Wesley Corpus

Mon. 15.--I set out for London, and read over in the way, that celebrated book, Martin Luther’s “* Comment on the Epistle to the Galatians.” I was utterly ashamed. How have I esteemed this book, only because I heard it so commended by others; or, at best, because I had read some excellent sentences occasionally quoted from it! But what shall I say, now I judge for myself? Now 1 see with my own eyes? Why, not only that the author makes nothing out, clears up not one considerable difficulty ; that he is quite shallow in his remarks on many passages, and muddy and confused almost on all; but that he is deeply tinctured with Mysticism throughout, and hence often dangerously wrong. ‘To instance only in one or two points :--How does he (almost in the words of Tauler) decry reason, right or wrong, as an irreconcilable enemy to the gospel of Christ! Whereas, what is reason (the faculty so called) but the power of apprehending, judging, and discoursing? Which power is no more to be condemned in the grose than seeing, hearing, or feeling. Again, how blasphemously does he: speak of good works and of the law of God ; constantly coupling che law ies. 914 REV. J, WESLEY’S JOURNAL. [June, 1741. with sin, death, hell, or the devil ; and teaching, that Christ delivers us from them all alike. Whereas, it can no more be proved by Scripture that Christ delivers us from the law of God, than that he delivers us from holiness or from heaven. Here (1 apprehend) is the real spring of the grand error of the Moravians. They follow Luther for better for worse. Hence their “ No works; no law; no commandments.” But who art thou that “ speakest evil of the law, and judgest the law?”