See Luther's
Table Talk
. The chapters in that work named "Law and Gospel," contain the very marrow of divinity. Still, however, there remains much to be done on this subject; namely, to show how the discovery of sin by the Law tends to strengthen the sin; and why it must necessarily have this effect, the mode of its action on the appetites and impetites through the imagination and understanding; and to exemplify all this in our actual experience.
Ib.
p. 40.
Then I saw that one came to Passion, and brought him a bag of treasure, and poured it down at his feet; the which he took up, and rejoiced therein, and withal laughed Patience to scorn; but I beheld but awhile, and he had lavished all away, and had nothing left him but rags.
One of the not many instances of faulty allegory in
The Pilgrim's Progress
; that is, it is no allegory. The beholding "but awhile," and the change into "nothing but rags," is not legitimately imaginable. A longer time and more interlinks are requisite. It is a hybrid compost of usual images and generalized words, like the Nile-born nondescript, with a head or tail of organized flesh, and a lump of semi-mud for the body. Yet, perhaps, these very defects are practically excellencies in relation to the intended readers of
The Pilgrim's Progress