| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther: shall never attain to that as long as we live here; so that this
commandment will remain, like all the rest, one that will constantly
accuse us and show how godly we are in the sight of God!
Conclusion of the Ten Commandments.
Thus we have the Ten Commandments, a compend of divine doctrine, as to
what we are to do in order that our whole life may be pleasing to God,
and the true fountain and channel from and in which everything must
arise and flow that is to be a good work, so that outside of the Ten
Commandments no work or thing can be good or pleasing to God, however
great or precious it be in the eyes of the world. Let us see now what
our great saints can boast of their spiritual orders and their great
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: points we intended to persevere and abide to the end.
I have accordingly compiled these articles and presented them
to our side. They have also been accepted and unanimously
confessed by our side, and it has been resolved that, in case
the Pope with his adherents should ever be so bold as
seriously and in good faith, without lying and cheating, to
hold a truly free [legitimate] Christian Council (as, indeed,
he would be in duty bound to do), they be publicly delivered
in order to set forth the Confession of our Faith.
But though the Romish court is so dreadfully afraid of a free
Christian Council, and shuns the light so shamefully, that it
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: abstraction so barren and unmeaning, no form of thought so contradictory to
experience, which has not been found to satisfy the minds of philosophical
enquirers at a certain stage, or when regarded from a certain point of view
only. The peculiarity of the fallacies of our own age is that we live
within them, and are therefore generally unconscious of them.
Aristotle has analysed several of the same fallacies in his book 'De
Sophisticis Elenchis,' which Plato, with equal command of their true
nature, has preferred to bring to the test of ridicule. At first we are
only struck with the broad humour of this 'reductio ad absurdum:' gradually
we perceive that some important questions begin to emerge. Here, as
everywhere else, Plato is making war against the philosophers who put words
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