Ib.
p. 324-328.
Descriptions of repentance taken from the Holy Scriptures.
This is a beautiful collection of texts. Still the pious but unconverted Jew (a Moses Mendelsohn, for instance), has a right to ask, What then did Christ teach or do, such and of such additional moment as to be rightfully entitled the founder of a new law, instead of being, like Isaiah and others, an enforcer and explainer of the old? If Christianity, or the
opus operans
of Redemption, was synchronous with the Fall of man, then the same answer must be returned to the passages here given from the Old Testament as to those from the New; namely, that Sanctification is the result of Redemption, not its efficient cause or previous condition. Assuredly
and Sanctification differ only as the plant and the growth or growing of the plant. But the words of the Apostle (it will be said) are exhortative and dehortative. Doubtless! and so would be the words of a wise physician addressed to a convalescent. Would this prove that the patient's revalescence had been independent of the medicines given him? The texts are addressed to the free will, and therefore concerning possible objects of free will. No doubt! Should that process, the end and virtue of which is to free the will, destroy the free will? But I cannot make it out to my understanding, how the two are compatible. — Answer; the spirit knows the things of the spirit. Here lies the sole true ground of Latitudinarianism, Arminian, or Socinian; and this is the sole and sufficient confutation;
spiritualia spiritus cognoscit
. Would you understand with your ears instead of hearing with your understanding? Now, as the ears to the understanding, so is the understanding to the spirit. This Plato knew; and art thou a master in Israel, and knowest it not?