# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1859_S71
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Extracts from Fr. Balduin's Tractatus De casibus conscientiae. 71

...foregoing, Calvin further shows how the Fathers were compelled to use
and introduce also the words "person" and "trinity." But after Calvin has
been forced to admit the truth of this testimony, he adds: "Would that
(the churchly expressions) were buried, and that all were agreed only on
this faith: that the Father and Son and Holy Spirit are one God, and yet
the Son is not the Father, nor the Holy Spirit the Son, but that they are
distinguished by a certain property";*) to which words of Calvin's our
Johann Gerhard makes the certainly correct remark: "This cannot be
approved simply and without the addition of a fitting interpretation. For
this must be understood to concern the occasion and origin of these
designations, which was the perversity of the heretics, but not the use of
the designations themselves." (Exeges. Loc. 3, § 43.)
(Conclusion to follow.)

—

(Contributed by B.)
Extracts from Fr. Balduin's Tractatus De casibus
conscientiae.**)

I.

Whether and how the ban is to be exercised in the church,
so that no disquiet of conscience be caused thereby.
Answer. To the binding key belongs the ban, in Greek ἀφορισμός

[...continuing a citation from Calvin's Institutes:] "...reproaches it, must
it not rightly be judged that he who so reproaches it bears the light of
truth with ill grace, seeing that all he accomplishes by this reproach is to
render the truth plain and clear? Now this novelty of words (if it is to be
so called) comes into use chiefly when the truth must be asserted against
slanderers who evade it by shuffling — which we experience abundantly
today, we who have no small labor in overcoming the enemies of pure and
sound doctrine; so obliquely and slipperily do those slithering serpents
escape, unless they are pressed hard and, once caught, held fast. So the
ancients, harassed by various contests over corrupt doctrines, were
compelled to set forth with exquisite clarity what they believed, lest they
leave crooked subterfuges to the wicked, for whom verbal coverings were
hiding-places for their errors. Arius confessed that Christ was God and
the Son of God, because he could not resist the plain oracles of Scripture,
and, as though he had honorably discharged his part, feigned some
agreement with the others. Yet meanwhile he did not cease to assert that
Christ was created and had a beginning, like the rest of the creatures. To
draw the man's slippery cunning out of its hiding places, the ancients
went further, and pronounced Christ the eternal Son of the Father, and
of one substance with the Father. Here impiety broke out, when the
Arians began most bitterly to hate and curse the name ὁμοουσίου. Yet had
they at the outset confessed sincerely and from the heart that he was God,
they would not have denied that he was of one substance with the Father.
Who would dare to attack those upright men as quarrelsome and
contentious, because they grew so heated in disputing over a single little
word, and disturbed the peace of the church? But that little word marked
the distinction between Christians of the pure faith and sacrilegious
Arians." (Institutio christ. rel. lib. I. c. 13. § 3. 4.)

*) "Would that they were indeed buried, provided only this faith stood
fast among all: that the Father and the Son and the Spirit are one God;
yet neither is the Son the Father, nor the Spirit the Son, but they are
distinguished by a certain property." (Loc. cit., § 5.)

**) Compare the November issue of L. u. W., p. 348.