who, willy nilly, do everything for gain or glory this class of men who handle even divine things for their own personal ends. ‘Therefore, since they see that, because they bear the mark of persons who speak only to win favor and blatantly dissemble their real opinions, it is not hard to perceive what they are inwardly, I beg them to confess with us, 7. e., with, the faithful, that man is altogether bad and that all his thoughts and actions are controlled by self-love.
[5]. Religion
I must now return to religion, which I put aside for a little while till I should speak, as far as the Lord gave to me, of those between whom religion subsists.
Of the word enough has been said, and I now come to the thing itself.
“God created man in his own image and likeness” [Gen. 1:27], and surrounded him with blessings and indescribable delights, but he foolishly suffered himself to be dragged into the direst calamity by vain hopes. As soon as that happened, he began to see in himself something unpleasing. For it is written, Gen. 3: 7: “And the eyes of them both were opened.” Good God, were they blind before? By no means, but their hearts, like their eyes, were ignorant of anything base, as long as they kept from eating of the tree of life. There was nothing to sadden them, nothing to make them ashamed. But after they ate the fatal apple, their eyes were opened; for it was plucked from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet what did they see first that they had not seen before? Something secret that they had not known before? The demon seemed to promise something of this kind, and the poor things no doubt hoped for something of the sort. They saw, then, that they were naked. Now, they had been naked before, but nakedness was not regarded as nakedness: sin was not imputed before the law came, Rom. 5: 13. So nakedness was not known before lack of clothing was felt; and this took place only when man turned away from his Creator, the treasure house of every good thing. From this we should learn that our minds, to whatever part of creation, to whatever design, to whatever hope they turn, find nothing but trouble, disaster, and utter
wretchedness (for this is the nakedness in question, to be exposed to all evils and deprived of the protection of God), and that comfort and rest are nowhere to be found save with God. And we see, if we look a little more closely, that such folly is native to us, so that we begin uncertain and difficult things blindly, without intelligent consideration of the end; and when that is finally reached our eyes are opened by hard experience, yet so that we see nothing but the evils into which our own recklessness has plunged us. And the human mind is always after something new, though we find an Epimetheus oftener than a Prometheus; that is, we are all wise after the event.
We are taught, in the next place, that the nakedness of Adam means nothing else than guilt and the death that is sin, of which so much was said above. For who could believe that Adam was so dull that he could not make the argument: “Suppose you are naked. God Himself created you naked. Let Him see you naked.” But it was his consciousness of wrongdoing that made him ashamed to come into the sight of God. If Adam had had a hope that he had anything left with which to coax back favor, he never would have hidden; but he saw that his case was so utterly lost that we do not read of his turning to supplication. Concluding, therefore, from his consciousness of guilt that the worst was in store for him, he hid, and gave his nakedness as an excuse for running away and delaying to appear. What else, then, are we to conclude from all this but that the case of man is so hopeless and lamentable that he dares not appear in God’s presence, and even flees from Him, dreads Him when He calls, and refuses to come into His sight? But at the same time we are taught the kindness of God, who receives back into favor this traitorous deserter to the enemy’s camp, without his humbly asking it, and though he swiftly runs away and tries to disguise himself. God calls to him, i reproaches him, and only so far turns-his happy estate into one of woe as His righteousness demands. For what did Adam deserve but death and destruction? But, as far as He could, God considered, with reference to Adam’s bold misdeed, how
[Epimetheus: Afterthought, the husband of Pandora, whom he mar-]
[ried against the advice of his brother Prometheus, Forethought.]
He might give a foretaste even in the beginning of what He would sometime do for the whole posterity of Adam; and when His righteous wrath was still hot at the recently committed crime, He judged more kindly than the guilt deserved.
Before we leave this topic I want to give certain theologians this point to consider. I beg you to give an answer, at least in the form of a probable theory—since you generally employ theories, though they are sometimes far from reasonable—to this question: Does it seem as if Adam would ever have come back of his own notion to ask for grace? You will certainly be forced to admit that on no reasonable inference does it seem likely that one who was so bent upon running away and hiding that he could scarcely be dragged out would have returned if the Lord had not followed him up in his flight. Why, then, will you not acknowledge that the acquired faith about which you talk so much is a fiction (for no man cometh to Christ, John 6: 44, unless the Father draw him), and that faith is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that hath mercy [Rom. 9:16]? Why indeed, when you see that our common parent, whose sin and death have extended to us, was so afraid of God that, yielding to the folly which kept telling him that he could hide, he took himself off in order not to be forced to hear himself upbraided for the sin of his desertion? But what need is there of lengthy discussion? Suppose God lets Adam be; he will never come back to Him from whom he has fled. Suppose He lets man be; he will never seek Him by whom he was created. For everyone is a God unto himself, as is made plain by his worship of himself. For who is there who does not worship himself and give himself the top place in some respect, while demanding of God the reason for all His acts and designs? And what is this but to exalt oneself above God and to exercise a censorship over His works? I have gone on at considerable length, but I wanted to make it plain how far man would wander from God if He from whom we flee did not stop us in our flight; and how far from the true path these theologians are when they talk more pointlessly than the heathen writers about acquired faith and freedom of the will.