# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1857_S198
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

198 On the Doctrine of the Election of Grace and Some Matters Connected with It, etc.

...Matthew 23:37. Compare Acts 6:10 with 7:51; 18:6 with 2 Corinthians 10:4ff.; Psalm 95:7ff.; Matthew 11:20-24. The upright Leipzig theologian Hülsemann disentangles the point at issue with singular aptness in his Disput. III de auxil. grat., p. 301: "Quaestio orthodoxorum adversus Calvinianos haec est: an positis ex parte Dei omnibus ad conversionem requisitis, gratia praeveniente, excitante, efficaci, et si quid porro ex parte causae superioris necessarium fuerit, homini convertendo liberum maneat non converti, an vero convertatur modo irresistibili? Haec quaestio non est aequipollens illi: an positis ex parte Dei omnibus ad conversionem requisitis homini liberum sit converti? Nam libertas non converti et libertas converti, etiam positis divinis requisitis, manant ex diversis principiis. Libertas non converti manat ex principio homini connaturali; libertas autem converti manat ex principio supernaturali, praeveniente scilicet gratia." It is impossible to evade the finger of God when it merely knocks at the door; but when He is willing to open it, He can let Himself be turned away. Therefore Quenstedt distinguishes, vol. III, p. 498: "Fit illa ab infidelitate ad fidem traductio 1) vi supernaturali et divina — minime vero per moralem suasionem vires liberi arbitrii supponentem et congruam ingenio eorum, quos efficaciter trahere Deus decrevit. — 2) Actione non irresistibili, sed resistibili, Proverbs 1:24; Isaiah 5:1, 2, 4; 65:2; Ezekiel 12:2; Matthew 23:37; Luke 7:30; John 5:40, 43; 12:37; Acts 7:51; 13:46; 26:27, 29. Quod ad primos motus a gratia praeveniente excitatos attinet, sunt illi quidem inevitabiles, quia non possunt impediri, ne oriantur, non tamen irresistibiles, quia ne radices agant, impediri, immo plane suffocari possunt, cf. Luke 4:22, 28; Acts 24:25; 26:28." And giving light and measure concerning Luther are his words on Genesis 22:18 (vol. I, p. 150f.): "God greets all the world, but few thank Him; still it remains true that they are all blessed, that is, it is offered and set before them all; but that not all become Christians comes of this, that they refuse such wholesome blessing, indeed for the most part persecute it."

The analogy of faith is the bond between the several members or parts of Christian doctrine, whereby they appear as such saving truths, without which the whole cannot stand and in which the whole is mirrored. It is not the subjective measure, although the confessor of Christianity possesses everything that he knows with divine conviction as an anointing of the Spirit only in the faith by which he believes; for every particular article of the faith which he believes, or of the body of doctrine, he ought, when it comes into question, to judge not merely by those parts of which he already has a firm certainty, but chiefly by that excellent proportion according to which all the articles that have been handed down to us by the holy Christian Church as the sum of the objective faith received from the first preachers of the Gospel — preserved and normed by the written Word of the prophets and apostles — stand toward one...