What did Luther mean by a body?  For to me the word seemeth capable of two senses, universal and special:—­first, a form indicating to A. B. C. &c., the existence and finiteness of some one other being ‘demonstrative’ as ‘hic’, and ‘disjunctive’ as ‘hic et non ille’; and in this sense God alone can be without body:  secondly, that which is not merely ‘hic distinctive’, but ‘divisive’; yea, a product divisible from the producent as a snake from its skin, a precipitate and death of living power; and in this sense the body is proper to mortality, and to be denied of spirits made perfect as well as of the spirits that never fell from perfection, and perhaps of those who fell below mortality, namely, the devils.

But I am inclined to hold that the Devil has no one body, nay, no body of his own; but ceaselessly usurps or counterfeits bodies; for he is an everlasting liar, yea, the lie which is the colored shadow of the substance that intercepts the truth.

Ib. p. 370.

  The devils are in woods, in waters, in wildernesses, and in dark pooly
  places, ready to hurt and prejudice people, &c.

  “The angel’s like a flea,
    The devil is a bore;—­”
  No matter for that! quoth S.T.C. 
    I love him the better therefore.

Yes! heroic Swan, I love thee even when thou gabbiest like a goose; for thy geese helped to save the Capitol.

Ib. p. 371.

I do verily believe (said Luther) that the day of judgment draweth near, and that the angels prepare themselves for the fight and combat, and that within the space of a few hundred years they will strike down both Turk and Pope into the bottomless pit of hell.

Yea! two or three more such angels as thyself, Martin Luther, and thy prediction would be, or perhaps would now have been, accomplished.

Chap.  XXXV. p. 388.

Cogitations of the understanding do produce no melancholy, but the cogitations of the will cause sadness; as, when one is grieved at a thing, or when one doth sigh and complain, there are melancholy and sad cogitations, but the understanding is not melancholy.

Even in Luther’s lowest imbecilities what gleams of vigorous good sense!  Had he understood the nature and symptoms of indigestion together with the detail of subjective seeing and hearing, and the existence of mid-states of the brain between sleeping and waking, Luther would have been a greater philosopher; but would he have been so great a hero?  I doubt it.  Praised be God whose mercy is over all his works; who bringeth good out of evil, and manifesteth his wisdom even in the follies of his servants, his strength in their weakness!

Ib. p. 389.

  Whoso prayeth a Psalm shall be made thoroughly warm.

‘Expertus credo’.

19th Aug. 1826.

I have learnt to interpret for myself the imprecating verses of the Psalms of my inward and spiritual enemies, the old Adam and all his corrupt menials; and thus I am no longer, as I used to be, stopped or scandalized by such passages as vindictive and anti-Christian.