# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S17
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 17 —

The chief cause of our sickness is evidently the misunderstanding and
misuse of the Gospel of free grace — a Gospel that, God be eternally
praised for it, has been current in all our congregations from the
beginning and remains current to this day. Should the remedy for our
healing, then, consist in our preachers now preaching only the Law for
a longer time and keeping silent about the sweet Gospel of grace, and
in our congregations introducing a legalistic church discipline instead
of an evangelical one, and carrying it out with merciless severity? —
Far from it! — In that way we would not only deprive the many true
little sheep of Christ among us of the pasture due them, without which
they would perish, and so turn ourselves from their shepherds into
their murderers; in that way we would also merely keep those who have
sunk back into spiritual death in that same death; indeed, out of a
church with offenses we would only make a church of hypocrites. No,
both Law and Gospel must continue to resound side by side in all our
sermons, and both must remain the foundation of our church discipline.
Let us, however, follow the example of our highly enlightened father
Luther! When he began his great work, he found a people spiritually
starved, crushed by God's laws [*Gottes-Gesetzen*] and even more by all
sorts of laws of men [*Menschen-Gesetzen*]. To this people he therefore
preached, above all, the sweet Gospel. This is attested, among other
things, by his precious Church Postil and his numerous small and
larger popular writings of that early period, dripping with evangelical
comfort. And how unspeakably rich and glorious was the fruit of these
writings! — But when, after only a few years, all too many turned the
Gospel into an excuse for licentiousness, he by no means then fell
silent about the Gospel. Indeed, as late as the year 1534, after
bitterly lamenting the abuse of the Gospel in his own time, he declared
in a sermon: "And yet one must and shall preach faith in Christ,
whatever may come of it. I would much rather hear it said of me that I
preach too sweetly, and that my preaching hinders people from good
works (though my preaching does no such thing), than that I should
fail to preach faith in Christ, leaving no help or counsel for timid,
anguished consciences." (XIII, 1327.) Yet if we compare Luther's
earlier and later writings with one another, we notice a most
remarkable difference. In both kinds of writings the Gospel of free
grace is indeed found in its full fullness and sweetness, without any
souring by the Law; but whereas in the earlier writings the Gospel
predominates, in the later ones the Law quite evidently predominates
instead. When, therefore, the Antinomians, who wanted the Law removed
from the Church, appealed to Luther's earlier writings, Luther among
other things wrote the following in the year 1539: "Therefore the
Antinomians rightly deserve that everyone be their enemy, who cling to
our example and wish to defend themselves by it; whereas the reason is
plain why, at the beginning, we

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