Is there anything further? Attend.
When Christ Crucified exclaimed, _My God, my God, why hast Thou
forsaken me,_ He was on fire with the flames of hell, He uttered
a cry of despair, He felt exactly as if nothing were before Him
but to perish in everlasting death (Calvin _in Harm. Evangel._).
To this also let them add something, if they can. Christ, they
say, descended into hell, that is, when dead, He tasted hell not
otherwise than do the damned souls, except that He was destined
to be restored to Himself: for since by His mere bodily death He
would have profited us nothing, He needed in soul also to
struggle with everlasting death, and in this way to pay the debt
of our crime and our punishment. And lest any one might haply
suspect that this theory had stolen upon Calvin unawares, the
same Calvin calls _all of you who have repelled this doctrine,
full as it is of comfort, God-forsaken boobies_ (Institut. ii.
16). Times, times, what a monster you have reared! That delicate
and royal Blood, which ran in a flood from the lacerated and torn
Body of the innocent Lamb, one little drop of which Blood, for
the dignity of the Victim, might have redeemed a thousand worlds,
availed the human race nothing, unless _the mediator of God and
men, the man Christ Jesus_ (I Tim. ii. 5) had borne also _the
second death_ (Apoc. xx. 6), the death of the soul, the death to
grace, that accompaniment only of sin and damnable blasphemy! In
comparison with this insanity, Bucer, impudent fellow that he is,
will appear modest, for he (on Matth. xxvi.), by an explanation
very preposterous, or rather, an inept and stupid tautology,
takes _hell_ in the creed to mean the tomb. Of the Anglican
sectaries, some are wont to adhere to their idol, Calvin, others
to their great master, Bucer; some also murmur in an undertone
against this article, wishing that it may be quietly removed
altogether from the Creed, that it may give no more trouble. Nay,
this was actually tried in a meeting at London, as I remember
being told by one who was present, Richard Cheyne, a miserable
old man, who was badly mauled by robbers outside, and, for all
that, never entered his father's house.[2]
And thus far of Christ. What of Man? The image of God is utterly
blotted out in man, not the slightest spark of good is left: his
whole nature in all the parts of his soul is so thoroughly
overturned that, even after he is born again and sanctified in
baptism, there is nothing what
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