# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1882_S13
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 13 —

and grim wrath of God over sin and death neither sees nor recognizes, but goes on continually in his security, even knowingly and willingly, and thereby comes into a thousand perils, at last into eternal death and damnation, and there avails no entreating, no pleading, no admonishing, indeed, no threatening or scolding, indeed all teaching and preaching is lost on him, until he is enlightened, converted and born again by the Holy Spirit. ... But when such a man despises the instrument of the Holy Spirit and will not hear, it is no injustice to him if the Holy Spirit does not enlighten him but lets him remain and perish in the darkness of his unbelief, of which it is written: 'How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!' Matt. 23. And in this case one may well say that man is not a stone or block. For a stone or block does not resist him who moves it, nor understands, nor feels what is being done with it, as a man resists God, the Lord, with his will, so long until he is converted. And although God does not compel man to become godly (for those who at all times resist the Holy Spirit and again and again also set themselves against the known truth, as Stephen speaks of the obstinate Jews, Acts 7, will not be converted), yet God, the Lord, draws the man whom He wills to convert, and draws him so that out of a darkened understanding comes an enlightened understanding, and out of a stubborn will an obedient will. And this Scripture calls 'creating a new heart.'" (Ibid., §§ 6, 7, 18, 19, 21, 58, 59, 60, p. 589 ff.)

That Prof. Schmidt, with this false doctrine of his on free will and conversion, cannot possibly hold the right doctrine of election, but will also reject this as Calvinism and must reject it, and that this his rejection of the right doctrine of election as a Calvinistic error has its ground in nothing other than that false doctrine of his on free will and conversion — all this now lies so open to view that only manifest blindness can deny it. Prof. Schmidt evidently did not first adopt synergistic teachings in order to be able to attack the biblical-confessional doctrine of election with them; but, on the contrary, because Prof. Schmidt either was a synergist from the start or at any rate became one before the controversy, it was not possible otherwise than that, when the biblical Lutheran doctrine of election resounded, it was to him foolishness and an offence. With his synergistic theory it was absolutely irreconcilable that the cause why God has elected and saves a man should lie only in God's grace and not also in the doing of man