98 The Works of Huldreich Zwingli pious. They are impious who embrace the word of man as God’s. It is, therefore, madness and utter impiety to put the enactments and decrees of certain men or certain councils upon an equality with the word of God. For if their dicta are like God’s word, it is the word that must be embraced, not the authority of men; if they are unlike it, they are to be rejected and shunned, as the Children of Isrel avoided marriage with the women of the Moabites and other Gentiles [cf. Ezra 10: 2-4]. The objection, which could be made here, that the Church should be listened to, I shall treat later.
[6]. Tug Christian Religion
This age has many scholars who spring up everywhere as if out of the Trojan Horse, and still more who set themselves up as censors of all things. These because of their impiety are unwilling to accept the renascent word,] yet make a pretense of piety and fill the ears of the pious with groundless and fictitious suspicions. Some, when we teach vigorously that all our confidence is to be placed in God our Father, spring up with the impudent suggestion that we must be guarded against for in all our teaching, they say, our aim is that we may do away with Christ, and, after the manner of the Jews, induce all to believe in only one Person, as we believe in only one God. Others, when we show an inclination to attribute all things to Christ, say they are afraid that we too rashly attribute too much to Him. Yet both make their pronouncements in such a way that you can see of yourself that they are either recklessly ignorant or knowingly impious. For they are so ignorant as to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in their essence, substance, divinity, power, that they do not know what you mean when you speak of one and understand all three; and their lack of knowledge is accompanied by such recklessness that what they are extremely ignorant of they all the more violently drag under suspicion. Or they are so willingly and knowingly impious that they assail with the depravity of a perverted heart what they see is done rightly and piously, and since they despair of accomplishing anything in open warfare,
[See below, Section [13], The Church. ti. e., the Reformation.]
they make an underground attack, alleging a fear that we are too much inclined sometimes towards the Father, sometimes towards the Son. To all such I say, κλαίειν; “fare ill.” For I teach that God is to be acknowledged and embraced in^ such wise that whether you call Him Father, or Son, or Holy Spirit, you always conceive of Him who is alone good, righteous, holy, kind, and all the rest. On the other hand, when I attribute all things to the Son, I attribute them to Him who is what the Father is, what the Holy Spirit is, and whose are the kingdom and the power just as truly as they are the Father’s and the Holy Spirits. For He is Himself that very thing which the Father is and the Holy Spirit, though seen from a different point of view, as they say. What, therefore, these emulous persons are sure to say, namely, that in discussing piety so far I have made no reference to salvation through Christ and to grace, will be groundless croaking: first, because I eannot say everything at once and in the same place; secondly, because all that I have said of the marriage of the soul to God applies to Christ just as much as to God (for Christ is God and Man); finally, because knowledge of God in the nature of the case precedes knowledge of Christ. Therefore, just as grace is first rightly known when sin has been effected through the law, as Paul says, Rom. 7:25, that is, when sin has been weighed and known through the law, so also Christ, who is the pledge of grace, nay, is grace itself, is first rightly taught and known when from close observation of sin we have learned that by its interposition the way to heaven has been elosed to us. For as he that is in sound health lays no store by the physician, but he that is in a desperate condition looks upon him as a god, so Christ is not especially welcome to the whole, but to the sick he is eds ἀπὸ μηχανῆς; that is, unexpected safety sent from above. To this He Himself testifies, saying: They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick,” Luke 5:31; and, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to change their former life.” In order, therefore, rightly to know Christ, we must first rightly know ourselves; for they that think themselves righteous receive not Christ, as is clear from His own words; and he that feels no sickness wants not the help of a physician.
Christ, then, is the certainty and pledge of the grace of God [cf. Eph. 1: 14]. This can be shown in this way: I said before in considering man that his condition is so pitiable that he is dead, the slave of sin, and of such a nature as to care for nothing so much as for himself. For this is what happened to him when he turned away from the good and to himself, for we know that in us is no good thing, Rom. 7:18. Hence arose endless despair of ever coming to God; for how could he ever hope to be received above who by daily evils felt himself exposed to bodily death, and from a guilty conscience felt himself so removed from God that he avoided coming into His sight? But God was better, and pitied His work, and devised a plan to repair so serious a misfortune. Since His justice, being inviolably sacred, had to remain as intact and unshaken as His mercy, and since man was indeed in need of mercy but wholly amenable to God’s justice, divine goodness found a way to satisfy justice and yet to be allowed to open wide the arms of mercy without detriment to justice. Not that He thus took precautions against the Adversary or that the potter may not out of moistened clay make or remake any vessel He chooses [cf. Rom. 9: 21], but that by this example of justice He might remove drowsiness and sloth from us and show us what sort of being He was—just, good, merciful; or, not to presume to say too much of His purposes, because it so pleased Him. For “righteous [justus] is the Lord and upright are his judgments, Ps. 119: 137, but, on the other hand, “He is patient and merciful, good to all; and his tender mercies are over all his works,” Ps. 145:8-9. For David sings unto Him of mercy and judgment, Ps. 101: 1. For He “visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the fourth generation of them that hate him, and sheweth mercy unto thousands of them that love him,” Exod. 20:5-6. While, therefore, God is — alike just and merciful, though with a leaning towards mercy (for His tender mercies are over all the rest of His works), yet His justice has to be satisfied that His wrath may be appeased. “That, then, God’s justice has to be satisfied, the theologians have rightly taught, even those of the new school. For, “if thou wouldst enter into life, keep the commandments,” Matt. 19: 17. But how shall man satisfy the