# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1859_S365
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Comparison of Luther with Arndt and August H. Francke in Respect, etc. 365

then simply be comforted by his baptism, by the Gospel, by absolution, by the holy Supper, but rather refers such a sinner to prayer, to the necessary struggle, and to the assurance to be awaited in the heart. He says: "When a man already presupposes that he is a child of God, although he has never tasted the power of the new birth, then it is indeed certain that when a man comforts himself in such security and in such corruption, he ought rather to be called a child of wrath and of damnation. But where this struggle truly begins, where this labor arises in the soul and the man pleads that God would make him his child, there, there comfort stands at the door; there, there the man is assured through the Spirit of God that God will take him up and receive him as his child, as we have seen here in the case of the man sick of the palsy. Venture, then, into this noble struggle! Do not think that this is impossible to attain; do not think that God will refuse you the grace which the Lord Jesus here granted to the paralytic; but remember rather that you have to do with your greatest lover of all, with the very one who gave his life for you and shed his blood for you, and with his heavenly Father, who so loved the world that he gave his [only-begotten Son], etc. Therefore give yourselves indeed to this noble struggle! Let each one, according to the admonition of the Lord Jesus, go nicely into his chamber and pray there to God, who sees in secret, etc. If you follow this good counsel so simply, if you do not despise this word now spoken to you, you will be obedient not to me but to the Lord Jesus in going into your chamber and praying to your Father in secret: then I give you the assurance in the name of the Lord Jesus that he will comfort you as truly as he here comforted the paralytic, that he will grant you as surely the forgiveness of all your sins as he here granted it to the paralytic. Oh, how sweet will comfort then be to you, when you taste and feel in your heart what the Lord Jesus here indicated in words to the paralytic: Be of good cheer, my son, your sins are forgiven you. How you will exult with rejoicing when you recognize in your hearts, through the testimony of the Holy Spirit, that you are God's children, that you are also heirs of eternal life. How you will rejoice when you can be certain that this your comfort is not presumed from flesh and blood, but sealed in your heart by the Holy Spirit."

There is not a word here of the forgiveness that lies in the means of grace. Instead of pointing to the Word, to absolution, to baptism and the Supper as the true ground of certainty, Francke here points to the certainty to be striven for and prayed for, arising from the feeling of a heart filled and renewed by the Holy Spirit; indeed, what Christ "indicated in words" to the paralytic, that — so runs the comfort — the one who prays will "taste in his heart." That this same word still resounds even now is not spoken of at all. In the last part of his sermon it says there-