# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1862_S163
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Report on the Right Mean of the Lutheran Liturgy. 163

preach. It is a service that goes not from Christ to Christ, but from Christ, and that comes not from us, but to us." (Erlangen Edition 7, 79.)

Apology on the Mass: "Sacramentum is a ceremony or outward sign, or a work, by which God gives us that which the divine promise attached to that ceremony offers. As, Baptism is a ceremony and a work, not one that we give or offer to God, but one in which God baptizes us, or his minister in God's stead. There God offers us, and gives us, forgiveness of sin according to his promise: He that believes and is baptized shall be saved. Again, Sacrificium or sacrifice is a ceremony or a work that we give to God, in order to honor him." (Art. 12, p. 206, Berlin Edition. In what follows, the Apology sets forth that the sacrifice of Christians is not a sacrifice of atonement, but purely a sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise for the all-sufficient atoning sacrifice of Christ.)

Luther, Sermon on the New Testament, etc.: "A testament is not beneficium acceptum, sed datum [a benefit received, but given]; it does not take a benefit from us, but brings us a benefit. Who ever heard that he does a good work who receives a testament? He rather takes a benefit to himself. So also in the Mass we give Christ nothing, but only receive from him. Unless one would call it a good work that a man holds still and lets himself be done good to — be given food and drink, be clothed and healed, be helped and released — just as in Baptism, where likewise there is a divine testament and sacrament, no one gives or does good to God, but rather receives something; so too in all the other sacraments (acts), and also in preaching." Erlangen Edition 27, 155.

The same, in that, in his "Exhortation to the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Our Lord, 1530," among the two reasons that should move us to the Sacrament, he designates as the first that which concerns Christ himself, and in doing so rests on the words: "This do in remembrance of me" — says, among other things, as follows: "Learn to remember him — that is (as has been said) to preach, to extol, to praise, to hearken, and to give thanks for the grace shown in Christ. If you do that, behold, then you confess with heart and mouth, with ears and eyes, with body and soul, that you have given God nothing, nor can give him anything, but rather have and receive everything, everything, from him — especially eternal life and boundless righteousness in Christ. Where this happens, there you have made him your true God, and by such confession have upheld his divine honor. For this is what it means to be a true God: one who gives and does not take, who helps and does not let himself be helped, who teaches and rules and does not let himself be taught and ruled. In sum, one who does and gives everything, and needs no one, and does all this for nothing, out of pure grace, without merit on the part of the unworthy and the undeserving — indeed, on the part of the damned and the lost. Such remembrance, confession, and honor he desires to have. Behold, this worship, then, goes forward well enough without any pomp, and does not fill the eyes according to the flesh; but it fills the heart, which otherwise neither heaven