--not indeed
peculiar to these, for it is the same in the Psalms, Ezekiel, and
throughout the Scriptures, but which I feel most in Paul and Luther,
--there is one fearful blank, the wisdom or necessity of which I do not
doubt, yet cannot help groping and straining after like one that stares
in the dark; and this is Death. The law makes us afraid of death. What
is death?--an unhappy life? Who does not feel the insufficiency of this
answer? What analogy does immortal suffering bear to the only death
which is known to us?

Since I wrote the above, God has, I humbly trust, given me a clearer
light as to the true nature of the 'death' so often mentioned in the
Scriptures.

Ib.

It is (said Luther), a very hard matter: yea, an impossible thing for
thy human strength, whosoever thou art (without God's assistance) that
(at such a time when Moses setteth upon thee with his law, and
fearfully affrighteth thee, accuseth and condemneth thee, threateneth
thee with God's wrath and death) thou shouldest as then be of such a
mind; namely, as if no law nor sin had ever been at any time:--I say,
it is in a manner a thing impossible, that a human creature should
carry himself in such a sort, when he is and feeleth himself assaulted
with trials and temptations, and when the conscience hath to do with
God, as then to think no otherwise, than that from everlasting nothing
hath been, but only and alone Christ, altogether grace and deliverance.

Yea, verily, Amen and Amen! For this short heroic paragraph contains the
sum and substance, the heighth and the depth of all true philosophy.
Most assuredly right difficult it is for us, while we are yet in the
narrow chamber of death, with our faces to the dusky falsifying
looking-glass that covers the scant end-side of the blind passage from
floor to ceiling,--right difficult for us, so wedged between its walls
that we cannot turn round, nor have other escape possible but by walking
backward, to understand that all we behold or have any memory of having
ever beholden, yea, our very selves as seen by us, are but shadows, and
when the forms that we loved vanish, impossible not to feel as if they
were real.

Ib. p. 197.

Nothing that is good proceedeth out of the works of the law, except
grace be present; for what we are forced to do, the same goeth not
from the heart, neither is acceptable.

A law supposes a law-giver, and implies an actuator and executor, and