# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 05 24_S169
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall never pass away."

Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States.

Volume 4.

St. Louis, Mo., June 27, 1848.

Only letters containing contributions for the paper are to be sent to the editor; all others, however — containing business matters, subscriptions, cancellations, money, etc. — are to be sent here under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

Conversations between two Lutherans on Methodism.

Second Conversation.
The Doctrine and Manner of the Methodists.
(Continued.)

Martin. This pretense is a long-standing custom of those factions of faith which deviate, precisely in important articles of the confession and the doctrine of salvation, from the old evangelical-apostolic church faith (which by God's grace has come again to light in the confessional writings of our church, against papism and fanatical spirits) either to the right or to the left. It is simply an enticing sign for curious visitors, and bait to catch fish. But, friend Philip, where does such wisdom come to you from? I have never before seen you in such churchly zeal.

Philip. That comes quite simply from the fact that I followed your advice and have diligently taken up the Small and Large Catechism.

Foolish and arrogant fellow that I formerly was, I thought this was only for schoolchildren and confirmands; but the more faithfully and carefully I have lately applied myself to it, the more I too have the experience of Luther, who says (in the preface to the Large Catechism) that he diligently practices the catechism and yet must remain a child and pupil of the catechism, and gladly remains one.

Martin. Would to God our dear countrymen and fellow believers here in this land did the same, especially those who have no preachers, or no believing preachers, or no preachers grounded in the church; then the fanatical and flighty spirits of whatever kind would not make particular conquests among them, if they thus remained in what has already been entrusted to them by the fathers for more than three centuries.

Philip. But if, for the Methodists, as for the Reformed in general, baptism is nothing other than an empty sign and picture of regeneration, without itself essentially and causally working this as a means of grace of the Holy Spirit, then what does it mean in Article 16, "Of the Sacraments," that "God works through them in us in an invisible way, and not only quickens our faith in Him, but also strengthens and confirms it"? For you said a moment ago that this is what the Methodists teach in that little book. Since they hold baptism to be a sacrament, they seem indeed to ascribe to it this very effect — to quicken, strengthen, and confirm faith.

Martin. So indeed it seems; but first, you yourself will hear little or nothing of this effect in their oral preaching; second, the expression concerning this effect of baptism is far too general and indefinite, and corresponds to no single scriptural expression of the effect of holy baptism — for example, every particular answer to prayer, every individual deliverance or preservation of body and soul, is for those already believing a quickening and strengthening of faith. But finally — and this is the main point — this expression improperly already presupposes faith, and consequently also presupposes what faith, as the hand and mouth of the soul, lays hold of, namely the forgiveness of sins, the putting on of Christ, in short, regeneration.

But according to those passages — such as Acts 2:38, Galatians 3:27, Titus 3:5, John 3:5 — which you cited by name earlier, these gifts of grace and salvation are derived precisely from the effect of baptism, which imparts them to the individual after Christ has earned and merited them for all; hence baptism, as the divine means of conveying grace, must be present before faith, the human means of receiving it — not the reverse, as those words of the Methodists invert the divine order of salvation.

Philip. But where then do the Methodists get faith — that is, properly, the grace of God and the merit of Christ which faith lays hold of — since they refuse to have this through baptism, which is supposed only to strengthen and quicken anew what is already present? What does their doctrine say about this in that little book?

Martin. Nothing; not a single article deals with the appropriation of salvation or with the divine means of grace. That is precisely what I called earlier the first defect of those twelve little pages — that several important articles of the doctrine of salvation are entirely missing. And so there is likewise not a word about the preaching office, or about the fact that God alone, through the Gospel and the holy Sacraments, gives the Holy Spirit and true faith in Christ, as our Augsburg Confession clearly testifies in the fifth article.

In their oral preaching, on the other hand, they do not fail to testify that faith comes from preaching, and in this they are right, for the Apostle himself testifies to it, Romans 10:17. But in this they are wrong, and with them the Reformed in general, that they take from baptism what the Lord has given it, as we have seen before, and give this taken-away thing, as it were, to preaching instead. Hence it comes that they hold preaching alone to be an essential and effective means of grace of the Holy Spirit, which effects regeneration and sanctification, while baptism and the Lord's Supper are held to be only external pictures and signs, which as such do not essentially convey any good of salvation. This tearing apart and disruption of the divine order for the appropriation of salvation in Christ has a root just as evil as the fruits it bears. That root is the unbelief that in and with the water, bread, and wine, by virtue of the word of promise of the almighty Lord Jesus Christ, the promised heavenly good — that is to say, in short, Christ, crucified and risen for us, together with all that he is and has — is essentially and truly conveyed and received. But the evil fruits are: 1. an overestimation of preaching, although they give no credence to the proclamation and promise of the Lord himself at the institution of the holy Sacraments; 2. an underestimation of the latter, in that they ascribe their effects to preaching;