To a Count — that in communion with Jesus is our whole salvation and justification, and that progress in sanctification does not annul justification.

The Hundred-and-Forty-Second Letter.

To a Count — that in communion with Jesus is our whole salvation and justification, and that progress in sanctification does not annul justification.

High-born Count!

In the grace of our Jesus, highly esteemed brother!

Your kind letter to Brother N. has been communicated to me; it gladdened me in spirit. Praised be our Savior, that He will heal us from the ground up! How good it is to remain, with a naked ground, before His presence! He is indeed a Sun of righteousness, which without mercy assails our darkness (O mercy!), and pierces with its beams even thither where no self-seeking reaches: but there is also healing under its wings, to make us light through itself, as it is itself. For this we are to sing Him a Hallelujah — that He would have us so pure and fair — and give ourselves over ever more inwardly to His leading, asking always, with unfeigned holding-still:

Is there aught else, my Friend? O Beauty without spot! Is there aught else in which I displease Thee?

Nothing binds the soul more closely to Jesus than when, through many real experiences, it comes to know the mingling of its own human element — however well-meant — with the divine: there He must become all. One wants to do nothing without Him. To let Jesus live in us — that is to live as we ought. This is the power of His resurrection, which one comes to know step by step, where one is willing to have fellowship with His suffering, and to be made conformable to His death. And so it remains, before as after, sheer grace, and Jesus our whole salvation. Freely are we justified, freely are we sanctified. Through our justification, at the forgiveness of sins, we are happily initiated into sanctification; and as sanctification goes forward, justification is not abolished, but ever heightened, and it becomes more and more a pure life of grace.

Why do I write so much? I meant only to greet, and to show my continuing love and fellowship. Had it been a paper love, it would have come to grief — I confess it — so long have I not written; I have not been able.

Mülheim, the 28th of October, 1738.

German

Der hundertzweiundvierzigste Brief.

An einen Grafen, daß in der Gemeinschaft mit JEsu unser ganzes Heil und Rechtfertigung sey, und daß der Fortgang in der Heiligung die Rechtfertigung nicht aufhebe.

Hochgeborner Graf!

In der Gnade unsers JEsu werthgeschätzter Bruder! Dero Angenehmes an den Bruder N. wird mir communiciret; es hat mich im Geist erfreuet.

— Opening lines of the original German. The complete transcription of all 605 letters appears in the forthcoming Encounter Press critical edition; Brief 1 is shown in full as a sample.

German text: public domain (1773–75 first edition / 1845 Gesammelte Schriften).