# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1894_S35
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1894. 35

b. Thomas Münzer, born in 1490 at Stolberg in the Harz, was a gross enthusiast because he rejected Scripture and Sacrament as mediators of the Holy Spirit. His method of obtaining the Spirit was the already described coarseness-shedding and stripping and boredom. The wild degeneration of his enthusiasm is sufficiently known from history. Whoever, like Luther, makes all faith depend only on the written Word, interferes, according to Münzer, with the Holy Spirit's trade.

c. Andreas Carlstadt also drew from the old mystics. His appearance became all the worse and more dangerous once he became acquainted with Münzer. Luther describes his spiritism as gross enthusiasm (VIII, 234): "For one knows not only what the monks let themselves dream, who prepared themselves for it by fasting and praying" (for the reception of the Spirit in the manner of the mystics) "; but also the opinion and conceit of those enthusiasts, Thomas Münzer, Carlstadt, etc. For these boasted before others that they alone had the pure doctrine, they despised the preaching office, which God has ordained in his Church and also maintained continually, wanted to do better, crept into corners, speculated and juggled with self-chosen enthusiasm." Now one might think this judgment of Luther's is not apt, since Carlstadt had his time when he stood so entirely on Scripture that he wanted every letter carried out, even in Moses and in the precepts of the apostles. This led him indeed to iconoclasm. Yet with Carlstadt it was only a change of method for the enthusiast spirit that ruled him. First he fell into a quite unscriptural literalism, in order to carry out the ideals of his enthusiasm concerning the pure Church and the right Christian life. Afterwards his method was emancipation from Scripture, with his own spirit led into the truth without means by the Spirit. The light of the Bible falls with Carlstadt through a glass, that is, through his enthusiastic understanding, which finally leads to ecclesiastical anarchy. By the fact that Carlstadt wanted the New Testament Church to be led and governed according to God's precepts for the Old Testament household, he proved that he conducted the Word of God in an enthusiastic fashion, as God does not want it conducted.

d. Caspar Schwenckfeldt, of Ossig, was born in Silesia in the year 1490, was thus also a contemporary of Luther. He stamps himself as a gross enthusiast by asserting that spiritual knowledge comes not through the Word of God but through mystical contemplation and absorption. He expressly rejects the necessity and efficacy of the means of grace. Faith is given without means. The way to it is spiritual feeling, the inner sensibility of grace. For this to come about, man must be quite free of all things and removed from all creatures. Then he becomes a partaker of the inward speaking of grace and of the Spirit. From this is explained