IX. I have no inclination to notice all the passages of Scripture, which the folly of the modern Sorbonists seizes as they occur, and without any reason employs against us. For some of them are so truly ridiculous, that I could not even mention them, unless I wished to be accounted a fool. I shall therefore conclude this subject after having explained a sentence uttered by Christ, with which they are wonderfully pleased. To a lawyer, who asked him what was necessary to salvation, he replied, “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.”[221] What can we wish more, say they, when the Author of grace himself commands to obtain the kingdom of heaven by an observance of the commandments? As though it were not evident, that Christ adapted his replies to those with whom he conversed. Here a doctor of the law inquires the method of obtaining happiness, and that not simply, but what men must _do_ in order to attain it. Both the character of the speaker and the inquiry itself induced the Lord to make this reply. The inquirer, persuaded of the righteousness of the law, possessed a blind confidence in his works. Besides, he only inquired what were those works of righteousness by which salvation might be procured. He is therefore justly referred to the law, which contains a perfect mirror of righteousness. We also explicitly declare, that if life be sought by works, it is indispensably requisite to keep the commandments. And this doctrine is necessary to be known by Christians; for how should they flee for refuge to Christ, if they did not acknowledge themselves to have fallen from the way of life upon the precipice of death? And how could they know how far they have wandered from the way of life, without a previous knowledge of what that way of life is? It is then, therefore, that Christ is presented to them as the asylum of salvation, when they perceive the vast difference between their own lives and the Divine righteousness, which consists in the observance of the law. The sum of the whole is, that if we seek salvation by works, we must keep the commandments, by which we are taught perfect righteousness. But to stop here, would be failing in the midst of our course; for to keep the commandments is a task to which none of us are equal. Being excluded, then, from the righteousness of the law, we are under the necessity of resorting to some other refuge, namely, to faith in Christ. Wherefore, as the Lord, knowing this doctor of the law to be inflated with a vain confidence in his works, recalls his attention to the law, that it may teach him his own character as a sinner, obnoxious to the tremendous sentence of eternal death, so, in another place, addressing those who have already been humbled under this knowledge, he omits all mention of the law, and consoles them with a promise of grace—“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest; and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”[222]