Dogmatic Theology, Vol. III: Supplement

Vou. I., p. 5. Twesten (Dogmatik I., 214) represents Melanchthon’s method in the Loci Communes as Christological. ‘“ Passing over the doctrines of God, creation, providence, and even the person of Christ which Melanchthon subsequently supplied, he begins with the sinful and corrupt state of man, then proceeds to the Divine provision for the suppression and removal of this corruption, to the doctrines of the law and the gospel, of grace and its conditions and effects, and concludes with the ultimate result, the final decision of human destiny.” ‘There is a prevailing Christological tendency in the Lutheran dogmatics generally, compared with the Calvinistic. The ee Catechism shows this influence in treating of man’s misery and man’s redemption before discussing the Trinity.

Vou. L., p. 17. One great difference between Christian and pagan ethics consists in the more searching and truthful estimate of human character made by the former. The sense of sin which is elicited by the decalogue, as explained by the Sermon on the Mount, is far deeper than that produced by an ethics which omits the relations of man to God, and is confined to those between man and man. A comparison of the two will demonstrate this. St. Paul (Rom. 7: 14-24 ) says, “‘ The law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing; for to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not.

I see a law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Says Augustine (Confessions, ix. 1; x. 2, 86), “Who am I, and what man am 1? Rather what evil have I not been, either in my deeds, or if not in my deeds in my words, or if not in my words in my will? But thou, O Lord, art eood and merciful, and thy right hand had respect unto the depth of my death, and from the bottom of my heart emptied that abyss of corruption.

From thee, O Lord, unto whose eyes the abyss of man’s conscience is naked, what could be hidden in me even though I would not confess it? I might hide thee from me, not me from thee. By these temptations we are assailed daily, O Lord; without ceasing, we are assailed. And in this way, thou commandest us self-denial. Give what thou enjoinest, and enjoin what thou wilt. Thou knowest on this matter the groans of my heart, and the floods of mine eyes. For I cannot learn how far I am cleansed from this plague, and I much fear my secret sins, which thine eyes know, mine do not.” Says Richard Baxter (Dying Thoughts), “O thou that freely gavest me thy grace, maintain it to the last against its enemies, and make it finally victorious. O let it not fail and be conquered by blind and base carnality, or by the temptations of a hellish enemy; without it I had lived as a beast, and without it I should die more miserably than a beast. My God, I have often sinned against thee ; but yet thou knowest I would fain be thine. I have not served thee with the resolution, fidelity, and delight as such a master should have been served, but yet I would not forsake thy service, nor change my master, or my work. T have not loved thee as infinite goodness, and love itself and fatherly bounty should have been loved, but yet I would not forsake thy family. Forsake not, then, a sinner that would not forsake thee, that looketh every hour toward thee, that feeleth it as a piece of hell to be so dark and strange unto thee.” Says Leighton (On Ps. cxxx.): “‘Tf thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquity, O Lord, who could stand?’ An uninstructed and incautious reader might perhaps imagine that the Psalmist was here seeking for refuge in a crowd, and desirous of sheltering himself under the common lot of human nature ; at least, that he would endeavor to find some low excuse for himself in the mention of its universal degeneracy. But the design of the sacred writer is far different from this. He confesses that whatever he or any other person, on a transient and inattentive glance, may imagine of his innocency, yet when the eye of the mind is directed inward in a serious and fixed manner, then he sees the sum and bulk of his sins to be so immensely great that he is even struck with astonishment by it; so that he finds himself beset as it were on every side with armed troops which cut off all possibility of escape otherwise than by flying to the Divine mercy, and to the freedom of pardoning grace.

He perceives himself unable to bear the examination of an awakened conscience exercising itself in impartial self-reflection ; and arguing from thence how much less he would be able to endure the penetrating eye and strict scrutiny of the Divine justice, he cries out as it were, in horror and trembling, under an apprehension of it, ‘If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquity, O Lord, who could stand?’ It cannot be doubted that they who daily and accurately survey themselves and their own hearts, though they may indeed escape many of those evils which the generality of mankind who live as it were by chance fall into, yet in consequence of that very care and study see so much the more clearly their own impurity, and contract a greater abhorrence of themselves, and a more reverent dread of the Divine judgments. It is certain that the holier and more spiritual any one is, the viler he is in his own eyes.”

The Pagan estimate of human character is found in the ethical writings of Plato and Aristotle, neither of whom expresses any sense of personal guilt and corruption like that contained in the above extracts from Christian writers, though they acknowledge their own failure to attain the philosopher’s ideal, and condemn the crimes of the openly vicious, and denounce the judgments …