ssenting, with a pretext for treating his doctrine with silent
contempt. Had he followed the example of his own Ben Ezra, and argued
temperately and learnedly, the controversy must have forced the
momentous question on our Clergy:--Are Christians bound to believe
whatever an Apostle believed,--and in the same way and sense? I think
Saint Paul himself lived to doubt the solidity of his own literal
interpretation of our Lord's words.

The whole passage in which our Lord describes his coming is so
evidently, and so intentionally expressed in the diction and images of
the Prophets, that nothing but the carnal literality common to the Jews
at that time and most strongly marked in the disciples, who were among
the least educated of their countrymen, could have prevented the
symbolic import and character of the words from being seen. The whole
Gospel and the Epistles of John, are a virtual confutation of this
reigning error--and no less is the Apocalypse whether written by, or
under the authority of, the Evangelist.

The unhappy effect which St. Paul's (may I not say) incautious language
respecting Christ's return produced on the Thessalonians, led him to
reflect on the subject, and he instantly in the second epistle to them
qualified the doctrine, and never afterwards resumed it; but on the
contrary, in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, c. 15, substitutes
the doctrine of immortality in a celestial state and a spiritual body.
On the nature of our Lord's future epiphany or phenomenal person, I am
not ashamed to acknowledge, that my views approach very nearly to those
of Emanuel Swedenborg.

Ib. p. 121.

Doctor Jacob Schenck never preacheth out of his book, but I do, (said
Luther), though not of necessity, but I do it for example's sake to
others.

As many notes, 'memoranda', cues of connection and transition as the
preacher may find expedient or serviceable to him; well and good. But to
read in a manuscript book, as our Clergy now do, is not to preach at
all. Preach out of a book, if you must; but do not read in it, or even
from it. A read sermon of twenty minutes will seem longer to the hearers
than a free discourse of an hour.

Ib.

My simple opinion is (said Luther) and I do believe that Christ for us
descended into hell, to the end he might break and destroy the same,
as in Psalm xvi, and Acts ii, is shewed and proved.

Could Luther have been ignorant, that this clause was not inserted into
th