# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S50
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

48 Proceedings of the tenth convention

Christian may think: If my pastor misleads me, he will have to answer for it. It is true that the latter is so, but whoever wants to be saved must live by his own faith. Therefore, dear Christians, consider well, as dear as your salvation is to you, so needful is it for you to study in God's Word yourselves, so that you may become mature and stand firm as pillars, even if you may not all have the gift of proving your doctrine to others and refuting error. For this gift not only do many laymen not possess, but even many preachers only in a small degree. But every individual Christian should come to this, that he can say: I do not believe the preacher because he says it, but because I have found this doctrine in God's Word. And since a Christian should seek the kingdom of God before all things, let no one say: I have no time to sit over books. This time you must take, for you must come to the point that you become so certain of your faith from God's Word that you can say: And if all our pastors fell away from this doctrine, we would nevertheless remain by it.

Luther describes faith also thus: "Faith is a living, daring confidence in God's grace, so certain that he would die for it a thousand times." (Preface to the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans. XIV, 115.)

Everyone should therefore examine himself well whether he stands so in his doctrine and faith that he would die for it a thousand times. Such a faith the dear martyrs had. Had it been only a conjecture, they would certainly not have let themselves be thrown to the wild beasts and torn to pieces by them; but they were certain: If I die now, I come to God in heaven and see his glory. Now there is indeed no persecution, but everyone should see whether, if a persecution were to break in now, his faith would then stand this test.

Further Luther writes: "The Holy Spirit is no Skepticus" (that was among the heathen a philosophical sect whose principle was to doubt everything); "he has not written an uncertain delusion into our heart, but a mighty great certainty, which lets us not waver and (God willing) will not let us waver, but (God be praised!) makes us as certain as we are certain that we now naturally live, or that two and three are five." (That Free Will Is Nothing. XVIII, 2066.)

If someone wanted to prove to me that I was not alive at all, that I only imagined it, could he make me doubt? Surely not. I feel indeed that I live. Nobody will be able to make a schoolboy of ten years believe that two and three are six. So it should also be with our faith. I should be exactly as certain that my doctrine is right as I am certain that I live.

Quenstedt therefore writes: "The divine revelation is the first and last principle of holy theology, beyond which there is