this I apprehend to be just the true state of the case: the natural ran, having his understanding darkened, being alienated

from the life of God, through the ignorance that is in him, because of the blindness of his heart; and being, more over, possessed by the devil, whose energizing consists in maintaining and in creasing his blindness; forms his decisions and determinations upon partial and false evidence. The same observation extends to the spiritual man, in so far as he is not spiritual; in so far as his flesh, through which the devil acts upon him, is allowed, in subserviency to the great general principle, God's glory in his real good,' to influence the determination of his will. So that it is the judgment, perception, or understanding, not the will, correctly speaking, which is / really in bondage; that faculty which presents objects to the determining faculty, presenting them erroneously, either by suppressing what ought to be made present, or giving a false colour or distorted appearance to that which is, and ought to be, there. This suggestion will explain the paradox, that the will is at

the same time free and not free, in popu lar language: free, inasmuch as from its very nature it cannot be compelled; not free inasmuch as it acts in the dark: so that it may more fitly be called blind-will, than bond-will, which is Luther's term. This suggestion will go further; it will explain all mysteries and all paradoxes: Paul's conflict in Romans vii.-Pharaoh's induration our own daily experiencenay, the whole system of God's government, in ruling, as he does, a world of moral beings-flee before it."-Vaughan -Preface, pp. li, lii.

In the celebrated contest which provoked the, in many respects, admirable treatise of which two translations now lie before us, Erasmus was the first to take the field. He was considerably Luther's senior, and had obtained, deservedly, a high reputation in the literary world. His great attainments, his classical style, his ready wit, and his facility of composition, had raised him to a sort of dictature in the republic of letters, and in the grand struggle of the Reformation, he was appealed to and courted by all parties. There can be no question but that he had rendered, in an indirect way, considerable service to the cause of the Reformers. He had exposed with keen satire, CONG. MAG. No. 70.

some of the abuses of Popery, and his sarcastic vein was well adapted, though not to make a permanent impression on the public mind, yet to loosen the hold which vain and empty observances might have on the prejudices of the age. But when he was pressed to go greater lengths, and to share in the glorious he recoiled" God," said he, work of religious disenthralment, "has not given to every one the spirit of martyrdom!" He had avowed his warm admiration of Luther, and spoken with commendation of his object and intentions; but interest was with him a too prevalent motive. Pensions, gifts, and lavish promises, were things too precious to be given up for truth, he yielded, in evil hour, to the suggestions of vanity and selfishness, and sent forth his Diatribe on Free-Will. It was impossible for Erasmus to write on any subject without instance, that there was one at ability, but he proved, in this least on which his utmost efforts could only enable him to write superficially. He displayed much talent and eloquence, he exhibited a ready conversance with all the common places of the dispute, and threw dust in the eyes of his readers with great dexterity and success; but he failed in the effort to reach the depths of the controversy. Here Luther was his superior; the great reformer had studied the Scriptures closely and experimentally, and he was a master of that masculine and impressive style of reasoning which, neglecting academic forms and distinctions, seizes fairly and resolutely on the main strength of an argument, and dismisses, with slight and sarcastic notice, the flimsy array of words and decorations which disputants by profession and diploma are so apt to substitute for sound and vigorous reasoning. Luther was a great clearer-away of rubbish, a for3 Y

midable demolisher of cobwebs; he understood the "nice fence" of the logician as well as his opponents, but he disdained all mere skirmishing in the great battle of truth. He was no holiday tilter, no arm's-length swordsman; he rushed at once into the heart of the conflict, and closed with his antagonist for victory or death. The volume before us will afford an impressive illustration of this part of his intellectual and moral character, of his profound con-. tempt for artifice; his devoted attachment to truth, and his able and determined manner of vindicating Gospel doctrine. "Simplicity and godly sincerity" might have been his motto, for they were the leading qualities of his noble character, and they are impressively displayed in his castigation of Erasmus. Luther seems to have been reluctant to engage in this conflict; he appears to have had something like an affection for Erasmus, and to have cherished something of a faint hope that his fine powers might at length be engaged on the side of truth. Still he was thoroughly aware of his want of fixed principle, and his letters to Nicholas Amsdorff show how accurately he had estimated his doubtful and arti

ficial character.

"Our king of ambiguity," he writes, "sits upon his ambiguous throne in security, and destroys us stupid Christians with a double destruction. First, it is his will, and it is a great pleasure to him, to offend us by his ambiguous words: and indeed he would not like it, if we stupid blocks were not offended. And next, when he sees that we are

offended, and have run against his in

sidious figures of speech, and begin to exclaim against him, he then begins to triumph and rejoice that the desired prey has been caught in his snares. For now, having found an opportunity of display ing his rhetoric, he rushes upon us with all his powers and all his noise, tearing us, flogging us, crucifying us, and sending us farther than hell itself; saying, that we have understood his words calumniously, virulently, satanically; (using the worst terms he can find ;)

whereas, he never meant them to be so understood.

"In the exercise of this wonderful

tyranny, (and who would think that this Madam Ambiguity could make so much ado, or could suppose that any one would be so great a madman as to have so much confidence in a vain figure of speech?) he not only compels us to put up with his all-free prerogative of using ambiguities, but binds us down to the necessity of keeping silence. He plainly designs all the while, and wishes us to be offended, that he, and his herd of

Epicureans with him, may have a laugh at us as fools; but on the other hand, he does not like to hear that we are offended, lest it should appear that we are true Christians. Thus must we suffer wounds without number, and yet, not utter a groan or a sigh!"-Cole, pp. 396, 397.

These men of ambiguities are the pests of the religious world. They go about with their specious phrases, and their affectation of liberality, insinuating their doubts and their hesitations, and suggesting their concessions and compromises, until they make the religion of the Gospel, with its uncomplying doctrines, and its awful sanctions, like the fairy tent in the Arabian Tales, a thing that can stretch wide enough to cover and comprehend all varieties of believers and unbelievers, Christian, Mahometan, and Pagan. These apostles of latitudinarianism fasten, with peculiar eagerness, upon the young; they are large dealers in that most miserable of all kinds of appeal, the argument ad verecundiam, and as it can only be successful with the inexperienced in the ways of sophistry, to them it is artfully addressed. Luther was just the man for encountering hoc genus omne of desperate fallacies, and he swept them away

with the besom of sacred and scriptural reasoning, to the full extent of their occurrence in the treatises of Erasmus. He shud

dered at the anticipation of the mischievous effects which they were likely to produce on the rising generation.

"He published lately," observes Luther in the same letter to Amsdorff,

"among his other works, his CATECHISM, a production evidently of Satanic subtlety. For, with a purpose full of craft, he designs to take children and youths at the outset, and to infect them with his poisons, that they might not afterwards be eradicated from them; just as he himself, in Italy and at Rome, so sucked in his doctrines of sorcerers and of devils, that now all remedy is too late. But who would bear with this method of bringing up children, or the weak in faith, which Erasmus proposes to us? The tender and unexperienced mind is to be formed at first by certain, plain, and necessary principles, which it may firmly believe. Because, it is necessary that every one who would learn, should believe: for what will he ever learn, who either doubts himself, or is taught to doubt ?

But this new catechist of ours, aims only at rendering his catechumens, and the doctrines of faith, suspicious. For at the very outset, laying aside all solid foundation, he does nothing but set be

fore them those heresies and offences of

opinions, by which the church has been troubled from the beginning. So that in fact, he would make it appear, that there has been nothing certain in the Christian religion. And if an unexperienced mind be from the very beginning poisoned by principles and questions of this kind, what else can it be expected to think of or do, but, either to withdraw itself secretly from, or if it dare, to hold the Christian religion in utter detestation, as a pest to mankind?

He first en

"He imagines, however, all the while, that no one will discover the craft of this design. As though we had not in the scriptures numberless examples of these bug-bears of the devil. It was thus the serpent dealt with Eve. tangled her in doubts, and brought her to suspect the reality of the precept of God concerning the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and when he had brought her to a stand-still of doubt, overthrew and destroyed her.--Unless Erasmus considers this to be a mere fable also!

Why,

It is with the same serpent-like attack that he creeps upon, and deceives, simple souls; saying- How is it, that there have been so many sects and errors in this one true religion, (as it is believed to be?) How is it, that there have been so many creeds? in the Apostles' Creed, is the Father called God, the Son not God, but Lord, and the Spirit neither God nor Lord, but Holy?' And so on.-Who I would ask troubles unexperienced souls, whom he undertakes to instruct, with questions like these, but the devil himself? Who would dare to speak thus upon a creed of faith, but the very mouth and instru

ment of the devil?-Here you have the Plot, the Execution, and the catastrophic End, of a soul-murdering tragedy!"pp. 384-386.

It must not be forgotten that the work of Luther, as now given to the reader, comes before him with many disadvantages. It was written in answer to another work, and not one in twenty of those who read it in its present shape will have seen the Diatribe to which it is a reply. Had it been a complete and independent treatise, the different parts would have been distributed in regular order, and with a just regard to their mutual dependence and support, whereas, under the circumstances of the case, Luther was compelled to follow the lead of Erasmus, and to take up arguments, whether principal or collateral, just as he found them. Hence there is an apparent want of consecutiveness about the work which is injurious to its effect, and which renders an analysis of its contents or even a summary of its different heads, an inexpedient and unprofitable task. It is the more necessary to have the Diatribe before the reader of the present volume, inasmuch as it would clear up some of the difficulties which will occasionally prevent him from understanding the course and bearing of the discussion. Enough, indeed, is usually quoted to furnish some notion of its general drift, but it frequently occurs that there is a reference to some portion of it that does not appear.

This might have been remedied by a few extracts inserted as marginal notes. As a fair example of the cogent manner in which Luther presses his adversary, we shall give an extract of some length, in preference to a number of smaller sections which would exhibit him to less advantage.

"Put the question to all the exercisers of free-will to a man, and see if you can show me one, who can honestly, and

from his heart, say of any one of his devoted efforts and endeavours,-This pleases God! If you can bring forward a single one, I am ready to acknowledge myself overthrown, and to cede to you the palm. But I know there is not one to be found. And if this glory be wanting, so that the conscience dares not say, to a certainty, and with confidence, this pleases God, it is certain that it does not please God. For as a man believes, so it is unto him; because, he does not, to a certainty, believe that he pleases God; which, nevertheless, it is necessary to believe; for to doubt of the favour of God, is the very sin itself of unbelief; because, he will have it believed with the most assuring faith that he is favourable. Therefore I have convinced them upon the testimony of their own conscience, that free-will, being "without the glory of God,' is, with all its powers, its devoted strivings and endeavours, perpetually under the guilt of the sin of unbelief.

·

"And what will the advocates of freewill say to that which follows, being justified freely by his grace? What is the meaning of the word 'freely?' What is the meaning of by his grace? How will merit, and endeavour, accord with freely-given righteousness? But, perhaps, they will here say, that they attribute to free-will a very little indeed, and that which is by no means the 'merit of worthiness,' (meritum condignum!) These, however, are mere empty words; for all that is sought for in the defence of Free-will, is to make place for merit. This is manifest; for the Diatribe has, throughout, argued and expostulated thus,

C If there be no freedom of will, how can there be place for merit? And if there be no place for merit, how can there be place for reward? To whom will the reward be assigned, if justification be without merit?'

"Paul here gives you an answer.That there is no such thing as merit at all; but that all who are justified are justified 'freely;' that this is ascribed to no one but to the grace of God. And when this righteousness is given, the kingdom and life eternal are given with it! Where is your endeavouring now? Where is your devoted effort? Where are your works? Where are your merits of free-will? Where is the profit of them all put together? You cannot here make, as a pretence, obscurity and ambiguity:' the facts and the works are most clear and most plain. But be it so, that they attribute to free-will a very little indeed, yet they teach us that by that very little we can attain unto righteousness and grace. Nor do they solve that question, Why does God justify

one and leave another? in any other way, than by asserting the freedom of the will, and saying, Because, the one endeavours and the other does not; and God regards the one for his endeavouring, and despises the other for his not endeavouring; lest, if he did otherwise, he should appear to be unjust.

"And notwithstanding all their pretence, both by their tongue and pen, that they do not profess to attain unto grace by the merit of worthiness,' (meritum condignum,) nor call it the merit of worthiness, yet they only mock us with a term, and hold fast their tenet all the while. For what is the amount of their pretence that they do not call it the merit of worthiness,' if nevertheless they assign unto it all that belongs to the merit of worthiness? saying, that he in the sight of God attains unto grace, who endeavours, and he who does not endeavour, does not attain unto it? Is this not plainly making it to be the merit of worthiness? Is it not making God a respecter of works, of merits, and of persons, to say that one man is devoid of grace from his own fault, because he did not endeavour after it, but that another, because he did endeavour after it, has attained unto grace, unto which he would not have attained, if he had not endeayoured after it? If this be not merit of worthiness,' then I should like to be informed what it is that is called 'the merit of worthiness.'

the

"In this way you may play a game of mocking upon all words; and say, it is not, indeed, the merit of worthiness, but is in effect the same as the merit of worthiness.' The thorn is not a bad tree, but is in effect the same as a bad tree! The fig is not a good tree, but is in effect the same as a good tree! The Diatribe is not, indeed, impious, but says and does nothing but what is impious!-Cole, pp. 336—339.

There is a short passage at the close of one of his major divisions, which displays the christian spirit of Luther in a most favourable light,

"As to my always conducting discussions with ardour, I acknowledge my fault, if it be a fault: nay, I greatly glory in this testimony which the world bears of me, in the cause of God; and may God himself confirm the same testimony in the last day! Then, who more happy than Luther-to be honoured with the universal testimony of his age, that he did not maintain the cause of truth lazily, nor deceitfully, but with a real, if not too great, ardour! Then shall I be blessedly clear from that word of

Jeremiah, Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully!'

"But, if I seem to be somewhat more severe than usual upon your Diatribepardon me. I do it not from a malig nant heart, but from concern; because I know, that by the weight of your name you greatly endanger this cause of Christ; though, by your learning, as to real effect, you can do nothing at all. And who can always so temper his pen as never to grow warm? For even you, who from a show of moderation grow almost cold in this book of yours, not unfrequently hurl a fiery and gall-dipped dart: so much so, that if the reader were not very liberal and kind, he could not but consider you virulent. But, however, this is nothing to the subject point. We must mutually pardon each other in these things; for we are but men, and there is nothing in us that is not touched with human infirmity."Cole, pp. 307, 308.

We cannot, however, thus dismiss Mr. Vaughan's notes-Mr. Cole, it is proper to observe, has left Luther to speak entirely for himself since they are, probably, some of the most singular productions that a pious, accomplished, and strong-minded man ever committed to the press under the sanction of his name. They are dogmatical in the extreme; always able, though too frequently substituting mere assertion for cool and comprehensive reasoning, as well as for the fairly interpreted language of Scripture. We have often been struck with the forcible way in which they state the nature and evidence of Gospel truth, but we have as frequently been annoyed by the rashness with which some of the most mysterious depths of the divine dispensations are invaded. Mr. Vaughan is no trimmer; he is about as plain-speaking a gentleman as any with whom we have ever held critical communion; witness the following extracts from a long note, which has for its object to prove, that God is the author of sin, and Satan his "agent and minister" in producing it.

the rest of his creatures, according to their nature. 2. Satan is in them unresisted and undisturbed. 3. They can only will evil. 4. God thwarts them by word, or deed, or both. All this is correct, but it is not the whole of the matter; neither does he put the several parts of the machinery together, cleverly; neither does he show an end. All these things are of God, through God, and to God. (Rom. xi. 36.) The natural man has been brought into the state in which he is, of, through, and to him.

"God's hardening, therefore, I define generally to be, that special operation of God upon the reprobate soul, by which, through the agency of Satan, (whose Lord and rider he is), combined with his own outward dispensations of word and work, he shuts and seals it up in its Own native blindness, aversion, and enmity towards himself."-Vaughan, pp. 273, 275.

to a general tender of the Gospel Mr. Vaughan is a mortal enemy to man as a lost and perishing

creature.

choice;

"The expression, offers of grace,' is exceptionable, as implying freeness of position and arguments. The truth is, in direct contrariety to Luther's that, whilst he abhorred free choice, he liked free offers. I could have been glad

if he had expressed his meaning more definitely, which is little else than the

promises of God received in such wise, as they be generally set forth to us in holy Scripture that is, received as promises of free favour made to persons of

a certain character; and not to individuals, as such! What but these are the very and legitimate stay of God's eternally foreknown, elect, predestinated, and now quickened child, in the day of his tearing and smiting?

Is he to hear a voice, or see a vision, or receive some

providential token, personal to himself; before he presumes to call upon the name of the Lord ? Are not these, this man will I look ;'Come unto me, Ho, every one that thirsteth ;'- To

all

ye that travail and are heavy laden ;' The same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him"-his warrant for drawing near, and his first words of consolation? But these, at last, are not 'offers' of grace; by which God throws himself, as it were, at the knees and feet of his creatures-subjecting himself to a refusal; nay, with full assurance that he must receive one, except he superadd a special and distinct impulse of his own to secure acceptance-but testimonies of his own mouth, and hand, and ordinances,