# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1857_S139
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Doctrine of the Election of Grace and Some Matters Connected Therewith, etc. 139

...in its self-decision, shape itself according to its ethical quality. He who had given everything, and desired from the creature only so little — the gratitude of love, by which alone the creature is able to exchange interaction with its Creator, even if only unequally — did He not then deserve that this one affection should govern and order all the other inclinations and powers, referred to the self or to the outer world, in such a way that each one alike should lead only toward Him, and not draw away from Him? Is not the highest and dearest thing a man possesses his life? What is there that he would not do for its sake? Is not God more, and higher, than life — since life exists in Him in the first place, He being more intimately in us than life is, being the life of our life, and will be so in all eternity? The greater a good appears to us, the more we are inclined to love it; God is the eternal highest good — what unspeakable misery, then, what a curse, not to love Him; what madness to cast Him away and to turn the heart from Him through wanton violence; what a depth of wickedness and ruin against the exalted Judge!

Depending on the object by whose stimulation the heart, with its desire, can enter into a certain circle of life's direction — out of which, if it is the wrong one, it is unable to step by its own power, though within it the spirit can still move freely within the domain of its inclinations as thus or otherwise constituted — Scripture and church doctrine, as has already been indicated, distinguish between the bondage and the freedom of the liberum arbitrium (ad objectum; Gerhard, loc. de lib. arb., §15), and speak, with regard to the fallen, of a servum arbitrium, inasmuch as the faculty of self-determination, overcome and enslaved by evil, is no longer to be found outside the bounds of this its slavery, but only still within its domain; and when it seems, or outwardly does, the good, that good is, in a certain measure, not the product of its own determining fundamental inclination, but of a compulsion, a necessitating influence of the divine Law — moved by which one suppresses what could only betray the secret inner contradiction, hostility, and reluctance toward its full content, and, in the delusion of self-deception, ascribes the fruit to itself as a free good work, whereas it is rather only the work of that "Thou shalt," which stirs up in us the affection either of fear or of self-loving desire for reward: the evil free will hates God's judgment, and is a servant of sin and of the Law. Augustine, Enchiridion, c. 30: "Servi addicti quae potest esse libertas, nisi quando eum peccare delectat? Liberaliter servit, qui sui domini voluntatem libenter facit; et per hoc ad peccandum liber est, qui peccati servus est." Cf. Augsburg Confession, Art. 18. To this condition the libertas spiritus, in the state of grace, forms the opposite — concerning which the aforementioned great teacher of the church likewise says, Contra Pelagianos 3:8: "Liberum arbitrium captivatum nonnisi ad peccatum valet, ad justitiam vero nisi divinitus liberatum adjutumque non valet." Cf. Formula of Concord, Epitome, IV, affirmativa 5, 7, 8. See 2 Peter 2:19; John 8:34, 32, 36; Romans 6:14, 16; Galatians 4:5.

(To be continued.)