# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1894_S10
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

10 Proceedings of the fifteenth convention

The manifold methods of the enthusiasts for wanting to obtain the Holy Spirit without the Word are of old date and well known to Luther. He often comes to speak of them, especially in his treatise against the heavenly prophets. "The new prophets have now, instead of the Word, invented a new kind of spirit, new vanities of words, with which they lead the common people by the nose. . . . When the Word is now heard, the Holy Spirit is given, who through faith purifies the heart, Romans 10: 'Faith comes from preaching,' certainly not to all who listen, but to whom God wills. For the wind blows where it wills, not where we will. . . . This order the new prophets leave out and proceed as follows. First they seize upon mortification. This they divide into many steps or burdens, to which they give all sorts of names (coarseness-shedding, astonishment, study, boredom, emptying of the creature). And they give righteousness to no one unless he has come through these steps to complete mortification; then they are filled with the Holy Spirit, so that they can do all things, know all things and will all things. For the Holy Spirit does not come to them through the preaching of the Word, which they boldly despise, but through mortification. . . . Therefore you see the devil here openly, in that they begin with mortification, which ought to follow after Word, faith and Spirit, and meanwhile despise the Word, and in that they end their business with the Spirit, who ought to go first of all." (IV, 159 ff.) Further: "But when one asks them: How does one come into that same high Spirit? Then they do not point you to the external Gospel, but to the land of Cockaigne, and say: Stand in boredom as I have stood, then you will experience it; the heavenly voice will come and God himself will speak with you. If you ask further about the boredom, they know as much about it as Dr. Carlstadt knows of Greek and Hebrew." (XIX, 186 ff.) And then Luther once more cites the enthusiasts' method of mortification, which is supposed to help to the Spirit, "the new way of killing the old man, and they invent here coarseness-shedding, study, astonishment, boredom, and more of such juggling, of which not a word stands in Scripture." Now one does indeed hear what is meant by these things. Luther himself cites several. About coarseness-shedding (*Entgröbung*), for example, he says: "The monks called the working life (as opposed to the contemplative) that which consists in a man keeping the evil lusts and desires in check and restraining them, and outwardly leading his life rightly with good conduct, through fasting and mortification of the flesh, etc. . . . which the sectarian spirit Münzer calls shedding coarseness." (II, 805.) Münzer says: Thereby comes the true fear of God. How, then, does God, how does the Spirit come into the heart? Of this Münzer says: He comes down from above in a high astonishment. This state he also calls bore-