the oath which He hath sworn unto your fathers." A truly wonderful and God-like reason. " He chose you because He loved you; and He loved you because He loved you " = the sole ground and motive being in His own heart of love> and in the sovereign purpose of grace which He hath formed in and through them.
And having known and foreknown them yea, with all their many and grievous sins and backslidings, and purposed in His heart to exhibit in and through them, not only His holy severity (as now in their unbelief), but even in a more wonderful way His infinite grace and goodness, and all the attributes of His character for the blessing of all the nations of the earth, He can never wholly cast them off.
Some of my readers may have visited the Wartburg and had pointed out to them the black spot on one of the walls of the room which Luther occupied during his benevolently intended imprisonment. The legend connected with it is this. One night during this mournful solitude, when suffer ing from great depression, because, as he himself expresses it in a letter to Melanchthon, dated May 24, I 52 I, " I do see myself insensible and hardened, a slave to sloth, rarely, alas! praying unable even to utter a groan for the Church, while my untamed flesh burns with devouring flame "[1] the great Reformer dreamt that Satan appeared to him with a long scroll, in which were carefully written the many sins and transgressions of which he was guilty from his birth, and which the evil one proceeded to read out, mocking the while that such a sinner as he should ever think of being called to do service for God, or even of escaping himself from hell. As the long list was being read, Luther's terrors grew, and his agonies of soul increased. At last, however, rousing himself, he jumped up and exclaimed: " It is all true, Satan, and many more sins which I have committed in my life which are known
- ↑ See The Life of Luther, by M. Michelet. Based almost entirely on his own letters and table talk, 2nd edition, translated by W. Hazlitt, pp. IOI, 102.
