of
Holy Scripture, esteems those mortal sufferings of the whole human race, and
the frightful calamities connected with them, which, ethically regarded, are
supremely tragic and worthy of deepest lamentation, as an essentially physical
evil, caused by the weakness and mutability of matter, 234 and as that whose
unalterable necessity must be encountered with the greatest possible equanim-
ity. Serious moral philosophers acknowledge indeed, besides physical evil, a
234 De causa, cur hæc hominum natura, quæ antecellit ceteris animantibus, tantis miseris subjecta sit,
sapientes semper disputarent, unde mors sit, unde tot morbi, unde corporum exitia non accersita nostris
consiliis, unde in imperiis tantæ confusiones, mutationes, ruinæ, pestilentiæ, fame necati populi, mersæ
urbes, debiscente terra, diluviis totæ gentes obrutæ, magnas urbes incendiis prorsus deletæ, denique alia
multa tristia, quæ vel multis vel singulis accidunt sine ipsorum consilio. Philosophi (whether of ancient,
modern, or most recent times) quærunt causam in materia, quam ajunt ruere æterno impeta ad alias
formas ac appetere vices. Hinc exstruxit Aristoteles suum illud dogma de privatione in
materia—Observemus hic discrimen humanæ philosophiæ et doctrinæ cælestis.—Melanchthon, l.c.

great moral evil with various sad consequences in the wilful wickedness of
individuals. The old tragedians too have their presentiments of an hereditary
curse descending to individuals in certain races. But still even in the nobler
kind of heathenism, and in the heathen philosophy of modern times, there is
everywhere as great an absence of a true perception of the magnitude, depth
and universality of sin in the historical and natural connection of the human
race, as there is of a true knowledge of God. There is consequently a corre-
sponding absence of all correct appreciation of those deadly ills of body and
soul, of those great tribulations under which mankind is groaning for redemp-
tion, and therefore of all true patience. It is just because philosophy, starting
from the philosophizing individual, seeks its principles in him—though he is
but a result of history—and does not start from the elementary and general
beginning of the whole human race, that it is unable to perceive that the race
is one great historical organism. For the same reason it is also incapable of
discerning in it that universal corporation representing the self-multiplying
fruitfulness of Adam and Eve which variously replenishes the earth with ever
fresh blossoms and fruits, according to Scripture (Gen. i. 28, iii. 16 sqq.), and
generalizing, from our first parents, both the blessing of their creation and the
curse of their sin, to their whole progeny. Departing from this view, naturalis-
tic philosophical reflection recognises only individual transgressions, and
admits a connection between suffering and sin only in proportion to their rela-
tive magnitude and the co-operation of the will therein. Then all ills, which
appear disproportionate to the apparent magnitude of individual guilt, are
referred to natural causes as to some obscure fatality, and suffering, rendered
thus inexplicable, becomes only the more oppressive and the sufferer the
more desponding.
The Church on the contrary, without ignoring the personal guilt of

individuals, teaches also, with equal truth and reason, a common sin or sinful-
ness and guilt of the entire human corporation, an original sin of the old
Adam in all his male and female members, and therefore a common
endurance of death and its accompanying internal and external, spiritual and
bodily ills. Everything is felt as an ill which is contrary to our nature, though
opposed to it only because it is diseased or sinful, and is therefore only thus
felt through its opposition so long as this lasts, but is not regarded as such in

itself, like evil, which is contrary to God. Among external ills are those of
external nature, by which human life is burdened and endangered; of nature,
which, since the fall, no longer manifests only in its good things the goodness
of God, but also in its evil things His wrath against man (Gen. iii. 17), whose
dominion over the earth has been broken since the breach of his covenant
with God. It is in consequence of this that all creation around him exhibits
features of barbarism, disease and alarm, and is earnestly awaiting its redemp-
tion and renovation (Rom. viii. 19 sqq.). The common participation of human
suffering is not however of such a kind that an equal measure is allotted to
every man. On the contrary, as great as is, in the unity of the human race, the
multiplicity of its members, so great is, as to both quantity and quality, the
variety of the ill they do and suffer. In a community the better members have
very frequently to suffer for what the worse do, of which fact the apostle says,
that it is far better to suffer injustice than to do it (1 Pet. ii. 20). This is espe-
cially the case in persecutions. Besides, one having to bear another’s burden
often finds it heavier than the other, and a sensitive compassionate heart will
always suffer far more than a hard one. There is certainly far less sin in a con-
scientious man, than in a ruder and unconscientious one; but the imputation
of sin and inward suffering on its account are much greater in the former than
in the latter, but therefore also his deliverance from it so much the nearer. To
this must be added the manifold temptations, with which even sanctified
souls are for their benefit not unfrequently visited by the enemy, who is both
their tempter and accuser, and which cause a degree of sadness such as
worldly and hardened souls never experience, while therefore they never
taste the consolations enjoyed by the former (Ps. xlii., lxix., lxxvii.; Isa. xxxviii.
14 sqq.; 2 Cor. xii. 7 sqq.). How little bad St. Paul to suffer before he was a
Christian, and how much after he became one! (2 Cor. xi. 23 sqq.); but how
wonderfully and happily was he confirmed and perfected by them all! (2 Tim.
iv. 7 sq.). How great is the number of holy martyrs, who have courageously
suffered for truth and righteousness’ sake, and patiently borne testimony
thereto before the world, and shed their blood in confession of Him, who
Himself without sin shed His sacred blood for the forgiveness of sins! (Rev.
vii. 9—14). How much greater and deeper too are the sufferings of the Church
than the sufferings of this world, whose prince has ever been the bitter foe of
the Church of Christ, and yet how small are all the sufferings of Christians of

these days compared with those of the ancient martyrs!
It is certain that the sum-total of suffering on earth, from the first sin-
ners downwards, is, by reason of the Divine mercy, which is ever according to
the fallen race remission and refreshment, rest and revival in the midst of
their thorny path of labour and sorrow, far less than the sum-total of sin and
guilt against the sacred majesty of the infinitely great and good God. Every-
where is His righteous chastisement combined with gracious forbearance,
which preserves us from far more ills than it lets us suffer (Lam. iii. 22; Wisd.
xii.). This long-suffering forbearance, which, alas! is to many a vain call to
repentance (Rom. ii. 4 sq.), is not however indifferently shown to all in propor-
tion to the greater or smaller amount of their individual guilt. On the contrary,
both gracious forbearance and righteous chastisement are often shown
together in the fact, that among several equally guilty, some are, according to
God’s secret wisdom, very quickly visited by the punishment they deserve,
while the greater number are still mercifully spared. This is not however that
they may regard themselves as more righteous than those who suffer such
things, but that they may regard such punishment as a warning to themselves,
that unless they repent they shall likewise perish (see Luke xiii. 1-5). Accord-
ingly, the judgments of God inflicted on Sodom and Gomorrha, on Babylon
and Jerusalem, are warnings to all those cities, as yet spared, which impeni-
tently oppose the kingdom of God, and, despising the grace of Christ, are
ripening for the terrible judgment of wrath (Matt. xi. 20-24). It also not seldom
happens that, in God’s wise counsel, comparatively less guilty members of the
sinful race have, for the purpose of preserving and separating them from its
corrupt association, far greater and more painful sufferings to bear than those
comparatively more guilty. The infants of Bethlehem, e.g., were slaughtered
by the tyrannical persecutor of Christ, while the greater sinners were suffered
to live; and pious Christians were esteemed as sheep for the slaughter, while
the enemies of the cross of Christ, though they knew no peace, ruled with a
high hand. Nay, in Christ Himself holy innocence suffered in the midst of evil-
doers as a spotless victim, through and for the sins of the whole world, such
most terrible suffering as must silence all other complaints. If the only-begot-
ten Son of God suffered supremely, and the members of His household are
not above but under their Head, all in this sacred family will have more to

suffer temporally, than the members of the world’s undisciplined household,
which, if judgment first begins at the house of God, is exposed to that final
judgment which is the end of them that obey not the gospel (1 Pet. iv. 17).
Hence, they who would follow Christ in His Church and the communion of
His saints, must deny themselves, take up their cross, and patiently follow
Him through the sufferings of this world to the kingdom of His glory (Matt.
xvi. 24; Rom. viii. 17).
Here then we come upon the old truth, that while Christianity
undoubtedly delivers the Christian, even in this world, from that guilt and
dominion of sin which subjects him to the wrath of God, and thus from the
greatest, the eternal evil, it by no means therefore preserves him from those
temporal sufferings which are so closely connected with sin. On the contrary,
it gives him a larger share of them to endure, and leads him only through
temporal death to eternal life, that he may enter it thoroughly sanctified.
Hence the Church recognises herein not merely physical evil, but specially
emphasizes its ethic or metaphysical character, because it is by this that suffer-
ing attains the sacred significance of the cross, by the patient bearing of which -
we are to be sanctified. It is by the fact of human suffering being brought into
contact and connection with Christ, that it receives the consecration of His
sacred cross. As natural evil, or obscure decree, or fate, it has no such consecra-
tion, and therefore no sanctifying power, but only grieves, or embitters, or
hardens the complaining heart. As punishment too, inflicted according to the
law of offended justice, suffering bears indeed the character of a righteous
penalty or curse by which the sinner is implacably consumed, but neither
sanctifies nor renews his heart so long as that union with Christ, which alone
changes the accursed suffering into a blessed cross, is absent. This process is
effected not chiefly by the transformation of the suffering itself, but rather by
the transformation of the suffering individual. God’s gracious pity releases the
poor lost sinner from the bonds of perdition, from the curse of the law which
condemns him; the Divine love wherewith the Father gives the Son and the
Son gives Himself to those depths of suffering, which the guilt of sinners had
incurred to deliver them from the curse of the law by bearing it for them (Gal.
iii. 13); His abounding fatherly compassion covers the nakedness of sinners
with the righteousness of His Son in holy baptism, and makes them partakers

in the Lord’s Supper of the sacrifice of His body and blood offered for them
on the cross, and thus receives them as children and joint heirs with the eter-
nal Son, who, if they suffer with Him, shall also reign with Him. This is the
great transformation by which, through communion with the crucified Christ,
the condemned becomes the justified sinner, the lost a saved son, the child of
the devil a child of God and joint heir with Christ. It is this which makes all
the suffering which as a child of God he has to bear, a wholesome and fatherly
correction, and all the evils which as a Christian he has to endure, a sacred
cross which he bears with patience. Thus evil is changed into a good (malum
bonum) which benefits by hurting, and, like the sharp instrument of a surgeon,
cures worse ills and procures better health by the pains it inflicts. Penal justice
is transformed into chastising mercy, and that which was a sign of Divine
wrath becomes a witness of Divine love, as it is written (Heb. x. 6-11): Whom
the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth;
but if ye are without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bas-
tards and not sons. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous
but grievous; nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of right-
eousness unto them that are exercised thereby. Therefore the Lord says with
as much love as seriousness (Rev. iii. 19): As many as I love I rebuke and chas-
ten; be zealous therefore and repent. Christians have indeed more to suffer
than non-Christians, but they have also, amid the sufferings of the cross, all
the more comfort of grace, strength of love and patience of hope, which those
who do not believe are so devoid of, that when trouble comes upon them,
they cannot conquer but are conquered by it.
It is and always will be natural to human nature to avoid and escape

from suffering of every kind; and yet it follows from what has been said, that
it is a Christian’s sacred duty neither timidly to flee from, nor indignantly to
resist the suffering which God allots him, but, on the contrary, willingly and
trustfully to accept it as his cross, and to bear it with patient hope as a sanctify-
ing discipline and healing sorrow. Self-seeking and self-will are the roots of all
evil in man. Hence the first aim of all discipline and education in the family of
God is to kill self-seeking and to break self-will. This result is accomplished
not only by active obedience, but more especially by passive obedience or
patience, and indeed, as we are now speaking only of the children of God, only

by the genuine patience of love, and not by the false patience of stubbornness.
We do not here refer to that hard and servile, nor that Stoic and apathetic
patience, which accommodates itself to the inevitable; such patience is to be
found among the heathen, and the Stoic philosophers excelled in it This might
more fitly be called selfish hardness235 than loving patience, and being devoid
of humility is animated only by pride. Nor do we intend a self-righteous
patience, deluding itself with the notion of making satisfaction for sin and of
earning grace and honour by self-made and self-chosen suffering (Col. ii. 23),
and growing impatient, because it finds no peace. However great may be the
pains which it may by constancy overcome, it is itself overcome by pride,236
and therefore not favoured by God. What we have in view is the self-denying
patience of humility and love required of the Christian,who, justified by faith,
has received the spirit of peace and adoption, and experienced the gentle
patience of Christ, and who, though accepted, is conscious of the faults of his
natural heart, submits willingly to their chastisement by the Father’s hand and
meekly subjects his own will to the cross of the Son, and the pains and grief
thereby incurred. Saved indeed from eternal death, and in a state of progres-
sive convalescence, he must still regard himself as an invalid, as a patient,
whose merely patient condition must be transformed into the virtue of
patience; for the more the latter is mingled with the remedies of the great
Physician, the more efficaciously do they work. It is true that the gospel of
Christ is the power of God for the salvation of all sinners who believe in it; but
it will also make them holy and heal them of the sickness of their sins, that
their salvation may be quite healthy, pure, and untroubled. For the remedy
which they need is indeed the gift of a loving hand, but at the same time it is
both sharp and painful. They are received through grace into the holy hospital
of the Church, and may be sure of recovery to a healthy, an eternal life in this
House of Mercy. But all the more must they submit to the Divine discipline
and order of the house, to the strict diet prescribed to convalescents and to the
punishment of their transgressions against it. They will also frequently have
235 Absit nobis ferrea ista philosophia, says Melanchthon.

236 Etsi videtur vincere patientia, vincitur a superbia.—Augustin. Serm. 274. Christiana patientia donum
Dei est; ab ipso vere est patientia, vera patientia, sancta patientia, religiosa patientia, recta
patientia.—Ibid. Comp. the same Father’s liber de patientia, Opp. tom. vi., in which the difference between
genuine and spurious patience is excellently explained.

to subject themselves to painful operations, nay amputations, in that obedient
and willing patience, which the Holy Spirit produces in those who quietly
submit to pray to Him for it. Such patience avails not only for the cure of the
patient, whose malady impatience, with its accompanying restlessness, would
only exasperate, but redounds also, because it sanctifies, to the good pleasure
of God, the glory of Christ, the joy of the Holy Spirit. He who is possessed of
such patience bears not only what God imposes, but also the sins and weak-
nesses of others, with that forgiving love (1 Cor. xiii. 7) which he has himself
received from Christ (Col. iii. 13), and with which he can even suffer injustice,
and love his enemies, for his Redeemer’s sake. Tolero quia toleror is the prin-
ciple upon which he bases that genuine toleration, which, far removed from a
spurious indifference, is an enemy to sin, while a friend to sinners, which
passes upon falsehood and injustice the sentence of justice and truth, but
treats the erring with kindness and gentleness. At the head of the graces by
which the minister of God is to prove himself such, St. Paul therefore places
great patience (2 Cor. vi. 4 sqq.), recommends the elect of God, holy and
beloved, to put on as their holy ornament the beautiful robe of kindness and
humbleness of mind and the jewel of patience (Col. iii. 12). It is brought for-
ward also among the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. v. 22), appears in closest connec-
tion with faith and love (1 Tim. vi. 11; Tit. ii. 2), and is a necessary condition
for receiving God’s merciful promises and blessings (Heb. x. 36; Jas. v. 7).
Rightly does Melanchthon237 call the exercise of patience in suffering,
whereby the existence of the old man is destroyed, a sacrifice, a service of
God, for suffering is a sacred act. He refers to Ps. ii. 19 with respect to spiritual,
and to Rom. xii. 1 with respect to bodily sufferings: I exhort you to present
your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God. Thus is the body conse-
crated to be by discipline and patience an offering well-pleasing to God. The
same Father, however, does not esteem self-chosen inflictions or injuries and
mortifications of the body, such as the heathen contemplated and the priests
237 Cum fide confirmati animi tolerant afflictiones, tunc vere patientia seu tolorantia est sacrificium, id
est cultus Dei, seu opus a Deo mandatum et eo factum, ut ipsi honos reddatur, sicut Ps. li. dicitur: sacri-
ficium Deo spiritas contribulatus, et Rom. xii.: offerte corpora vestra hostias vivas, etc. Nec vero ipsa
laceratio corporis, ut Ethnici putabant, est sacrificium, sed voluntatis obedientia seu tolerantia in dolore,
cum quidem voluntas Deum intuetur et petit et expectat a Deo auxilium. Nec sunt sacrificia accersitæ
calamitates, ut sacerdotes Baal fodiebant sua corpora, seu ut Decii se devovebant pro republica.

of Baal effected, an acceptable sacrifice. Only the obedience of the will, in other
words patience, in bearing such sorrows and sufferings, as either accompany
our vocation, or are entailed by a due testimony to truth, or are the chastise-
ment of general and particular sins are such. Well is it with those who, in such
sufferings, whether of body or soul or both, offer up with prayer and supplica-
tion for Divine grace and help and in imitation of Christ, whom they are
therein esteemed worthy to resemble in the congregation of His saints, the
sacrifice of God-given patience (1 Pet. ii. 21-25; Rev. vii. 14 sqq.).
Various in kind and degree are the sufferings in which Christian

patience, the patience of love, has to prove itself, and to gain strength by the
comfort of a lively hope. Innumerable are those ills of body and soul, which
arise either from the infirmities of man’s nature, or come upon him from with-
out, whether from nature beneath or men around him, whether stealthily
planned by Satan or inflicted by God, whether they threaten or attack him
from his past, present or future with fear and anxiety, or with pain and
torture.238 To such ills the Christian must take up an attitude of not merely
passive, but of active obedience, which shows itself not only by suffering but
by acting, and unites both in stedfast patience. Since the fall, ills have been to
men not merely punishments for sins past and committed, but a means of dis-
cipline for the repression of present, and preservation against future and
increasing sin, and a test and verification of patient obedience. The chief forms
of sinful selfishness are, as is acknowledged, ambition, covetousness, and love
of pleasure. Ambition is mortified by humiliations, covetousness receives a
blow from losses, love of pleasure is chastised either as the lust of the flesh by
pain, or as slothfulness by being forced to labour and take pains (Gen. iii. 19).
Ills are meant to excite the old man to diligent action and reaction, lest he
should grow lax and idle, but in such wise, that whatever has to be borne or
suffered should be submitted to without murmuring, with free and faithful
patience. They should admonish to fresh penitence, should awaken thanksgiv-
238 Compare Luther’s consolatory tract in aller Widerwärtigkeit einer jeglichen christgläubigen Men-
schen, dedicated to Frederick, Elector of Saxony, anno 1520, Walch, Part 10, p. 2130 sqq. In it he opposes
to the sevenfold evil the sevenfold good, and emphatically shows how the former is vanquished by the
latter. This excellent and forcible treatise on consolation is as far above John Gerson’s de consolatione the-
ologiæ, as the latter is above Boethius’ de consolatione philotophiæ.

ing for the blessing which Divine grace deposits in all the suffering of a Chris-
tian, suffering which he would not exchange for all the pleasures of the
ungodly, and call forth supplication for gracious alleviation and assistance in
the bearing of the cross. The model of all prayer here, as everywhere, is the
Lord’s prayer. However great the Christian’s sufferings, however heavy his
cross, the grace which mitigates and lifts it, and which, when its pains are fin-
ished and the probation completed, transfigures it in the joy and glory of
Christ, is greater. “Happy is the man that endureth temptation, for when he
hath been approved, he shall receive the crown of life, which God has
promised to them that love Him” (Jas. i. 12). If the Christian has more tempta-
tion to endure, more sorrows to bear, more tears to weep, than the children of
the world, he has also all the richer consolations to enjoy, and the purer and
higher pleasure to hope for. “Verily, verily, I say unto you,” says our Lord
(John xvi. 20), “ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice; and ye
shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.” The more deeply
patience is tried in times of sorrow, the more deeply is receptivity for the expe-
rience of consolation developed, and the more does a lively hope, which
maketh not ashamed, become active and elevated. For faithful is the love
which guarantees its fulfilment, the love of God, shed abroad by the Com-
forter in mourning hearts (Rom. v. 3-5). Human sorrow is deified by this
influxion of Divine love. It becomes a godly sorrow, through the peace of justi-
fication and reconciliation in Christ, to which it cleaves by faith even in the
midst of affliction. Conscious too of the guilt of sin, though forgiven, and
knowing and feeling the connection between sin and suffering, it ever experi-
ences a penitent sorrow, a repentance unto salvation, not unto despair,
because sin is forgiven, a godly repentance, not to be repented of (2 Cor. vii. 10
sq.). From this grows an ever renewed diligence in the work of sanctification.
This sanctifying power of affliction alleviates and tempers it, because the sting
of sin in it is broken by grace. Grace sweetens its bitterness by the emotion of
holy love which it inspires, and pours oil and wine into the burning wounds,
the soft oil of patience and the reviving wine of hope, both which quiet and
strengthen the soul (Isa. xxx. 15). Thus the sufferer receives comfort, strength
and stedfastness (fortitudo patientice) in bearing even the greatest ills, and that
victorious courage which can confidently say: In all these things we are more
than conquerors, through Him that loved us; for I am persuaded, that neither

life nor death, that nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in
Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. viii. 18), and esteem all earthly affliction light and
temporal, because it works a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory
(2 Cor. iv. 17).
While patience bears present evil, Christian hope directs its attention to
future good. Combined with faith and love, it is a cardinal virtue especially of
the suffering Christian, and this as to its foundations, objects and opposites
must now engage our attention. It would be no Christian virtue, but on the
contrary a weakness and a fault, if founded on any selfconfidence or self-right-
eousness of man. Complacent and prosperous self-love has its reward, and
therefore no hope awaiting fulfilment, no hope of future glory, which shall
not be made ashamed. The hope of the hypocrite, built upon vain appearance
and dreams of his own worth and supposed merit, will be lost, for his confi-
dence fails, and his trust is a spider’s web; he leans on his house, but shall not
stand; he will hold it fast, but shall not endure (Job viii. 13-15). Vain is the
hope of man, which he builds upon his changeable sinful self; it is but an
exalted self-consciousness, which is soon turned into a depressed one. For he
that exalteth himself is abased, his confidence fails. Vain also is the hope
which a man places in earthly goods, to which he trusts for happiness and
wealth, for power and honour before men; he leans on his house, but shall not
stand, he would hold fast by what has no firm hold; hence he shall not
endure, but fall with the fall of the perishable possessions of which death
deprives him (Luke xii. 20 sq.). The hope too of the man who relies on others,
and expects great benefits from their favour, power, and wisdom, though
more modest, is equally transient. To base one’s hope upon himself, says
Augustine (Serm. 13), is dangerous pride, to build it on another man is inordi-
nate humility. However worthy of honour other men, especially those placed
over us, may be, and whatever good we may not infrequently hope from
them, still, seeing they are perishing and sinful men, it is neither wise nor vir-
tuous to build our hope for the future upon them. On the contrary, the words
of the Psalmist (Ps. cxviii. 8 sq.) here apply: It is good to trust in the Lord, and
to put no confidence in man; it is good to trust in the Lord, and to put no con-
fidence in princes (comp. Jer. xvii. 5—8).

The Lord in whom they trust is alone the firm foundation of the sure
and certain hope of Christians. It is just because this hope, rising above the
creature, is founded upon God the Father of all goodness and Creator of all
good things, that it is, like the faith from which it springs, a virtue, while credu-
lous creature-hope is only an interest. A certain hope, however, can no more
be founded upon an unknown and hidden God than upon uncertain goods or
gods. As faith, in its relations to the past and to the present, presupposes a
revelation, a decided word of God, so also does hope or hoping faith (Heb. xi.
1) require with respect to the future a firm word, a certain promise of God, on
which to depend and whereby to rest upon and confide in Him. This cannot
however be an injunction of the law, nor a promise connected with the condi-
tion of its fulfilment. For the law reveals the holy justice of God, before which
the sinner cannot stand, from which therefore he has nothing to hope, but
only wrath and condemnation to fear. The promises of the law are given only
to the just, so that the sinner can derive from them neither comfort nor hope.
The law of God utterly denies to a sinner all tho hope which he is inclined to
place in himself or in human merit; it accuses him, it testifies to him that God
is against him, and therefore makes him fearful and anxious about the future.
For if God, who is all-powerful, and from whom there is no escape, is against
him, what can be for him, and what hope can he still have? How then, when
everything is against him, is the hopeless to gain hope? how shall he hope
when there is nothing to hope for? (Rom. iv. 18). He can and he must hope
through faith in the second revelation of God, the revelation and promise of
His redeeming grace in the gospel of Jesus Christ the Beconciler, who has
appeased the opposition of the law by His own blood, overcome the curse of
death by His sacrificial death (victor quia victima), and brought life and immor-
tality to light by His resurrection. Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, who, according to His abundant mercy, hath begotten us again to a lively
hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Pet. i. 3, 13, 21). 239
When all higher and eternal hope is extinguished by the fear of death, we are
begotten again to the lively hope of an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled,
and that fadeth not away, through Him who was crucified and raised for us,
and as the Son exalts us to be children of God. The fellowship of His death
239 Comp. der Petrinische Lehrbegriff, by Dr. B. Weiss, Berlin 1855, p. 92 sqq.

assures us also the fellowship of His resurrection (Rom. vi. 4 sqq.). The grace
of His death drives away the old fear; the victory of His life assures the new
hope which, though directed to the invisible (Eom. viii. 24), still sees in Christ
what it hopes for.240 Hence it is not so much hope in the abstract which we
merely derive from Him, but He, Jesus Christ, is Himself our living concrete
hope (1 Tim. i. 1; 1 Thess. i. 3; Col. i. 27). He is the Lord of time and of eternity,
of past, present and future; in Him is our confidence amid all change of times
and circumstances. In Him, our Immanuel, is God with us and for us; and if
the merciful and almighty God is for us, what can be against us? He who
spared not His own Son, but freely delivered Him up for us all, how shall He
not with Him also freely give us all things? (Rom. viii. 31 sq.). Upon this foun-
dation it is that the apostle builds the courageous, victorious, triumphant and
blessed hope of God’s children, as so excellently developed from confident
faith in the gospel, in the 8th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. Christian
hope then rests upon God the Creator and Father, who gave the Son, and
upon the Son whom He gave to be the God-man and Redeemer, and upon the
Holy Ghost whom the Son gives from the Father as the pledge of Divine adop-
tion and eternal inheritance. For they who believe are sealed with the Holy
Spirit, who produces hopeful love in the heart (Rom. v. 5), and by bearing
witness to our spirit that we are the children of God, and eliciting from our
hearts the trustful and hopeful prayer of children to a Father (Rom. viii. 14), is
the earnest of our inheritance (Eph. i. 14; 1 Cor. i. 22). These gracious effects
He produces by means of the abundant promises and comfort of Holy Scrip-
ture, for whatsoever was written aforetime was written for our learning, that
we, through patience and comfort of the Scripture, might have hope (Rom. xv.
4). God in His word bids us in patience hope in Him, promises to hope a
comforting fulfilment, and assures this to us by His Holy Spirit. 241 Thus it
comes to pass that the Triune God, as the God of hope, fills His people with
all joy and peace in believing, that they may abound in hope through the power
240 Quod non ridetnus quidem, speramus; sed corpus sumus illius capitis, in quo jam perfectum est,
quod speramus.—August. Serm. 157, 3.

241 Gerson, de consolatione theologiæ, lib. i. c. 4: Quadruplex meditatio est, quæ velut in tetragono fermis-
simo gestat spem. Una meditatio est divinæ jussionis, ut speres; altera divinæ promissionis, si speres; tertia
immensæ Dei pietatis, ne desperes unquam de suis miserationibus; quarta propriæ fragilitatis ne speres in
te vel propriis viribus.

of the Holy Ghost.
This brings us from the foundation of Christian hope to its object,

which is not a matter different from, but the living produce of that
foundation.242 My soul, says David (Ps. lxii. 6), wait thou on God, for He is my
hope; and (Ps. lxxi. 5): Thou art my hope, O Lord God; Thou art my trust from
my youth (comp. Jer. xvii. 13; 1 Tim. iv. 10, etc.). God Himself then is both the
foundation and object of our hope, God the Father, Son and Spirit; for what
God is, that He also promises, gives and effects; the Father the love of Divine
fatherhood, the Son the grace of blissful sonship, the Holy Spirit the comfort
and strength of His fellowship (2 Cor. xiii. 13; Eph. iii. 14-17). Herewith is also
promised and assured to us that for which we pray in childlike humility to the
Father in the name of His dear Son, viz. the hallowing of the name, the com-
ing of the kingdom, and the doing of the will of the Father, the Son and the
Holy Spirit. Hence also follows the gift of daily bread for this life, the forgive-
ness of sins, preservation from the tempter, and deliverance from evil,
whether temporal or eternal. Hope rises to desire (Ps. cxliii. 8, xxv. 1 sq.), and
this to prayer, which again concludes with the Amen of hope. Every hope of a
Christian for this world and the next is included in the seven petitions of the
Lord’s prayer,243 while its beginning and ending bring forward the grounds of
his confidence. Everything for which we may and ought to pray in the name of
Jesus, we also may and ought to hope for from the God of grace and hope, who
both stirs up prayer and hope in our spirit, and prepares for its fulfilment.
First and chiefly then should we hope and pray for heavenly blessings from
our almighty and merciful Father, for the glorification of His name and the
testification to His word by His children on earth, for the gracious and glori-
ous, internal and external coming of His heavenly kingdom to us, who, from
the kingdom of this world, are longing for it, and for the accomplishment of
His Divine counsel and will, as in heaven so in us on earth, till we go from
earth to heaven, and till there is at last a new heaven and a new earth. It is
evident that these hopes are realized not merely “here temporally,” but also
“there eternally,” and stretch beyond life, suffering and death into the future
242 Sit Domimis Deus spes tua; non aliud aliquid a Domino Deo tuo speres, sed ipse Dominus sit spes
tua.—Augustin. Enarrat. in Ps. xxxix.

243 Comp. Augustini Enchiridion de fide, spe et caritate, c. 30.

glory of heaven, of which the risen Christ, seated at the right hand of the
Father, to whom is given all power both in heaven and earth, is the pledge.
Consequently the hope and prayers of pilgrims on earth look for the supply of
their daily needs, whether of body or soul, during their earthly pilgrimage,
from the goodness of God their Father. But since they by no means deserve
what they pray for, and need not only the bestowal of God’s gifts, but the
removal of opposing evils, they pray and hope also for the forgiveness of their
debt and reconciliation with their debtors, for preservation from fresh tempta-
tions and transgressions, and long with patient expectation for their final
deliverance from all evil of body and souL Meantime they comfort them-
selves, though not without homesickness, with the joyful hope, that “after a
happy end their heavenly Father will take them from this vale of sorrows to
Himself in heaven,” where is fulness of joy and at His right hand pleasures for
evermore (Ps. xvi. 11). Thus the prayer and hope of God’s children, which
began from the heights of heaven and proceeded through the depths of earth,
return to their Father in heaven, who is the foundation and goal, the begin-
ning and end of all Christian hope.
According to what has been said, Christian hope refers objectively to

both blessings and ills, temporal and eternal, present and future. It prays in
confidence for the continuance of present and the bestowal of future good, for
the alleviation of present and the removal of future ills. It gives the prece-
dence over temporal and earthly to spiritual and heavenly good, and desires
deliverance from inward and eternal before outward and temporal evils.
However great its objects, its confident Amen is firm in the faith that the king-
dom, the power, and the glory are the Father’s in heaven, who with the Son
and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns One God for ever and ever. The glorious
hymn: “Befiehl du deine Wegé,” eta, taken, as is well known, from the 37th
Psalm, gives excellent expression to a hope which trusts in God. The virtue of
Christian hope, being always combined with the obedience of patience, does
not impatiently presume to prescribe to God the time, measure, or manner of
fulfilling its desires and prayers. In every case till the appearing of the glory of
the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ (Tit. ii. 13), has the Father left the
times and seasons of fulfilment undiscovered, and reserved it to His own
power to determine when and how the future of sacred hope should change

into its present. Therefore hope waits in faith and patience for its fulfilment,
which always takes place at the right time, not, it may be, with regard to the
uncertain accidents of good things hoped for, but certainly with regard to the
substance of the highest good and the supreme goodness. Hope rests upon the
promises of God, which are yea and Amen in Christ (2 Cor. i. 20), and is
already happy, although it sees not yet what is hoped for, but waits for it with
patience (Rom. viii. 24), which is not put to shame (Ps. xxv. 2, 3, 5). Hence it is
said (Ps. xxvii. 14): Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, wait I say on the
Lord; and (Ps. xlii. 12): Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou
disquieted within me? hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him, which is
the help of my countenance and my God; and Ps. lxii. 5: My soul waiteth only
upon God; for He is my hope (comp. Ps. cxxx. 5-8). The pedagogic rule,”that
children must learn to wait, holds good also in the education of God’s chil-
dren. The Christian virtue of hope, which is patient and peaceful, persevering
and courageous, stands opposed to the fault of unchristian fear, which, lacking
the support of assured faith, is uneasy, weak and cowardly; and, instead of
overcoming the evil before which it flees, is itself overcome by it, and at last
perishes in misery and despair. Christian hope, on the contrary, rests upon the
God of hope, and is animated by the Comforter, who is the Christian’s great
and strong consolation. All comforts which do not flow from this source are
only of human origin and without power, and miserable comforters are all
they who would administer them (Job xvi. 2). These, whether founded on a
man’s own merit, upon his internal qualities or external possessions, or sup-
ported by the favour or possessions of others, or built upon philosophical
arguments, fall back again upon their failing foundations, either ruined by
their internal emptiness, or overthrown by external attacks. The assurance of
possessing or obtaining a present or future good is a comfort or comforting,
under the experience of present or the fear of future evil. It is for this reason
that there is such comfort in Christian hope, which opposes to even the great-
est temporal evil the believing certainty of far greater and eternal good (2 Cor.
iv. 17), and overcomes the loss of all transitory possessions by the gain of the
highest good, as St. Paul says: To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain (Phil. i.
21), and Asaph (Ps. lxxiii. 25 sq.): If I have Thee, there is nothing in heaven or
earth I desire beside; though my flesh and heart fail, Thou art the comfort of
my heart and my portion for ever. Truly there can be no greater comfort than

that God is Himself our comfort. Raised far above and yet at hand, acting and
abounding in the inmost heart, is this Divine comfort for even the very poor-
est, who with confidence lays hold of it This is declared even in the preface to
the ten commandments: I am the Lord thy God, and therefore also thy com-
fort, thy help in time of trouble (comp. Jer. xiv. 8). Hence God is called the
God of comfort (Rom. xv. 5) as well as the God of hope and patience. If God
be for us, if He is our comfort, all His attributes also are living sources of con-
solation; and His name, in which His grace comprises them for us (Ps. cix. 21),
and His word, in which He meets us with His promises, are the joy and com-
fort of our heart as the suffering prophet testifies (Jer. xv. 16). If God is my
God, then all that He is, is my comfort. He the eternal Father, from whom all
fatherhood in heaven and earth is named, is then also my Father, and by His
almighty power the God of my strength (Ps. xliii. 2, xlvi. 2; Jer. xvi. 19). He is
Love, supreme Love, my Love, who loves me and whom I love, and therefore
my kind friend, my gentle and sweet comfort even in the bitter suffering
which He ever alleviates. He is Omnipotence, omnipresent, omniscient,
Omnipotence, and therefore my strong consolation in time of trouble, from
which His Divine sin-pardoning mercy will in His own time deliver me, and
sanctify and eternally save me in the fellowship of the eternal Son and Holy
Spirit, and of all His saints. Both the blessedness and strength of the great
consolation secured by the possession through faith of the Supreme Good—by
the soul’s possession of God—are excellently expressed by David (Ps. xviii.): I
love Thee, O Lord my strength; the Lord is my rock and my fortress and my
deliverer; my God, my strength in whom I trust, my buckler and the horn of
my salvation, my high tower (comp. Ps. cxviii. 14; Isa. xii. 2). The moral power
of this sacred comfort, which stands firm upon God’s covenant of peace when
all earthly heights fall (Isa. liv. 10), overcomes its opposite of all evil, and tri-
umphs over even death’s conquest and hell’s terrors with the crucified and
risen Christ. Thanks be to God, who gives our timid weakness the comfort of
victory through our mighty Redeemer Jesus Christ (1 Cor. xv. 57).
The meekness of Christian patience and the strong consolation of Chris-

tian hope, have to prove their victorious power especially in the Christian’s
death, which terminates his transitory earthly life, completes his baptism of
suffering into the death of Christ (Rom. vi. 3 sq.), and is thus an entrance into

a higher life. Luther, with a profound appreciation of holy baptism, says
(Walch, Part 19, p. 82), that whatever contributes in this life to mortify the
flesh and quicken the spirit belongs to baptism, and that consequently the
shorter time we live the more quickly do we complete our baptism. The old
self-willed man must die, not only spiritually but corporeally, that the new
mail may become the more freely alive. He must, since body and soul are sin-
ful and carnal, be completely killed—not indeed by arbitrary self-inflictions,
but by obedient submission to the Divine will, which extinguishes his plea-
sure in pain and destroys his life in death. All men, all sinners, must die, for
death is the wages or penalty of the sinner who has sunk from Divine life to
carnal earthly existence. Hence sentence of death has been passed by God
upon all men, who are awaiting its execution in the prison of this world with
fear and reluctance proportioned to the degree in which they have offended
God, and know themselves unreconciled with Him, and therefore such in
death see before them only destruction and condemnation; for where the
spirit has not risen to new life, the death of the body can only lead from spiri-
tual to eternal death, which is without hope or comfort. Hence an unreconciled
sinner cannot die calmly and patiently, cannot depart in the peace of God,
because even the penalty of death does not kill, although it does strike down
the old man, which is without peace, in him. The death of one who dies unre-
deemed in his sins is a sinful and impure death, a punishment of guilt, not an
offering of patience, a groaning of the creature, without the comfort and grace
of the Holy Spirit. Since modern philosophism has separated human suffer-
ings in general, and death in particular, from their spiritual and moral connec-
tion, and represented them as only natural calamities, and moreover treated
morality as merely the doctrine of right action or of good works, that good suf-
fering and happy dying at peace with God, which were formerly a Christian’s
most sacred interest, have been less and less a subject of serious consideration.
The more the natural eye turns with reluctance from the prospect of death, the
more devotionally should the spiritual eye be directed towards it. Lord, so
teach us to consider that we must die, that we may apply our hearts to wis-
dom (Ps. xc. 12). Teach us to live to die, and to die to live.
He who has been baptized into the sufferings and death of Christ, who
has received pardon and grace for his whole life, suffering and death, sinks

the latter in the former. Death thus loses the character of a penalty of the law
and its wrath, and acquiring that of a fatherly though severe chastisement, is
at the same time transformed into a sacrifice of submission in the case of him
who endures it. The death of wrath, in other words death undergone with
fearful and angry reluctance, is nothing but punishment, and that endured
with stupid indifference is not much better. But when, contrary to the natural
inclination, it is borne with ready submission to the holy and gracious will of
God, and life with all its joys and pains willingly resigned, it becomes a self-
denying sacrifice of body and life, acceptable to God (Rom. xii. 1), one which
attains the aim of all sacrifice, viz. the glorification, not the destruction of its
nature. Not that we may ever look upon our death as an atonement before
God for the sins of our life. He who has not previously received reconciliation
and pardon through the blood of Christ, cannot, because still abiding not in
the love but in the wrath of God, offer an acceptable sacrifice, nor reconcile
God by His unpeaceful and impure death. But when sinful man, reconciled by
the holy and sacrificial death of the Saviour for him, devotes himself in thank-
ful love to live and to die henceforth to Him (Rom. xiv. 8), then even the sin-
ner’s self-denying death, that patient endurance of death which kills all that is
still carnal in his nature, becomes a pure and perfect whole burnt-offering,
from which the redeemed soul rises in happy hope, an offering of a sweet
savour, well-pleasing to God, what is heavenly ascending to the heavenly
sanctuary, while what is earthly becomes earth again in the grave (2 Cor. v. 1).
Such an offering up of life at the end of the earthly life (2 Tim. iv. 6) completes
its priestly character (1 Pet. ii. 5, 9). The life-embracing import of Holy Bap-
tism is thus fulfilled, to which also the daily morning and evening sacrifice,
and the daily alternation of night and day, of sleeping and waking point, in
the sense expressed in Part IV. Such a baptism of water signifies that the old
Adam in us is by daily repentance and contrition to be drowned and to die
with all his sins and evil desires (mortificatio), and a new man, who is to live in
righteousness and purity before God for ever (vivificatio), comp. Rom. vi. 4
sqq., 2 Cor. ix. 10 sq., daily to rise and come forth. Very reverently consistent
therefore with an exalted estimation of Christian dying is it to combine the
thought of Holy Baptism in the early morning of a Christian life with the par-
ticipation of the Holy Communion on the death-bed at its evening close. For
this sacrament exalts its recipient to the most intimate communion with the

priestly atonement of Christ, and at the same time with His heavenly and glo-
rified nature. And thus, while life sinks in earthly death, death is exalted to
heavenly life, and while the old body dies away from the soul, the latter lives
in the glorified body of the Redeemer, which embraces all His saints, and is
clothed upon with the house from heaven (2 Cor. v. 2). This is not merely to
terminate, but to complete our earthly course in Him who is the end of the
law (2 Tim. iv. 7), it is to die as a Christian redeemed and happy in Christ,
united with Him who is risen and liveth for ever. Hence also is it, though a
dying in weakness, a living in the power of His resurrection (John xi. 25), a
victory over death and the grave, over sin and the devil. To dying Christians,
death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where
is thy victory? Sin, which as condemned is the sting of death, is crushed by
grace, and the law, which as condemning is the strength of sin, is overcome by
the victory of the atonement. Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory
through Jesus Christ our Lord and representative, out of whose hand no hos-
tile power can pluck us (1 Cor. xv. 55-57; comp. John x. 28 sq.). For neither life,
nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor
things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to
separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is with
this triumphant passage that we close, as with it we began this chapter.
CHAPTER II. OF ETERNAL LIFE, THE LAST JUDGMENT AND

THE VICTORY OF DIVINE LOVE.
We know, says St. Paul (2 Cor. v. 1), that if our earthly house of this
tabernacle is dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens. We know that we shall eternally survive tempo-
ral death, say, together with the apostle, all Christians with undoubting assur-
ance. Why are they so certain of it? Because God has given them the earnest of
the Spirit (2 Cor. v. 5; Eph. i. 13 sq.). The spirit here is far more than the mere
human soul, which without the spirit from God would no more have a pledge
and bond of immortality than the animal life has. The soul is not itself the
reason of its eternal life; but its union, its personal association with the eternal
God, who in love breathed into it His image, and testifies of Himself to its

conscience, is its pledge of an immortal endurance of this alliance. This union
unbroken is its eternal life; but broken by mortal sin, it deeply and painfully
wounds the soul and deprives it of the mortal body, which it ought to rule,
but not of the immortal conscience, which is founded on the knowledge and
nature of God. However man may forget and come short of his Divine destina-
tion, God, who has written it as a law in His heart, never forgets it, and
appoints it to be as much a misery to the transgressor as a blessing to the obe-
dient; while the soul of the animal, experiencing neither the one nor the other,
just lives and just dies. God does not let alone the soul, in which or on which
He has determined to manifest His holiness and glory in either love or wrath.
He leaves it no rest till it seeks rest in Him, and lets it find no peace out of
Him. And when the soul has found Him, He does not suffer anything again to
separate it from His love (Rom. viii. 38), and is able to raise it from the cross to
Himself in Paradise, or to bear it out of deep afflictions and the shadow of
death to Abraham’s bosom, and to gather it to its people. For He, the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of their fathers, to whom He gathers their
children (Deut. xxxii. 50), is not the God of the dead but of the living; they all
live to Him (Luke xx. 37 sq.). As surely then as God lives and reigns as Lord
and God of all men, who, through their reception and possession of the seeds
of the Spirit, are of His family, so surely do they all live for ever to Him, and
cannot, even in mortal sickness, die to Him, but on the contrary remain rather
with than in life even at their departure, and are then the living dead. Hence
faith in God’s eternal and communicable life involves faith in our eternal par-
ticipation of it, or in our immortality. It follows that the more certain, vital and
loving is the communion of the soul with God, the more assured, confident
and joyful will be the belief in its eternal and happy life; while the more its
union with God is obscured and depressed by sin and its accompanying fear,
the more will this faith become uncertain and doubting, nay despairing. We
cannot then wonder that, after the loss of Paradisaic immortality244 in the Old
Covenant and under the unfulfilled law, which condemns sin to death, and
before the reconciliation and reunion of man with God was accomplished in
Christ, the hope of a future life should have still been uncertain and shadowy,
and that the corruption of the body should not unfrequently have over-
244 Comp. however the testimonies to the Hebrew belief in immortality collected in the recent work of
Dr. Ludwig von Essen, der Prediger Salomo, p. 52 sqq.

clouded it with fear of death. The more firmly founded and the clearer on the
other hand is the confidence in the gospel of Jesus, the God-man and
Redeemer, which St. Paul expresses when he says: We know that if our
earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building of God, a
house which is eternal in heaven.
The animal, whether human or otherwise, knows nothing of God and

eternity, but is wholly absorbed in the world and time and the flesh. The natu-
ral man discerneth not the things of the Spirit of God; though He speaks to
him, he does not or will not hear His testimony. The closer however the spiri-
tual communion of man with God in Christ, the more does his royal preroga-
tive beyond all merely animal existence again come forth. This consists in the
intercourse which God holds with him in spirit, speaking and bearing testi-
mony to his spirit. Spirit in spirit, the Spirit of God in the personal spirit of
man, the Divine I in the human thou (I am the Lord thy God), testifying,
inspiring, embracing the creature of His love, and speaking in and to him as
His living image. This is the indwelling, divinely familiar secret, which is for
the most part missed by the ear dull of hearing of the natural man, but which
grows more and more audible and evident to the children of God. If we are
reconciled in Christ the Son to the Father, the Spirit of God beareth witness to
our spirit that we are the children of God; and if children, then heirs, heirs of
God, and joint-heirs with Christ (Rom. viii. 17). Not perishable, not lost chil-
dren are we, but immortal children of the eternal Father, heirs of God, who
live on after death, joint-heirs with the eternal Son, our heavenly brother, who
as the God-man has received us into imperishable communion with Himself,
and made us partakers of His victory over sin and hell. Thus through the
earnest of the Divine Spirit and His testimony to the human spirit, man’s life
after death is as certain as his conscience. It was because of this comforting
testimony and loving attraction of the Spirit, that the apostle wished rather to
be absent from the body and at home with the Lord; that to him to live was
Christ, and therefore to die gain (2 Cor. v. 8; Phil. i. 21).
To be at home with the Lord (ἐνδημῆσαι πρὸς τὸν κύριον), herein con-
sists the supreme desire of the believing Christian; while present with the
body he is not yet at home with the exalted Son in the Father’s home and

bosom. To be there at home. Oh, happy goal of rest and peace, which beckons
with its welcome promise to the pilgrim of earth at the end of his uneasy,
much troubled, and thorny path! Thither would I flee to Thee, O my Beloved!
to rest in Thy bosom, and there to find the unfading peace which this world
can never give. It was a fine saying of Jung Stilling: Blessed are the home-sick, for
they shall go home, they shall be at home with the Lord. The apostolic seer con-
firms it when he says: Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord; they rest
with Him from their labour, from their works, which do not pretentiously
precede, but unassumingly follow them, and receive in the peace and blessing
of their Father’s grace their promised reward (Rev. xiv. 13; comp. Isa. lvii. 2;
Wisd. iii. 1 sqq.). How Sabbatic also after the labour of suffering is the promise
of the Lord to him who suffers and dies with Him: To-day shalt thou be with
me in Paradise! Nor less so to His people are His own parting words spoken
on the cross: Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit, which are also the
last sigh of every redeemed soul (Ps. xxxi. 6).
Thus the testimony of God’s word assures us that the life of souls akin
to God and beloved by Him, who have departed in faith and reconciliation
from this afflicted and burdensome body, will be a peaceful and happy state,
a being at home and at rest in God. And this has been the universal belief of
the Christian Church throughout all ages. It is just because this state in its ret-
rospection and introspection is pre-eminently one of restful and contempla-
tive separation from the world and concealment in God, one in which the
departed lead in the heavenly mansions (Luke xvi. 9; John xiv. 2), a happy,
quiet life, that it does not come forward with power and energy into the world
of corporeal phenomenon,245 but awaits for its epiphany and perfection the
day of the glorious appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, to which the whole
Church is looking forward in hope (Tit. ii. 13). The apostle, amidst the disqui-
etude of this world and the infirmities of this decaying tabernacle, longed
indeed for the quiet peace of being at home with the Lord. But his desire was
not so much to be entirely unclothed of this his body by dying, as to have it
glorified (1 Cor. xv. 51), and clothed upon with the immortal resurrection
body without dying, by his living to see the speedy return of the Lord (2 Cor.
245 Comp. Martensen, die Christliche Dogmatik, 3rd edit., Kiel 1855, p. 276.

v. 2-4). He was, however, content to leave this in God’s hands (2 Cor. v. 8),
knowing that the delay of the Lord’s return would leave a time of grace and
space for repentance to many who would enter His kingdom (2 Pet. iii. 9). As
in the case of Christ Himself, an interval took place between death and the
resurrection of the body. St. Paul too admits and acknowledges that in the
case also of most who have fallen asleep in Christ, this interval will extend to
far greater temporal dimensions (1 Thess. iv. 13 sqq.). Their souls, indeed, are
meantime safe in heavenly garments and abodes, though not as yet clothed
again in their specific and effectively apparent corporeity, but are awaiting it
in peaceful anticipation and patient hope. This is in accordance with their
contemplative and resting condition, in which they do God priestly service in
the upper sanctuary, but do not as yet exercise kingly rule on earth (Rev. vi.
10). Hence this state is characterized as one which, however blessed and edify-
ing, is still looking forward to its royal perfection at the resurrection. It is cer-
tain that a growth in the love and knowledge of God, augmenting till it
becomes a sealing, takes place in it, but a manifest and ruling activity in the
outer world, under the new heavens and upon the new earth in the brightness
of the revelation of Christ’s royal glory, is still lacking. The state of the pious
departed is therefore twofold. It is one of happy peace in silent concealment,
and yet one of desire for their manifestation and perfection in glorified corpor-
eity. When then Christ the Lord, who makes all things new, shall appear in
His Divinehuman glory, the souls which are written in heaven (Heb. xii. 23)
will come forth from their quiet abodes, and enter with delight into the new
resurrection bodies, which God will make for them, and for each from the
dead grain of corn of his own old, his individual body (1 Cor. xv. 35-38). That
it is not intelligence, but the want of it, which misconceives and therefore
rejects the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, is powerfully shown by the
apostle in his reply: Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except
it die, and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but
bare grain, etc. Now, to affirm that God, who is always making new and pre-
viously non-existent bodies, should be unable from the seed-corn of existent
bodies to renew them again, is folly. Not in the power of the dead flesh, but in
that of the holy quickening Spirit who conquers all death, do we believe in a
thorough renovation of the entire old world, a resurrection of the flesh and
eternal life.

The life of the godly after death teaches us by contrast to understand
the future state of the ungodly. Departed from the shattered tabernacle, and
banished from this world, they find in another no pleasant home, no place of
rest, but are either driven restlessly about at some far distance, or are by
Divine justice condemned to some prison (1 Pet. iii. 19), in which they have no
rest and no kind of satisfaction, but suffer torment (Luke xix. 23 sq.). There is
no lust of the eye, for outer darkness is about them (Matt. xxii. 13), from
which, indeed, they can see and long for, but at an inaccessible distance, the
regions of heavenly light (Luke xix. 26). The pride of the world and its society
have departed, and the lusts of the flesh have disappeared with death, which
leaves only gnawing conscience in existence. Nothing is left to the unclothed
spirit in the land of the dead but sad despairing nakedness, and an insatiable
craving for refreshment (Luke xvi. 24), for real life, for corporeity to fill its
shadowy emptiness in the kingdom of the dead, in cold, dark Sheol (Hades to
be distinguished from Gehenna, the hell of fire). In the dark depths of Hades
are heard indeed lamentations, groans and sighs, but not the voice of praise
and thanksgiving, of love and joy (Isa. xxxviii. 18; Ps. vi. 6, cxv. 17 sq.). This is
silenced by fear and hopeless desire, and stifled by terrified expectation of the
future, or by defiant gnashing of teeth. In this state of spiritual death, the
ungodly and unbelieving are already judged (Heb. ix. 27), but not yet defini-
tively and completely, not yet in the last resort.
Hence the question arises, whether any deliverance from this hopeless
condition is still possible. Scripture forbids any hope for those who in this life
had Moses and the prophets, the law and the prophets, who both externally
and internally clearly apprehended the voice of the Holy Spirit, but arrogantly
or frivolously hardened themselves against it, and therefore incurred, by their
contempt of grace, the guilt of the sin against the Holy Ghost;246 who, if they
constantly rejected pardon in this world, will still less find it in the next (Matt.
xii. 31 sq.). Hence no one must inconsiderately presume to put off his conver-
sion to the future. On the other hand, Scripture does indeed leave room for
hope for those who, like sinners before the deluge and the heathen at the
246 Comp. Oettingen, disputatio de peccato in spiritum sanctum, qua cum eschatologia christiana
contineatur ratione, Dorpati 1856.

present day, had the law of God written in their heart and transgressed it, but
not having Moses and the prophets, i.e. Divine revelation, have not yet heard
the gospel, and are therefore guiltless of contemptuous unbelief of it (non defec-
tus sed contemtus damnat), and of the sin against the Holy Spirit of grace and
supplication. They may, even beyond the valley of death, come in the next
world to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. ii. 4), and receive grace through
the proclamation and repentant acceptance of the gospel. St. Peter gives us
scriptural ground for this hope in the well-known passage concerning the
descent of Christ into Hades, and His preaching the gospel to the dead (1 Pet.
iii. 19 sq., and iv. 6). Not according to their disobedience to the law, which is
expiated by His obedience unto death upon the cross, but according to their
unbelief in the gospel, will Christ judge all men at the close of their whole
history on the last day (Rom. xiv. 9 sqq).
When then the times are fulfilled and the gospel and its blessings have
penetrated the fulness of the Gentiles and of the now blinded Jews even unto
the ends of the world (Rom. xi. 25 sqq.), and when on the one hand the num-
ber of His elect and called known only to God is accomplished, and on the
other the antichristian opposition of Satan and the world has reached its cli-
max, then will appear together with the last judgment the end of this old
world and the beginning of the new, and both through Christ, who is at once
the Redeemer of the world and the Judge of the unredeemed, the end of the
old Adam, the beginning and life of the new.247 The Christ, exalted from the
depths of His sacrificial death to the right hand of the Majesty on high (Heb. i.
3), will then visibly return, in His Divine-human heaven and earth embracing
glory, surrounded by His holy angels and the spirits of just men made perfect
(Heb. xii. 32), to raise the dead and to judge the world, as He Himself
promised and foretold (Matt. xxv. 31 sqq.). As truly as the time and hour of
this mighty catastrophe, which is to conclude the last act of human history, is
a close, a Divine secret, so truly has it had during the course of the ages its
presages and tokens, or its preliminary instances, presignifying and introduc-
ing that last all-comprehending decision, from which there is no appeal. These
prophetic indications and predictions which are recorded and prefigured
247 Comp. on the Second Corning of Christ, on the separation at the last judgment, and on the final
conflagration of the old world, Rothe, Theologische Ethik, vol. ii. pp. 326-337.

even by the Old Testament prophets, then more definitely by the New Testa-
ment evangelists (Matt. xxiv. and parallel passages) and apostles, and last of
all especially in the Apocalypse, go through all history, which is an alternation
of Divine judgments and gracious respites. Their fulfilment too draws nearer
and nearer, till at last after long patience, the great and general day of judg-
ment, with its definite decision of all things, its expulsion of all that is hostile
from the kingdom of God, and its glorious accomplishment of all in the tri-
umph of Christ and His righteousness, shall take place. Sacred prophecy, as
the Divine direction of the world’s history whether by advice or deed, is, as
the passages of Scripture in question show, so copious and manifold, that,
though always aiming at its final goal, it attains it only by a slow and gradual
advance,248 and therefore in much longer periods than men, with the short
duration of their lifetime, may wish. One height after another is successively
reached, till at last upon the final summit all is simultaneously disclosed and
fulfilled to God’s supreme honour in the appearance of the kingdom of His
glory. Then with the rapidity of lightning will that day break upon the world
on which the flames of Divine anger shall—as formerly the flood—destroy the
old world and Hades and death and all effete and corrupt matter (2 Pet. iii. 6
sq.). While thus the new transfigured world is born amidst the burning pangs
of the old, all living spirits and resurrection germs will be quickened to new
and spiritual developments and formations. All the dead will then rise with
new, more spiritual and immortal bodies; and the bodies of all the living will
be changed together with the metamorphosis of the whole world (1 Cor. xv.
51-53). And thus will the whole body of mankind, the whole race of Adam
and Eve, stand renovated on the great scene of judgment, of eternal separation
and decision.
Then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven,
with power and great glory (Matt. xxiv. 30). The appearance of this Rex
248 It is consequently a continual truth, that the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. After various judg-
ments and times of grace, the thousand years’ reign, rightly understood and without any certain deter-
mination of its time, may be regarded in the course of prophecy and its fulfilment, as the broad and
bright inaugural platform of the last days for the world and the Church, the state and the home. Comp.
Auberlen’s instructive work, Der Prophet Daniel und die Offenbarung Johannis, Basle 1854, especially p. 538
sqq. As to the length of the thousand years’ reign, it reminds us of 2 Pet. iii. 8. Comp. Martensen, christl.
Dogmatik, § 281.

tremendæ majestatis and the sight of Him is of itself a terrible judgment. All
men—created in the image of God, but far fallen from it—must now be mani-
fested before the judgment - seat of Christ, and shall behold with their eyes as
their judge the glorified God-man, the perfect image of God, God of God,
Light of Light, which shines through His exalted human nature, while He
looks through them with His. To look at this sun - bright mirror of God and
see themselves in all their nakedness therein, and thence to be looked at to the
inmost heart, what a humiliation, what a condemnation for the race of sin-
ners! They must see Jesus in His Divine Majesty, Jesus whom they pierced,
when He bore the form of a servant (Rev. i. 7). They must bow before Him as
their Judge, whom they judged, and must acknowledge as King of heaven and
earth Him whom here they despised, whose voice they disregarded, whose
sacrifice they despised, whose grace they self-righteously rejected. All will be
awe-stricken before the pure and holy splendour of His appearing, and each
must feel with fear and trembling, that he is unable to stand by his own merits
and courage before the presence of this Judge, and that all his righteousnesses
are but filthy rags. The penetrating and discriminating glance of the Judge
will immediately lead to the separation of the multitudes assembled before
His judgment - seat, He will separate them one from another as a shepherd
divideth the sheep from the goats (Matt. xx. 32 sq.). Jesus is the Shepherd of
the people, who knows His own sheep, and they know Him and hear His
voice and gather to the place to which He assigns them at His right hand,
while He directs the headstrong goats to the left. Sheep then and goats,—such
is the eternally decisive distinction, which He makes among men. And what
does this distinction signify? That nothing but His own image avails before
Him. The sheep are they who bear the image of the Lamb of God, the merci-
ful, meek and lowly bearer of the sin of the world (Matt. xi. 29). Mercy from
Christ has come not only upon them, but into them, making their hearts also
merciful, meek and lowly, and producing from them the gentle fruits of these
Christ-like virtues in words and deeds of love. Jesus will have His own
known by the fruits of their love (Matt. vii. 20), which are the fruits of His
grace, and declares them His for the same reason in the great day of separa-
tion.
It is upon works of compassionate love, of lowly ministration, that the

King of Heaven, the Shepherd of all nations lays stress, it is this that He makes
the test in the judgment (Matt. xxv. 35 sqq.). This is entirely in accordance
with 1 John iii. 14. We know that we have passed from death to life, because
we love the brethren; he that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Again by
love to the brethren is it perceived whether any one has love to God (1 John
iii. 17, iv. 12, 20). Now it is upon love to God and our neighbour that all the
law and the prophets hang (Matt. xxii. 40). What then? Are we to infer, that
man is just before God, and can stand in the judgment by his own works or by
the works of the law? Surely not. We must neither make void the law by the
gospel, nor the gospel by the law (Rom. iii. 31). The double commandment to
love God and to love our neighbour is combined into one, as Augustine
remarks, in the love of Christ; for He is both the Lord our God and, as the Son
of man, our brother and neighbour. Who is in the strictest sense my neigh-
bour? Not he to whom I show mercy, but he who shows it to me (Luke x. 29,
36, 37), the Good Samaritan, the all-merciful God-man, Jesus, who has com-
passion upon man lying in his blood, after the priest and Levite of the law
have passed by on the other side. All those works of mercy to our poor neigh-
bours, which He will on the day of judgment own as done to Himself, He has
first done (Luke iv. 18, vii. 21 sq.), and continues to do to us. For He feeds
those that hunger for the bread of life, gives drink to those who thirst for the
water of life, takes in the strangers to His Father’s house, clothes the naked
with the robe of His righteousness, heals the sick at heart, and ransoms and
visits the prisoners. The works of compassionate love, which He owns in His
sheep at the judgment, are not such selfwrought deeds as they have per-
formed by their own power and merit, and for which the heavenly reward is
now thendue, but fruits of that mercy which He first abundantly bestowed on
them. Hence He refers them chiefly to Himself, as to Him who is the very near-
est of all our brethren and neighbours. For He does not say: Ye fed the hun-
gry, but: I was hungry and ye fed me; I was thirsty, etc. Hereby he also testi-
fies that all these good deeds have a spiritual reference, that they concern not
merely the external need of relief, but the internal need of salvation, and there-
fore profit the Church of Christ, which is His body. The grace and benefits
first received from Him quite put any notion of merit out of question, and
only leave room for that of the duty and result of gratitude and love. Again, in
the fact that the Lord regards them as done to Himself we have a gracious and

generous, nay, even a thankful recognition of small loving services towards
poorer brethren. It is heart-affecting, it is as deeply and tenderly condescend-
ing as it is noble and highminded in the majestic monarch who provides for
all, to put Himself in the place of the lowest and to say to His subjects: I was
hungry and ye fed me; I was thirsty and ye gave me drink; a stranger and ye
took me in; I was naked and ye clothed me; I was sick and ye visited me; I was
in prison and ye came unto me. And when, in extreme astonishment at this
gracious testimony on the part of their Judge, they inquire concerning the
when and the how, the King will answer: Verily I say unto you, what ye did to
one of the least of these my brethren, ye did unto me (Matt. xxv. 40). Behold
then our suffering neighbours with their temporal and spiritual wants all
united in the one Christ, who suffered for all, who shows supreme mercy on
all; and again the one Christ, who suffered for all, extended in all our suffer-
ing neighbours and brethren, for whom He requires mercy and love. There is
no higher, purer and concretely stronger motive to Divine philanthropy than
this. All humanity which does not rest upon the Divinity of Christ is vain, and
all extra-Christian morality is but feeble and unfruitful. Blessed be God the
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercy (2 Cor. i. 3). Yes, He is the
Father of mercy, and the Son whom He has given is mercy itself; He is the
compassionate High Priest and the gentle pitying Lamb, who bore our sick-
nesses and took upon Him our sorrows; He is the merciful King, whose king-
dom is founded on the love with which we are loved, and with which we love
in return (1 John iv. 7-21), and manifested in the Divine mercy, which He gen-
erously gives, which we humbly receive and have meekly to bestow upon our
neighbour, which moreover we must again and again appropriate by faith,
that we may be able to exercise it in love for love. All Christianity, all love of
God and man, the gospel and the law are included and united in the love of
Christ, the love with which He loves us, with which we love Him. Christ is all
and in all (Gal. iii. 11), and this applies also to the last judgment.
Hence the sheep, who on the day of judgment stand on the right hand of
the King and Shepherd of the nations, are the true Christians, the children of
mercy, who are born, or rather born again of it (1 Pet. i. 3), who live self-deny-
ingly in it, and follow in faith and love their good Shepherd through the king-
dom of grace and of the cross to the kingdom of glory and triumph. For then

shall the King say to those on His right hand: Come, ye blessed of my Father,
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world (Matt.
xxv. 34). They did not found, they did not prepare, they did not even gain this
kingdom; they inherit it as fellow-heirs with Christ and as in Him, in common
with their already departed brethren who now join them, the blessed children
of the eternal Father. The love of the Father from the beginning prepared this
kingdom for all whom He created in His image, but closed it against them
when they degenerated into selfishness, until the Son reopened it by His suf-
ferings to His lost children. He graciously brings back out of the perishing
world, at the end of the days, those who followed Him upon the narrow way,
into the kingdom of glory, prepared from the beginning and now tri-
umphantly perfected. Thus the end of history is reunited to its commence-
ment, and a new and better beginning made.
We now turn to the goats, whom the last judgment of separation places
at the left hand. Though of the same nature as the sheep, they are still their
opposite in disposition, an opposite obstinately persevered in to the end, and
therefore, as contrasted with the children of God, children of the devil (John
viii. 44). They were and still are in opposition to the Lamb of God,249 to whom
in His exaltation they are not willingly but unwillingly subject. Their natural
pride would not humble itself before His humiliation, at which they took
offence, before His cross, at which they stumbled. Their stiff-necked wilful-
ness, their self-love and self-righteousness would not bow before the lowli-
ness and gentleness of Christ, their carnal selfishness would not penitently
deny itself, but lustfully asserted itself against the Holy Spirit, and hence they
resisted both the punishment and the pardon of their sins. Therefore they
remained insensible to the gentle converting influence of the mercy of God in
Christ, and so hardened their hearts in unbelief against the gracious opera-
tions of the Holy Spirit through the gospel, as to persevere impenitently and
mercilessly in sin against Him. Thus remaining devoid of the fruits of the
Spirit, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
temperance (Gal. v. 22 sq.), which adorn the sheep of Christ, they brought
forth luxuriantly the works of the flesh, of which enmity, envy, wrath, strife,
249 The many-horned beast in the Revelation (xvii. 14), the world-power hostile to God, together with
hostile worldly wisdom point to this.

discord, faction, hatred, accompany them in another life, and of which the
apostle says: They who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God
(ver. 21). This sentence is now definitively passed on the day of judgment
upon unreconciled, unconverted, obdurate sinners, the goats of this world
(Isa. xiv. 9), who prided themselves upon the obstinacy of their opposition. It
is justified by the hardness of heart which they have manifested, by their want
of compassion towards the afflicted, and especially towards the poor mem-
bers of Christ, towards His despised and persecuted sheep, and thereby
towards Himself and His Church (Matt. xxv. 42 sq.). They did not accept Him
who would have redeemed them from the curse of the law, being made a
curse for them (Gal. ii. 13); they rejected, in rejecting Him, the blessing of
Divine grace and mercy, and therefore remain under the curse of their ever
accumulating transgressions of God’s law. Hence on this terrible day of wrath
(dies irse, dies ilia, Rom. ii. 5), they have to hear that dreadful sentence of
condemnation: Depart, ye cursed, into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his
angels; and they shall go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into
life eternal (Matt. xxv. 41, 46).
Even the execrable levity of our days and of the world can approve of
eternal happiness in its own sense of the word, but is much horrified at its
correlative opposite eternal punishment, as too severe and terrible. Hence in
the times of a crude illuminism it already decreed with puerile arrogance that
“Hell was no more,” and that the devil and his angels belonged to fairyland,
where none cares for him, and he is made a mere subject of poetry, made poet-
ical game of, which he mischievously retorts. That truths concerning hell and
the devil are revolting to the natural and unsanctified man is a criterion of
their sacred and scriptural truth. All objections and pretences against them
rest upon the weakness and laxity of that spirit of presumption, which insists
upon their being untrue because unpleasant. Such a spirit delights in first
producing from its own imagination childish and fabulous representations
and caricatures fit only to frighten children, and then in being able pedanti-
cally to criticize or deny these superstitious fancies. Sin is next extenuated into
mere weakness of will, or declared in materialistic fashion to be the result of
sensuous matter, and touching effusions are indulged in concerning the good
Father who dwells above the starry vault, and will not surely punish with

everlasting severity the weaknesses, the shady side of His imperfect or ill-
behaved children, but make them all happy as soon as possible. These
notions, as false as they are lax, have terribly contributed to the licence and
demoralization of the present generation, which as their result extends to
itself the most comfortable remission of all its sins, together with their tempo-
ral and eternal penalties, and no longer fears any Divine judgment, any wrath
of God, any hell. Which therefore too no longer zealously strives after heaven,
being of opinion that it will sooner or later fall to their share, or that it already
exists on earth and consists in the transitory pleasures of this world. Neither is
there any longer a wholesome fear of, and powerful resistance to sin, because
the fact that it is from a strong spirit, viz. the devil, and leads, unless taken
away by the Lamb of God, to hell, is ignored. It is no longer perceived how
deeply sin is rooted in the soul, which idolatrously departs from God and His
love, and loves itself more than God, and would be as God its own master
(Gen. iii. 5), and which therefore transgresses the commandment of God, and
resists in its selfishness the law of His love. It is then also forgotten how the
love of God encounters with severity indeed, but still with exceeding grace
and deepest self-abnegation, this rebellion of selfishness; how the Father deliv-
ers up His Son to death and Hades for the expiation of all sin, how the Son
again and again with gentle long-suffering beseeches sinners, by His messen-
gers: Be ye reconciled to God. And finally, there is an utter misconception of
the fact, that it is not so much their vain opposition to God’s sovereignty as
their obstinate and proud rejection of His grace, which at last, when the time
of grace is past, draws down upon the goats, i.e. upon the presumptuous, stiff-
necked despisers of God, who are ashamed to become the sheep of Christ, the
judgment of eternal rejection according to the holy word and sacred justice of
God. Thus the heights of human sin and rebellion and the depths of Divine
grace and pity, and the real and overpowering earnestness of the Divine holi-
ness and righteousness, are all misconceived by that sentimental levity which
denies this rejection, and since it no longer believes in, no longer fears either
hell or judgment, but sinks deeper and deeper in worldly pleasures or sor-
rows, and sows more and more profusely to the flesh, to reap thereof tempo-
ral and eternal ruin.
The unjust, that is the unjustified, shall go into eternal punishment, but

the righteous or justified into life eternal. Eternal life is life in the eternal love of
God, which from the beginning prepared for angels and men its holy happy
kingdom, which created them in the image and for the love of God and for
love of each other, and has anew constrained them to holy love in Christ the
Redeemer (Rom. vi. 23). The love of God is the vital warmth of His creation, it
is the sacrificial fire of His sanctuary, which, kindled from heaven, reascends
thither. Man was to be the priestly guardian of this sacred primal flame, but
he did not sustain it, but let it spread sidewards and downwards till a consum-
ing fire was thus kindled. Eternal punishment or eternal fire, prepared for the
devil and his angels, is the contrary of eternal life and love, it is life in the fire
of God’s eternal wrath. This fire, unquenchable from the day of judgment
onwards, was not, like the kingdom of the blessed of the Father, prepared
from the beginning. It was kindled when the children began to be disobedient,
when one high in rank among them grew proud and selfish, and did not
abide in the truth and fidelity of love (John viii. 44), but apostatized and
seduced many others to fellowship with his falsehood, unfaithfulness and
rebellion. Divine love is angry with the loveless, the holy God with the
ungodly, sacred sovereignty with criminal revolt. The love of God, though
angry with its opposite, shows both its height towards friends and its depth
towards foes. Hence Divine majesty sank itself in the human form of a ser-
vant, expiated all the guilt and hostility of sinners by the sacrifice aglow with
love, and by the blood of the merciful God-man, who applied to Himself all the
wrath, and to us all the grace of Divine love. This is the perfect Redeemer and
this His great ransom, whereby the prison of the law is opened that its debtors
may be set at liberty. Well for those who in penitence and faith accept it. They
are saved, they are justified, they are renewed by the Holy Spirit, they are
under the good Shepherd’s care, and they go at the judgment to His right
hand and thence to life eternal (John v. 24). But woe to those who despise the
God of grace and patience, reject the merciful Saviour and Holy Comforter,
count the blood of the covenant wherewith they are sanctified an unholy
thing, and do despite to the spirit of grace. “Woe unto those who wilfully sin
against the Holy Ghost, after they have received the knowledge of the truth;
there remaineth to them no other sacrifice for sin, but a fearful looking for of
judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries (Heb. x.
26-29; Deut. xxxiii. 22). These are the goats, the refractory, who have become

unsusceptible of renewing grace, who therefore now receive that sentence of
rejection: Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his
angels. And they will go into eternal punishment. They will go into the miser-
able punishment of that hell, now for ever separated by the powers of the old
world’s transformation, from the new heaven and the new earth, where there
is no peace, no love, where the pride, strife and envy of selfishness alone pre-
vail; they will go to a restless, passionate hell, to Gehenna, where their worm
dieth not, and the fire is not quenched (Mark ix. 43 sqq.). This, in opposition to
eternal life in communion with God, is eternal death in separation from Him;
this is the condemnation of hell in which, after physical dissolution, spiritual
becomes eternal death. The less the effeminate moralism of the times desires
to hear of the horrors of eternity, the more decidedly must it be spoken of in
scriptural language, and the more needful is it to testify again and again to
this reckless generation, that there is a hell, a fiery hell.250
The contrast of the sheep and the goats, of the saved and lost in the last
judgment, does not turn upon any original Divine decree, but upon the fact
that God, when He made spiritual creatures in His own self-conscious image,
laid upon them neither internal nor external constraint to continue in that
innate likeness to God. On the contrary, He left it to their own choice, by loyal
obedience to His will, to continue truly like Him, or by the disloyal mainte-
nance of their own will to seek to be as God, and in pursuit of the false like-
ness to lose the true. God did this because His goodness can only find delight
in the free homage and devotion of such a creature, for which reason also He
neither combines an irresistible necessity with the gracious influences of His
Spirit, nor suffers such in the temptations of the evil spirit, but leaves free the
decision for the right or the left hand in the hour of trial. Now, if men were at
last to stand either all on the right hand or all on the left, were all to be saved
or all lost, such a fact could not but be referred to a general, a finally equal
predestination, definitively abolishing the will of created personalities. A sepa-
ration and decision, for or against, in the judgment, would then be out of ques-
tion. The history of the world would then be a history only displayed by God
to man, a drama, played out to its end by God either with Himself or with
250 Comp. Rothe’s above-cited work, § 605, especially note 2. Among older theologians, Gerhard’s Locc.
Theoll. tom. ix. de inferno seu morte æterna may especially be consulted.

subjects, which He would only have subjectivized not objectivized. Such sub-
jects led only by the will of God suffer it, but neither do nor leave it undone by
either willingly choosing, or refusing to obey it (Matt. xxiii. 37), and selfishly
following their own will. Scripture testifies from the guilt of the fall and its
consequences down to the free unmerited grace of redemption, which makes
all free, who do not resist it, and from the offence of resisting and rejecting
this grace, down to the righteous sentence of the last judgment, against such
pantheizing predestination, which deprives human personality of its signifi-
cance, the notion of human guilt of its real seriousness, and consequently
Divine grace and righteousness of their true fulness. The doctrine of our
Church, according to which man is, indeed, justified and saved without his
own works and merits, but not lost and condemned without the fault of his
own will and the sin against the Holy Ghost, proves his moral responsibility
for his own righteousness, without any self-righteousness. It also announces
that contrast, pervading as its main theme this world’s whole history, of the
godly and ungodly, the good and the evil, now so entwined with each other,
but who, after long conflict, shall at last be separated before the judgment, as
sheep and goats, Christians and antichristians, and the former graciously
exalted to the triumphant kingdom of God, the latter dismissed, according to
the righteous sentence which they have by their rejection of grace provoked,
to the vanquished kingdom of Satan.
That this contrast, rendered definitive by the final judgment, should at

some subsequent period be abolished by a general amnesty or apokatastasis
for those who have frustrated, by their persistent wilfulness, the redemption
effected once for all, is testified against in a twofold manner. First by that judi-
cial obduracy, often perceptible even in this world, of a proud, hard selfish-
ness, which will have nothing to do with converting grace, nay, with heaven
itself, which can only be entered by self-denial and conversion, by the humil-
ity and gentleness of Christ’s sheep; and secondly, by the final character of the
last judgment, for it is that consummated revelation of Christ, which cannot
be repeated, in which, after the conquest of all His enemies, He is to complete
and terminate both His priesthood and His reign over the kingdom of grace (1
Cor. xv. 24), by admitting, on the one hand, the subjects of grace into the
happy and peaceful kingdom of glory, and on the other, as supreme Judge, by

irrevocably executing upon the refractory that final sentence so long
restrained by His forbearance. Thus is the Holy God glorified in both aspects,
in and for those who submit to His grace, on and against those who reject it.
As Divine Love, He is, and for ever continues adorable to the holy, who love
Him, and terrible to the unholy, who hate Him. At the very beginning of the
creation God manifested Himself in the opposite to Himself, and caused the
light of His glory to shine in the darkness (Gen. i. 2 sq.); nor does He cease at
the end of this world to glorify Himself on the opposite to Himself, on the
darkness of hell, by causing the bright beams of His light, which are so hateful
to its impure inhabitants, to shine into it (comp. John iii. 19-21). According to
this Scripture, a similar fact is observable even in this life, and this is but one
of the many analogies existing between the future hell and the depths and
heights of the devil in this world. If then the children of hell (Matt. xxiii. 15)
have continued in hard opposition to the love of God, proudly rejected His
mercy and are themselves without mercy, it is indeed but natural that they
should, especially after the last judgment,251 despise with that contemptuous
pride, which is the property of the devil and his angels, all demonstrations of
compassion on the part of other creatures, and care nothing for them. Hence
the objection, that the happiness of both God and the children of God is dis-
turbed or obscured by pity for the righteous punishment of the condemned, is
an unfounded one. Certainly the blessed will be no more affected by it than
belongs to the holiness of their state, in which, though sin will indeed be for-
given, the remembrance of evil will not be extinguished, and in which at all
events perfect satisfaction with the holy dealings of God will prevail.
Christ the Lord must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet (1
Cor. xv. 25). He rules as the exalted Mediator and Prophet in the kingdom of
grace, which, by reason of the still prevailing mixture of the good and the evil,
is also the militant Church. He will govern it as High Priest, by dispensing
blessings as King, by inflicting judgment, until His complete victory and tri-
umph over all His enemies, whom He will either reconcile, or if irreconcilable
condemn. Hence, at His glorious appearing for the final judgment, they will
either humbly fall at His feet reconciled and conquered by the power of His
251 What is said of the rich man (Luke xvi. 24 sqq.) refers to the state immediately after death, but not
after the last judgment. Comp. Olshausen’s commentary on this passage.

love, or rush from Him into the abyss, disconcerted by the radiance of His
holiness. His Divine and human love, with which in deepest mercy He suf-
fered for and from men, will then triumph over all, in righteousness over His
enemies, who flee before Him, in bliss with His friends, who come to Him as
the blessed of His Father. As His elect, they largely share in His triumph,
beholding Him in His glory as their Lord and King, whose light glorifies
themselves also, and entering with Him, the Captain of their Salvation, into
life everlasting. With Him too they will make their entrance into the city of
God, the city prepared for them, the heavenly Jerusalem, which cometh down
from the new heaven to the new earth, adorned as a bride, and lighted by the
glory of God and of the Lamb (Rev. xxi.). And they will come to the innumer-
able company of many thousands of happy angels, and to the general assem-
bly and Church of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven, and to
the righteous who have preceded them, among whom they will certainly
rejoice to meet with those whom they loved and lost All will then be one in
heart, and live and reign together in holy unity, in the one love of God, and
worship Him in the new sanctuary of His holy city, through whose midst runs
the pure river of the water of life (Rev. xxii. 1-5), while unconverted sinners,
idolatrous, impure and lying spirits shall be cast out (Rev. xxii. 15). The his-
tory of the old world, torn by hostile opposition to God and men, which the
God-man ruled as Redeemer and Judge till the final judgment, will be fin-
ished, and the last enemy conquered. Hence Christ will now lay down His
mediatorial government, then brought to its goal, before the reconciled Father,
and now that His peace is victorious, will, as Son of man, become, with all the
authorities and powers of His militant Church, subject to Him, that in the
Church triumphant of the new world of peace God may he all in all (1 Cor. xv.
28), as the fully manifest and allglorious God, blessing and sanctifying all with
that love of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, which will then,
without opposition, pervade, fill and unite all. Thus is proved the full and
perfect truth of that root of sacred theology: God is love, and he that dwcllcth in
love dwelleth in God, and God in him (1 John iv. 16).
Starting from this great and fruitful saying of God’s revelation, we

have developed as evangelical moral theology that doctrine of Divine Love,
which embraces all things pertaining to life and godliness, and now finally

seal it with the same saying. In taking leave of my readers, I once more sum
up all the work of Love effected by our God and Saviour, in and for us, in the
prayer of the well-known hymn:—
“O Love, who formedst me to wear

The image of Thy Godhead here;
Who soughtest me with tender care
Thro’ all my wanderings mild and drear.
O Love, I give myself to Thee,
Thine ever, only Thine to be.
“O Love, who ere life’s earliest dawn

On me Thy choice hast gently laid;
O Love, who here as man wast born,
And wholly like to us wast made;
“O Love, who once in time wast slain,

Pierced through and through with bitter woe;
O Love, who wrestling thus didst gain,
That we eternal joy might know;
“O Love, who lovest me for aye,

Who for my soul dost ever plead;
O Love, who didst that ransom pay,
Whose power sufficeth in my stead.
O Love, 1 give myself to Thee,
“O Love, who once shalt bid me rise

From out this dying life of ours;
O Love, who once o’er yonder skies
Shalt set me in the fadeless bowers.

Thine ever, only Thine to be.”
MORRISON AND GIBB, EDINBURGH

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gives with care and thoroughness a complete history, as far as it goes, of each
word aud phrase that it deals with.… Dr. Cremer’s explanations are most
lucidly set out’—Guardian.
‘It is hardly possible to exaggerate the value of this work to the student
of the Greek Testament.… The translation is accurate and idiomatic, and the
additions to the later edition are considerable and important.’—Church Bells.
‘We cannot find an important word in our Greek New Testament which
is not discussed with a fulness and discrimination which leaves nothing to be
desired.’— Nonconformist.
‘This noble edition in quarto of Cremer’s Biblico-Theological Lexicon

quite supersedes the translation of the first edition of the work. Many of the
most important articles have been re-written aud re-arranged.’—British Quar-
terly Review.
Just published, in extra 8vo, price 12s.,
THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THEISM.
An Examination of the Personality of Man to ascertain his Capacity to Know and

Serve God, and the Validity of the Principles underlying the Defence of Theism.
By Rev. SAMUEL HARRIS, D.D., LL.D.,
PROFESSOR OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, YALE COLLEGE.
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mind the true account and justification of its religious knowledge. The length
of the bouk is by no means the result of any undue diffuseness of style, but

represents an amount of solid thought quite commensurate with the number
of its pages.’—Spectator.
Just published, in demy 8vo, price 10s. 6d.,
THE THEORY OF MORALS.
By PAUL JANET, Member of the Institute, Paris.
TRANSLATED FROM THE LATEST FRENCH EDITION.
CONTENTS.—Book First:—Pleasure and Good—Good and Law—The

Principle of Excellence, or of Perfection—The Principle of Happiness—Imper-
sonal Goods—The True, the Good, and the Beautiful—Absolute Good.—Book
Second:—Nature and Basis of the Moral Law—Good and Duty—Definite and
Indefinite Duties—Right and DutyDivision of Duties—Conflict of
Duties.—Book Third:—The Moral Consciousness— Moral Intention—Moral
Probabilism—Universality of Moral Principles—The Moral Rentiment—Lib-
erty—Kant’s Theory of Liberty—Virtue—Moral Progress—Sin—Merit and
Demerit, the Sanctions of the Moral Law—Religion.
By the same Author.

In One Volume, &vo, Second Edition, price 12s.,
FINAL CAUSES.
TRANSLATED FROM THE LATEST FRENCH EDITION
By WILLIAM AFFLECK, B.D.
CONTENTS.—Preliminary Chapter—The Problem. Book I.—The Law

of Finality. Book II.—The First Cause of Finality. Appendix.
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tive work.…The book as a whole abounds in matter of the highest interest,

and is a model of learning and judicious treatment.’—Guardian.
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command the reader’s admiration.’—Dublin Review.
‘A great contribution to the literature of this subject M. Janet has mas-

tered tho conditions of the problem, is at home in the literature of science and
philosophy, and has that faculty of felicitous expression which makes French
books of the highest class such delightful reading; ... in clearness, vigour, and
depth it has been seldom equalled, and more seldom excelled, in philosophi-
cal literature.’—Spectator.
‘A wealth of scientific knowledge and a logical acumen which will win

the admiration of every reader.’—Church Quarterly Review.
In demy 8vo, price 10s. 6d.,
THE BIBLE DOCTRINE OF MAN.
(SEVENTH SERIES OF CUNNINGHAM LECTURES)
By JOHN LAIDLAW, D.D.,
Professor of Systematic Theology, New College, Edinburgh.
‘An important and valuable contribution to the discussion of the

anthropology of the sacred writings, perhaps the most considerable that has
appeared in our own language. Literary Churchman.
‘The work is a thoughtful contribution to a subject which must always

have deep interest for the devout student of the Bible.’—British Quarterly
Review.
‘Dr. Laidlaw’s work is scholarly, able, interesting, and valuable. . . .

Thoughtful and devout minds will find mnoh to stimulate, and not a little to
assist, their meditations in this learned and, let us add, charmingly printed
volume.’—Record.

‘On the whole, we take this to be the most sensible and reasonable
statement of the Biblical psychology of man we have met.’—Expositor.
‘The book will give ample material for thought to the reflective reader;
and it holds a position, as far as we know, which is unique.’—Church Bells.
In demy 8vo, Second Edition, price 10s. 6d„
THE HUMILIATION OF CHRIST,
IN ITS PHYSICAL, ETHICAL, AND OFFICIAL ASPECTS.
By A. B. BRUCE, D.D.,
PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY, FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, GLASGOW.
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as a whole, has the rare advantage of being at once stimulating and satisfying
to the mind in a high degree.’—British and Foreign Evangelical Review.
‘This work stands forth at once as an original, thoughtful, thorough

piece of work in the branch of scientific theology, such as we do not often
meet in our language.… It is really a work of exceptional value; and no one
can read it without perceptible gain in theological knowledge.’—English
Churchman.
‘We have not for a long time met with a work so fresh and suggestive as
this of Professor Bruce.… We do not know where to look at our English
Universities for a treatise so calm, logical, and scholarly.’—English Indepen-
dent.
By the same Author.
In demy 8vo, Third Edition, price 10s. 6d.,
THE TRAINING OF THE TWELVE;

OR,
EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES IN THE GOSPELS EXHIBITING THE TWELVE

DISCIPLES OF JESUS UNDER DISCIPLINE FOR THE APOSTLESHIP.
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subject—a book full of loving. wholesome, profound thoughts about the fun-
damentals of Christian faith and practice.’—British and Foreign Evangelical
Review.
‘It is some five or six years since this work first made its appearance,
and now that a second edition has been called for. the Author has taken the
opportunity to make some alterations which are likely to render it still more
acceptable. Substantially, however, the book remains the same, and the hearty
commendation with which we noted its first issue applies to it at least as
much now.’—Rock.
‘The value, the beanty of this volume is that it is a unique contribution

to. because a loving and cultured study of, the life of Christ, in the relation of
the Master of the Twelve.’—Edinburgh Daily Review.
In demy 8vo, price 10s. 6d.,
DELIVERY AND DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.
By ROBERT RAINY, D.D.,
PRINCIPAL, AND PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY AND CHURCH HISTORY,

NEW COLLEGE, EDIN.
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which these lectures display. They are able to the last degree; and the author
has, in an unusual measure, the power of acute and brilliant
generalization.’—Literary Churchman,
‘It is a rich and nutritious book throughout, and in temper and spirit
beyond all praise.’—British and Foreign Evangelical Review.

‘The subject is treated with a comprehensive grasp, keen logical power,
clear analysis and learning. and in devout spirit.’—Evangelical Magazine,
KEIL AND DELITZSCH’s
COMMENTARIES ON AND INTRODUCTION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT.
THE above series (published in Clark’s Foreign Theological Library) is now

completed in 27 Volumes, and Messrs. Clark will supply it at the Subscription
price, in COMPLETE SETS (only), of £7, 2s.
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So complete a Critical and Exegetical Apparatus on the Old Testament

is not elsewhere to be found in the English language, and at the present time,
when the study of the Old Testament is more widely extended than perhaps
ever before, it is believed this offer will be duly appreciated.
‘This series is otie of great importance to the biblical scholar, and as

regards its general execution, it leaves little or nothing to be desired.’—Edin-
burgh Review.
‘We have often expressed our opinion of Dr. Delitzsch’s great merits as
a commentator, and, in particular, of his portion of the admirable Commen-
tary on the Old Testament, written by himself and Dr. Keil, that we need only
now congratulate our readers on the completion of the entire work.’—Church
Bells.
‘The authors are among the most accomplished of living Hebraists, and
Delitzsch is, in addition, a man of fine historical imagination, and of clear spiri-
tual vision.’—Baptist Magazine.
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we think, never been presented to English theological students.’—Rock.
‘Very high merit, for thorough Hebrew scholarship, and for keen critical

sapracity, belongs to these Old Testament Commentaries. No scholar will will-
ingly dispeuso with them.’—British Quarterly Review.
‘The very valuable Keil and Delitzsch series of

Commentaries.’—Wesleyan Methodist Magazine.
In One Volume, 8vo. price 12s.,
A SYSTEM OF BIBLICAL PSYCHOLOGY.
By F. DELITZSCH, D.D.
By the same Author.

In Two Volumes, 8vo, price 21s.,
COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLE

TO THE HEBREWS.
In Three Volumes, Imperial 8vo, price 24s. each,
ENCYCLOPEDIA
OR
DICTIONARY
OF
BIBLICAL, HISTORICAL, DOCTRINAL, AND PRACTICAL THEOLOGY.
BASED ON THE REAL-ENCYKLOPADIE OF HERZOG, PLITT, AND

HAUCK.
EDITED BY

PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., LL.D.,
PROFESSOR IN THE UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, HEW YORK.
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know nothing at all equal to it in the large department which it deals
with.’—Church Bells.
‘The work will remain as a wonderful monument of industry, learning,

and skill. It will be indispensable to the student of specifically Protestant the-
ology; nor, indeed, do we think that any scholar, whatever be his especial line
of thought or study, would find it superfluous on his shelves.’—Literary
Churchman.
‘We commend this work with a touch of enthusiasm, for we have often
wanted such ourselves. It embraces in its range of writers all the leading
authors of Europe on ecclesiastical questions. A student may deny himself
many other volumes to secure this, for it is certain to take a prominent and
permanent place in our literature.’— Evangelical Magazine.
‘Dr. SchafTs name is a guarantee for valuable and thorough work. His
new Encyclopsedia (based on Herzog) will be one of the most useful works of
the day. It will prove a standard authority on all religions knowledge. No man
in the country is so well fitted to perfect such a work as this distinguished and
exact scholar.’—Howard Crosby, D.D., LL.D.. ex-Chancellor of the Univertity,
New York.
‘This work will prove of great service to many; it supplies a distinct

want in our theological literature, and it is sure to meet with welcome from
readers who wish a popular book of reference on points of historical, bio-
graphical, and theological interest. Many of the articles give facts which may
be sought far and wide, and in vain in our encyclopsedias.’—Scottman.
‘Those who possess the latest edition of Herzog will still find this work
by no means superfluous.… Strange to say, the condensing process seems to
have improved the original articles.… We hope that no minister’s library will

long remain without a copy of this work.’—Daily Review.
‘For fulness, comprehensiveness, and accuracy, it will take the first

place among Biblical Encyclopædias.’—Wm. M. Taylor, D.D.
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NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS.

MESSRS. CLARK have pleasure in forwarding to their Subscribers the First

WEISS’S LIFE OF CHRIST. Vol. III. (completion).

GODET’S COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLE OF ST. PAUL TO THE

The FOREIGN THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY was commenced in 1846, and from

The Binding of the Series is modernized, so as to distinguish it from the

The Publishers beg to announce as in preparation—

DR. KEIL’S HANDBOOK OF BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.

Ernst Satorius, The Doctrine of Divine Love, n.d.

A Selection of 20 Volumes may be had at the Subscription Price of Five

May they request an early remittance of Subscription for 1884.