# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1894_S17
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1894. 17

. . . . In sum, enthusiasm is lodged in Adam and his children from the beginning to the end of the world, instilled and poisoned into them by the old dragon, and is the origin, strength and power of all heresy, including that of the papacy and of Mohammed. Therefore we should and must insist that God does not want to deal with us human beings except through his external Word and Sacrament. But everything that is boasted of as Spirit apart from such Word and Sacrament is the devil." [Smalcald Articles, continued.]

That, then, is enthusiasm on the soil of the Church. We see this enthusiasm, or spirit of the enthusiasts, appear through all times of the Old Testament and rise up against God's Word. Think only of the story of the golden calf, Exodus 32: "The people said: Make us gods to go before us; for we do not know what has happened to this man Moses who brought us out of Egypt." One perceives the thoughts of the people, which at bottom run this way: Such a God, of whom Moses always only talks and preaches, whom we do not see — will not do; for us a more useful, better worship is, like other peoples, to have visible gods that can be carried ahead, so that one follows, and around which one can gather in joyous festal assemblies. Worship must be so arranged that man has something for the eye. So, to prepare something for the eye out of one's own devotion shall be the watchword; as the Antichrist has also prepared a worship in which the eye is to feast to its heart's content, and by it even exalted spirits have let themselves be bribed, like flies by honey. Other enthusiasts went just to the opposite, like Münzer and Carlstadt and Schwenkfeld. With them it was said, in order to set up the true worship according to their enthusiasm or conceit: Images, altar, organs, ornament and everything external out! worship must be purely spiritual! But it is the same enthusiast spirit that set up the image in the wilderness and that in Wittenberg and elsewhere threw all the images out of the church; never can it stand things as God wants them. If there is to be no image according to God's Word — then it must be precisely an image for the enthusiast spirit. If God says, you may have your church ornament so that the images only hang on the wall, then the enthusiast spirit cries: Away with the images! The enthusiast's thoughts are, after all, the main thing for him. In all the prophets the Lord therefore laments: "You turn away from God," that is, from his Word, through which alone we come to him and remain with him.

The brazen serpent was also mentioned in order to describe enthusiasm in the Old Testament. When God said (Numbers 21): Make yourselves a brazen serpent and raise it up and look at it in faith in my promise and in the coming Messiah, and you will be made well — then the enthusiast heart said: What use is the mere looking to me? Again, God commands (2 Kings 18) the brazen serpent to be broken in pieces, because the children of Israel had burned incense to it up to the time of Hezekiah,