_ ii. 3). To
this, Illyricus, the standard-bearer of the Magdeburg company,
has added his own monstrous teaching about original sin, which he
makes out to be the innermost substance of souls, whom, since
Adam's fall, the devil himself engenders and transforms into
himself. This also is a received maxim in this scum of evil
doctrine, that all sins are equal, yet with this qualification
(not to revive the Stoics), "if sins are weighed in the judgment
of God." As if God, the most equitable judge, were to add to our
burden rather than lighten it; and, for all His justice, were to
exaggerate and make it what it is not in itself. By this
estimation, as heavy an offence would be committed against God,
judging in all severity, by the innkeeper who has killed a
barn-door cock, when he should not have done, as by that infamous
assassin who, his head full of Beza, stealthily slew by the shot
of a musket the French hero, the Duke of Guise, a Prince of
admirable virtue, than which crime our world has seen in our age
nothing more deadly, nothing more lamentable.
But perchance they who are so severe in the matter of sin
philosophise magnificently on divine grace, as able to bring
succour and remedy to this evil.
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