from them, but this was only in order to aggravate their guilt, and by no means with the earnest will to convert them. How would it be possible to resist the will of God, supposing of course that it was his real will, not a mere velleity? Paul himself represents his conversion as a work of divine grace thoroughly unmerited on his part;[1] and quite correctly. Not to resist divine grace, i.e., to accept divine grace, to allow it to work upon one, is already something good, and consequently is an effect of the Holy Spirit. Nothing is more perverse than the attempt to reconcile miracle with freedom of inquiry and thought, or grace with freedom of will. In religion the nature of man is regarded as separate from man. The activity, the grace of God is the projected spontaneity of man, Free Will made objective.[2]
It is the most flagrant inconsequence to adduce the experience that men are not sanctified, not converted by baptism, as an argument against its miraculous efficacy, as is done by rationalistic orthodox theologians;[3] for all kinds of miracles, the objective power of prayer, and in general all the supernatural truths of religion, also contradict experience. He who appeals to experience renounces faith. Where experience is a datum, there religious faith and feeling have already vanished. The unbeliever denies the objective efficacy of prayer only because it contradicts experience; the atheist goes yet farther,—he denies even the existence of God, because he does not find it in experience. Inward experience creates no difficulty to him; for what thou experiencest in thyself of another existence, proves only that there is something in thee which thou thyself art not, which works upon thee independently of thy personal
- ↑ “Here we see a miracle surpassing all miracles, that Christ should have so mercifully converted his greatest enemy.”—Luther (T. xvi. p. 560).
- ↑ Hence it is greatly to the honour of Luther’s understanding and sense of truth that, particularly when writing against Erasmus, he unconditionally denied the free will of man as opposed to divine grace. “The name Free Will,” says Luther, quite correctly from the stand-point of religion, “is a divine title and name, which none ought to bear but the Divine Majesty alone.” (T. xix. p. 28.)
- ↑ Experience indeed extorted even from the old theologians, whose faith was an uncompromising one, the admission that the effects of baptism are, at least in this life, very limited. “Baptismus non aufert omnes pœnalitates hujus vitæ.”—Mezger. Theol. Schol. T. iv. p. 251. See also Petrus L. 1. iv. dist. 4, c. 4; 1. ii. dist. 32, c. l.
