[3] “Because God does good through government, great men and creatures in general, people rush into error, lean on creatures and not on the Creator;—they do not look from the creature to the Creator. Hence it came that the heathens made gods of kings.... For they cannot and will not perceive that the work or the benefit comes from God, and not merely from the creature, though the latter is a means, through which God works, helps us, and gives to us.”—Luther (T. iv. p. 237). [↑]
[4] “They who honour me, I will honour, and they who despise me shall be lightly esteemed.”—[1 Sam. ii. 30]. “Jam se, o bone pater, vermis vilissimus et odio dignissimus sempiterno, tamen confidit amari, quoniam se sentit amare, imo quia se amari præsentit, non redamare confunditur.... Nemo itaque se amari diffidat, qui jam amat.”—Bernardus ad Thomam (Epist. 107). A very fine and pregnant sentence. If I exist not for God, God exists not for me; if I do not love, I am not loved. The passive is the active certain of itself, the object is the subject certain of itself. To love is to be man, to be loved is to be God. I am loved, says God; I love, says man. It is not until later that this is reversed, that the passive transforms itself into the active, and conversely. [↑]
[5] “The Lord spake to Gideon: The people are too many that are with thee, that I should give Midian into their hands; Israel might glorify itself against me and say: My hand has delivered me,”—i.e., “Ne Israel sibi tribuat, quæ mihi debentur.” [Judges vii. 2]. “Thus saith the Lord: Cursed is the man that trusteth in man. But blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord and whose hope is in the Lord.”—[Jer. xvii. 5]. “God desires not our gold, body and possessions, but has given these to the emperor (that is, to the representative of the world, of the state), and to us through the emperor. But the heart, which is the greatest and best in man, he has reserved for himself;—this must be our offering to God—that we believe in him.”—Luther (xvi. p. 505). [↑]
[6] Christian baptism also is obviously only a relic of the ancient Nature-worship, in which, as in the Persian, water was a means of religious purification. (S. Rhode: Die heilige Sage, &c., pp. 305, 426.) Here, however, water baptism had a much truer, and consequently a deeper meaning, than with the Christians, because it rested on the natural power and value of water. But indeed for these simple views of Nature which characterised the old religions, our speculative as well as theological supranaturalism has neither sense nor understanding. When therefore the Persians, the Hindoos, the Egyptians, the Hebrews, made physical purity a religious duty, they were herein far wiser than the Christian saints, who attested the supranaturalistic principle of their religion by physical impurity. Supranaturalism in theory becomes anti-naturalism in practice. Supranaturalism is only a euphemism for anti-naturalism. [↑]
[7] “Eating and drinking is the easiest of all work, for men like nothing better: yea, the most joyful work in the whole world is eating and drinking, as it is commonly said: Before eating no dancing, and, On a full stomach stands a merry head. In short, eating and drinking is a pleasant necessary work;—that is a doctrine soon learned and made popular. The same pleasant necessary work takes our blessed Lord Christ and says: ‘I have prepared a joyful, sweet and pleasant meal, I will lay on you no hard heavy work ... I institute a supper,’ &c.”—Luther (xvi. 222). [↑]