On the harmful returning to oneself, and one's own pondering and cares.

What this letter is. The last of the 150 letters that make up the First Part — and fittingly, it closes on Christiana Griesenbeck, the correspondent who runs like a thread through this whole stretch of the book. Written 16 May 1734, it is short, and one of his most disarmingly direct. Griesenbeck has evidently sent him yet another anxious inventory of her failings; Tersteegen gently refuses to take the inventory seriously — or rather, he relocates the problem.

Its argument. He reads her letters "with astonishment," he says — "not… at your sins… but… at the constant returnings to yourself, which is the greatest part of your miseries." The disease is the self-scrutiny itself; hence the tender scolding, endearment and rebuke in one gesture: "What have you to do with yourself? You are given over to JEsus… Why, you silly child! why do you not let Him do it?" The particular form her self-return takes is a hunger for certainty — she wants "to grasp, feel, and see" that God is dealing well with her, "and ever again certainty." Tersteegen names this, kindly, as the opposite of the "child-state" to which she is called: the child does not audit its father. She has known "the lovely blossom" of that state, but the "abiding fruit" comes another way — "born under the cross when, in holy foolishness, you learn to forget and lose yourself, and remain given over in God, without craving special certainty." He ends with a prayer that she may carry both sufferings and comforts "in a placid, gentle, peaceable child-mind," resting in a marvellously simple ground — "that God is who He is, and that He does it as He does it" — and then the last line of the whole First Part, half counsel, half benediction: "Give yourself over to JEsus through a wise unreason. He bless you! I remain in Him — your weak brother and intercessor."

A few words and echoes.

• "The constant returnings to yourself." The letter's diagnosis: not her sins but her anxious self-scrutiny is "the greatest part of your miseries" — the endless falling back into "your own pondering, worrying, doubting and despairing."
• "What have you to do with yourself? You are given over to JEsus." The freeing reversal: she is not her own project to fix; she has been handed over to Christ, "who out of unspeakable mercy has taken it upon Himself to cleanse you after His manner."
• "You silly child!" (du dummes Kind). The endearment and the rebuke in a single breath — the whole letter's affectionate exasperation with her self-management.
• "The innocent child-state" / "holy foolishness" (heilige Dummheit). Tersteegen's name for the trust that does not demand to understand or verify — the "child-state" whose blossom she has tasted, but whose "abiding fruit" is "born under the cross" (cf. Matthew 18:3; John 12:24–25). "Holy foolishness" is, for him, a compliment.
• "That God is who He is, and that He does it as He does it." The simple ground he leaves her to rest in — a quiet echo of the divine name of Exodus 3:14, "I AM THAT I AM."
• "A wise unreason" (eine kluge Unvernunft). Tersteegen's whole spirituality in three words, and the last counsel of the Part: to give oneself to Jesus in a trust that reason cannot license and does not need to.
• "Your weak brother and intercessor." How he signs the final letter of the Part — not a master over her soul, but one who prays for her.