# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1860_S291
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Old Testimonies against New Errors Concerning the Effect, etc. 291

II. Testimonies from the Private Writings of Old, Acknowledged, Orthodox Teachers of Our Church.

Luther: "But Christ lets it be enough that in the first part of this saying (Mark 16:16) he says: He who believes and is baptized; and in the other: But he who does not believe, etc., he does not repeat the Baptism — because, to be sure, with the first part enough is indicated, and elsewhere further is commanded concerning it, as in Matt. 28:19. And it does not follow from this that one may therefore neglect Baptism, or that it is enough that someone should wish to pretend he had faith and did not need Baptism. For whoever becomes a Christian and believes will surely also gladly receive such a sign, in order that he may have both — such a divine testimony and confirmation of his salvation — with him, and may thereby strengthen and comfort himself throughout his whole life, and that he may also openly confess this before all the world. For to a Christian both parts belong, as Paul says, Rom. 10:10: With the heart to believe before God and in oneself, and with the mouth to confess before the world. Although it can happen that someone may also believe even though he is not baptized, and again that some receive Baptism who yet do not truly believe. Therefore one must understand this text in such a way that Baptism is hereby commanded and confirmed as something one should not despise but use, as has been said; and yet not stretched so tightly that anyone should therefore be condemned who could not come to Baptism. And in sum: from this text proceed these four propositions: 1. That some believe and are baptized — which is in general the command of Christ and the rule which one is to teach and hold. 2. Some believe and are not baptized. 3. Some do not believe and yet are baptized. 4. Some do not believe and are also not baptized. This distinction the text itself gives. (And to the first two belongs, as has been said, that part of this saying, the affirmation or promise of salvation, where he says: He shall be saved.) And it has always been held in agreement that if anyone believed and yet died unbaptized, he would not on that account be condemned; for it may indeed happen that someone believes, and although he desires Baptism, is overtaken by death before he can receive it (as can sometimes happen with young children, before or during or even after their birth, who nevertheless have already been offered to Christ and commended to him beforehand through the faith and prayer of their parents or others; whom he also, according to his own words — Let the little children come unto me, etc. — receives without doubt). But in those other two cases, of those who do not believe, whether God grants that they be baptized or not, the judgment is pronounced that they must be condemned.)" (Church Postil on the Gospel for the Day of Christ's Ascension, XI, 1332–4.)

Chemnitz: "God, who has ordained that the satisfaction of his Son should be the merit and the acquiring of our salvation, who has also ordained that faith should be, as it were, our hand with which we