Faith is the freedom and blessedness which feeling finds in

itself. Feeling objective to itself and active in this freedom,

the reaction of feeling against Nature, is the arbitrariness

of the imagination. The objects of faith therefore necessarily

contradict Nature, necessarily contradict Reason, as that

which represents the nature of things. "Quid magis contra

fidem, quam credere nolle, quidquid non possit ratione

attingere?... Nam illam quae in Deum est fides, beatus papa

Gregorius negat plane habere meritum, si ei humana ratio praebeat

experimentum."--Bernardus (contr. Abelard. Ep. ad. Dom. Papam

Innocentium). "Partus virginis nec ratione colligitur,

nec exemplo monstratur. Quodsi ratione colligitur non erit

mirabile."--Conc. Toletan. XI. Art. IV. (Summa. Carranza.) "Quid

autem incredibile, si contra usum originis naturalis peperit Maria et

virgo permanet: quando contra usum naturae mare vidit et fugit atque

in fontem suum Jordanis fluenta remearunt? Non ergo excedit fidem,

quod virgo peperit, quando legimus, quod petra vomuit aquas et in

montis speciem maris unda solidata est. Non ergo excedit fidem,

quod homo exivit de virgine, quando petra profluit, scaturivit

ferrum supra aquas, ambulavit homo supra aquas."--Ambrosius

(Epist. L. x. Ep. 81. edit. Basil. Amerbach. 1492 et 1516). "Mira

sunt fratres, quae de isto sacramento dicuntur.... Haec sunt quae

fidem necessario exigunt, rationem omnino non admittunt."--Bernardus

(de Coena Dom.). "Quid ergo hic quaeris naturae ordinem in Christi

corpore, cum praeter naturam sit ipse partus ex virgine."--Petrus

Lomb. (l. iv. dist. 10, c. 2). "Laus fidei est credere quod

est supra rationem, ubi homo abnegat intellectum et omnes

sensus." (Addit. Henrici de Vurimaria. ibid. dist. 12, c. 5.) "All the

articles of our faith appear foolish and ridiculous to reason." ... "We

Christians seem fools to the world for believing that Mary was the true

mother of this child, and was nevertheless a pure virgin. For this is

not only against all reason, but also against the creation of God,

who said to Adam and Eve, 'Be fruitful and multiply.'" "We ought not

to inquire whether a thing be possible, but we should say, God has

said it, therefore it will happen, even if it be impossible. For

although I cannot see or understand it, yet the Lord can make the

impossible possible, and out of nothing can make all things."--Luther

(T. xvi. pp. 148, 149, 570). "What is more miraculous than that God and

man is one Person? that he is the Son of God and the Son of Mary, and

yet only one Son? Who will comprehend this mystery in all eternity,

that God is man, that a creature is the Creator, and the Creator

a creature?"--Id. (T. vii. p. 128). The essential object of faith,

therefore, is miracle; but not common, visible miracle, which is an

object even to the bold eye of curiosity and unbelief in general;

not the appearance, but the essence of miracle; not the fact, but

the miraculous power, the Being who works miracles, who attests and

reveals himself in miracle. And this miraculous power is to faith

always present; even Protestantism believes in the uninterrupted

perpetuation of miraculous power; it only denies the necessity that

it should still manifest itself in special visible signs, for the

furtherance of dogmatic ends. "Some have said that signs were the

revelation of the Spirit in the commencement of Christianity and have

now ceased. That is not correct; for there is even now such a power,

and though it is not used, that is of no importance. For we have still

the power to perform such signs." "Now, however, that Christianity

is spread abroad and made known to all the world, there is no need

to work miracles, as in the times of the apostles. But if there were

need for it, if the Gospel were oppressed and persecuted, we must

truly apply ourselves to this, and must also work miracles."--Luther

(Th. xiii. pp. 642, 648). Miracle is so essential, so natural to

faith, that to it even natural phenomena are miracles, and not in the

physical sense, but in the theological, supranaturalistic sense. "God,

in the beginning, said: Let the earth bring forth grass and herbs,

&c. That same word which the Creator spoke brings the cherry out of

the dry bough and the cherry-tree out of the little kernel. It is

the omnipotence of God which makes young fowls and geese come out

of the eggs. Thus God preaches to us daily of the resurrection of

the dead, and has given us as many examples and experiences of this

article as there are creatures."--Luther (Th. x. p. 432. See also

Th. iii. pp. 586, 592, and Augustine, e.g., Enarr. in Ps. 90, Sermo

ii. c. 6). If, therefore, faith desires and needs no special miracle,

this is only because to it everything is fundamentally miracle,

everything an effect of divine, miraculous power. Religious faith

has no sense, no perception for Nature. Nature, as it exists for us,

has no existence for faith. To it the will of God is alone the ground,

the bond, the necessity of things. "God ... could indeed have made us

men, as he did Adam and Eve, by himself, without father and mother,

as he could reign without princes, as he could give light without

sun and stars, and bread without fields and ploughs and labour. But

it is not his will to do thus."--Luther (Th. xvi. p. 614). It is true

"God employs certain means, and so conducts his miraculous works as to

use the service of Nature and instruments." Therefore we ought--truly

on very natural grounds--"not to despise the means and instruments of

Nature." "Thus it is allowable to use medicine, nay, it ought to be

used, for it is a means created in order to preserve health."--Luther

(Th. i. p. 508). But--and that alone is decisive--it is not necessary

that I should use natural means in order to be cured; I can be cured

immediately by God. What God ordinarily does by means of Nature,

he can also do without, nay, in opposition to Nature, and actually

does it thus, in extraordinary cases, when he will. "God," says

Luther in the same place, "could indeed easily have preserved Noah

and the animals through a whole year without food, as he preserved

Moses, Elijah, and Christ forty days without any food." Whether he

does it often or seldom is indifferent; it is enough if he only

does it once; what happens once can happen innumerable times. A

single miracle has universal significance--the significance of an

example. "This deed, the passage through the Red Sea, happened as a

figure and example, to show us that it will be so with us."--Luther

(Th. iii. p. 596). "These miracles are written for us, who are

chosen."--Ib. (Th. ix. p. 142). The natural means which God employs

when he does no miracle, have no more significance than those which

he employs when he performs miracles. If the animals, God so willing

it, can live as well without food as with it, food is in itself

as unnecessary for the preservation of life, as indifferent, as

non-essential, as arbitrary, as the clay with which Christ anointed

the eyes of the blind man to whom he restored sight, as the staff

with which Moses divided the sea ("God could have done it just as

well without the staff"). "Faith is stronger than heaven and earth,

or all creatures." "Faith turns water into stones; out of fire it

can bring water, and out of water fire."--Luther (Th. iii. pp. 564,

565). That is to say, for faith there exists no limit, no law, no

necessity, no Nature; there exists only the will of God, against which

all things and powers are nothing. If therefore the believer, when in

sickness and distress, has recourse notwithstanding to natural means,

he only follows the voice of his natural reason. The one means of

cure which is congruous with faith, which does not contradict faith,

which is not thrust upon it, whether consciously and voluntarily

or not, from without,--the one remedy for all evil and misery is

prayer; for "prayer is almighty."--Luther (Th. iv. p. 27). Why then

use a natural means also? For even in case of its application, the

effect which follows is by no means its own, but the effect of the

supernatural will of God, or rather the effect of faith, of prayer;

for prayer, faith determines the will of God. "Thy faith hath saved

thee." Thus the natural means which faith recognises in practice it

nullifies in theory, since it makes the effect of such means an effect

of God,--i.e., an effect which could have taken place just as well

without this means. The natural effect is therefore nothing else than

a circumstantial, covert, concealed miracle; a miracle however which

has not the appearance of a miracle, but can only be perceived as

such by the eyes of faith. Only in expression, not in fact, is there

any difference between an immediate and mediate, a miraculous and

natural operation of God. When faith makes use of a natural means, it

speaks otherwise than it thinks; when it supposes a miracle it speaks

as it thinks, but in both cases it thinks the same. In the mediate

agency of God faith is in disunion with itself, for the senses here

deny what faith affirms; in miracle, on the contrary, it is at one

with itself, for there the appearance coincides with the reality,

the senses with faith, the expression with the fact. Miracle is the

terminus technicus of faith.

§ 13.

The Resurrection of Christ is bodily, i.e., personal immortality,

presented as a sensible indubitable fact.

"Resurrexit Christus, absoluta res est.--Ostendit se ipsum

discipulis et fidelibus suis, contrectata est soliditas

corporis.... Confirmata fides est non solum in cordibus, sed

etiam in oculis hominum."--Augustinus (Sermones ad Pop. S. 242,

c. I. S. 361, c. S. See also on this subject Melancthon, Loci: de

Resurr. Mort.). "The philosophers ... held that by death the soul

was released from the body, and that after it was thus set free from

the body, as from a prison, it came into the assembly of the gods,

and was relieved from all corporeal burthens. Of such an immortality

the philosophers allowed men to dream, though they did not hold it to

be certain, nor could defend it. But the Holy Scriptures teach of the

resurrection and eternal life in another manner, and place the hope

of it so certainly before our eyes, that we cannot doubt it."--Luther

(Th. i. p. 549).

§ 14.

Christianity made man an extramundane, supernatural being. "We have

here no abiding city, but we seek one to come."--Heb. xiii. 14. "Whilst

we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord."--2

Cor. v. 6. "If in this body, which is properly our own, we

are strangers, and our life in this body is nothing else than

a pilgrimage; how much more then are the possessions which we

have for the sake of the body, such as fields, houses, gold, &c.,

nothing else than idle, strange things, to be used as if we were on

a pilgrimage?" "Therefore we must in this life live like strangers

until we reach the true fatherland, and receive a better life which

is eternal."--Luther (Th. ii. pp. 240, 370 a). "Our conversation

(politeuma, civitas aut jus civitatis) is in heaven, from whence

also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change

our vile body that it may be like unto his glorious body, according

to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto

himself."--Phil. iii. 20, 21. "Neque mundus generat hominem, neque

mundi homo pars est."--Lactantius (Div. Inst. l. ii. c. 6). "Coelum

de mundo: homo supra mundum."--Ambrosius (Epist. l. vi. Ep. 38,

ed. cit.). "Agnosce o homo dignitatem tuam, agnosce gloriam

conditionis humanae. Est enim tibi cum mundo corpus ... sed est

tibi etiam sublimius aliquid, nec omnino comparandus es caeteris

creaturis."--Bernardus (Opp. Basil. 1552, p. 79). "At Christianus

... ita supra totum mundum ascendit, nec consistit in coeli convexis,

sed transcensis mente locis supercoelestibus ductu divini spiritus

velut jam extra mundum raptus offert Deo preces."--Origenes (contra

Celspum. ed. Hoeschelio, p. 370). "Totus quidem iste mundus ad unius

animae pretium aestimari non potest. Non enim pro toto mundo Deus

animam suam dare voluit, quam pro anima humana dedit. Sublimius

est ergo animae pretium, quae non nisi sanguine Christi redimi

potest."--Medit. devotiss. c. ii. (Among the spurious writings of

St. Bernard.) "Sapiens anima ... Deum tantummodo sapiens hominem

in homine exuit, Deoque plene et in omnibus affecta, omnem infra

Deum creaturam non aliter quam Deus attendit. Relicto ergo corpore

et corporeis omnibus curis et impedimentis omnium quae sunt praeter

Deum obliviscitur, nihilque praeter Deum attendens quasi se solam,

solumque Deum existimans," etc.--De Nat. et Dign. Amoris Divini,

cc. 14, 15. (Ib.) "Quid agis frater in saeculo, qui major es

mundo?"--Hieronymus (ad Heliod. de Laude Vitae solit.).

§ 15.

The celibate and monachism--of course only in their original,

religious significance and form--are sensible manifestations, necessary

consequences, of the supranaturalistic, extramundane character of

Christianity. It is true that they also contradict Christianity;

the reason of this is shown by implication in the present work; but

only because Christianity is itself a contradiction. They contradict

exoteric, practical, but not esoteric, theoretical Christianity;

they contradict Christian love so far as this love relates to man,

but not Christian faith, not Christian love so far as it loves man

only for God's sake. There is certainly nothing concerning celibacy

and monachism in the Bible; and that is very natural. In the beginning

of Christianity the great matter was the recognition of Jesus as the

Christ, the Messiah--the conversion of the heathens and Jews. And this

conversion was the more pressing, the nearer the Christians supposed

the day of judgment and the destruction of the world;--periculum

in mora. There was not time or opportunity for a life of quietude,

for the contemplation of monachism. Hence there necessarily reigned

at that time a more practical and even liberal sentiment than at a

later period, when Christianity had attained to worldly dominion,

and thus the enthusiasm of proselytism was extinguished. "Apostoli

(says the Church, quite correctly: Carranza, l. c. p. 256) cum fides

inciperet, ad fidelium imbecillitatem se magis demittebant, cum autem

evangelii praedicatio sit magis ampliata, oportet et Pontifices ad

perfectam continentiam vitam suam dirigere." When once Christianity

realised itself in a worldly form, it must also necessarily develop

the supranaturalistic, supramundane tendency of Christianity

into a literal separation from the world. And this disposition to

separation from life, from the body, from the world,--this first

hyper-cosmic then anti-cosmic tendency, is a genuinely biblical

disposition and spirit. In addition to the passages already cited,

and others universally known, the following may stand as examples:

"He that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life

eternal." "I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good

thing."--Rom. vii. 18. ("Veteres enim omnis vitiositatis in agendo

origenes ad corpus referebant."--J. G. Rosenmüller Scholia.) "Forasmuch

then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also

with the same mind; for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased

from sin."--1 Pet. iv. 1. "I have a desire to depart, and to be with

Christ."--Phil. i. 23. "We are confident and willing rather to be

absent from the body and present with the Lord."--2 Cor. v. 8. Thus,

according to these passages, the partition-wall between God and man

is the body (at least the fleshly, actual body); thus the body as a

hindrance to union with God is something worthless, to be denied. That

by the world, which is denied in Christianity, is by no means to be

understood a life of mere sensuality, but the real objective world,

is to be inferred in a popular manner from the belief that at the

advent of the Lord, i.e., the consummation of the Christian religion,

heaven and earth will pass away.

The difference between the belief of the Christians and that of

the heathen philosophers as to the destruction of the world is not

to be overlooked. The Christian destruction of the world is only

a crisis of faith,--the separation of the Christian from all that

is anti-christian, the triumph of faith over the world, a judgment

of God, an anti-cosmical, supernaturalistic act. "But the heavens

and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store,

reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of

ungodly men."--2 Pet. iii. 7. The heathen destruction of the world is

a crisis of the cosmos itself, a process which takes place according

to law, which is founded in the constitution of Nature. "Sic origo

mundi, non minus solem et lunam et vices siderum et animalium ortus,

quam quibus mutarentur terrena, continuit. In his fuit inundatio,

quae non secus quam hiems, quam aestas, lege mundi venit."--Seneca

(Nat. Qu. l. iii. c. 29). It is the principle of life immanent in the

world, the essence of the world itself, which evolves this crisis

out of itself. "Aqua et ignis terrenis dominantur. Ex his ortus et

ex his interitus est."--(Ibid. c. 28.) "Quidquid est, non erit; nec

peribit, sed resolvetur."--(Idem. Epist. 71.) The Christians excluded

themselves from the destruction of the world. "And he shall send

his angels with a great sound of a trumpet; and they shall gather

together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to

the other."--Matt. xxiv. 31. "But there shall not a hair of your head

perish.... And then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud

with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to

pass, then look up and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth

nigh."--Luke xxi. 18, 27, 28. "Watch ye therefore and pray always, that

ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come

to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man."--Ib. 36. The heathens,

on the contrary, identified their fate with the fate of the world. "Hoc

universum, quod omnia divina humanaque complectitur ... dies aliquis

dissipabit et in confusionem veterem tenebrasque demerget. Eat

nunc aliquis et singulas comploret animas. Quis tam superbae

impotentisque arrogantiae est, ut in hac naturae necessitate, omnia

ad eundem finem revocantis, se unum ac suos seponi velit."--Seneca

(Cons. ad Polyb. cc. 20, 21). "Ergo quandoque erit terminus rebus

humanis.... Non muri quenquam, non turres tuebuntur. Non proderunt

templa supplicibus."--(Nat. Qu. L. iii. c. 29.) Thus here we have again

the characteristic distinction between heathenism and Christianity. The

heathen forgot himself in the world, the Christian forgot the world

in himself. And as the heathen identified his destruction with the

destruction of the world, so he identified his immortality with

the immortality of the world. To the heathen, man was a common,

to the Christian, a select being; to the latter immortality was a

privilege of man, to the former a common good which he vindicated

to himself only because, and in so far as, he assigned to other

beings a share in it also. The Christians expected the destruction

of the world immediately, because the Christian religion has in it

no cosmical principle of development:--all which developed itself in

Christendom developed itself only in contradiction with the original

nature of Christianity;--because by the existence of God in the flesh,

i.e., by the immediate identity of the species with the individual,

everything was attained, the thread of history was cut short, no

other thought of the future remained than the thought of a repetition

of the second coming of the Lord. The heathens, on the contrary,

placed the destruction of the world in the distant future, because,

living in the contemplation of the universe, they did not set heaven

and earth in motion on their own account,--because they extended and

freed their self-consciousness by the consciousness of the species,

placed immortality only in the perpetuation of the species, and thus

did not reserve the future to themselves, but left it to the coming

generations. "Veniet tempus quo posteri nostri tam aperta nos nescisse

mirentur."--Seneca (Nat. Qu. l. vii. c. 25). He who places immortality

in himself abolishes the principle of historical development. The

Christians did indeed, according to Peter, expect a new heaven and

a new earth. But with this Christian, i.e., superterrestrial earth,

the theatre of history is for ever closed, the end of the actual

world is come. The heathens, on the contrary, set no limits to the

development of the cosmos; they supposed the world to be destroyed

only to arise again renovated as a real world; they granted it eternal

life. The Christian destruction of the world was a matter of feeling,

an object of fear and longing; the heathen, a matter of reason,

an inference from the contemplation of nature.

Unspotted Virginity is the principle of Salvation, the principle of

the regenerate Christian world. "Virgo genuit mundi salutem; virgo

peperit vitam universorum.... Virgo portavit, quem mundus iste

capere aut sustinere non potest.... Per virum autem et mulierem

caro ejecta de paradiso: per virginem juncta est Deo."--Ambrosius

(Ep. L. x. Ep. 82). "Jure laudatur bona uxor, sed melius pia

virgo praefertur, dicente Apostolo (1 Cor. vii.). Bonum conjugium,

per quod est inventa posteritas successionis humanae; sed melius

virginitas, per quam regni coelestis haereditas acquisita et

coelestium meritorum reperta successio. Per mulierem cura successit:

per virginem salus evenit."--(Id. Ep. 81.) "Castitas jungit hominem

coelo.... Bona est castitas conjugalis, sed melior est continentia

vidualis. Optima vero integritas virginalis."--De modo bene vivendi,

Sermo 22. (Among the spurious writings of Bernard.) "Pulchritudinem

hominis non concupiscas."--(Ibid. S. 23.) "Fornicatio major est

omnibus peccatis.... Audi beati Isidori verba: Fornicatione coinquinari

deterius est omni peccato."--(Ibid.) "Virginitas cui gloriae merito non

praefertur? Angelicae? Angelus habet virginitatem, sed non carnem,

sane felicior, quam fortior in hac parte."--Bernardus (Ep. 113,

ad Sophiam Virginem). "Memento semper, quod paradisi colonum de

possessione sua mulier ejecerit."--Hieronymus (Ep. Nepotiano). "In

paradiso virginitas conversabatur.... Ipse Christus virginitatis

gloria non modo ex patre sine initio et sine duorum concursu genitus,

sed et homo secundum nos factus, super nos ex virgine sine alieno

consortio incarnatus est. Et ipse virginitatem veram et perfectam

esse, in se ipso demonstravit. Unde hanc nobis legem non statuit

(non enim omnes capiunt verbum hoc, ut ipse dixit) sed opere nos

erudivit."--Joan. Damasc. (Orthod. Fidei, l. iv. c. 25).

Now if abstinence from the satisfaction of the sensual impulse,

the negation of difference of sex and consequently of sexual

love,--for what is this without the other?--is the principle of the

Christian heaven and salvation; then necessarily the satisfaction

of the sexual impulse, sexual love, on which marriage is founded,

is the source of sin and evil. And so it is held. The mystery of

original sin is the mystery of sexual desire. All men are conceived

in sin because they were conceived with sensual, i.e., natural

pleasure. The act of generation, as an act of sensual enjoyment,

is sinful. Sin is propagated from Adam down to us, simply because

its propagation is the natural act of generation. This is the

mystery of Christian original sin. "Atque hic quam alienus a vero

sit, etiam hic reprehenditur, quod voluptatem in homine Deo authore

creatam asserit principaliter. Sed hoc divinae scriptura redarguit,

quae serpentis insidiis atque illecebris infusam Adae atque Evae

voluptatem docet, siquidem ipse serpens voluptas sit.... Quomodo

igitur voluptas ad paradisum revocare nos potest, quae sola nos

paradiso exuit?"--Ambrosius (Ep. L. x. Ep. 82). "Voluptas ipsa

sine culpa nullatenus esse potest."--Petrus L. (l. iv. dist. 31,

c. 5). "Omnes in peccatis nati sumus, et ex carnis delectatione

concepti culpam originalem nobiscum traximus."--Gregorius (Petrus

L. l. ii. dist. 30, c. 2). "Firmissime tene et nullatenus dubites,

omnem hominem, qui per concubitum viri et mulieris concipitur,

cum originali peccato nasci.... Ex his datur intelligi, quid sit

originale peccatum, scl. vitium concupiscentiae, quod in omnes

concupiscentialiter natos per Adam intravit."--(Ibid. c. 3, see

also dist. 31, c. 1.) "Peccati causa ex carne est."--Ambrosius

(ibid.) "Christus peccatum non habet, nec originale traxit, nec suum

addidit: extra voluptatem carnalis libidinis venit, non ibi fuit

complexus maritalis.... Omnis generatus, damnatus."--Augustinus

(Serm. ad Pop. S. 294, cc. 10, 16). "Homo natus de muliere et ob

hoc cum reatu."--Bernardus (de Consid. l. ii.). "Peccatum quomodo

non fuit, ubi libido non defuit?... Quo pacto, inquam, aut sanctus

asseretur conceptus, qui de spiritus non est, ne dicam de peccato

est?"--Id. (Epist. 174, edit. cit.). "All that is born into the world

of man and woman is sinful, under God's anger and curse, condemned to

death." "All men born of a father and mother are children of wrath

by nature, as St. Paul testifies, Ephes. ii." "We have by nature a

tainted, sinful conception and birth."--Luther (Th. xvi. 246, 573). It

is clear from these examples, that "carnal intercourse"--even a kiss is

carnal intercourse--is the radical sin, the radical evil of mankind;

and consequently the basis of marriage, the sexual impulse, honestly

outspoken, is a product of the devil. It is true that the creature

as the work of God is good, but it has long ceased to exist as it was

created. The devil has alienated the creature from God and corrupted

it to the very foundation. "Cursed be the ground for thy sake." The

fall of the creature, however, is only an hypothesis by which faith

drives from its mind the burdensome, disquieting contradiction,

that Nature is a product of God, and yet, as it actually is, does

not harmonise with God, i.e., with the Christian sentiment.

Christianity certainly did not pronounce the flesh as flesh,

matter as matter, to be something sinful, impure; on the contrary,

it contended vehemently against the heretics who held this opinion

and rejected marriage. (See for example Augustin. contra Faustum,

l. 29, c. 4, l. 30, c. 6. Clemens Alex. Stromata, lib. iii. and

Bernard. Super Cantica, Sermo 66.) But quite apart from the hatred

to heretics which so inspired the holy Christian Church and made

it so politic, this protest rested on grounds which by no means

involved the recognition of Nature as such, and under limitations,

i.e., negations, which make the recognition of Nature merely apparent

and illusory. The distinction between the heretics and the orthodox

is only this, that the latter said indirectly, covertly, secretly,

what the former declared plainly, directly, but for that very reason

offensively. Pleasure is not separable from matter. Material pleasure

is nothing further, so to speak, than the joy of matter in itself,

matter proving itself by activity. Every joy is self-activity, every

pleasure a manifestation of force, energy. Every organic function is,

in a normal condition, united with enjoyment; even breathing is a

pleasurable act, which is not perceived as such only because it is an

uninterrupted process. He therefore who declares generation, fleshly

intercourse, as such, to be pure, but fleshly intercourse united with

sensual pleasure to be a consequence of original sin and consequently

itself a sin, acknowledges only the dead, not the living flesh--he

raises a mist before us, he condemns, rejects the act of generation,

and matter in general, though under the appearance of not rejecting

it, of acknowledging it. The unhypocritical, honest acknowledgment

of sensual life is the acknowledgment of sensual pleasure. In brief,

he who, like the Bible, like the Church, does not acknowledge fleshly

pleasure--that, be it understood, which is natural, normal, inseparable

from life--does not acknowledge the flesh. That which is not recognised

as an end in itself (it by no means follows that it should be the

ultimate end) is in truth not recognised at all. Thus he who allows

me wine only as medicine forbids me the enjoyment of wine. Let not

the liberal supply of wine at the wedding at Cana be urged. For that

scene transports us, by the metamorphosis of water into wine, beyond

Nature into the region of supernaturalism. Where, as in Christianity,

a supernatural, spiritual body is regarded as the true, eternal body,

i.e., a body from which all objective, sensual impulses, all flesh,

all nature, is removed, there real, i.e., sensual fleshly matter is

denied, is regarded as worthless, nothing.

Certainly Christianity did not make celibacy a law (save at a later

period for the priests). But for the very reason that chastity,

or rather privation of marriage, of sex, is the highest, the most

transcendent, supernaturalistic, heavenly virtue, it cannot and must

not be lowered into a common object of duty; it stands above the

law, it is the virtue of Christian grace and freedom. "Christus

hortatur idoneos ad coelibatum, ut donum recte tueantur;

idem Christus iis, qui puritatem extra conjugium non, retinent,

praecipit, ut pure in conjugio vivant."--Melancthon. (Responsio ad

Colonienses. Declam. T. iii.). "Virginitas non est jussa, sed admonita,

quia nimis est excelsa."--De modo bene viv. (Sermo 21). "Et qui

matrimonio jungit virginem suam, benefacit, et qui non jungit, melius

facit. Quod igitur bonum est, non vitandum est, et quod est melius

eligendum est. Itaque non imponitur, sed proponitur. Et ideo bene

Apostolus dixit: De virginibus autem praeceptum non habeo, consilium

autem do. Ubi praeceptum est, ibi lex est, ubi consilium, ibi gratia

est.... Praeceptum enim castitatis est, consilium integritatis.... Sed

nec vidua praeceptum accipit, sed consilium. Consilium autem non semel

datum, sed saepe repetitum."--Ambrosius (Liber. de viduis). That is to

say: celibacy, abstinence from marriage, is no law in the common or

Jewish sense, but a law in the Christian sense, or for the Christian

sentiment, which takes Christian virtue and perfection as the rule

of conscience, as the ideal of feeling,--no despotic but a friendly

law, no public but a secret, esoteric law--a mere counsel, i.e.,

a law which does not venture to express itself as a law, a law for

those of finer feelings, not for the great mass. Thou mayst marry;

yes indeed! without any fear of committing a sin, i.e., a public,

express, plebeian sin; but thou dost all the better if thou dost not

marry; meanwhile this is only my undictatorial, friendly advice. Omnia

licent, sed omnia non expediunt. What is allowed in the first member

of the sentence is retracted in the second. Licet, says the man;

non expedit, says the Christian. But only that which is good for the

Christian is for the man, so far as he desires to be a Christian, the

standard of doing and abstaining. "Quae non expediunt, nec licent,"

such is the conclusion arrived at by the sentiment of Christian

nobility. Marriage is therefore only an indulgence to the weakness, or

rather the strength of the flesh, a taint of nature in Christianity,

a falling short of the genuine, perfect Christian sentiment; being,

however, nevertheless good, laudable, even holy, in so far as it is the

best antidote to fornication. For its own sake, as the self-enjoyment

of sexual love, it is not acknowledged, not consecrated; thus the

holiness of marriage in Christianity is only an ostensible holiness,

only illusion, for that which is not acknowledged for its own sake

is not acknowledged at all, while yet there is a deceitful show of

acknowledgment. Marriage is sanctioned not in order to hallow and

satisfy the flesh, but to restrict the flesh, to repress it, to kill

it--to drive Beelzebub out by Beelzebub. "Quae res et viris et feminis

omnibus adest ad matrimonium et stuprum? Commixtio carnis scilicet,

cujus concupiscentiam Dominus stupro adaequavit.... Ideo virginis

principalis sanctitas, quia caret stupri affinitati."--Tertullianus

(de Exhort. Cast. c. 9). "Et de ipso conjugis melius aliquid, quam

concessisti, monuisti."--Augustinus (Confess. x. c. 30). "It is

better to marry than to burn."--I Cor. vii. 9. But how much better

is it, says Tertullian, developing this text, neither to marry nor to

burn.... "Possum dicere, quod permittitur bonum non est."--(Ad Uxorem,

l. i. c. 3.) "De minoribus bonis est conjugiam, quod non meretur

palmam, sed est in remedium.... Prima institutio habuit praeceptum,

secunda indulgentiam. Didicimus enim ab Apostolo, humano generi

propter vitandam fornicationem indultum esse conjugium."--Petrus

Lomb. (l. iv. dist. 26, c. 2). "The Master of the Sentences says

rightly, that in Paradise marriage was ordained as service, but

after sin as medicine."--Luther (Th. i. p. 349). "Where marriage

and virginity are compared, certainly chastity is a nobler gift

than marriage."--Id. (Th. i. p. 319). "Those whom the weakness

of nature does not compel to marriage, but who are such that

they can dispense with marriage, these do rightly to abstain from

marriage."--Id. (Th. v. p. 538). Christian sophistry will reply to

this, that only marriage which is not Christian, only that which is

not consecrated by the spirit of Christianity, i.e., in which Nature

is not veiled in pious images, is unholy. But if marriage, if Nature

is first made holy by relation to Christ, it is not the holiness of

marriage which is declared, but of Christianity; and marriage, Nature,

in and by itself, is unholy. And what is the semblance of holiness

with which Christianity invests marriage, in order to becloud the

understanding, but a pious illusion? Can the Christian fulfil his

marriage duties without surrendering himself, willingly or not, to

the passion of love? Yes indeed. The Christian has for his object the

replenishing of the Christian Church, not the satisfaction of love. The

end is holy, but the means in itself unholy. And the end sanctifies,

exculpates the means. "Conjugalis concubitus generandi gratia non

habet culpam." Thus the Christian, at least the true Christian,

denies, or at least is bound to deny Nature, while he satisfies it;

he does not wish for, he rather contemns the means in itself; he seeks

only the end in abstracto; he does with religious, supranaturalistic

horror what he does, though against his will, with natural, sensual

pleasure. The Christian does not candidly confess his sensuality, he

denies Nature before his faith, and his faith before Nature, i.e.,

he publicly disavows what he privately does. Oh, how much better,

truer, purer-hearted in this respect were the heathens, who made no

secret of their sensuality, than the Christians, who, while gratifying

the flesh, at the same time deny that they gratify it! To this day

the Christians adhere theoretically to their heavenly origin and

destination; to this day, out of supranaturalistic affectation,

they deny their sex, and turn away with mock modesty from every

sensuous picture, every naked statue, as if they were angels; to

this day they repress, even by legal force, every open-hearted,

ingenuous self-confession even of the most uncorrupt sensuality,

only stimulating by this public prohibition the secret enjoyment

of sensuality. What then, speaking briefly and plainly, is the

distinction between Christians and heathens in this matter? The

heathens confirmed, the Christians contradicted their faith by their

lives. The heathens do what they mean to do, the Christians what they

do not mean: the former, where they sin, sin with their conscience,

the latter against their conscience; the former sin simply, the

latter doubly; the former from hypertrophy, the latter from atrophy

of the flesh. The specific crime of the heathens is the ponderable,

palpable crime of licentiousness, that of the Christians is the

imponderable, theological crime of hypocrisy,--that hypocrisy of

which Jesuitism is indeed the most striking, world-historical,

but nevertheless only a particular manifestation. "Theology makes

sinners," says Luther--Luther, whose positive qualities, his heart

and understanding, so far as they applied themselves to natural

things, were not perverted by theology. And Montesquieu gives the

best commentary on this saying of Luther's when he says: "La dévotion

trouve, pour faire de mauvaises actions, des raisons, qu'un simple

honnête homme ne saurait trouver."--(Pensées Diverses.)

§ 16.

The Christian heaven is Christian truth. That which its excluded from

heaven is excluded from true Christianity. In heaven the Christian is

free from that which he wishes to be free from here--free from the

sexual impulse, free from matter, free from Nature in general. "In

the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but

are as the angels of God in heaven."--Matt. xxii. 30. "Meats for the

belly, and the belly for meats; but God shall destroy (katargesei,

make useless) both it and them."--1 Cor. vi. 13. "Now this I say,

brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven,

neither doth corruption inherit incorruption."--Ib. xv. 50. "They

shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the

sun light on them, nor any heat."--Rev. vii. 16. "And there shall

be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the

sun."--Ib. xxii. 5. "Comedere, bibere, vigilare, dormire, quiescere,

laborare et caeteris necessitatibus naturae subjacere, vere magna

miseria est et afflictio homini devoto, qui libenter esset absolutus

et liber ab omni peccato. Utinam non essent istae necessitates,

sed solum spirituales animae refectiones, quas heu! satis raro

degustamus."--Thomas à K. (de Imit. 1. i. cc. 22, 25). See also on this

subject S. Gregorii Nyss. de Anima et Resurr., Lipsiae, 1837, pp. 98,

144, 153). It is true that the Christian immortality, in distinction

from the heathen, is not the immortality of the soul, but that of

the flesh, that is, of the whole man. "Scientia immortalis visa est

res illis (the heathen philosophers) atque incorruptibilis. Nos

autem, quibus divina revelatio illuxit ... novimus, non solum

mentem, sed affectus perpurgatos, neque animam tantum, sed etiam

corpus ad immortalitatem assumptum iri suo tempore."--Baco de

Verul. (de Augm. Scien. 1. i.). On this account Celsus reproached

the Christians with a desiderium corporis. But this immortal body

is, as has been already remarked, an immaterial, i.e., a thoroughly

fanciful, subjective body--a body which is the direct negation of

the real, natural body. The ideal on which this faith hinges is not

the recognition or glorification of nature, of matter as such, but

rather the reality of the emotive imagination, the satisfaction of

the unlimited, supranaturalistic desire of happiness, to which the

actual, objective body is a limitation.

As to what the angels strictly are, whom heavenly souls will be like,

the Bible is as far from giving us any definite information as on

other weighty subjects; it only calls them pneumata, spirits, and

declares them to be higher than men. The later Christians expressed

themselves more definitely on this subject; more definitely,

but variously. Some assigned bodies to the angels, others not;

a difference which, however, is only apparent, since the angelic

body is only a phantasmal one. But concerning the human body of

the resurrection, they had not only different, but even opposite,

conceptions; indeed, these contradictions lay in the nature of the

case, necessarily resulted from the fundamental contradiction of the

religious consciousness which, as we have shown, exhibits itself in

the incompatible propositions that the body which is raised is the

same individual body which we had before the resurrection, and that

nevertheless it is another. It is the same body even to the hair,

"cum nec periturus sit capillus, ut ait Dominus: Capillus de capite

vestro non peribit."--Augustinus und Petrus, L. l. iv. dist. 44,

c. 1. Nevertheless it is the same in such a way that everything

burdensome, everything contradictory to transcendental feeling,

is removed. "Immo sicut dicit Augustinus: Detrahentur vitia et

remanebit natura. Superexcrescentia autem capillorum et unguium

est de superfluitate et vitio naturae. Si enim non peccasset homo,

crescerent ungues et capilli ejus usque ad determinatam quantitatem,

sicut in leonibus et avibus."--(Addit. Henrici ab Vurimaria,

ibid. edit. Basiliae, 1513.) What a specific, naïve, ingenuous,

confident, harmonious faith! The risen body, as the same and yet

another, a new body, has hair and nails, otherwise it would be a

maimed body, deprived of an essential ornament, and consequently the

resurrection would not be a restitutio in integrum; moreover they are

the same hair and nails as before, but yet so modified that they are

in accordance with the body. Why do not the believing theologians

of modern times enter into such specialities as occupied the older

theologians? Because their faith is itself only general, indefinite,

i.e., a faith which they only suppose themselves to possess; because,

from fear of their understanding, which has long been at issue with

their faith, from fear of risking their feeble faith by bringing

it to the light, that is, considering it in detail, they suppress

the consequences, the necessary determinations of their faith, and

conceal them from their understanding.

§ 17.

What faith denies on earth it affirms in heaven; what it renounces

here it recovers a hundred-fold there. In this world, faith occupies

itself with nullifying the body; in the other world, with establishing

it. Here the main point is the separation of the soul from the body,

there the main point is the reunion of the body with the soul. "I

would live not only according to the soul, but according to the body

also. I would have the corpus with me; I would that the body should

return to the soul and be united with it."--Luther (Th. vii. p. 90). In

that which is sensuous, Christ is supersensuous; but for that reason,

in the supersensuous he is sensuous. Heavenly bliss is therefore by

no means merely spiritual, it is equally corporeal, sensuous--a state

in which all wishes are fulfilled. "Whatever thy heart seeks joy and

pleasure in, that shall be there in abundance. For it is said, God

shall be all in all. And where God is, there must be all good things

that can ever be desired." "Dost thou desire to see acutely, and to

hear through walls, and to be so light that thou mayst be wherever

thou wilt in a moment, whether here below on the earth, or above in

the clouds, that shall all be, and what more thou canst conceive, which

thou couldst have in body and soul, thou shalt have abundantly if thou

hast him."--Luther (Th. x. pp. 380, 381). Certainly eating, drinking,

and marriage find no place in the Christian heaven, as they do in the

Mohammedan; but only because with these enjoyments want is associated,

and with want matter, i.e., passion, dependence, unhappiness. "Illic

ipsa indigentia morietur. Tunc vere dives eris, quando nullius indigens

eris."--Augustin. (Serm. ad Pop. p. 77, c. 9). The pleasures of this

earth are only medicines, says the same writer; true health exists only

in immortal life--"vera sanitas, nisi quando vera immortalitas." The

heavenly life, the heavenly body, is as free and unlimited as

wishes, as omnipotent as imagination. "Futurae ergo resurrectionis

corpus imperfectae felicitatis erit, si cibos sumere non potuerit,

imperfectae felicitatis, si cibus eguerit."--Augustin. (Epist. 102,

§ 6, edit. cit). Nevertheless, existence in a body without fatigue,

without heaviness, without disagreeables, without disease, without

mortality, is associated with the highest corporeal well-being. Even

the knowledge of God in heaven is free from any effort of thought or

faith, is sensational, immediate knowledge--intuition. The Christians

are indeed not agreed whether God, as God, the essentia Dei, will

be visible to bodily eyes. (See, for example, Augustin. Serm. ad

Pop. p. 277, and Buddeus, Comp. Inst. Th. l. ii. c. 3, § 4.) But

in this difference we again have only the contradiction between the

abstract and the real God; the former is certainly not an object of

vision, but the latter is so. "Flesh and blood is the wall between

me and Christ, which will be torn away.... There everything will

be certain. For in that life the eyes will see, the mouth taste,

and the nose smell it; the treasure will shine into the soul and

life.... Faith will cease, and I shall behold with my eyes."--Luther

(Th. ix. p. 595). It is clear from this again, that God, as he is

an object of religious sentiment, is nothing else than a product

of the imagination. The heavenly beings are supersensuous sensuous,

immaterial material beings, i.e., beings of the imagination; but they

are like God, nay, identical with God, consequently God also is a

supersensuous sensuous, an immaterial material being.

§ 18.

The contradiction in the Sacraments is the contradiction of

naturalism and supernaturalism. In the first place the natural

qualities of water are pronounced essential to Baptism. "Si quis

dixerit aquam veram et naturalem non esse de necessitate Baptismi

atque ideo verba illa domini nostri Jesu Christi: Nisi quis renatus

fuerit ex aqua et Spiritu sancto, ad metamorpham aliquam detorserit,

anathema sit.--Concil. Trident. (Sessio vii. Can. ii. de Bapt.) De

substantia hujus sacramenti sunt verbum et elementum.... Non ergo

in alio liquore potest consecrari baptismus nisi in aqua.--Petrus

Lomb. (l. iv. dist. 3, c. l. c. 5). Ad certitudinem baptismi requiritur

major quam unius guttae quantitas.... Necesse est ad valorem baptismi

fieri contactum physicum inter aquam et corpus baptizati, ita ut non

sufficiat, vestes tantum ipsius aqua tingi.... Ad certitudinem baptismi

requiritur, ut saltem talis pars corporis abluatur, ratione cujus homo

solet dici vere ablutus, v. 6, collum, humeri, pectus et praesertim

caput.--Theolog. Schol. (P. Mezger. Aug. Vind. 1695, Th. iv. pp. 230,

231). Aquam, eamque veram ac naturalem in baptismo adhibendam esse,

exemplo Joannis ... non minus vero et Apostolorum Act. viii. 36, x. 47,

patet.--F. Buddeus (Com. Inst. Th. dog. l. iv. c. i. § 5)." Thus water

is essential. But now comes the negation of the natural qualities

of water. The significance of Baptism is not the natural power of

water, but the supernatural, almighty power of the Word of God,

who instituted the use of water as a sacrament, and now by means of

this element imparts himself to man in a supernatural, miraculous

manner, but who could just as well have chosen any other element

in order to produce the same effect. So Luther, for example, says:

"Understand the distinction, that Baptism is quite another thing than

all other water, not on account of its natural quality, but because

here something more noble is added. For God himself brings hither

his glory, power, and might ... as St. Augustine also hath taught:

'accedat verbum ad elementum et fit sacramentum.'" "Baptize them

in the name of the Father, &c. Water without these words is mere

water.... Who will call the baptism of the Father, Son, and Holy

Ghost mere water? Do we not see what sort of spice God puts into

this water? When sugar is thrown into water it is no longer water,

but a costly claret or other beverage. Why then do we here separate

the word from the water and say, it is mere water; as if the word of

God, yea, God himself, were not with and in the water.... Therefore,

the water of Baptism is such a water as takes away sin, death, and

unhappiness, helps us in heaven and to everlasting life. It is become

a precious sugared water, aromaticum, and restorative, since God has

mingled himself therewith."--Luther (Th. xvi. p. 105).

As with the water in Baptism, which sacrament is nothing without

water, though this water is nevertheless in itself indifferent, so

is it with the wine and bread in the Eucharist, even in Catholicism,

where the substance of bread and wine is destroyed by the power of

the Almighty. "Accidentia eucharistica tamdiu continent Christum,

quamdiu retinent illud temperamentum, cum quo connaturaliter

panis et vini substantia permaneret: ut econtra, quando tanta fit

temperamenti dissolutio, illorumque corruptio, ut sub iis substantia

panis et vini naturaliter remanere non posset, desinunt continere

Christum."--Theol. Schol. (Mezger. l. c. p. 292). That is to say: so

long as the bread remains bread, so long does the bread remain flesh;

when the bread is gone, the flesh is gone. Therefore a due portion

of bread, at least enough to render bread recognisable as such, must

be present, for consecration to be possible.--(Ib. p. 284.) For the

rest, Catholic transubstantiation, the conversio realis et physica

totius panis in corpus Christi, is only a consistent continuation of

the miracles of the Old and New Testaments. By the transformation of

water into wine, of a staff into a serpent, of stones into brooks

(Ps. cxiv.) by these biblical transubstantiations the Catholics

explained and proved the turning of bread into flesh. He who does not

stumble at those transformations, has no right, no reason to hesitate

at accepting this. The Protestant doctrine of the Lord's Supper is

not less in contradiction with reason than the Catholic. "The body of

Christ cannot be partaken otherwise than in two ways, spiritually or

bodily. Again, this bodily partaking cannot be visible or perceptible,"

i.e., is not bodily, "else no bread would remain. Again, it cannot

be mere bread; otherwise it would not be a bodily communion of the

body of Christ, but of bread. Therefore the bread broken must also

be truly and corporeally the body of Christ, although invisibly"

(i.e., incorporeally).--Luther (Th. xix. p. 203). The difference is,

that the Protestant gives no explanation concerning the mode in which

bread can be flesh and wine blood. "Thereupon we stand, believe,

and teach, that the body of Christ is truly and corporeally taken

and eaten in the Lord's Supper. But how this takes place, or how he

is in the bread, we know not, and are not bound to know."--Id. (ut

sup. p. 393). "He who will be a Christian must not ask, as our

fanatics and factionaries do, how it can be that bread is the body of

Christ and wine the blood of Christ."--Id. (Th. xvi. p. 220). "Cum

retineamus doctrinam de praesentia corporis Christi, quid opus est

quaerere de modo?"--Melancthon (Vita Mel. Camerarius, ed. Strobel,

Halae, 1777, p. 446). Hence the Protestants as well as the Catholics

took refuge in Omnipotence, the grand source of ideas contradictory

to reason.--(Concord. Summ. Beg. Art. 7, Aff. 3, Negat. 13. See also

Luther, e.g., Th. xix. p. 400.)

An instructive example of theological incomprehensibleness and

supernaturalness is afforded by the distinction, in relation to the

Eucharist (Concordienb. Summ. Beg. art. 7), between partaking with

the mouth and partaking in a fleshly or natural manner. "We believe,

teach, and confess that the body of Christ is taken in the bread and

wine, not alone spiritually by faith, but also with the mouth, yet not

in a Capernaitic, but a supernatural heavenly manner, for the sake

of sacramental union." "Probe namque discrimen inter manducationem

oralem et naturalem tenendum est. Etsi enim oralem manducationem

adseramus atque propugnemus, naturalem tamen non admittimus.... Omnis

equidem manducatio naturalis etiam oralis est, sed non vicissim oralis

manducatio statim est naturalis.... Unicus itaque licet sit actus,

unicumque organum, quo panem et corpus Christi, itemque vinum et

sanguinem Christi accipimus, modus (yes, truly, the mode) nihilominus

maximopere differt, cum panem et vinum modo naturali et sensibili,

corpus et sanguinem Christi simul equidem cum pane et vino, at modo

supernaturali et insensibili, qui adeo etiam a nemine mortalium (nor,

assuredly, by any God) explicare potest, revera interim et ore corporis

accipiamus."--Jo. Fr. Buddeus (l. c. Lib. v. c. i. § 15).

§ 19.

Dogma and Morality, Faith and Love, contradict each other in

Christianity. It is true that God, the object of faith, is in himself

the idea of the species in a mystical garb--the common Father of

men--and so far love to God is mystical love to man. But God is not

only the universal being; he is also a peculiar, personal being,

distinguished from love. Where the being is distinguished from

love arises arbitrariness. Love acts from necessity, personality

from will. Personality proves itself as such only by arbitrariness;

personality seeks dominion, is greedy of glory; it desires only to

assert itself, to enforce its own authority. The highest worship of God

as a personal being is therefore the worship of God as an absolutely

unlimited, arbitrary being. Personality, as such, is indifferent to

all substantial determinations which lie in the nature of things;

inherent necessity, the coercion of natural qualities, appears to it

a constraint. Here we have the mystery of Christian love. The love of

God, as the predicate of a personal being, has here the significance

of grace, favour: God is a gracious master, as in Judaism he was a

severe master. Grace is arbitrary love,--love which does not act from

an inward necessity of the nature, but which is equally capable of not

doing what it does, which could, if it would, condemn its object; thus

it is a groundless, unessential, arbitrary, absolutely subjective,

merely personal love. "He hath mercy on whom he will have mercy,

and whom he will he hardeneth (Rom. ix. 18).... The king does what

he will. So is it with the will of God. He has perfect right and

full power to do with us and all creatures as he will. And no wrong

is done to us. If his will had a measure or rule, a law, ground, or

cause, it would not be the divine will. For what he wills is right,

because he wills it. Where there is faith and the Holy Spirit ... it

is believed that God would be good and kind even if he consigned all

men to damnation. 'Is not Esau Jacob's brother? said the Lord. Yet

I have loved Jacob and hated Esau.'"--Luther (Th. xix. pp. 83, 87,

90, 91, 97). Where love is understood in this sense, jealous watch

is kept that man attribute nothing to himself as merit, that the

merit may lie with the divine personality alone; there every idea

of necessity is carefully dismissed, in order, through the feeling

of obligation and gratitude, to be able to adore and glorify the

personality exclusively. The Jews deified the pride of ancestry;

the Christians, on the other hand, interpreted and transformed

the Jewish aristocratic principle of hereditary nobility into the

democratic principle of nobility of merit. The Jew makes salvation

depend on birth, the Catholic on the merit of works, the Protestant

on the merit of faith. But the idea of obligation and meritoriousness

allies itself only with a deed, a work, which cannot be demanded of me,

or which does not necessarily proceed from my nature. The works of

the poet, of the philosopher, can be regarded in the light of merit

only as considered externally. They are works of genius--inevitable

products: the poet must bring forth poetry, the philosopher must

philosophise. They have the highest satisfaction in the activity of

creation, apart from any collateral or ulterior purpose. And it is

just so with a truly noble moral action. To the man of noble feeling,

the noble action is natural: he does not hesitate whether he should do

it or not, he does not place it in the scales of choice; he must do

it. Only he who so acts is a man to be confided in. Meritoriousness

always involves the notion that a thing is done, so to speak, out of

luxury, not out of necessity. The Christians indeed celebrated the

highest act in their religion, the act of God becoming man, as a work

of love. But Christian love in so far as it reposes on faith, on the

idea of God as a master, a Dominus, has the significance of an act

of grace, of a love in itself superfluous. A gracious master is one

who foregoes his rights, a master who does out of graciousness what,

as a master, he is not bound to do--what goes beyond the strict idea

of a master. To God, as a master, it is not even a duty to do good

to man; he has even the right--for he is a master bound by no law--to

annihilate man if he will. In fact, mercy is optional, non-necessary

love, love in contradiction with the essence of love, love which

is not an inevitable manifestation of the nature, love which the

master, the subject, the person (personality is only an abstract,

modern expression for sovereignty) distinguishes from himself as a

predicate which he can either have or not have without ceasing to be

himself. This internal contradiction necessarily manifested itself

in the life, in the practice of Christianity; it gave rise to the

practical separation of the subject from the predicate, of faith from

love. As the love of God to man was only an act of grace, so also the

love of man to man was only an act of favour or grace on the part of

faith. Christian love is the graciousness of faith, as the love of

God is the graciousness of personality or supremacy. (On the divine

arbitrariness, see also J. A. Ernesti's treatise previously cited:

"Vindiciæ arbitrii divini.")

Faith has within it a malignant principle. Christian faith, and nothing

else, is the ultimate ground of Christian persecution and destruction

of heretics. Faith recognises man only on condition that he recognises

God, i.e., faith itself. Faith is the honour which man renders to

God. And this honour is due unconditionally. To faith the basis of all

duties is faith in God: faith is the absolute duty; duties to men are

only derivative, subordinate. The unbeliever is thus an outlaw [233]--a

man worthy of extermination. That which denies God must be itself

denied. The highest crime is the crime laesae majestatis Dei. To faith

God is a personal being--the supremely personal, inviolable, privileged

being. The acme of personality is honour; hence an injury towards

the highest personality is necessarily the highest crime. The honour

of God cannot be disavowed as an accidental, rude, anthropomorphic

conception. For is not the personality, even the existence of God,

a sensuous, anthropomorphic conception? Let those who renounce the

honour be consistent enough to renounce the personality. From the idea

of personality results the idea of honour, and from this again the idea

of religious offences. "Quicunque Magistratibus male precatus fuerit,

pro eorum arbitrio poenas luito; quicunque vero idem scelus erga Deum

admiserit ... lapidibus blasphemiae causa obruitur."--(Lev. xxiv. 15,

16. See also Deut. xii., whence the Catholics deduce the right to

kill heretics. Boehmer, l. c. l. v. Th. vii. § 44.) "Eos autem merito

torqueri, qui Deum nesciunt, ut impios, ut injustos, nisi profanus

nemo deliberat: quum parentem omnium et dominum omnium non minus

sceleris sit ignorare, quam laedere."--Minucii Fel. Oct. c. 35. "Ubi

erunt legis praecepta divinae, quae dicunt: honora patrem et matrem,

si vocabulum patris, quod in homine honorari praecipitur, in Deo impune

violatur?"--Cypriani Epist. 73 (ed. Gersdorf). "Cur enim, cum datum

sit divinitus homini liberum arbitrium, adulteria legibus puniantur

et sacrilegia permittantur? An fidem non servare levius est animam

Deo, quam feminam viro?"--Augustinus (de Correct. Donatist. lib. ad

Bonifacium, c. 5). "Si hi qui nummos adulterant morte mulctantur, quid

de illis statuendum censemus, qui fidem pervertere conantur?"--Paulus

Cortesius (in Sententias (Petri L.) iii. l. dist. vii.). "Si enim

illustrem ac praepotentem virum nequaquam exhonorari a quoquam licet,

et si quisquam exhonoraverit, decretis legalibus reus sistitur et

injuriarum auctor jure damnatur: quanto utique majoris piaculi crimen

est, injuriosum quempiam Deo esse? Semper enim per dignitatem injuriam

perferentis crescit culpa facientis, quia necesse est, quanto major

est persona ejus qui contumeliam patitur, tanto major sit noxa ejus,

qui facit." Thus speaks Salvianus (de Gubernat. Dei, l. vi. p. 218,

edit. cit.)--Salvianus, who is called Magistrum Episcoporum, sui

saeculi Jeremiam, Scriptorem Christianissimum, Orbis christiani

magistrum. But heresy, unbelief in general--heresy is only a definite,

limited unbelief--is blasphemy, and thus is the highest, the most

flagitious crime. Thus to cite only one among innumerable examples,

J. Oecolampadius writes to Servetus: "Dum non summam patientiam prae

me fero, dolens Jesum Christum filium Dei sic dehonestari, parum

christiane tibi agere videor. In aliis mansuetus ero: in blasphemiis

quae in Christum, non item."--(Historia Mich. Serveti. H. ab Allwoerden

Helmstadii, 1737, p. 13). For what is blasphemy? Every negation of

an idea, of a definition, in which the honour of God, the honour

of faith is concerned. Servetus fell as a sacrifice to Christian

faith. Calvin said to Servetus two hours before his death: "Ego vero

ingenue praefatus, me nunquam privatus injurias fuisse persecutum,"

and parted from him with a sense of being thoroughly sustained by the

Bible: "Ab haeretico homine, qui autokatakritos peccabat, secundum

Pauli praeceptum discessi."--(Ibid. p. 120.) Thus it was by no means

a personal hatred, though this may have been conjoined,--it was a

religious hatred which brought Servetus to the stake--the hatred which

springs from the nature of unchecked faith. Even Melancthon is known

to have approved the execution of Servetus. The Swiss theologians,

whose opinion was asked by the Genevans, very subtilely abstained, in

their answer, from mentioning the punishment of death, [234] but agreed

with the Genevans in this--"Horrendos Serveti errores detestandos esse,

severiusque idcirco in Servetum animadvertendum." Thus there is no

difference as to the principle, only as to the mode of punishment. Even

Calvin himself was so Christian as to desire to alleviate the horrible

mode of death to which the Senate of Geneva condemned Servetus. (See on

this subject, e.g., M. Adami, Vita Calvini, p. 90; Vita Bezae, p. 207;

Vitae Theol. Exter. Francof. 1618.) We have, therefore, to consider

this execution as an act of general significance--as a work of faith,

and that not of Roman Catholic, but of reformed, biblical, evangelical

faith. That heretics must not be compelled to a profession of the faith

by force was certainly maintained by most of the lights of the Church,

but there nevertheless lived in them the most malignant hatred of

heretics. Thus, for example, St. Bernard says (Super Cantica, § 66)

in relation to heretics: "Fides suadenda est, non imponenda," but he

immediately adds: "Quamquam melius procul dubio gladio coercerentur,

illius videlicet, qui non sine causa gladium portat, quam in suum

errorem multos trajicere permittantur." If the faith of the present

day no longer produces such flagrant deeds of horror, this is due

only to the fact that the faith of this age is not an uncompromising,

living faith, but a sceptical, eclectic, unbelieving faith, curtailed

and maimed by the power of art and science. Where heretics are no

longer burned either in the fires of this world or of the other,

there faith itself has no longer any fire, any vitality. The faith

which allows variety of belief renounces its divine origin and rank,

degrades itself to a subjective opinion. It is not to Christian faith,

not to Christian love (i.e., love limited by faith); no! it is to

doubt of Christian faith, to the victory of religious scepticism,

to free-thinkers, to heretics, that we owe tolerance, freedom of

opinion. It was the heretics, persecuted by the Christian Church, who

alone fought for freedom of conscience. Christian freedom is freedom

in non-essentials only: on the fundamental articles of faith freedom

is not allowed. When, however, Christian faith--faith considered in

distinction from love, for faith is not one with love, "potestis habere

fidem sine caritate" (Augustinus, Serm. ad Pop. § 90)--is pronounced

to be the principle, the ultimate ground of the violent deeds of

Christians towards heretics (that is, such deeds as arose from real

believing zeal), it is obviously not meant that faith could have these

consequences immediately and originally, but only in its historical

development. Still, even to the earliest Christians the heretic was

an antichrist, and necessarily so--"adversus Christum sunt haeretici"

(Cyprianus, Epist. 76, § 14, edit. cit.)--accursed--"apostoli ... in

epistolis haereticos exsecrati sunt" (Cyprianus, ib. § 6)--a lost

being, doomed by God to hell and everlasting death. "Thou hearest that

the tares are already condemned and sentenced to the fire. Why then

wilt thou lay many sufferings on a heretic? Dost thou not hear that

he is already judged to a punishment heavier than he can bear? Who

art thou, that thou wilt interfere and punish him who has already

fallen under the punishment of a more powerful master? What would I do

against a thief already sentenced to the gallows?... God has already

commanded his angels, who in his own time will be the executioners

of heretics."--Luther (Th. xvi. p. 132). When therefore the State,

the world, became Christian, and also, for that reason, Christianity

became worldly, the Christian religion a State religion; then it was

a necessary consequence that the condemnation of heretics, which was

at first only religious or dogmatic, became a political, practical

condemnation, and the eternal punishment of hell was anticipated by

temporal punishment. If, therefore, the definition and treatment of

heresy as a punishable crime is in contradiction with the Christian

faith, it follows that a Christian king, a Christian State, is in

contradiction with it; for a Christian State is that which executes

the Divine judgments of faith with the sword, which makes earth a

heaven to believers, a hell to unbelievers. "Docuimus ... pertinere

ad reges religiosos, non solum adulteria vel homicidia vel hujusmodi

alia flagitia seu facinora, verum etiam sacrilegia severitate

congrua cohibere."--Augustinus (Epist. ad Dulcitium). "Kings ought

thus to serve the Lord Christ by helping with laws that his honour

be furthered. Now when the temporal magistracy finds scandalous

errors, whereby the honour of the Lord Christ is blasphemed and

men's salvation hindered, and a schism arises among the people

... where such false teachers will not be admonished and cease

from preaching, there ought the temporal magistracy confidently

to arm itself, and know that nothing else befits its office but to

apply the sword and all force, that doctrine may be pure and God's

service genuine and unperverted, and also that peace and unity may

be preserved."--Luther (Th. xv. pp. 110, 111). Let it be further

remarked here, that Augustine justifies the application of coercive

measures for the awaking of Christian faith by urging that the Apostle

Paul was converted to Christianity by a deed of force--a miracle. (De

Correct. Donat. c. 6.) The intrinsic connection between temporal and

eternal, i.e., political and spiritual punishment, is clear from this,

that the same reasons which have been urged against the temporal

punishment of heresy are equally valid against the punishment of

hell. If heresy or unbelief cannot be punished here because it is a

mere mistake, neither can it be punished by God in hell. If coercion

is in contradiction with the nature of faith, so is hell; for the

fear of the terrible consequence of unbelief, the torments of hell,

urge to belief against knowledge and will. Boehmer, in his Jus. Eccl.,

argues that heresy and unbelief should be struck out of the category

of crimes, that unbelief is only a vitium theologicum, a peccatum

in Deum. But God, in the view of faith, is not only a religious,

but a political, juridical being, the King of kings, the true head

of the State. "There is no power but of God ... it is the minister of

God"--Rom. xiii. 1, 4. If, therefore, the juridical idea of majesty, of

kingly dignity and honour, applies to God, sin against God, unbelief,

must by consequence come under the definition of crime. And as with

God, so with faith. Where faith is still a truth, and a public truth,

there no doubt is entertained that it can be demanded of every one,

that every one is bound to believe. Be it further observed, that the

Christian Church has gone so far in its hatred against heretics,

that according to the canon law even the suspicion of heresy is

a crime, "ita ut de jure canonico revera crimen suspecti detur,

cujus existentiam frustra in jure civili quaerimus."--Boehmer

(l. c. v. Tit. vii. §§ 23-42).

The command to love enemies extends only to personal enemies, not to

the enemies of God, the enemies of faith. "Does not the Lord Christ

command that we should love even our enemies? How then does David

here boast that he hates the assembly of the wicked, and sits not

with the ungodly?... For the sake of the person I should love them;

but for the sake of the doctrine I should hate them. And thus I must

hate them or hate God, who commands and wills that we should cleave to

his word alone.... What I cannot love with God, I must hate; if they

only preach something which is against God, all love and friendship

is destroyed;--thereupon I hate thee, and do thee no good. For

faith must be uppermost, and where the word of God is attacked, hate

takes the place of love.... And so David means to say: I hate them,

not because they have done injury and evil to me and led a bad and

wicked life, but because they despise, revile, blaspheme, falsify,

and persecute the word of God." "Faith and love are two things. Faith

endures nothing, love endures all things. Faith curses, love blesses:

faith seeks vengeance and punishment, love seeks forbearance and

forgiveness." "Rather than God's word should fall and heresy stand,

faith would wish all creatures to be destroyed; for through heresy

men lose God himself."--Luther (Th. vi. p. 94; Th. v. pp. 624,

630). See also, on this subject, my treatise in the Deutsches

Jahrb. and Augustini Enarrat. in Psalm cxxxviii. (cxxxix.). As Luther

distinguishes the person from the enemy of God, so Augustine here

distinguishes the man from the enemy of God, from the unbeliever, and

says: We should hate the ungodliness in the man, but love the humanity

in him. But what, then, in the eyes of faith, is the man in distinction

from faith, man without faith, i.e., without God? Nothing: for the sum

of all realities, of all that is worthy of love, of all that is good

and essential, is faith, as that which alone apprehends and possesses

God. It is true that man as man is the image of God, but only of the

natural God, of God as the Creator of Nature. But the Creator is only

God as he manifests himself outwardly; the true God, God as he is in

himself, the inward essence of God, is the triune God, is especially

Christ. (See Luther, Th. xiv. pp. 2, 3, and Th. xvi. p. 581.) And the

image of this true, essential, Christian God, is only the believer,

the Christian. Moreover, man is not to be loved for his own sake,

but for God's. "Diligendus est propter Deum, Deus vero propter se

ipsum."--Augustinus (de Doctrina Chr. 1. i. cc. 22, 27). How, then,

should the unbelieving man, who has no resemblance to the true God,

be an object of love?

§ 20.

Faith separates man from man, puts in the place of the natural

unity founded in Nature and Love a supernatural unity--the unity

of Faith. "Inter Christianum et gentilem non fides tantum debet,

sed etiam vita distinguere.... Nolite, ait Apostolus, jugum

ducere cum infidelibus.... Sit ergo inter nos et illos maxima

separatio."--Hieronymus (Epist. Caelantiæ matronae).... "Prope

nihil gravius quam copulari alienigeniae.... Nam cum ipsum conjugium

velamine sacerdotali et benedictione sanctificari oporteat: quomodo

potest conjugium dici, ubi non est fidei concordia?... Saepe plerique

capti amore feminarum fidem suam prodiderunt."--Ambrosius (Ep. 70,

Lib. ix.). "Non enim licet christiano cum gentili vel judaeo inire

conjugium."--Petrus L. (l. iv. dist. 39, c. 1). And this separation is

by no means unbiblical. On the contrary, we find that, in support of

it, the Fathers appeal directly to the Bible. The well-known passage

of the Apostle Paul concerning marriage between heathens and Christians

relates only to marriages which had taken place before conversion, not

to those which were yet to be contracted. Let the reader refer to what

Peter Lombard says in the book already cited. "The first Christians

did not acknowledge, did not once listen to, all those relatives who

sought to turn them away from the hope of the heavenly reward. This

they did through the power of the Gospel, for the sake of which all

love of kindred was to be despised; inasmuch as ... the brotherhood

of Christ far surpassed natural brotherhood. To us the Fatherland and

a common name is not so dear, but that we have a horror even of our

parents, if they seek to advise something against the Lord."--G. Arnold

(Wahre Abbild. der ersten Christen. B. iv. c. 2). "Qui amat patrem

et matrem plus quam me, non est me dignus Matth. x. ... in hoc

vos non agnosco parentes, sed hostes.... Alioquin quid mihi et

vobis? Quid a vobis habeo nisi peccatum et miseriam?"--Bernardus

(Epist. iii. Ex persona Heliae monachi ad parentes suos). "Etsi

impium est, contemnere matrem, contemnere tamen propter Christum

piissimum est."--Bernardus (Ep. 104. See also Ep. 351, ad Hugonem

novitium). "Audi sententiam Isidori: multi canonicorum, monachorum

... temporali salute suorum parentum perdunt animas suas.... Servi

Dei qui parentum suorum utilitatem procurant a Dei amore se

separant."--De modo bene vivendi (S. vii.). "Omnem hominem fidelem

judica tuum esse fratrem."--(Ibid. Sermo 13). "Ambrosius dicit,

longe plus nos debere diligere filios quos de fonte levamus,

quam quos carnaliter (genuimus."--Petrus L. (l. iv. dist. 6,

c. 5, addit. Henr. ab Vurim.). "Infantes nascuntur cum peccato,

nec fiunt haeredes vitae aeternae sine remissione peccati.... Cum

igitur dubium non sit in infantibus esse peccatum, debet aliquod

esse discrimen infantium Ethnicorum, qui manent rei, et infantium in

Ecclesia, qui recipiuntur a Deo per ministerium."--Melancthon (Loci de

bapt. inf. Argum. II. Compare with this the passage above cited from

Buddeus, as a proof of the narrowness of the true believer's love). "Ut

Episcopi vel Clerici in eos, qui Catholici Christiani non sunt, etiam

si consanguinei fuerint, nec per donationes rerum suarum aliquid

conferant."--Concil. Carthag. III. can. 13 (Summa Carranza). "Cum

haereticis nec orandum, nec psallendum."--Concil. Carthag. IV. can. 72

(ibid.).

Faith has the significance of religion, love only that of

morality. This has been declared very decidedly by Protestantism. The

doctrine that love does not justify in the sight of God, but only

faith, expresses nothing further than that love has no religious

power and significance. (Apol. Augsb. Confess. art. 3. Of Love and

the Fulfilment of the Law.) It is certainly here said: "What the

scholastic writers teach concerning the love of God is a dream, and

it is impossible to know and love God before we know and lay hold

on mercy through faith. For then first does God become objectum

amabile, a lovable, blissful object of contemplation." Thus here

mercy, love is made the proper object of faith. And it is true

that faith is immediately distinguished from love only in this,

that faith places out of itself what love places in itself. "We

believe that our justification, salvation, and consolation, lie out

of ourselves."--Luther (Th. xvi. p. 497; see also Th. ix. p. 587). It

is true that faith in the Protestant sense is faith in the forgiveness

of sins, faith in mercy, faith in Christ, as the God who suffered and

died for men, so that man, in order to attain everlasting salvation,

has nothing further to do on his side than believingly to accept this

sacrifice of God for him. But it is not as love only that God is an

object of faith. On the contrary, the characteristic object of faith

as faith is God as a subject, a person. And is a God who accords no

merit to man, who claims all exclusively for himself, who watches

jealously over his honour--is a self-interested, egoistic God like

this a God of love?

The morality which proceeds from faith has for its principle

and criterion only the contradiction of Nature, of man. As the

highest object of faith is that which most contradicts reason,

the Eucharist, so necessarily the highest virtue of the morality

which is true and obedient to faith is that which most contradicts

Nature. Dogmatic miracles have therefore moral miracles as their

consequence. Antinatural morality is the twin sister of supernatural

faith. As faith vanquishes Nature outside of man, so the morality of

faith vanquishes Nature within man. This practical supernaturalism,

the summit of which is "virginity, the sister of the angels, the queen

of virtues, the mother of all good" (see A. v. Buchers: Geistliches

Suchverloren. (Sämmtl. W. B. vi. 151), has been specially developed

by Catholicism; for Protestantism has held fast only the principle of

Christianity, and has arbitrarily eliminated its logical consequences;

it has embraced only Christian faith and not Christian morality. In

faith, Protestantism has brought man back to the standpoint of

primitive Christianity; but in life, in practice, in morality, it has

restored him to the pre-Christian, the Old Testament, the heathen,

Adamitic, natural standpoint. God instituted marriage in paradise;

therefore even in the present day, even to Christians, the command

Multiply! is valid. Christ advises those only not to marry who

"can receive" this higher rule. Chastity is a supernatural gift;

it cannot therefore be expected of every one. But is not faith also

a supernatural gift, a special gift of God, a miracle, as Luther

says innumerable times, and is it not nevertheless commanded to us

all? Are not all men included in the command to mortify, blind, and

contemn the natural reason? Is not the tendency to believe and accept

nothing which contradicts reason as natural, as strong, as necessary

in us, as the sexual impulse? If we ought to pray to God for faith

because by ourselves we are too weak to believe, why should we not

on the same ground entreat God for chastity? Will he deny us this

gift if we earnestly implore him for it? Never! Thus we may regard

chastity as a universal command equally with faith, for what we

cannot do of ourselves, we can do through God. What speaks against

chastity speaks against faith also, and what speaks for faith speaks

for chastity. One stands and falls with the other; with a supernatural

faith is necessarily associated a supernatural morality. Protestantism

tore this bond asunder: in faith it affirmed Christianity; in life, in

practice, it denied Christianity, acknowledged the autonomy of natural

reason, of man,--restored man to his original rights. Protestantism

rejected celibacy, chastity, not because it contradicted the Bible,

but because it contradicts man and nature. "He who will be single

renounces the name of man, and proves or makes himself an angel or

spirit.... It is pitiable folly to wonder that a man takes a wife,

or for any one to be ashamed of doing so, since no one wonders that

men are accustomed to eat and drink."--Luther (Th. xix. pp. 368,

369). Does this unbelief as to the possibility and reality of chastity

accord with the Bible, where celibacy is eulogised as a laudable,

and consequently a possible, attainable state? No! It is in direct

contradiction with the Bible. Protestantism, in consequence of its

practical spirit, and therefore by its own inherent force, repudiated

Christian supranaturalism in the sphere of morality. Christianity

exists for it only in faith--not in law, not in morality, not in the

State. It is true that love (the compendium of morality) belongs

essentially to the Christian, so that where there is no love,

where faith does not attest itself by love, there is no faith, no

Christianity. Nevertheless love is only the outward manifestation of

faith, only a consequence, and only human. "Faith alone deals with

God," "faith makes us gods;" love makes us merely men, and as faith

alone is for God, so God is for faith alone, i.e., faith alone is

the divine, the Christian in man. To faith belongs eternal life, to

love only this temporal life. "Long before Christ came God gave this

temporal, earthly life to the whole world, and said that man should

love him and his neighbour. After that he gave the world to his Son

Christ, that we through and by him should have eternal life.... Moses

and the law belong to this life, but for the other life we must have

the Lord."--Luther (Th. xvi. p. 459). Thus although love belongs to

the Christian, yet is the Christian a Christian only through this,

that he believes in Christ. It is true that to serve one's neighbour,

in whatever way, rank, or calling, is to serve God. But the God whom I

serve in fulfilling a worldly or natural office is only the universal,

mundane, natural, pre-Christian God. Government, the State, marriage,

existed prior to Christianity, was an institution, an ordinance

of God, in which he did not as yet reveal himself as the true God,

as Christ. Christ has nothing to do with all these worldly things;

they are external, indifferent to him. But for this very reason, every

worldly calling and rank is compatible with Christianity; for the true,

Christian service of God is faith alone, and this can be exercised

everywhere. Protestantism binds men only in faith, all the rest it

leaves free, but only because all the rest is external to faith.

It is true that we are bound by the commandments of Christian morality,

as, for example, "Avenge not yourselves," &c., but they have validity

for us only as private, not as public persons. The world is governed

according to its own laws. Catholicism "mingled together the worldly

and spiritual kingdoms," i.e., it sought to govern the world by

Christianity. But "Christ did not come on earth to interfere in the

government of the Emperor Augustus and teach him how to reign."--Luther

(Th. xvi. p. 49). Where worldly government begins Christianity ends;

there worldly justice, the sword, war, litigation, prevail. As a

Christian I let my cloak be stolen from me without resistance, but

as a citizen I seek to recover it by law. "Evangelium non abolet jus

naturæ."--Melancthon (de Vindicta Loci. See also on this subject

M. Chemnitii Loci Theol. de Vindicta). In fact, Protestantism is

the practical negation of Christianity, the practical assertion of

the natural man. It is true that Protestantism also commands the

mortifying of the flesh, the negation of the natural man; but apart

from the fact that this negation has for Protestantism no religious

significance and efficacy, does not justify, i.e., make acceptable

to God, procure salvation; the negation of the flesh in Protestantism

is not distinguished from that limitation of the flesh which natural

reason and morality enjoin on man. The necessary practical consequences

of the Christian faith Protestantism has relegated to the other world,

to heaven--in other words, has denied them. la heaven first ceases

the worldly standpoint of Protestantism; there we no longer marry,

there first we are new creatures; but here everything remains as of old

"until that life; there the external life will be changed, for Christ

did not come to change the creature."--Luther (Th. xv. p. 62). Here

we are half heathens, half Christians; half citizens of the earth,

half citizens of heaven. Of this division, this disunity, this chasm,

Catholicism knows nothing. What it denies in heaven, i.e., in faith, it

denies, also, as far as possible, on earth, i.e., in morality. "Grandis

igitur virtutis est et sollicitate diligentiae, superare quod nata sis:

in carne non carnaliter vivere, tecum pugnare quotidie."--Hieronymus

(Ep. Furiae Rom. nobilique viduae). "Quanto igitur natura amplius

vincitur et premitur, tanto major gratia infunditur."--Thomas à

K. (Imit. l. iii. c. 54). "Esto robustus tam in agendo, quam in

patiendo naturae contraria."--(Ibid. c. 49.) "Beatus ille homo, qui

propter te, Domine, omnibus creaturis licentiam abeundi tribuit,

qui naturae vim facit et concupiscentias carnis fervore spiritus

crucifigit" (c. 48). "Adhuc proh dolor! vivit in me verus homo, non est

totus crucifixus."--(Ibid. c. 34, l. iii. c. 19, l. ii. c. 12.) And

these dicta by no means emanate simply from the pious individuality

of the author of the work De Imitatione Christi; they express the

genuine morality of Catholicism, that morality which the saints

attested by their lives, and which was sanctioned even by the Head of

the Church, otherwise so worldly. Thus it is said, for example, in

the Canonizatio S. Bernhardi Abbatis per Alexandrum papam III. anno

Ch. 1164. Litt. apost ... primo ad. Praelatos Eccles. Gallic.:

"In afflictione vero corporis sui usque adeo sibi mundum, seque

mundo reddidit crucifixum, ut confidamus martyrum quoque eum merita

obtinere sanctorum, etc." It was owing to this purely negative moral

principle that there could be enunciated within Catholicism itself the

gross opinion that mere martyrdom, without the motive of love to God,

obtains heavenly blessedness.

It is true that Catholicism also in practice denied the

supranaturalistic morality of Christianity; but its negation has

an essentially different significance from that of Protestantism;

it is a negation de facto but not de jure. The Catholic denied in

life what he ought to have affirmed in life,--as, for example, the

vow of chastity,--what he desired to affirm, at least if he was a

religious Catholic, but which in the nature of things he could not

affirm. Thus he gave validity to the law of Nature, he gratified the

flesh, in a word, he was a man, in contradiction with his essential

character, his religious principle and conscience. Adhuc proh

dolor! vivit in me verus homo. Catholicism has proved to the world

that the supernatural principle of faith in Christianity, applied to

life, made a principle of morals, has immoral, radically corrupting

consequences. This experience Protestantism made use of, or rather

this experience called forth Protestantism. It made the illegitimate,

practical negation of Christianity--illegitimate in the sense of

true Catholicism, though not in that of the degenerate Church--the

law, the norm of life. You cannot in life, at least in this life,

be Christians, peculiar, superhuman beings, therefore ye ought not

to be such. And it legitimised this negation of Christianity before

its still Christian conscience, by Christianity itself, pronounced

it to be Christian;--no wonder, therefore, that now at last modern

Christianity not only practically but theoretically represents

the total negation of Christianity as Christianity. When, however,

Protestantism is designated as the contradiction, Catholicism as

the unity of faith and practice, it is obvious that in both cases we

refer only to the essence, to the principle.

Faith sacrifices man to God. Human sacrifice belongs to the very idea

of religion. Bloody human sacrifices only dramatise this idea. "By

faith Abraham offered up Isaac."--Heb. xi. 17. "Quanto major Abraham,

qui unicum filium voluntate jugulavit.... Jepte obtulit virginem filiam

et idcirco in enumeratione sanctorum ab Apostolo ponitur."--Hieronymus

(Epist. Juliano). On the human sacrifices in the Jewish religion

we refer the reader to the works of Daumer and Ghillany. In the

Christian religion also it is only blood, the sacrifice of the Son of

Man, which allays God's anger and reconciles him to man. Therefore

a pure, guiltless man must fall a sacrifice. Such blood alone is

precious, such alone has reconciling power. And this blood, shed on

the cross for the allaying of the divine anger, Christians partake

in the Lord's Supper, for the strengthening and sealing of their

faith. But why is the blood taken under the form of wine, the flesh

under the form of bread? That it may not appear as if Christians ate

real human flesh and drank human blood, that the natural man may not

shrink from the mysteries of the Christian faith. "Etenim ne humana

infirmitas esum carnis et potum sanguinis in sumptione horreret,

Christus velari et palliari illa duo voluit speciebus panis et

vini."--Bernard. (edit. cit. pp. 189-191). "Sub alia autem specie

tribus de causis carnem et sanguinem tradit Christus et deinceps

sumendum instituit. Ut fides scil. haberet meritum, quae est de

his quae non videntur, quod fides non habet meritum, ubi humana

ratio praebet experimentum. Et ideo etiam ne abhorreret animus quod

cerneret oculus; quod non habemus in usu carnem crudam comedere

et sanguinem bibere.... Et etiam ideo ne ab incredulis religioni

christianae insultaretur. Unde Augustinus: Nihil rationabilius,

quam ut sanguinis similitudinem sumamus, ut et ita veritas non desit

et ridiculum nullum fiat a paganis, quod cruorem occisi hominis

bibamus."--Petrus Lomb. (Sent. lib. iv. dist. ii. c. 4).

But as the bloody human sacrifice, while it expresses the utmost

abnegation of man, is at the same time the highest assertion of

his value;--for only because human life is regarded as the highest,

because the sacrifice of it is the most painful, costs the greatest

conquest over feeling, is it offered to God;--so the contradiction

of the Eucharist with human nature is only apparent. Apart from the

fact that flesh and blood are, as St. Bernard says, clothed with

bread and wine, i.e., that in truth it is not flesh but bread, not

blood but wine, which is partaken,--the mystery of the Eucharist

resolves itself into the mystery of eating and drinking. "All

ancient Christian doctors ... teach that the body of Christ is

not taken spiritually alone by faith, which happens also out of

the Sacraments, but also corporeally; not alone by believers,

by the pious, but also by unworthy, unbelieving, false and wicked

Christians." "There are thus two ways of eating Christ's flesh, one

spiritual ... such spiritual eating however is nothing else than

faith.... The other way of eating the body of Christ is to eat it

corporeally or sacramentally."--(Concordienb. Erkl. art. 7). "The

mouth eats the body of Christ bodily."--Luther (against the

"fanatics." Th. xix. p. 417). What then forms the specific difference

of the Eucharist? Eating and drinking. Apart from the Sacrament,

God is partaken of spiritually; in the Sacrament he is partaken of

materially, i.e., he is eaten and drunken, assimilated by the body. But

how couldst thou receive God into thy body, if it were in thy esteem

an organ unworthy of God? Dost thou pour wine into a water-cask? Dost

thou not declare thy hands and lips holy when by means of them thou

comest in contact with the Holy One? Thus if God is eaten and drunken,

eating and drinking is declared to be a divine act; and this is what

the Eucharist expresses, though in a self-contradictory, mystical,

covert manner. But it is our task to express the mystery of religion,

openly and honourably, clearly and definitely. Life is God; the

enjoyment of life is the enjoyment of God; true bliss in life is true

religion. But to the enjoyment of life belongs the enjoyment of eating

and drinking. If therefore life in general is holy, eating and drinking

must be holy. Is this an irreligious creed? Let it be remembered that

this irreligion is the analysed, unfolded, unequivocally expressed

mystery of religion itself. All the mysteries of religion ultimately

resolve themselves, as we have shown, into the mystery of heavenly

bliss. But heavenly bliss is nothing else than happiness freed from

the limits of reality. The Christians have happiness for their object

just as much as the heathens; the only difference is, that the heathens

place heaven on earth, the Christians place earth in heaven. Whatever

is, whatever is really enjoyed, is finite; that which is not, which

is believed in and hoped for, is infinite.

§ 21.

The Christian religion is a contradiction. It is at once the

reconciliation and the disunion, the unity and the opposition, of God

and man. This contradiction is personified in the God-man. The unity

of the Godhead and manhood is at once a truth and an untruth. We

have already maintained that if Christ was God, if he was at

once man and another being conceived as incapable of suffering,

his suffering was an illusion. For his suffering as man was no

suffering to him as God. No! what he acknowledged as man he denied

as God. He suffered only outwardly, not inwardly, i.e., he suffered

only apparently, not really; for he was man only in appearance,

in form, in the external; in truth, in essence, in which alone he

was an object to the believer, he was God. It would have been true

suffering only if he had suffered as God also. What he did not

experience in his nature as God, he did not experience in truth,

in substance. And, incredible as it is, the Christians themselves

half directly, half indirectly, admit that their highest, holiest

mystery is only an illusion, a simulation. This simulation indeed

lies at the foundation of the thoroughly unhistorical, [235]

theatrical, illusory Gospel of John. One instance, among others,

in which this is especially evident, is the resurrection of Lazarus,

where the omnipotent arbiter of life and death evidently sheds tears

only in ostentation of his manhood, and expressly says: "Father,

I thank thee that thou hast heard me, and I know that thou hearest

me always, but for the sake of the people who stand round I said it,

that they may believe in thee." The simulation thus indicated in the

Gospel has been developed by the Church into avowed delusion. "Si

credas susceptionem corporis, adjungas divinitatis compassionem,

portionem utique perfidiae, non perfidiam declinasti. Credis enim,

quod tibi prodesse praesumis, non credis quod Deo dignum est.... Idem

enim patiebatur et non patiebatur.... Patiebatur secundum corporis

susceptionem, ut suscepti corporis veritas crederetur et non patiebatur

secundum verbi impassibilem divinitatem.... Erat igitur immortalis

in morte, impassibilis in passione.... Cur divinitati attribuis

aerumnas corporis et infirmum doloris humani divinae connectis

naturae?"--Ambrosius (de incarnat. domin. sacr. cc. 4, 5). "Juxta

hominis naturam proficiebat sapientia, non quod ipse sapientior esset

ex tempore ... sed eandem, qua plenus erat, sapientiam caeteris ex

tempore paulatim demonstrabat.... In aliis ergo non in se proficiebat

sapientia et gratia."--Gregorius in homil. quadam (ap. Petrus

Lomb. l. iii. dist. 13, c. 1). "Proficiebat ergo humanus sensus in eo

secundum ostensionem et aliorum hominum opinionem. Ita enim patrem et

matrem dicitur ignorasse in infantia, quia ita se gerebat et habebat

ac si agnitionis expers esset."--Petrus L. (ibid. c. 2). "Ut homo ergo

dubitat, ut homo locutus est."--Ambrosius. "His verbis innui videtur,

quod Christus non inquantum Deus vel Dei filius, sed inquantum homo

dubitaverit affectu humano. Quod ea ratione dictum accipi potest: non

quod ipse dubitaverit, sed quod modum gessit dubitantis et hominibus

dubitare videbatur."--Petrus L. (ibid. dist. 17, c. 2). In the first

part of the present work we have exhibited the truth, in the second

part the untruth of religion, or rather of theology. The truth is only

the identity of God and man. Religion is truth only when it affirms

human attributes as divine, falsehood when, in the form of theology,

it denies these attributes, separating God from man as a different

being. Thus, in the first part we had to show the truth of God's

suffering; here we have the proof of its untruth, and not a proof

which lies in our own subjective view, but an objective proof--the

admission of theology itself, that its highest mystery, the Passion of

God, is only a deception, an illusion. It is therefore in the highest

degree uncritical, untruthful, and arbitrary to explain the Christian

religion, as speculative philosophy has done, only as the religion of

reconciliation between God and man, and not also as the religion of

disunion between the divine and human nature,--to find in the God-man

only the unity, and not also the contradiction of the divine and

human nature. Christ suffered only as man, not as God. Capability of

suffering is the sign of real humanity. It was not as God that he was

born, that he increased in wisdom, and was crucified; i.e., all human

conditions remained foreign to him as God. "Si quis non confitetur

proprie et vere substantialem differentiam naturarum post ineffabilem

unionem, ex quibus unus et solus extitit Christus, in ea salvatum, sit

condemnatus."--Concil. Later. I. can. 7 (Carranza). The divine nature,

notwithstanding the position that Christ was at once God and man,

is just as much dissevered from the human nature in the incarnation

as before it, since each nature excludes the conditions of the other,

although both are united in one personality, in an incomprehensible,

miraculous, i.e., untrue manner, in contradiction with the relation in

which, according to their definition, they stand to each other. Even

the Lutherans, nay, Luther himself, however strongly he expresses

himself concerning the community and union of the human and divine

nature in Christ, does not escape from the irreconcilable division

between them. "God is man, and man is God, but thereby neither the

natures nor their attributes are confounded, but each nature retains

its essence and attributes." "The Son of God himself has truly suffered

and truly died, but according to the human nature which he had assumed;

for the divine nature can neither suffer nor die." "It is truly said,

the Son of God suffers. For although the one part (so to speak), as

the Godhead, does not suffer, still the person who is God suffers in

the other half, the manhood; for in truth the Son of God was crucified

for us, that is, the person who is God; for the person is crucified

according to his manhood." "It is the person that does and suffers all,

one thing according to this nature, another according to that nature,

all which the learned well know."--(Concordienb. Erklär. art. 8.) "The

Son of God and God himself is killed and murdered, for God and man is

one person. Therefore God was crucified, and died, and became man;

not God apart from humanity, but united with it; not according

to the Godhead, but according to the human nature which he had

assumed."--Luther (Th. iii. p. 502). Thus only in the person, i.e.,

only in a nomen proprium, not in essence, not in truth, are the two

natures united. "Quando dicitur: Deus est homo vel homo est Deus,

propositio ejusmodi vocatur personalis. Ratio est, quia unionem

personalem in Christo supponit. Sine tali enim naturarum in Christo

unione nunquam dicere potuissem, Deum esse hominem aut hominem esse

Deum.... Abstracta autem naturae de se invicem enuntiari non posse,

longe est manifestissimum.... Dicere itaque non licet, divina natura

est humana aut deitas est humanitas et vice versa."--J. F. Buddeus

(Comp. Inst. Theol. Dogm. l. iv. c. ii. § 11). Thus the union of the

divine and human natures in the incarnation is only a deception, an

illusion. The old dissidence of God and man lies at the foundation of

this dogma also, and operates all the more injuriously, is all the more

odious, that it conceals itself behind the appearance, the imagination

of unity. Hence Socinianism, far from being superficial when it denied

the Trinity and the God-man, was only consistent, only truthful. God

was a triune being, and yet he was to be held purely simple,

absolute unity, an ens simplicissimum; thus the Unity contradicted the

Trinity. God was God-man, and yet the Godhead was not to be touched or

annulled by the manhood, i.e., it was to be essentially distinct; thus

the incompatibility of the divine and human attributes contradicted the

unity of the two natures. According to this, we have in the very idea

of the God-man the arch-enemy of the God-man,--rationalism, blended,

however, with its opposite--mysticism. Thus Socinianism only denied

what faith itself denied, and yet, in contradiction with itself,

at the same time affirmed; it only denied a contradiction, an untruth.

Nevertheless the Christians have celebrated the incarnation as a

work of love, as a self-renunciation of God, an abnegation of his

majesty--Amor triumphat de Deo; for the love of God is an empty word

if it is understood as a real abolition of the distinction between him

and man. Thus we have, in the very central point of Christianity, the

contradiction of Faith and Love developed in the close of the present

work. Faith makes the suffering of God a mere appearance, love makes

it a truth. Only on the truth of the suffering rests the true positive

impression of the incarnation. Strongly, then, as we have insisted on

the contradiction and division between the divine and the human nature

in the God-man, we must equally insist on their community and unity,

in virtue of which God is really man and man is really God. Here then

we have the irrefragable and striking proof that the central point,

the supreme object of Christianity, is nothing else than man, that

Christians adore the human individual as God, and God as the human

individual. "This man born of the Virgin Mary is God himself, who has

created heaven and earth."--Luther (Th. ii. p. 671). "I point to the

man Christ and say: That is the Son of God."--(Th. xix. p. 594.) "To

give life, to have all power in heaven and earth, to have all things

in his hands, all things put under his feet, to purify from sin,

and so on, are divine, infinite attributes, which, according to the

declaration of the Holy Scriptures, are given and imparted to the

man Christ." "Therefore we believe, teach, and confess that the Son

of Man ... now not only as God, but also as man, knows all things,

can do all things, is present with all creatures." "We reject and

condemn the doctrine that he (the Son of God) is not capable according

to his human nature of omnipotence and other attributes of the divine

nature."--(Concordienb. Summar. Begr. u. Erklär. art. 8.) "Unde et

sponte sua fluit, Christo etiam qua humanam naturam spectato cultum

religiosum deberi."--Buddeus (l. c. l. iv. c. ii. § 17). The

same is expressly taught by the Fathers and the Catholics,

e.g., "Eadem adoratione adoranda in Christo est divinitas et

humanitas.... Divinitas intrinsece inest humanitati per unionem

hypostaticam: ergo humanitas Christi seu Christus ut homo potest

adorari absoluto cultu latriae."--Theol. Schol. (sec. Thomam

Aq. P. Metzger. iv. p. 124). It is certainly said that it is not

man, not flesh and blood by itself, which is worshipped, but the

flesh united with God, so that the cultus applies not to the flesh,

or man, but to God. But it is here as with the worship of saints and

images. As the saint is adored in the image and God in the saint,

only because the image and the saint are themselves adored, so God is

worshipped in the human body only because the human flesh is itself

worshipped. God becomes flesh, man, because man is in truth already

God. How could it enter into thy mind to bring the human flesh into

so close a relation and contact with God if it were something impure,

degrading, unworthy of God? If the value, the dignity of the human

flesh does not lie in itself, why dost thou not make other flesh--the

flesh of brutes the habitation of the Divine Spirit? True it is said:

Man is only the organ in, with, and by which the Godhead works, as

the soul in the body. But this pretext also is refuted by what has

been said above. God chose man as his organ, his body, because only in

man did he find an organ worthy of him, suitable, pleasing to him. If

the nature of man is indifferent, why did not God become incarnate in

a brute? Thus God comes into man only out of man. The manifestation

of God in man is only a manifestation of the divinity and glory of

man. "Noscitur ex alio, qui non cognoscitur ex se"--this trivial

saying is applicable here. God is known through man, whom he honours

with his personal presence and indwelling, and known as a human being,

for what any one prefers, selects, loves, in his objective nature; and

man is known through God, and known as a divine being, for only that

which is worthy of God, which is divine, can be the object, organ,

and habitation of God. True it is further said: It is Jesus Christ

alone, and no other man, who is worshipped as God. But this argument

also is idle and empty. Christ is indeed one only, but he is one who

represents all. He is a man as we are, "our brother, and we are flesh

of his flesh and bone of his bone." "In Jesus Christ our Lord every

one of us is a portion of flesh and blood. Therefore where my body is,

there I believe that I myself reign. Where my flesh is glorified,

there I believe that I am myself glorious. Where my blood rules,

there I hold that I myself rule."--Luther (Th. xvi. p. 534). This

then is an undeniable fact: Christians worship the human individual

as the supreme being, as God. Not indeed consciously, for it is

the unconsciousness of this fact which constitutes the illusion of

the religious principle. But in this sense it may be said that the

heathens did not worship the statues of the gods; for to them also

the statue was not a statue, but God himself. Nevertheless they did

worship the statue; just as Christians worship the human individual,

though, naturally, they will not admit it.

§ 22.