In what manner one must be free from the goods of this earth.

What this letter is. A short, sharp piece of biblical teaching — an excerpt from a longer letter — that clears up a common misreading of the Ananias story (Acts 5) and, in doing so, states Tersteegen's whole doctrine of freedom from possessions. The error he corrects: people read Peter's rebuke of Ananias as though the sin were keeping property. Not so. Tersteegen re-renders Peter's words to make the point unmistakable — "When the field had remained unsold, would it not have remained yours?… was not the money also in your power?" The field was Ananias's to keep or sell; the money was his to give or withhold; nobody compelled him. His sin was not ownership but pretense — laying part at the apostles' feet while claiming to give the whole. "In short! the Holy Spirit means to say: Wholly mine, or let it be altogether. Hypocrites and the double-hearted I will not have." From this Tersteegen draws a distinction he keeps everywhere: the outward renunciation of goods — literally selling all, as in "if thou wilt be perfect" — is voluntary, resting on "a special calling and faith"; but the inward freedom — being so unattached that you could let everything go in an instant — is "not voluntary, but commanded," the very condition of being "fully a disciple of Jesus." What God forbids is the half-gift that lies about itself; the one fatal move is "to deceive the Holy Spirit."

A few words and echoes.

• "The passage cited, Acts 5, is wrongly translated." Acts 5:4 — Peter to Ananias: "Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power?" Tersteegen first gives his own faithful rendering, then an amplifying paraphrase of what "the Holy Spirit means to say," to correct those who made the passage forbid property as such.
• "Wholly mine, or let it be altogether. Hypocrites and the double-hearted I will not have." The heart of the matter: God asks not necessarily the thing but the whole heart, and abhors the divided one — cf. James 1:8 and 4:8, the "double minded man."
• "The community of goods." Acts 2:44–45; 4:32–35 — the Jerusalem church, where "they had all things common." Tersteegen notes it was later "done away" as an outward institution, yet its inner truth abides.
• "If thou wilt be perfect." Matthew 19:21, to the rich young ruler: "go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor." Tersteegen treats the literal, total divestment as a "special calling," not a universal command.
• "Otherwise one cannot become fully a disciple of Jesus." Luke 14:33, "whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple" — the inward forsaking is required of everyone.
• "To deceive the Holy Spirit." Acts 5:3, "why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?" — the deepest self-deception is the attempt to deceive God, which only deceives oneself.
• "The Lord be with your spirit!" 2 Timothy 4:22 — the excerpt's closing benediction.