mind; namely, as if no law nor sin had ever been at any time:--I say,
it is in a manner a thing impossible, that a human creature should
carry himself in such a sort, when he is and feeleth himself assaulted
with trials and temptations, and when the conscience hath to do with
God, as then to think no otherwise, than that from everlasting nothing
hath been, but only and alone Christ, altogether grace and deliverance.

Yea, verily, Amen and Amen! For this short heroic paragraph contains the
sum and substance, the heighth and the depth of all true philosophy.
Most assuredly right difficult it is for us, while we are yet in the
narrow chamber of death, with our faces to the dusky falsifying
looking-glass that covers the scant end-side of the blind passage from
floor to ceiling,--right difficult for us, so wedged between its walls
that we cannot turn round, nor have other escape possible but by walking
backward, to understand that all we behold or have any memory of having
ever beholden, yea, our very selves as seen by us, are but shadows, and
when the forms that we loved vanish, impossible not to feel as if they
were real.


Ib. p. 197.

Nothing that is good proceedeth out of the works of the law, except
grace be present; for what we are forced to do, the same goeth not
from the heart, neither is acceptable.

A law supposes a law-giver, and implies an actuator and executor, and
consequently rewards and punishments publicly announced, and distinctly
assigned to the deeds enjoined or forbidden; and correlatively in the
subjects of the law, there are supposed, first, assurance of the being,