# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1860_S140
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

140 How the Simple, and Especially the Sick, Are to Be Instructed in Christianity, etc.

Yet sin is forgiven and paid for through the death of Christ, who gave himself for me; for he gave me this as a gift when he gave me his body and blood, through the Word into my hearing and my heart, wherein I have grasped it and believe: and the body too could say: Since I, together with the soul, would also have had to be condemned for the sake of sin, so I too am now, alongside my soul, made partaker of the forgiveness of sins. For to me also the body of Christ is given — Christ, who for the sin for which I too would have had to be condemned and suffer eternal hellish torment — and his blood has been delivered, imparted, and given to me in a manner in which I can receive it, namely in bread and wine. For this bread, which is given me to eat, is the body of Christ, and this draught of wine which I have drunk is the blood of Christ, the very same that was also shed for me and has washed away, paid for, and satisfied for my sin, which I committed in the body and which came to pass through me, and for which I, together with my soul, would also have had to be eternally condemned; so that I, the body, am now also a member of Christ, as St. Paul says, 1 Cor. 6, and a dwelling of the Holy Spirit, bone and flesh of the bone and flesh of Christ. And although my five bodily senses and understanding no longer see, taste, feel, and know anything but the bread and the wine, yet my spirit within me, which gives me life and governs me, hears that this bread and wine are the body and the blood of Christ; so I say rightly, alongside and with my spirit, to God my Redeemer, with whom no word is impossible, together with Mary the Virgin: Be it unto me according to these words of God. Do you now desire, for the strengthening and assurance of this faith and confession, the holy, venerable sacrament? — There let him say: Yes.

15. Since God now so graciously forgives you, for Christ's sake, so many thousand sins, and all the sins in which you were born and have lived until now, and is content with you — indeed becomes a dear, gracious Father — so that now complete and lasting love, friendship, and peace may prevail everywhere, will you now also forgive and pardon your neighbor, wherever he has in any way erred or forgotten himself and offended you, and be a friend to him and at peace with him for God's sake? For what can human vexation and sin amount to against the ten thousand pounds of debt that God forgives us? — There let him say: It is forgiven from the heart.

So God too will forgive you, and there shall thus be peace between God as Father and you as child, and between you and your neighbor as siblings; so that now there is nothing but peace on earth and friendship throughout the whole house of God, and joy in heaven before the angels of God over one sinner who repents and is thus reconciled with God. — There let him say: Amen, or something of the kind.

(Hereupon Myconius lets the Communion follow, and closes the whole rite with the following words:)

Now, dear friend! Behold what goodness and grace our dear LORD God has shown you, in that he has, out of divine, fatherly, gracious...