# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1855_S238
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

238 The Union.

a. God gradually withdraws from human beings His Spirit, which reproves them and moves them to repentance and conversion.

b. To the same extent that He withdraws His Spirit, He gives the human being over to his perverse mind, to Satan, and to his own evil will. Psalm 81:13; Proverbs 1:24–31; John 13:21.

c. In this He ordains the ruinous interaction between the increasing darkening of the understanding and the growing wickedness of the will.

d. The more this interaction takes place within a human being, the more he sins against his conscience without being reproved by it, the more resistant he becomes toward God, and the more readily he consents to Satan. 1 Timothy 4:2.

e. Nevertheless, on this road to hell, the summary judgment of his conscience remains against him, as one who has condemned himself. Titus 3:11. (All this is contained in the brief words of Scripture: “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.”)

Thesis 4. Just as it is not faith in itself, but faith that perseveres, which ultimately saves, so it is not unbelief in itself that casts a person into eternal damnation, but unbelief that persists to the end. For God does not forsake anyone with His converting grace who has not first forsaken Him through continued resistance or persistent apostasy.

Thesis 5. Just as the final salvation and glorification of the elect is the fulfillment of the election that took place from eternity, so the final damnation of the ungodly is the fulfillment of the decree of their rejection, formed by God from eternity in view of their foreseen, persistent unbelief in opposition to His grace in Christ revealed in the Gospel.

The Union.

The most recent defense of the Union is found in a work by Professor Dr. Julius Müller in Halle, which appeared last year from Wiegandt in Berlin (418 octavo pages) under the title: “The Evangelical Union, Its Nature and Divine Right.” We find a review of this work in the Saxon Church and School Journal, edited by Dr. Kahnis. We hope to meet the wishes of most of our readers by sharing with them at least something from this review, since the book reviewed is of great importance, while the review is both instructive and edifying. The reviewer writes, among other things, as follows:

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The author’s entire argument for establishing the div-