determine, confine and define. To think an infinite is a contradiction
in terms equal to a boundless bound. So in German 'Ding, denken'; in
Latin 'res, reor'.


Chap. VII. p. 113.

Helvidius alleged the mother of Christ was not a virgin; so that
according to his wicked allegation, Christ was born in original sin.

O, what a tangle of impure whimsies has this notion of an immaculate
conception, an Ebionite tradition, as I think, brought into the
Christian Church! I have sometimes suspected that the Apostle John had a
particular view to this point, in the first half of the first chapter of
his Gospel. Not that I suppose our present Matthew then in existence, or
that, if John had seen the Gospel according to Luke, the 'Christopædia'
had been already prefixed to it. But the rumor might have been whispered
about, and as the purport was to give a psilanthropic explanation and
solution of the phrases, Son of God and Son of Man,--so Saint John met
it by the true solution, namely, the eternal Filiation of the Word.


Ib. p. 120. Of Christ's riding into Jerusalem.

But I hold (said Luther) that Christ himself did not mention that
prophecy of Zechariah, but rather, that the Apostles and Evangelists
did use it for a witness.

Worth remembering for the purpose of applying it to the text in which
our Lord is represented in the first (or Matthew's) Gospel, and by that