O, what a tangle of impure whimsies has this notion of an immaculate conception, an Ebionite tradition, as I think, brought into the Christian Church! I have sometimes suspected that the Apostle John had a particular view to this point, in the first half of the first chapter of his Gospel. Not that I suppose our present Matthew then in existence, or that, if John had seen the Gospel according to Luke, the
Christopædia
had been already prefixed to it. But the rumor might have been whispered about, and as the purport was to give a psilanthropic explanation and solution of the phrases, Son of God and Son of Man,—so Saint John met it by the true solution, namely, the eternal Filiation of the Word.
Ib. p. 120. Of Christ's riding into Jerusalem.
But I hold (said Luther) that Christ himself did not mention that prophecy of Zechariah, but rather, that the Apostles and Evangelists did use it for a witness.
Worth remembering for the purpose of applying it to the text in which our Lord is represented in the first (or Matthew's) Gospel, and by that alone, as citing Daniel by name. It was this text that so sorely, but I think very unnecessarily, perplexed and gravelled Bentley, who was too profound a scholar and too acute a critic to admit the genuineness of the whole of that book.
Ib.
The Prophets (said Luther) did set, speak, and preach of the second coming of Christ in manner as we now do.