# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1861_S328
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

328 Report on the Law.

by mouth himself, so that they may see how it stands written in the heart. For if the natural law had not been written and given by God into the heart, one would have to preach a long time before the conscience were reached at all. One would have to preach to a donkey, a horse, an ox, or a cow for a hundred thousand years before they would accept the law, although they have ears, eyes, and a heart just like a man; they can indeed hear it too, but it does not enter into the heart. Why? What is the defect? The soul is not so formed and created that such a thing could fall into it. But a man, when the law is held before him, says at once: Yes, it is so, I cannot deny it. One could not persuade him of that so quickly, unless it had already been written beforehand in his heart. Because it is already there beforehand in his heart, although dim and quite faded, it is awakened again by the word, so that the heart must confess that it is indeed as the commandments say — that one should honor, love, and serve one God, since he alone is good and does good, and that not to the pious alone, but to the wicked as well; although the devil strongly resists so that man neither feels, recognizes, nor performs it; indeed, man is not even able to do the least of it without the work and light of the Holy Spirit. So then this is a bright, clear indication that these words, with which God here threatens and promises, concern the Jews alone. For he threatens here with a bodily punishment, that he will so punish the father, where he acts against his commandment, that even the child must pay for it, down to the third or fourth generation. But as to the soul, he does not punish in this way, but only bodily and outwardly, as when he punishes someone in house, farmstead, fields and meadows, money and goods; as he did to the pious Job, whom he also attacked in the body, though differently than when he punishes the wicked, of which he speaks here. Likewise, when he shows kindness to a thousand generations, that too is bodily, and amounts to this: I will also do good to children and children's children, not only to the fourth generation, but through many generations and members, so that the house may continue in a good state and the family endure through and through; as David's line endured through many generations down to Joseph and Mary, indeed down to Christ. Conversely, the line of the godless shall be rooted out, as happened to the houses of Jeroboam and Ahab. But in the New Testament this punishment is abolished. For we see how God deals with things, letting the worst, most reckless rascals grow rich, live in all manner of wantonness, and have the best of fortune, so that even the pious take offense and stumble at it. Conversely, he lets the righteous be flayed and scraped, tormented and tortured, sends every misfortune upon their necks, so that it seems to them that everything runs against the current; as David shows quite beautifully in the 78th Psalm. But in the New Testament we have a different threat, namely, there eternal death is threatened us, the wrath of God together with the Last Day, hell, and eternal damnation. Mark 16: He that believeth not shall be damned. John 3: He that believeth not on Christ is condemned already. Likewise, on the other hand, we also have in the New Testament