# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1860_S292
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

seek, grasp, and receive the grace of God in Christ; this same God has also ordained a certain means or instrument through which he wills to offer and impart the benefits of his Son, our Mediator, to our salvation, so that faith may have a certain means and may know in what it may seek and receive grace and salvation. Such a means or instrument of God is now the preached, heard, considered, and by faith grasped Word of the Gospel. Rom. 10. Justifying faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the Word. Rom. 1. The Gospel is a power of God to save all who believe in it. John 5. Truly, truly, I say unto you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has everlasting life, etc. Since, then, God offers and imparts through the Word, and faith in the Word likewise grasps and receives not something half and insufficient, but the grace which is necessary to salvation, so that the Gospel is a power of God to save all who believe in it — the question arises what the use of the sacraments is, or for what causes God has added the outward ceremonies of the sacraments, by his own institution, to the promise of the Gospel. And indeed there are not a few people, some fanatical, some irreligious, who both think and also declare aloud that the use of the sacraments is superfluous and unnecessary. Even the minds of the godly are often assailed by such thoughts: since God, through the Word, offers and imparts everything necessary to salvation, and since faith can find and grasp this in the Word, what need is there of the sacraments? The use of the sacraments, therefore, could be neglected without harm to salvation. To such temptations, or to such an outcry of the fanatics, it is indeed rightly opposed, from God's Word, that the sacraments which God himself has instituted, being helps to our salvation, are by no means to be regarded as useless or superfluous, so that they could be neglected and despised without scruple. For rightly does Augustine say, against Faustus, Bk. 19, ch. 11: The power of the sacraments is of ineffably great importance, and therefore it makes those who despise them profaners of holy things. This, however, must be diligently explained from God's Word, so that both the doctrine may be rightly understood and the true use of the sacraments held in high esteem and earnestly loved. As far, then, as God is concerned, he thereby offers and imparts that grace of his which is necessary to salvation, so that faith can find in that object or means everything necessary to salvation. And indeed (as Chrysostom says) if we were angels, we would need no further sign at all. But the weakness of the flesh hinders, disturbs, distracts, and weakens faith. For it is a hard and difficult thing to cling, with firm confidence of heart, to that which is set forth in the Word although it does not come into appearance, Heb. 11, indeed to believe against hope in hope, Rom. 4, since indeed in this life the heart