# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1894_S27
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1894. 27

ones at Wittenberg can do nothing but preach, exalt the external Word; therefore there follow with them neither faith, love, patience nor other good fruits. But we have the Spirit (they say), who works in us faith, love, patience, contempt of temporal honor and goods, steadfastness in all tribulations, distress and death. They are haughty, presumptuous hypocrites," etc. And in the Smalcald Articles III, 8 Luther speaks thus: "This is all the old devil and old serpent, who made Adam and Eve also into enthusiasts, leads from the external Word of God to spiritualism and self-conceit, and did so too through other external words. Just as our enthusiasts also condemn the external Word and yet do not keep silent themselves, but fill the world with chatter, just as if the Spirit could not come through the Scripture or the spoken word of the apostles, but had to come through their writing and word."

This forcing of God by the enthusiasts has been compared to sorcery, which is to be found in our congregations, even old ones, more often than we think. These sorcerers, blood-stoppers, blowers and charmers say: For bodily help what God puts in our hands (prayer, medicine, physicians) is as good as nothing. Scripture says: All things are possible to him who believes. But faith that trusts God's Word, and plain asking and pleading, accomplishes nothing, according to the opinion of the old sorceresses and charmers, even though one uses the holy name according to God's direction. But the holy names used with the sorcerers' spells and formulas — those do it. They have firm confidence in this, such as they have in no promise of God concerning faith and the prayer of faith. Here the help must come. And since they never want to admit that the healings by their charming are a work of the devil, there remains as their opinion only this: The charmings of the sorcerers and the formulas in which they use the three holy names exert such compulsion and force on God that he must help. Just so enthusiasm. It is the most hideous disobedience, is, as Scripture calls disobedience, a sin of sorcery. Like sorcery in the charming of diseases and similar things, the enthusiasts want to wrest Spirit and spiritual life and heavenly glory from God and force them to themselves.

c. Finally there lies in enthusiasm the most horrifying blasphemy of God. One can hardly blaspheme God more terribly than by declaring: What you say in your Word is not true. The enthusiasts make God a liar. When God says: Through my Word I will give the Spirit, my Word shall not return to me empty, the enthusiasts say: Yes, it stands there, but one cannot do much with it. But that is nothing other than the old devil's word: Hath God said?

So today the hidden enthusiasts say to the words: I do not desire the death of the sinner, I desire that all men be helped,