# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1860_S289
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lehre und Wehre.
Volume VI.    October 1860.    No. 10.

Old Testimonies against New Errors Concerning the
Effect of Holy Baptism.

After for a longer time everything had been swallowed up by a false subjectivism, so that the means of grace, Word and Sacrament, were counted as nothing, while regard was paid solely to what man does and what goes on within him, many who have recognized that aberration have now fallen into the opposite error, into a false objectivism, and ascribe to the sacraments, in particular, an effect which they do not have. Among these errors, one in particular is more and more gaining the upper hand, and threatens that the last will be worse than the first — namely, that Baptism is the sole entrance into the kingdom of heaven and the sole means of regeneration, and that therefore no one can have justifying and saving faith before Baptism.

It is time that, against this error of our age, which disparages the means of grace of the Word, and which seeks to become dominant especially among those who wish to be truly decided Lutherans, powerful testimony be borne, and that this error be set forth and demonstrated in its erroneousness and its danger, and so be repelled and overcome by the weapon of the Word of God.

For the present we wish to communicate to our readers at least a few testimonies of the old, acknowledged, orthodox teachers of our Church, which put it beyond doubt, to begin with, that this doctrine of Baptism is altogether new in the Lutheran Church and hitherto unheard of, indeed already combated by that very Church.

I. Testimonies from the Symbolical Books.

The Smalcald Articles say: "We will now come back to the Gospel, which gives counsel and help against sin not in one way only*) — for God is overflowingly

*) "Counsel and help," or the gift of grace, is thus always the same, which is given through the Word, Baptism, the Lord's Supper, Absolution, etc., namely grace, forgiveness of sin, righteousness, redemption from death and the devil, the Holy Spirit, sonship, life and salvation; but the manner and way in which God gives this counsel and help, these gifts of grace, differs.

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