[8] As such,—as perishable and unreal, are all evil things regarded by an unknown author in the Middle Ages. In his beautiful opuscule “Deutsche Theologie,” he says among other things: “Now some one may ask, ‘Since we must love every thing, must we also love sin?’ The answer is, no; for when we say every thing, we only mean every thing that is good. Every thing that exists is good by virtue of its existence. The devil is good in so far as he exists. In this sense, there is nothing evil in existence. But it is a sin to wish, desire or love any thing else than God. Now all things are essentially in God, and more essentially in God than in themselves; therefore are they all good in their real essence.”—The little work from which the above is quoted, is the expression of a deep and pious soul, struggling to master the dualism which fettered his age. It is remarkable that Luther was not more strongly influenced by its spirit, although he confesses that “Next to the Bible and St. Augustine I have found no book from which I have learned more.”
[9] See the work “Summa Theologica” (supplementum ad tertiam partem, quæst. 94) by the most prominent and most influential among the theologians of the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas. It is there said: “Ut beatitudo sanctorum eis magis complaceat et de ea uberiores gratias Deo agant, datur eis ut pœnam impiorum perfecte videant.... Beati, qui erunt in gloria, nullam compassionem ad damnatos habebunt.... Sancti de pœnis impiorum gaudebunt, considerando in eis divinæ justitiæ ordinem et suam liberationem de qua gaudebunt.”—With this may be compared the following execrable effusion of another theologian: “Beati cœlites non tantum non cognatorum sed nec parentum sempiternis suppliciis ad ullam miserationem flectentur. Imo vero lætabuntur justi, cum viderint vindictam; manus lavabunt in sanguine peccatorum.”
[10] Tertullian.
[11] This has been denied in so far as the original teachings of Zoroaster are concerned, but is confirmed by a passage in Aristotle (Metaphys., I., XIV., c. 4).
[12] A. F. Ch. Vilmar: “Theologie der Thatsachen wider die Theologie der Rhetorik” (Marburg, 1857).
[13] Thus, for instance, the red lustre of copper was supposed to indicate that it was connected with Mars, which shines with a reddish light.
[14] “Non baptisatis parvulis nemo promittat inter damnationem regnumque cœlorum quietis vel felicitatis cujuslibet atque ubilibet quasi medium locum; hoc enim eis etiam hæresis Pelagiana promisit” (Augustinus: De Anima et Ejus Origine, 1. I., c. IX). In one of his letters Augustine declares that even if the parents hurry to the priest, and he likewise hasten to baptize the child, but find it dead before it has obtained the sacrament, it is nevertheless then doomed to be eternally tormented with the damned, and to blaspheme the name of God.
[15] All these are found, in connection with baptism, in heathen mysteries.
[16] Extract from the formula given at the council of Rome, A. D. 1059, to Berengar of Tours, to which he was forced to swear under penalty of death.
[17] The wafer substituted in the twelfth century for bread was called the host.