# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 07 05_S190
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

and conversion of sinners as exceedingly excellent and precious.

c. that they like to call everything "outside" that is not called Methodist, and look down rather pityingly on believers who are not Methodists, as if to say: One thing you still lack — become a Methodist!

d. that they place an exaggerated value and emphasis on their individual pangs of sin and struggles of repentance, feelings of faith, and joys of faith, and already regard these as the genuine and true evangelical state of grace.

e. that they apply this skewed and one-sided standard of conversion everywhere, as though everyone had to come to Christ the way David, Peter, and Paul did, and not also the way Joseph and John did.

f. that they therefore regard all slow and gradual conversions with haughty suspicion.

g. that they imagine they must come, so to speak, to the aid of the divine means of grace of the Holy Spirit — the pure preaching of the Gospel and the proper administration of the holy sacraments — through their humanly devised institutions of conversion and efforts at revival (in No. 5), in order to fix firmly the wholesome impressions of the Word of God and drive people quickly to a decision, as though all plants grew out of the earth overnight, like mushrooms.

h. that they accordingly ascribe to man a cooperation for and in conversion, alongside the Gospel and the holy sacraments, thereby setting up, as it were, a new law of circumcision within their apparatus of conversion and repentance, and, like new Jews under the guise of the Gospel, obscure and diminish the free grace of God, the sole merit of Christ, and the sole efficacious means of grace of the Holy Spirit.

All this, however, from a through h, comes from pride and leads to pride.

2. The production of a diseased and womanish Christianity of feeling.

This becomes evident, however, from the following:

a. that they cling more to the emotional impressions which the preached or written Word of God, in Law and Gospel, arouses in them than to this Word itself.

b. that they therefore stand in great danger of seeking the ground and source of their blessedness more in their inner experience of Christ, by means of the Gospel, than outside themselves — in the person and the work of redemption of Christ, and in the Word of God and the holy sacraments, which impart Christ and his work to souls desirous of salvation.

c. that they accordingly judge the character of their repentance and their faith more by their inward pains and joys than by the firm and unchangeable laws and promises of God in his Word, and by the fruits and works of their life and conduct.

d. that they esteem the abundant and varied chatter about these inward, at times rather petty, sufferings and joys more highly than the quiet, steadfast, and manly walk in the Lord.

e. that they make the greater or lesser amount of this believing chatter and prattle in others the standard for judging their conversion.

f. that in their praying they place a particular value on their kneeling, sighing, and groaning, and all similar outward gestures, and, instead of keeping their eyes believingly fixed solely on God's command and promise in this matter, seem to regard this subtle outward discipline as contributing to their being heard.

g. that they like to strive after a renewal of their earlier enjoyments of grace, and admire themselves in them, bask in them, and flirt with themselves in a womanish and sentimental manner.

h. that with all this praying, singing, chattering, running and racing, snatching and nibbling, pressing and driving, groaning and shouting for joy, boasting and complaining, they nevertheless have no steadfast heart, according to Hebrews 13:9 and Psalm 73:23–26; for since, as is evident from 1 and 2, a through h, they place their trust partly in themselves — that is, in their feelings, exercises, and institutions, such as, for example, pangs of sin, exertions in prayer, anxious benches, and the like — as though this contributed to and cooperated in their conversion and justification, it is clear that they likewise place their trust only partly in the grace of God, the merit of Christ, and the means of grace of the Holy Spirit.

Just ask, for instance, a thorough but honest Methodist, on his best knowledge and conscience, hand on heart, which he considers more essential and more effective for conversion: holy baptism, the work of God (for the sake of which the Holy Spirit, through the Word of God, grants the covenant-breaking man grace for conversion and renewal), or the anxious bench and No. 5 in general, the work of man? Ask him further which strengthens his faith more: the simple partaking of the holy Lord's Supper, even without any special "blowing of the Spirit," or the spectacle of a stormy anxious-bench conversion? Ask him finally whether he expects more fruit and effect from the simple, believing use of the holy Our Father, no matter when, how, or where it is prayed, or from his kneeling, free, heartfelt, and crying-out prayer? And I fear he will decide, in all three cases, for the latter.

And from this come two things: namely, in good times, when no particular outward or inward distress presses upon them, they easily become secure and self-satisfied, and neglect diligently to contemplate the holy Law of God in order to examine the state of their repentance and their good works in and upon themselves; but in evil times, when tribulation, dryness, and anguish come upon them, they easily become despondent and downcast, and neglect earnestly to use the dear Gospel in order to establish their weak and wavering faith upon its comforting and unchangeable promises in Holy Scripture, which are all Yea and Amen in Christ. And so they lack the steadfast heart.

3. The production of an immature and fanatical zeal for converting others.

This shows itself, however, in the following points:

a. that they take becoming a Methodist and being converted to be one and the same thing.

b. that they place a superstitious trust in those external, forcible means of conversion in No. 5, and campaign, orally and in writing, against baptism itself, instead of against its abuse.

c. that in their sermons, out of culpable ignorance or malice (at least among the Germans), they confuse the Lutheran scriptural doctrine with the Roman false doctrine, especially concerning holy baptism, casting suspicion on the former by making it appear like the latter, while praising and adorning the wonder-working power of their own little man-made invention in No. 5, especially the anxious bench and its like.

d. that the Methodist preachers sneak behind the backs of the preachers of other confessions, like spiritual peddlers, to their parishioners, offering them their art of prayer and conversion, casting suspicion on their preachers as unconverted men without ever having heard them preach themselves, while cowardly and evasively declining these preachers' challenges to a public debate — for instance, on the scriptural doctrine of holy baptism, or on the scriptural warrant and fitness of the anxious bench — and, in the midst of this thoroughly unlawful conduct, nevertheless claim to have the Holy Spirit, to be truly converted people, and to make others so as well.

We have indeed experienced these tricks and dodges of the Methodist soul-hunters among us only recently, and in doing so they are moreover so cunning as to work on anxious and as yet ungrounded people, in order, through questions that are quite fitting and in place against Pharisees and dead lip-believers, to trouble their hearts and consciences — as, for example, "whether they already have the testimony of the Holy Spirit in their hearts that they are children of God," and so forth. With gross sinners, however, or thoroughgoing Pharisees — who would need their infallible and quickly effective method of conversion the most — their Christian love does not usually concern itself.

But if these German Methodist preachers truly and genuinely had the love of Christ dwelling in their hearts, they would turn only to where, unfortunately, straying sheep without shepherds still are; and this, indeed, they also do, to the wholesome chastening and awakening of our church, even if in their diseased manner. But surely, where a shepherd stands who is, by God's grace, churchly minded and believing, they would not permit themselves, through such secret encroachment, any intrusion into his field of office — which the apostle Paul himself did not do, according to Romans 15:20 (compare 2 Corinthians 10:15–16), whom they otherwise claim to emulate.

Indeed, if it stood thus, that a preacher called by a Lutheran or Reformed congregation did not preach Christ according to the Scripture and