To the same. That she should not fall into unbelief at the experience of her weakness.

What this letter is. Four weeks after the letter that gave Anna Maria Elisabeth Schmitz an act of self-offering to sign, she has relapsed — and this letter opens with an unusually blunt word for Tersteegen: "No — it does not please the Lord." He does not think the relapse is simply illness. He thinks she has been looking in the wrong direction: "this time too you have looked too much at yourself and at your enemies, so that through this taking-to-heart your sickness has set in afresh."

Then, in a single unbroken movement, he argues her out of it. Do you suppose that what you cannot do is impossible to the Almighty too? Or that He will withhold His power because you don't deserve it — as though you had ever given Him anything to deserve it with? And then the turn, which is the heart of the letter: the very fact that He calls you at all is the proof. "This very thing — that He calls you so inwardly to be His whole and eternal possession — that alone is an incontestable proof and ground that He also can and will bring you there, notwithstanding all your weaknesses, dangers and enemies."

And what is asked of her in return is one word, which the printer set apart in a type of its own: "From your side nothing at all is required, but that to this high purpose of God over you you give your hearty Yes." After that, weakness changes its meaning entirely: "The experience of your weakness is a great grace, if you use it well" — used well meaning to let yourself fall out of your own hand. Then she may "be without care in the very highest weakness, and defy the whole world and the power of hell." He ends by sending her to a particular verse to pray with — the one where Christ asks not that His people be taken out of the world, but kept from evil.

A few words and echoes.

• weakness. The letter's keyword, spaced out by the printer at its first appearance in the body of the letter, and then turned right round: what began as the thing to be feared ends as "a great grace."
• called you with so holy a calling. 2 Timothy 1:9 — "who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works."
• your hearty Yes. Jawort — the word for the consent given at a betrothal; the print sets it in a distinct type, which the italics preserve.
• His whole and eternal possession. Titus 2:14 — "a peculiar people"; Malachi 3:17.
• without care in the very highest weakness. 2 Corinthians 12:9–10 — "my strength is made perfect in weakness… when I am weak, then am I strong."
• "Pray as the Saviour did, John 17:15." He gives the reference and leaves the words to you; they are: "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil."
• "That is not right." Gentler in German than it looks. Nicht fein is Luther's phrase from Matthew 15:26 — "it is not meet to take the children's bread" — so the rebuke arrives wearing a scriptural coat.
• the Lord is with us, who cares for us. Romans 8:31 and 1 Peter 5:7.