# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1860_S297
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Old Testimonies against New Errors concerning the Working etc.                                                    297

Johann Paul Hebenstreit (professor at Jena, died 1719): "When I taught in the thesis that regeneration, in the strictest and most proper sense so called, is that act by which God first effectually imparts justifying faith to a person who does not yet believe and is wholly dead in sins, I thereby indicated that adult persons can, properly speaking, be born again through the Word without baptism, and that therefore regeneration, in the most properly so-called sense, is of a twofold kind: the one, by which faith (namely in adults) is first kindled through the mere read or heard Word without baptism; the other, by which faith is first produced through baptism (namely in children). ... Against this the first objection is made: if adults can be truly born again by means of the Word without baptism, then something absurd follows, a dogma opposed to Christ's own words, John 3:5 (Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God) — namely, that a man who is not baptized could be saved. But this dogma (understood in the sense in which it flows from our assertion, that adults can be truly born again by means of the Word without baptism) is by no means absurd, nor is it contrary to the stated saying of the Savior. For one asserts neither anything absurd nor speaks against Christ's words and institution when one says that an adult person who is indeed converted and has the true faith that lays hold of Christ's merit, and who also had the intention of receiving baptism, but, overtaken by death, could not attain his wish and could not receive baptism, is saved by an extraordinary way of salvation. For whoever believes in the Son of God does not perish, but has eternal life, John 3:16. Also, it is not the lack but the contempt of the sacrament that condemns. Nor do the Savior's words cited from John 3:5 in the objection contradict our dogma. For these are to be understood only of the ordinary way of salvation, and insofar as they exclude unbaptized adults from the kingdom of heaven, they concern especially the godless despisers of baptism. Hence Augustine, speaking of the salvation of certain adults who did not receive the sacrament of baptism in New Testament times, evidently expresses the same opinion when he writes, in The City of God, Book 13, ch. 7: "For all who, even without having received the bath of regeneration, die for the confession of Christ, it avails as much for the forgiveness of sins as if they had been washed by the holy fountain of baptism. For he who said: Except a man be born again of water and the Spirit, he shall not enter the kingdom of God, has by another saying made exception of those of whom he said no less universally: Whoever confesses me before