Men and Women

“Johannes Agricola in Meditation” presents the doctrine of predestination as it appears to a devout and poetic soul whose conviction of the truth of such a doctrine has the strength of a divine revelation.  Those elected for God’s love can do nothing to weaken it, those not elected can do nothing to gain it, but it is not his to reason why; indeed, he could not praise a god whose ways he could understand or for whose love he had to bargain.

Johannes Agricola:  (1492-1566), Luther’s secretary, 1519, afterward in conflict with him, and author of the doctrine called by Luther antinomian, because it rejected the Law of the Old Testament as of no use under the Gospel dispensation.  In a note accompanying the first publication of this poem, Browning quotes from “The Dictionary of All Religions” (1704):  “They say that good works do not further, nor evil works hinder salvation; that the child of God cannot sin, that God never chastiseth him, that murder, drunkenness, etc., are sins in the wicked but not in him, that the child of grace being once assured of salvation, afterwards never doubteth . . . that God doth not love any man for his holiness, that sanctification is no evidence of justification.”  Though many antinomians taught thus, says George Willis Cooke in his “Browning Guide Book,” it does not correctly represent the position of Agricola, who in reality held moral obligations to be incumbent upon the Christian, but for guidance in these he found in the New Testament all the principles and motives necessary.