# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S169
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Fourth Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States. 1884.   169

want to expose and name their real reason, the one that moves them to such error, more accurately, and I am willing to stake my body and soul on it — which I, too, would not gladly lose — that I will not be wrong; for I, poor sinner that I am, know a little of the Spirit, and a great deal of the old rascal that rages in us, I mean the flesh. The one thing that troubles them most of all is that it seems, to reason, utterly foolish to believe that we are to eat and drink Christ's body and blood bodily in the Supper. And I know for certain that, if they should win, their final cry of triumph would be: 'Yes, I always thought it couldn't be right; I could never bring myself to believe that Christ's body and blood should be handled that way.' That is indeed how they now talk secretly among themselves, and the mad rabble talks about it openly. But they would gladly hide this, for they are ashamed to confess it, knowing well that it is worthless; yet they are glad to see the mad rabble come out with it, and they neither speak nor write against it. But it is shameful that there is not enough honesty and decency in them to confess openly what they nevertheless wish, desire, see, and hear in their hearts; instead they pretend that Scripture forces them, which they know is not true, but rather they attack Scripture with cunning and outrage, to adorn themselves before the people with it, and to peddle their poison among the people under the name of Scripture. Yet however hard they work to hide this, the rascal still peeks out and makes himself well enough known. Zwingli himself confesses this much, that he never believed it his whole life long — and I well believe that he believes in nothing at all. ... Now from such a confession it is easy to note that he did not get this notion from Scripture, which he found only long afterward, as his book *Subsidium* in particular, and others, prove; rather, long before he found such Scripture, he already believed as he did, and only now, after the fact, runs about seeking Scripture and forcing it to fit that notion. Dr. Karlstadt, too, long before he wrote anything, said to a certain man: 'Friend, you will never persuade me that God is in the bread and wine.' So it slips out of them unawares, by God's own power." (Erl. Ausg., Bd. 30, S. 52 ff.)

A question that calls for special attention is, however, this: how can one distinguish between the word of Scripture and a mere inference of reason, between the text and a human gloss? Where does the word of Scripture stop and the inference of reason begin? Here this must be held fast: we call — with the ancients — an "inference" what is, in a sense, still stated or revealed in the word of Scripture itself. This kind of "inference" is of course not to be rejected or labeled with the name "inference of reason." This kind of "inference" leaves the word of Scripture standing exactly as it stands, and merely unfolds what the word of Scripture — as if wrapped up — holds within itself. Let us take, for example, the word of Scripture: "Baptize them," that is, all nations. From the fact that all nations are to be baptized, we infer that children, too, are to be baptized. Why is this inference