This follows from the very definition or idea of righteousness;-it is
itself the law;--[Greek: pas gar dikais autonomos.]
Ib.
The Scripture saith, God maketh the ungodly righteous; there he
calleth us all, one with another, despairing and wicked wretches; for
what will an ungodly creature not dare to accomplish, if he may but
have occasion, place, and opportunity?
That is with a lust within correspondent to the temptation from without.
A Christian's conscience, methinks, ought to be a 'Janus bifrons',--a
Gospel-face retrospective, and smiling through penitent tears on the
sins of the past, and a Moses-face looking forward in frown and menace,
frightening the harlot will into a holy abortion of sins conceived but
not yet born, perchance not yet quickened. The fanatic Antinomian
reverses this; for the past he requires all the horrors of remorse and
despair, till the moment of assurance; thenceforward, he may do what he
likes, for he cannot sin.
Ib. p. 165.
All natural inclinations (said Luther) are either against or without
God; therefore none are good. We see that no man is so honest as to
marry a wife, only thereby to have children, to love and to bring them
up in the fear of God.
This is a very weak instance. If a man had been commanded to marry by
God, being so formed as that no sensual delight accompanied, and refused
to do so, unless this appetite and gratification were added,--then
indeed!
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