# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1860_S295
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Old Testimonies against New Errors concerning the Working etc.                                                    295

...Spirit. Children obtain through baptism the firstfruits of the Spirit and of faith; adults, who have received the firstfruits of faith and of the Spirit, obtain through baptism the increase of the same." (Loc. th. de S. Baptismo § 123.) Gerhard had already written earlier: "When those are baptized who have already been born again through the Word, as the spiritual seed, they do not need regeneration through baptism, but baptism is to them a confirmation and a sealing of the same. Just as (writes Augustine, Book 4, On Baptism, ch. 24) in Abraham the righteousness of faith went before, and circumcision was added as a seal of the righteousness of faith, Romans 4:11, so in Cornelius the spiritual sanctification in the gift of the Holy Spirit went before, and the sacrament of regeneration in the bath of baptism was added." (Loc. th. de Sacramentis. § 106.)

The same [author]: "Bellarmine objects: It is certain that catechumens are not actually (actu) and properly, but only potentially (in potentia), in the Church, just as one who has been conceived but not yet formed and born is called a man only potentially. For we read, Acts 2: Those who gladly received his word were baptized, and were added that day about three thousand souls. I answer: 1. Believing catechumens are either actually in the Church, or they are not saved; there is no third possibility, as we have shown above, because outside the Church there is no ingrafting into Christ, the Head of the Church, no bestowal of the Holy Spirit, and no eternal life. If, then, Bellarmine grants that believing catechumens are saved, he must grant that they are actually in the Church, and not merely according to capacity. 2. Believing catechumens are born of God through the word of truth and faith in Christ; hence they are wrongly compared to an embryo not yet formed and born. The first proposition is plain from the fact that not only is the sacrament of baptism called a bath of regeneration, Titus 3:5, but also that the Word itself is that imperishable seed from which believers are born again, 1 Peter 1:23, James 1:18, and that those who receive Christ in true faith are born of God, John 1:12-13. We therefore reverse the comparison: just as a formed and born child is actually a man, so believing catechumens are actually born of God and therefore also actually in the Church ... As regards baptized children, baptism is that single ordinary means of regeneration and the single door to the Church; but in adult believers baptism does not first work the regeneration of which they have already become partakers beforehand through the Word and faith, but rather seals and confirms the regeneration and increases in them the gifts of the Holy Spirit." (Loc. th. de Ecclesia. § 55.)

Johann Andreas Quenstedt (Johann Gerhard's nephew, professor