The sparrows are the least birds, and yet they are very hurtful, and have the best nourishment.
Ergo digni sunt omni persecutione
. Poor little Philip Sparrows! Luther did not know that they more than earn their good wages by destroying grubs and other small vermin.
Ib. p. 61.
He that without danger will know God, and will speculate of him, let him look first into the manger, that is, let him begin below, and let him first learn to know the Son of the Virgin Mary, born at Bethlehem, that lies and sucks in his mother's bosom; or let one look upon him hanging on the Cross. ** But take good heed in any case of high climbing cogitations, to clamber up to heaven without this ladder, namely, the Lord Christ in his humanity.
To know God as God (
the living God) we must assume his personality: otherwise what were it but an ether, a gravitation?—but to assume his personality, we must begin with his humanity, and this is impossible but in history; for man is an historical—not an eternal being.
Ergo