A cordial, rich and juicy speech, such as shaped itself into, and lived anew in, the Gustavus Adolphuses. Chap. XV. p. 233-4. "God most certainly heareth them that pray in faith, and granteth when and how he pleaseth, and knoweth most profitable for them. We must also know, that when our prayers tend to the sanctifying of his name, and to the increase and honor of his kingdom (also that we pray according to his will) then most certainly he heareth. But when we pray contrary to these points, then we are not heard; for God doth nothing against his Name, his kingdom, and his will." Then (saith the understanding, [Greek: Tò phrónaema sarkòs]) what doth prayer effect? If A--prayer = B., and A + prayer = B, prayer = O. The attempt to answer this argument by admitting its invalidity relatively to God, but asserting the efficacy of prayer relatively to the pray-er or precant himself, is merely staving off the objection a single step. For this effect on the devout soul is produced by an act of God. The true answer is, prayer is an idea, and 'ens spirituale', out of the cognizance of the understanding. The spiritual mind receives the answer in the contemplation of the idea, life as 'deitas diffusa'. We can set the life in efficient motion, but not contrary to the form or type. The errors and false theories of great men sometimes, perhaps most often, arise out of true ideas falsified by degenerating into conceptions; or the mind excited to action by an inworking idea, the understanding works in the same direction according to its kind, and produces a counterfeit, in which the mind rests. This I believe to be the case with the scheme of emanation in Plotinus. God is made a first and consequently a comparative intensity, and matter the last; the whole thence finite; and thence its conceivability. But we must admit a gradation of intensities in reality. Chap. XVI. p. 247. "When governors and rulers are enemies to God's word, then our duty is to depart, to sell and forsake all we have, to fly from one place to another, as Christ commandeth; we must make and prepare no uproars nor tumults by reason of the Gospel, but we must suffer all things." Right. But then it must be the lawful rulers; those in whom the sovereign or supreme power is lodged by the known laws and constitution of the country. Where the laws and constitutional liberties of the nation are trampled on, the subjects do not lose, and are not in conscience bound to forego, their right of resistance, because they are Christians, or because it happens to be a matter of religion, in which their rights are violated. And this was Luther's opinion. Whether, if a Popish Czar shall act as our James II. acted, the Russian Greekists would be justified in doing with him what the English Protestants justifiably did with regard to James, is a knot which I shall not attempt to cut; though I guess the Russians would, by cutting their Czar's throat. Ib.