[122] In fewer words thus: For the brute animals, their nature is their law;--for what other third law can be imagined, in addition to the law of nature, and the law of reason? Therefore: in irrational agents the law constitutes the will. In moral and rational agents the will constitutes, or ought to constitute, the law: I speak of moral agents, unfallen. For the personal Will comprehends the _idea_, as a Reason, and it gives causative force to the Idea, as a _practical_ Reason. But Idea with the power of realizing the same is a Law; or say:--the Spirit comprehends the Moral Idea, by virtue of its rationality, and it gives to the Idea causative Power, as a Will: In every sense therefore, it _constitutes_ the Law, supplying both the Elements of which it consists--namely, the Idea, and the realizing Power.
Christ's death was both voluntary and violent. There was external violence: and that was the accompaniment, or at most the occasion, of his death. But there was internal willingness, the spiritual Will, the Will of the Spirit, and this was the proper cause. By this Spirit he was restored from death: neither indeed _was it possible for him to be holden of it; being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit_, says St. Peter. But he is likewise declared elsewhere to have died by that same Spirit, which here, in opposition to the violence, is said to quicken him. Thus Hebrews ix. 14. _Through the eternal Spirit he offered himself._ And even from Peter's words, and without the epithet, eternal, to aid the interpretation, it is evident that _the Spirit_, here opposed to the flesh, body or animal life, is of a higher nature and power than the individual _soul_, which cannot of itself return to re-inhabit or quicken the body.
If these points were niceties, and an over-refining in doctrine, is it to be believed that the Apostles, John, Peter and Paul, with the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, would have laid so great stress on them? But the true life of Christians is to eye Christ in every step of his life--not only as their Rule but as their Strength: looking to him as their Pattern both in doing and in suffering, and drawing power from him for going through both: being _without him_ able for nothing. Take comfort then, thou that believest! _It is he that lifts up the Soul from the Gates of Death_: and he hath said, _I will raise thee up at the last day_. Thou that believest _in_ him, believe him and take comfort. Yea, when thou art most sunk in thy sad apprehensions, and he far off to thy thinking, then is he nearest to raise and comfort thee: as sometimes it grows darkest immediately before day.