ne, they are secure and unafraid. Isaiah's words (ch.
29, 13) are to the same effect: "Their fear of me is a commandment of
men which hath been taught them." Always the perverted people spoken
of corrupt everything. They confidently call on God where is only the
devil; they refrain in fear from calling on God where God is.

13. Such, mark you, is the wretched condition of them who are blindly
occupied with laws and works and fail to comprehend the design of law
and its mistress Love. Note, also, in the case of our miserable
ecclesiasts and their followers, how rigidly they adhere to their own
inventions! Though all the world meet ruin, their devices must be
sustained; they must be perpetuated regardless of bodily illness and
death, or of suffering and ruin for the soul. They even regard such
destruction and ruin as divine service, and know no fear nor remorse
of conscience. Indeed, so strongly entrenched are they in their
wickedness, they will never return from it. Moreover, should one of
their wretched number be permitted to alleviate the distress of his
body and soul--to eat meat, to marry--he is afraid, he feels remorse
of conscience; he is uncertain about sin and law, about death and
hell; he calls not on God, nor serves him; all this, even though the
body should die ten deaths and the soul go to the devil a hundred
times.

14. Observe, then, the state of the world; how little flesh and blood
can accomplish even in their best efforts; how dangerous to undertake
to rule by law alone--indeed, how impossible it is, without great
danger, to govern and instruct souls with mere laws, ignoring love and
the Spirit, in whose hands is the full power of all law. It is written
(Deut 33, 2), "At his right hand was a fiery law for them." This is
the law of love in the Spirit. It shall regulate all laws at the left
hand; that is, the external laws of the world. It is said (Ex 28, 30)
that the priest must bear upon his breast, in the breastplate, "the
Urim and the Thummim"; that is, Light and Perfection, indicative of
the priest's office to illuminate the Law--to give its true sense--and
faultlessly to keep and to teach it.

15. In the conception, the establishment and the observance of all
laws, the object should be, not the furtherance of the laws in
themselves, not the advancement of works, but the exercise of love.
That is the true purpose of law, according to Paul here, "He that
loveth his neighbor hath fulfilled the law."