# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1857_S16
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

16 On the Doctrine of the Election of Grace and Certain Matters Connected Therewith, etc.

"-te, nor say. For from this has also come the unspeakable, innumerable, abominable abuse of the Mass. And they can point to no title nor letter from the ancient fathers by which the opinion of the Scholastic is proven. Indeed, Augustine says flatly against this, that it is faith in the use of the sacrament, not the sacrament itself, that makes us righteous before God." —

On the Doctrine of the Election of Grace and Certain Matters Connected Therewith.
(By Pastor O. Fürbringer.)
(Continuation from the previous volume.)

Since we have thus far recognized as admissible the distinctions in the divine being and working, in the will itself, and between it and knowing: it will not, in order thoroughly to understand the doctrine of predestination and also Luther, be superfluous to note here before all things, that such determinations always and altogether proceed only from oppositions which are indeed necessary for the finite understanding, but may claim nothing more than that they serve to bring home to us the greatness of God, the riches of His power, love, and wisdom, to render the immeasurableness of His being as accessible as possible to our thinking, and to raise the same in some measure up to Him. For it is just as unavoidable as it is permitted, to distinguish for our contemplation what in God is one, in order to heighten the fullness and clarity of our knowledge of God, to come as near as is granted the mortal eye to the unapproachable light in which He dwells; and our weakness must lay hold of it in order to ease the resolving of problematic propositions, to make them more all-sided and more penetrating for us; but never may we seek to comprehend that which is distinguished otherwise than in its harmony, in its essential unity, and, where we are unable to do this, at least never abandon the thought of that unity. Therefore Quenstedt, distinguished for the subtlety of his distinctions, says: "Si propriè et accurate loqui velimus, Deus mera et simplicissima est essentia, quae nec realem differentiam nec ullam vel rerum vel modorum admittit compositionem; quia vero simplicissimam Dei essentiam uno adaequato conceptu adaequate concipere non possumus, ideo inadaequatis et distinctis conceptibus, inadaequate essentiam divinam repraesentantibus, eam apprehendimus; quos inadaequatos conceptus, qui a parte rei essentiae divinae identificantur et a nobis per modum affectionum apprehenduntur, attributa vocamus. — Conceptus objectivus in Deo actu unus est, virtute vero et eminenter multus — attributa divina a parte rei et in se non multa sunt, sed simplicissima unitas, multa vero dicuntur syncatabatice et energetice — conceptus noster inadaequatus sumit occasionem ex distinctione operationum et apotelesmatum distinguendi vel distincte concipiendi, quae in Deo summe unum sunt, etsi