.
Religion necessarily, as to its main and proper doctrines, consists of ideas, that is, spiritual truths that can only be spiritually discerned, and to the expression of which words are necessarily inadequate, and must be used by accommodation. Hence the absolute indispensability of a Christian life, with its conflicts and inward experiences, which alone can make a man to answer to an opponent, who charges one doctrine as contradictory to another,—"Yes! it is a contradiction in terms; but nevertheless so it is, and both are true, nay, parts of the same truth."—But alas! besides other evils there is this,—that the Gospel is preached in fragments, and what the hearer can recollect of the sum total of these is to be his Christian knowledge and belief. This is a grievous error. First, labour to enlighten the hearer as to the essence of the Christian dispensation, the grounding and pervading idea, and then set it forth in its manifold perspective, its various stages and modes of manifestation. In this as in almost all other qualities of a preacher of Christ, Luther after Paul and John is the great master. None saw more clearly than he, that the same proposition, which, addressed to a Christian in his first awakening out of the death of sin was a most wholesome, nay, a necessary, truth, would be a most condemnable Antinomian falsehood, if addressed to a secure Christian boasting and trusting in
his
faith—yes, in
his
own faith, instead of the faith of Christ communicated to him.
I cannot utter how dear and precious to me are the contents of pages 197-199, to line 17, of this work, more particularly the section headed:
How we ought to carry ourselves towards the Law's accusations.