# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1863_S292
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

292 Some Remarks on a New Apology of the Reformed Church.

knows it must conclude, if only from the fact that this symbol, precisely because it rejects and condemns all synergism, was not accepted by the Philippists of that time, that this symbol must be free of every Pelagianism. The first seeds of the synergism that later shot up so rampantly in our church were sown, as is well known, by none other than Melanchthon, so highly celebrated by the Reformed. In the altered Augsburg Confession, in Article 18, he had written: "that in the working of a spiritual righteousness in us we are assisted by the Holy Spirit."*) In the altered edition of the German Apology: "We affirm, however, that the free will and reason avail nothing at all in spiritual things;" and shortly afterward: "To be inwardly regenerated and renewed in heart and mind, etc. — this the Holy Spirit works;" passages in which the exclusive little word "alone" (namely, of the Holy Spirit alone), which stands in the original edition, has been omitted, while, on the other hand, the negative particle "nothing," which in the first edition denies human powers all power, is in the later, altered edition again so restricted, by the addition of the little word "alone," that the free will in spiritual matters avails only, alone, nothing. In the edition of the Loci which Melanchthon published two years after Luther's death, one finds the definition of the free will already censured by Luther in his letter to Erasmus: "The free will in man is the capacity to apply himself to grace, that is, he hears the promise and strives to assent to it, and lays aside the sins against conscience."**) In the same place it says: "You will say: I cannot obey the voice of the gospel, cannot hear the Son of God, cannot acknowledge the Mediator. I answer: In some measure you can indeed do this, and while you brace yourself up by the voice of the gospel, you must pray that you be assisted by God."†) In the Examen for those to be ordained, in the article on the free will, Melanchthon sets down three causes of conversion, saying: "In the conversion of man these causes concur: the Word of God, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father and the Son send, that he may kindle our hearts, and our assenting will, not resisting the Word of God."††)

*) "Nos adjuvari a Spiritu Sancto in efficienda spirituali justitia in nobis."

**) "Liberum arbitrium in homine est facultas applicandi se ad gratiam h. e. audit promissionem et assentiri conatur et abjicit peccata contra conscientiam."

†) "Non possum, inquies, voci evangelii obtemperare, filium Dei audire, agnoscere mediatorem. Respondeo: Imo, aliquo modo potes et, dum te voce evangelii sustentas, adjuvari te a Deo petito."

††) "Concurrunt in conversione hae causae: verbum Dei, Spiritus Sanctus, quem Pater et Filius mittunt, ut accendat corda nostra, et nostra voluntas assentiens et non repugnans verbo Dei."