# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1861_S83
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Report on the Preaching of the Correct Doctrine of Justification. 83

For here and there in Germany, Lutheran teachers, in combating the inwardly work-driven Pietism and its morbid deformation, have unfortunately not returned to the confession of their own church in order to wage the fight from that ground, and to demonstrate, precisely from the scriptural doctrine of justification, the pestilent character of this Pietism.

Instead, in combating the feeling-based self-activity and cooperation of Pietism — which does indeed push the means of grace ordained by God, and especially the sacraments, into the background — they have fallen into the opposite error of pushing these so far into the foreground that they teach concerning them in an almost Papist manner, and thereby likewise decisively damage and corrupt the doctrine of justifying faith.

They maintain, namely, mistakenly, that the sacraments work salvation even without the faith of the recipient, simply as an accomplished divine act. This, however — with regard first of all to Baptism — stands flatly against the clear Word of God, which, in the promise the Lord attaches to Baptism, runs thus: "He who believes and is baptized shall be saved." From this it is plain that faith is necessary for the salutary use of Baptism, and that to have oneself baptized without faith — being, by reason of unbelief, a contempt and mockery of God — can only work harm and ruin, and must only sharpen the judgment upon the unbelieving baptized person, should he die in that state without repenting. It is, therefore, a blasphemous and fanatical assertion that even in a fallen and unbelieving baptized person something of grace still clings (as if by magic), whereas Christ says: "He who does not believe (whether he be baptized or not) shall be condemned." Rather, the matter stands thus: a baptized unbeliever is doubly a member of the devil, whereas the unbaptized unbeliever is so only singly — for which reason the eternal punishment of the former will also be sharper than that of the latter, should he depart in unbelief. Yet the former does indeed have this advantage over the latter, that on God's side the covenant of grace still stands firm for him, and a genuine conversion, in repentance and faith, still remains open to him.

Likewise, with regard to the Holy Supper, Holy Scripture testifies in express words that whoever receives it unworthily, that is, unbelievingly, becomes guilty of the body and blood of the Lord, and partakes of both to his judgment. He does, indeed, receive the same body and blood of Christ as the believer does, but, precisely because of his unbelief, not as his Savior, but as his Judge — whom he has likewise despised and mocked by such an unbelieving or unworthy partaking, and who will therefore, should he persist in unbelief to the end, experience all the harsher torment in eternal, hellish damnation.

Finally, those erroneous and harmful assertions of a, as it were, magical or mechanical salutary working of the sacraments, even apart from the faith of the recipient, run contrary to the general rule of faith of Holy Scripture, and accordingly also contrary to the confession of the Lutheran