"Johannes Agricola in Meditation" presents the doctrine of
predestination as it appears to a devout and poetic soul whose
conviction of the truth of such a doctrine has the strength of a
divine revelation. Those elected for God's love can do nothing to
weaken it, those not elected can do nothing to gain it, but it is
not his to reason why; indeed, he could not praise a god whose ways
he could understand or for whose love he had to bargain.
Johannes Agricola: (1492-1566), Luther's secretary, 1519, afterward
in conflict with him, and author of the doctrine called by Luther
antinomian, because it rejected the Law of the Old Testament as of
no use under the Gospel dispensation. In a note accompanying the
first publication of this poem, Browning quotes from "The Dictionary
of All Religions" (1704): "They say that good works do not further,
nor evil works hinder salvation; that the child of God cannot sin,
that God never chastiseth him, that murder, drunkenness, etc., are
sins in the wicked but not in him, that the child of grace being
once assured of salvation, afterwards never doubteth . . . that God
doth not love any man for his holiness, that sanctification is no
evidence of justification." Though many antinomians taught thus,
says George Willis Cooke in his "Browning Guide Book," it does not
correctly represent the position of Agricola, who in reality held
moral obligations to be incumbent upon the Christian, but for
guidance in these he found in the New Testament all the principles
and motives necessary.