Friday, December 08, 2006

" Of this order, my brother, take care ; for thereupon it entirely depends. Although this spirit of delusion pretends to revere the word and spirit of God very highly, and boasts of great fervor of love and zeal for the truth and righteousness of God, nevertheless his design is to pervert this order, and to establish a contrary one out of his own presumption. First : what God orders externally, he turns into the spirit inwardly. Oh ! how disdainfully he rejects this, and will enter the spirit first. Yea, says he, " shall a handful of water cleanse me from sin ?" The spirit! the spirit! the spirit! must do it inwardly. Should bread and wine help me ? Should the breathing, or the bread, bring Christ into the sacrament? No, no : One must eat Christ's flesh spiritually. The Wittenbergians know nothing of it ; they steal their faith from the letter :" and many such bombastic words : that who does not know this devil, might think they had with them five holy spirits. But if they be asked how one is to get into this high spirit, they will not then refer to the external gospel, but to a self-created land that has no existence ; and say, rest awhile, as I did, you will then also experience it ; the heavenly voice will come, and God himself shall speak to you. If you, after this while, ask further, they will even know as much as Doctor C. does of the Greek and Hebrew tongues.

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