# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1894_S23
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1894. 23

prescriptions of exalted spirituality and spiritual life, for which the Church was not ripe on the lower stages. Here we have a halved enthusiasm — namely, the norm of perfect morality is not the perfect law of God, but rather a new revelation of perfect precepts.

In the fourth century there was in Asia Minor the sect of the Euchites, also called Adelphians. According to their enthusiasm every person is born in a state of bondage under the demons. To free oneself from it, the means of grace do not give man the power, but through persistent prayer the entrance of the Holy Spirit into the heart is brought about, to the degree that the person filled with the Spirit sees the Trinity with his eyes.

From the Middle Ages the Brethren of the Free Spirit are to be named as representatives of enthusiasm, of whom, however, more will be said under Thesis II. At all times of the Church, then, there was enthusiasm.

3. The Church May at No Time Think Herself Secure from Enthusiasm.

This statement must appear to us already as well founded by experience. We have, after all, convinced ourselves that enthusiasm has visited and assailed the Church at all times. We also have no guarantee that we are safe from it. However well things may stand with us, and however much right there may be to speak of a flourishing state of affairs among us, we do not want to forget that in the most glorious times of bloom of the Church, in the time of the apostles and in the time of the Reformation, enthusiasm also flourished most luxuriantly. Above all, however, the clear Word of God impresses this warning upon us emphatically: Do not think yourselves secure from enthusiasm. Precisely for these last times the Lord himself says, and all the apostles proclaim, that enthusiasm will be in vogue. By this four points are to be impressed upon us:

a. We must not think that the forms of enthusiasm are exhausted, that enthusiasm was long since there in its most alluring forms. No, we should be prepared that enthusiasm can appear in a quite different form from the one we have come to know so far.

b. Nor should we imagine: We know the whole arsenal, all the weapons of the enthusiasts. The father of enthusiasm, the devil, can very well find new, much more dangerous ones beside the old weapons of attack. "Great might and much craft are his cruel armor; on earth is not his equal."