# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1856_S322
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

322 On the Doctrine of the Election of Grace and Some Matters Connected Therewith, etc.

…of which sign and indication it now gives, that, provided we are certain of our predestination from the feeling of faith and of the desire to serve God, it may in obedience be followed — as the opponents of Luther in Switzerland slanderously asserted;) and its Author, the Spirit of the living God, who filled the apostles and prophets, effectually calling by means of their mouth and their teaching alike upon the hearts of the ever-resisting and stiff-necked, as upon those being sanctified in faith, shows Himself. It is one and the same Word, Spirit, and power for both; but the outcome differs. The seed of the heavenly Sower, which falls on fourfold ground, has found nothing but bad soil, and has itself first produced the good soil; accordingly, to be sure, the differing soil also conditions the wholly differing efficacy of the seed. That many, however, increasingly harden themselves follows, as of itself, not from a natural necessity but from the accidental character of the effect of the Word, which aims only at sanctification and salvation, and which has its proximate ground in the constitution and nature of human hearts, which are of an evil will by nature. According to their original corruption they are therefore equally capable and equally incapable for that which has been spoken by the Holy Spirit, that is, dead in trespasses and sins; only the persistently continued resistance of the one carried by His almighty hand against the working activity of the Gospel, against the inner better conviction of conscience — called forth by the fact that, and as often as, one hears it — has the increase of evil willfulness (for a compulsion it certainly cannot possibly be; cf. Chemnitz, Exam. Conc. Trid., Geneva ed., 1634, p. 125) and the curse of being lost as its inevitable consequence. It thus becomes necessary for us to ask further: How does it come about that the one sort, even though many among them believe for a time, resist to the end, while the others do not — when both, all without distinction, are by nature equally powerless to know and to will in a way fruitful and pleasing to God for eternal life? How does it come about that the Word works differently? Does God alone, then, remain the sole factor, together with the election of grace, and thus is the fault His if many are not saved — or does it lie with men? Are they born already condemned, or condemned only afterward; and is something demanded of these His servants that was not given them at all — or did they after all receive a pound, whereby they could trade and gain with the grace-bringing call? So we have arrived at the point which, when rightly developed as a principial thesis, will lead us to a satisfying resolution of dark, difficult doubts and questions of conscience, but which, in a form more or less deviating from its true foundation, will lead us into the labyrinth of Calvinism or of Pelagianism.

Thesis II.

The divine prescience, or God's eternal foreknowledge, foreknowing, called among believers most commonly foresight, conflicts