il that reproach of Martha: 'If
the Lord had been near me, I had not died.' But of the means of the
working of God's grace, and of the time of the formation of the
Divine counsels, I know nothing, guess nothing, and struggle to
guess nothing; and my persuasion is that when people talk of what was
ordained or approved by God before the foundations of the world, their
tendency is almost always towards a confusion of His eternal nature
with the human conditions of ours; and to an oblivion of the fact that
with _Him_ there can be no after nor before.

At any rate, I do not find it good for myself to examine any more the
brickbats of controversy--there is more than enough to think of in
truths clearly revealed; more than enough for the exercise of the
intellect and affections and adorations. I would rather not suffer
myself to be disturbed, and perhaps irritated, where it is not likely
that I should ever be informed. And although you tell me that your
system of investigation is different from some others, answer me with
your accustomed candour, and admit, my very dear friend, that this
argument does not depend upon the construction of a Greek sentence or
the meaning of a Greek word. Let a certain word[71] be 'fore-know' or
'publicly _favor_,' room for a stormy controversy yet remains. I went
through the Romans with you partially, and wholly by myself, by your
desire, and in reference to the controversy, long ago; and I could not
then, and cannot now, enter into that view of Taylor and Adam Clarke,
and yourself I believe, as to the _Jews and Gentiles_. Neither could
I conceive that a particular part of the epistle represents an actual
dialogue between a Jew and Gentile, since the form of question and
answer appears to me there simply rhetorical. The Apostle Paul was
learned in rhetoric; and I think he described so, by a rhetorical and
vivacious form, that struggle between the flesh and the spirit common
to all Christians; the spirit being triumphant through God in Christ
Jesus. These are my impressions. Yours are different. And since we
should not probably persuade each other, and since we are both of us
fond of and earnest in what we fancy to be the truth, why should
we cast away the thousand sympathies we rejoice in, religious and
otherwise, for the sake of a fruitless contention? 'What!' you would
say (by the time we had quarrelled half an hour), 'can't you talk
without being excited?' Half an hour afterwards: 'Pray _do_ l