# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1857_S129
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Doctrine and Defense.

Year III.   May 1857.   No. 5.

On the Doctrine of the Election of Grace and Some Matters Connected Therewith.
(By Pastor O. Fürbringer.)
(Continued.)
Thesis VI.

We all, without exception, find ourselves within an empirical-moral direction of life which indeed can in no way be called forced or imposed upon us, but within which we must nevertheless move forward. That which, beyond all doubt, ought to proceed from a pure disposition, or which, viewed from one side, ought often to remain wholly undone, can never, once it happens, be altered by us ourselves as to its morality, and it binds each one with a power from which no one is able to withdraw, because our will cannot will otherwise. Evil and good inclination of heart mutually exclude one another; and it is with the former, not together with the latter, that we are born. The formal power of choice is here likewise still essentially united with the erring desires, joining itself with them as a concrete content — for through their corruption no part of finite nature has fallen away — just as in Adam, before the Fall, it was united with his well-ordered impulses.*) The harmonious unity of the development of human existence consisted in this: that in our relations, both to ourselves and to other creatures, we should subordinate ourselves to God — not, in the delusion of autonomy, vainly seeking our balance, through an unsatisfied wavering to and fro without a center, either in ourselves or in the enjoyment and service of the world, but that we should rather live for love and obedience toward Him. The disturbance and the

*) Note. See Joh. Gerhard, loc. de lib. arb. §7, from Augustine, Enchiridion c. 30: "Liberum arbitrium semper est liberum, sed non semper est bonum." Ibid., Prosper, de vocat. gent. c. 3: "Homo a Diabolo spoliatus non voluntate, sed voluntatis sanitate privatus est; depravatum est voluntatis judicium, non ablatum." §27, Bernard, de grat. et lib. arb.: "Nemo putet ideo dictum liberum arbitrium, quod aequa inter bonum et malum potestate aut facultate versetur, alioqui nec Deus nec angeli, sive boni vel mali, liberi arbitrii esse dicerentur; sed ex eo potius liberum arbitrium dicitur, quod sive in bono sive in malo aeque liberam facit voluntatem, quum nec bonus quispiam nec item malus dici debeat aut esse valeat nisi volens."