Nothing can be more sound or more philosophic than the contents of these two paragraphs.  They afford a sufficient answer to the pretence of the Romanists and Arminians, that by the law St. Paul meant only the ceremonial law.

Ib. p. 189.

And if Moses had not cashiered and put himself out of his office, and had not taken it away with these words, (where he saith, ’The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee another prophet out of thy brethren; Him shall thou hear’. (Deut. xviii.)) who then at any time would or could have believed the Gospel, and forsaken Moses?

If I could be persuaded that this passage (Deut. xviii. 15-19.) primarily referred to Christ, and that Christ, not Joshua and his successors, was the prophet here promised; I must either become a Unitarian psilanthrophist, and join Priestley and Belsham,—­or abandon to the Jews their own Messiah as yet to come, and cling to the religion of John and Paul, without further reference to Moses than to Lycurgus, Solon and Numa; all of whom in their different spheres no less prepared the way for the coming of the Lord, ‘the desire of the nations’.

Ib. p. 190.

  It is therefore most evident (said Luther), that the law can but only
  help us to know our sins, and to make us afraid of death.  Now sins and
  death are such things as belong to the world, and which are therein.

Both in Paul and Luther, (names which I can never separate),—­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.