Paul's Epistles to the Romans and Galatians and wrote commentaries on
them, and contributed the penetrating original works, _The Christian
Alphabet_ and _The Hundred and Ten Divine Considerations_.[1]

These writings present in vivid and powerful style the way of salvation
through Faith. The primary insight is Lutheran, but it is everywhere
coloured and tempered by the author's Humanistic outlook. He insists,
in all his interpretations of salvation, upon the vital interior work
of the Holy Spirit and upon the necessity of re-living the Christ-life
in all its heights and depths. All the truths of religion, he
constantly urges, must be known and verified in experience, and those
who are to be effective ministers of the Gospel in any age must know
that they are divinely sent and must be taught by the inward Word of
God rather than by human science. The attractive power of the Cross is
rediscovered in his profound experience and makes itself felt as the
dynamic principle of his entire moral activity.

The _Divine Considerations_ was put into English by Nicholas Ferrar
(1592-1637) of Little Gidding, and published at Oxford in 1638,
together with the Introduction to the _Commentary on Romans_, under the
name of "John Valdesso." The English translation was submitted by
Ferrar to his friend, George Herbert, who wrote some interesting
critical notes which were printed with the original edition. George
Herbert expresses his great love for "Valdesso," whose eyes, he says,
God has opened, even in the midst of Popery, "to understand and
expresse so clearly {238} and excellently the intent of the Gospell in
the acceptation of Christ's righteousness," but he "likes not" his
slighting of Scripture and his use of the Word of God for inward
revelation. He believed, though wrongly, that de Valdes was a
"mystic," and that he was advocating a religion of "private enthusiasms
and revelations." The fact was rather that de Valdes was presenting or
was aiming to present a religion of universal validity, brought to
birth by the discovery of God in Christ as revealed in the Gospel, and
made continuously effective anew by personal experience of the same
Christ as Divine Revealer in the lives of men.

There is no question of the far-reaching influence of Ferrar's
translation of this vital message of de Valdes, especially among
scholars and literary men. It must also have had a popular influence,
for Samuel Rutherford in 1648 declared it