baptized and had begun to believe. But He suffers us
to live here in order that we may bring others also to believe, doing
to them as He has done toward us. But while we remain on earth, we
must live in hope; for although we are assured that through faith we
have all the good things of God, (for faith brings along with it
assuredly the new birth, the adoption, the inheritance, and makes
them yours,) still you do not as yet behold them; but the matter
exists in hope, while it is of but small importance that we may not
see it with our eyes. This he calls _the hope of life_; that is, by a
Hebrew phrase, as though for sinful man we should say, a man of sin.
We call it a living hope; that is, one in which we certainly expect,
and may be assured of, eternal life. But it is concealed, and a veil
is drawn over it, that we see it not. It can only be apprehended in
the heart and by faith, as St. John writes in his Epistle, 1 John v.:
"We are now the children of God, and it doth not yet appear what we
shall be; but we know that when it shall appear that we are like Him,
we shall behold Him as He is." For _this_ life, and _that_, cannot be
commingled, cannot consist with one another, so that we should eat,
drink, sleep, watch, and do other works of the flesh which this life
renders necessary, and at the same time have our full salvation.
Therefore we can never arrive at eternal life unless we die, and this
present life passes away. Thus, as long as we are here we must stand
in hope, until it be God's pleasure that we should behold the
blessings that are ours.

But how do we attain to this living hope? By the resurrection of
Christ from the dead, he says. I have often asserted that no one can
believe on God except through a mediation, since we can none of us
treat for ourselves before God, inasmuch as we are all children of
wrath; but we must have another by whom we may come before God, who
shall intercede for us and reconcile us to God. But there is no other
mediator than the Lord Christ, who is the Son of God. Therefore that
is not a true faith which is held by the Turks and Jews,--I believe
that God has created heaven and earth. Just so does the devil, too,
believe, but it does not help him. They venture to present themselves
before God without having Christ as mediator. So St. Paul speaks in
the fifth of Romans, "We have access to God by faith, not through
ourselves, but through Christ." Therefore we must bring Christ with
us,