# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1862_S180
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Essay on the Right Mean of the Lutheran Liturgy.    180

The Word and the Sacrament, therefore, also do not come forward as means of grace, through which and in which God, as in vessels, offers and imparts his grace, and is truly present with his Spirit and gifts among his assembled Christians. The Word is regarded merely as a means of stirring the heart, in which man holds himself able to seize the grace from wherever it may come, and in which he first becomes aware that he is near the Lord. Likewise the Supper becomes a mnemonic rite, a memorial meal, which for that reason not only does not invariably follow the proclamation of the Word in the chief service, but is only "celebrated" now and then, in which the consecration is transformed into a mere historical recitation.

Smalcald Articles, Of Confession: "In these matters, so far as they concern the outward, spoken Word, it must be firmly maintained that God gives no one his Spirit or grace except through or with the preceding outward Word. By this we may guard ourselves against the enthusiasts, that is, against spirits who boast that they have the Spirit without and before the Word, and who accordingly interpret, twist, and stretch Scripture or the spoken Word according to their own pleasure, as Müntzer did, and as many still do today who wish to be sharp judges between the Spirit and the letter, and yet know not what they are saying or asserting. For the papacy, too, is nothing but sheer enthusiasm, in that the Pope boasts: All rights lie in the shrine of his heart, and whatever he decides and decrees with his church shall be Spirit and right, even though it be against and contrary to Scripture or the spoken Word." (What a kinship!)

Luther on Deut. 4:28: "Behold, what else do our new sects and fanatics do, than lead people to works? . . . The Anabaptists — what do they do, what do they teach? They say Baptism is nothing; they take clean away from Baptism its grace, so that no grace and mercy of God, no forgiveness of sins, is in it; but only a sign, that you are to be pious, and that you must already be so before you are baptized, etc.; or that Baptism is a sign that you already possess that same piety. They separate grace from Baptism and leave us with a bare outward sign; there is not the smallest spark of grace in it, but it has been cut clean out. If, then, the grace of Christ is entirely gone out of Baptism, there remains a bare work. So too, in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the fanatics take away the promise that is offered to us; they say it is only bread and wine when you eat and drink it. Thus the grace that is offered to us therein is likewise cut away and denied. For thus they teach: You do a good work thereby, if you merely confess Christ; and if you only eat the bread and drink the wine in the Supper, there can be no grace in it at all. . . . Therefore the fanatics also talk a great deal about God, about the forgiveness of sins and the grace of God, and that Christ has died; but as to how I am to obtain Christ, and how grace is to come to me so that I receive it, so that we come together — there they say: The Spirit alone must do it. . . .