Ib. p. 337.

  The council of Nice, held after the Apostles’ time, (said Luther) was
  the very best and purest; but soon after in the time of the Emperor
  Constantine, it was weakened by the Arians.

What Arius himself meant, I do not know:  what the modern Arians teach, I utterly condemn; but that the great council of Ariminum was either Arian or heretical I could never discover, or descry any essential difference between its decisions and the Nicene; though I seem to find a serious difference of the pseudo-Athanasian Creed from both.  If there be a difference between the Councils of Nicea and Ariminum, it perhaps consists in this;—­that the Nicene was the more anxious to assert the equal Divinity in the Filial subordination; the Ariminian to maintain the Filial subordination in the equal Divinity.  In both there are three self-subsistent and only one self-originated:—­which is the substance of the idea of the Trinity, as faithfully worded as is compatible with the necessary inadequacy of words to the expression of ideas, that is, spiritual truths that can only be spiritually discerned. [4]

18th August, 1826.

Chap.  XXVIII. p. 347.

  God’s word a Lord of all Lords.

Luther every where identifies the living Word of God with the written word, and rages against Bullinger, who contended that the latter is the word of God only as far as and for whom it is the vehicle of the former.  To this Luther replies:  “My voice, the vehicle of my words, does not cease to be my voice, because it is ignorantly or maliciously misunderstood.”  Yea! (might Bullinger have rejoined) the instance were applicable and the argument valid, if we were previously assured that all and every part of the Old and New Testament is the voice of the divine Word.  But, except by the Spirit, whence are we to ascertain this?  Not from the books themselves; for not one of them makes the pretension for itself, and the two or three texts, which seem to assert it, refer only to the Law and the Prophets, and no where enumerate the books that were given by inspiration:  and how obscure the history of the formation of the Canon, and how great the difference of opinion respecting its different parts, what scholar is ignorant?

Chap.  XXIX. p. 349.

  ’Patres, quamquam saepe errant, tamen venerandi propter testimonium
  fidei.’

Although I learn from all this chapter, that Luther was no great Patrician, (indeed he was better employed), yet I am nearly, if not wholly of his mind respecting the works of the Fathers.  Those which appear to me of any great value are valuable chiefly for those articles of Christian Faith which are, as it were, ‘ante Christum’ JESUM, namely, the Trinity, and the primal Incarnation spoken of by John i, 10.  But in the main I should perhaps go even farther than Luther; for I cannot conceive any thing more likely than that a young man of strong and active intellect,