# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S56
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

54 Proceedings of the tenth convention

rather: "You have heard." Christ is therefore speaking of the so-called oral traditions of the ancients. Therefore, when Christ says: "You shall not kill," he is not citing the words of Moses as such, even though they sound exactly alike. Christ cites these words so bare rather in order to show that the ancients had taken and interpreted them only in their crude sense. For they said: "If you do not strike a man dead with your hand, you have kept the fifth commandment. If you do not live in shame with another's wife, you have kept the sixth commandment. If you do not swear outright falsely, that is, swear to a lie, you have kept the eighth commandment; nothing more is forbidden in it." In short, the Lord deals with the handed-down distortions of the ten commandments, in order first of all to cleanse the teaching of the law of them. Chemnitz also draws attention to this when he writes: "This whole passage: 'You have heard that it was said to those of old,' etc., has been obscured, indeed horribly perverted, by those who held that Christ set this explanation of his against the law itself. . . But the words of which Christ says that they were said to those of old are not to be regarded as taken from Moses; they are rather those with which the expounding scribes were accustomed to present their traditions concerning the law to the people or to their hearers; hence he says: 'You have heard.' For the Pharisees, in order to confirm righteousness by works, presented the fulfilment of the law not only as possible but as so easy that according to their traditions they could do much more, Luke 18:11, 12, and perverted the knowledge of sin from the law in various ways. These perversions Christ removes, and restores the light to the true interpretation of the law." (Harmon. ev. ad l. c. [Chemnitz, Harmony of the Gospels, on this place])

The papists, namely, are those who say that Christ is here speaking of the law of Moses, and that when he goes on: "But I say to you," etc., he thereby gave a sharper law than Moses; in the Old Testament God was content if one only did not grossly transgress the ten commandments; but in the New Testament a sharper law is now set up, indeed so sharp that it is quite impossible for an ordinary man to keep it; those heavy demands were at bottom only counsels, which only he need keep who wants to be perfect. For, for example, to love one's enemies, to live wholly chaste, that could only be done by a monk or one otherwise specially favoured, who does more than the ten commandments require of him.

Unfortunately in our church, too, the law has not always been expounded in its sharpness, but has been greatly weakened especially in one point. When, for example, the principle was laid down: "Love begins with oneself," that is a sentence which in the end the whole