Letters · Zweiter Band · Theil III (1775)

Thorough instruction: how one is made holy and blessed out of grace.

Bd II · Th III · Brief 42 · Der zweiundvierzigste Brief

Addressee — To Freund Feldhovius, at Homburg — addressed as a dearly beloved friend, in a mixed polite register (the honorific Ihr/Euer and the courteous third-person "der liebe Freund" / "Er"); English you throughout. Salutation In der Gnade JEsu hertzlich geliebter Freund! → "In the grace of Jesus, dearly beloved friend!"
Date — Mülheim, 7 January 1744 — the print dateline reads Mülheim, den 7. Jan. 1744.
Provenance — *Translated from the public-domain 1775 first edition (Theil III, pp. 124–128), in normalized GS-1845 house orthography. All rendered words are from public-domain prints.

The Forty-Second Letter.

Thorough instruction: how one is made holy and blessed out of grace.

In the grace of Jesus, dearly beloved friend!

Your kind letter of the 2nd of December, and likewise the previous one of the 23rd of November, I have duly received. So far as time and weakness allow, I will answer it this once.

To speak of the matter according to my light: your state is tolerably well described in Romans 7; and the blessed issue of it is nothing else than the resigned, thorough sinking into the grace of God in Christ Jesus — which works death to self-love, but life and peace to the spirit. To be made holy and blessed out of grace is not so easy as people think. When God's light and discipline lay proper hold of the soul, it is experienced otherwise. One sees that without the inmost purity no union with God is to be hoped for. One wills, one strives to render a sufficiency to the lawful demands of grace; but the deep root-damage is not helped by one's own effort. If one cannot get forward, one grows dispirited and fretful; and where it does succeed, then one's own righteousness comes up, and the soul looks back over its shoulder, so that through the secret self-love even its best remains defiled. Does it go somewhat forward for a time, of a sudden it finds itself lying again in the midst of the mire. What shall it do? To believe that one must remain a poor sinner in this life is a desperate comfort. To rely on Christ's merit and death is excellent, and the sole ground of our salvation: but He gave Himself for us, that He might sanctify us — Ephesians 5. He is not come to dissolve the law, but to fulfil it — Matthew 5:17. What counsel, then? The soul is to go forward, and cannot. It is to give something, and has nothing. Hypocrisy or seeming will no longer serve. One single means is left: namely, that the soul creep to the cross, and, with humble confession and consent to its helpless condition, cease from its own doing — so that God may have His work in it, and thus, in resigned and believing turning-to and turning-in, may await the blessed hour within the opened grace and love of Jesus, that this mighty Redeemer may reveal Himself to it, and Himself fulfil in it the righteousness which the law requires — Romans 8. And behold, this is then just what enlightened writers say, when they direct us to the exercise of the inner prayer and of the inward turning, and to seek and find help only in stillness and trust.

You, dear friend, may without scruple take to yourself what such enlightened souls say of this state; only with this one safeguard: that when they speak of higher ways of purification — where the souls whom the matter concerns can no longer, in so active a manner, turn to God, gather themselves, deny themselves, and the like, because, that is, without their knowing it, they have already arrived where they meant to go by the repetition of those activities — that this, I say, is not yet for you at present, if I know you well. You must indeed turn inward to God in an active manner; but there must be no straining of the head, or other vehemence, in it — rather an inward but resigned hungering, a true, hearty and trustful inclining toward God in Christ, and a sweet, reverent waiting upon His presence within us. Through the blood of Jesus we have this boldness of access: because we are reconciled to God through Christ, God is favorable to us; we may turn childlike in to Him, and beg for His full help, and wait for it. He who searches the inmost part sees well that the soul, in the very act of childlike turning-in and turning-to — even without thinking of it — turns away from the world, from sin, and from all that is its own, according to the upright will; and therefore, for Jesus' sake, nothing of all that is reckoned to it either. And through this very act of inward turning, of laying-open, and the like, it will be cleansed most easily and most beautifully from all defilements of the flesh and of the spirit.

You, dear friend, must not go seeking out your miseries; they will find themselves out soon enough, as much as God pleases. Do not take your corruption for the proper object of your regard: God, as a friend and Saviour; God, as present in the heart — He must be your regard. And when you must see and feel your corruption, then suffer it in God's presence, just as a sick child on its mother's lap makes its pain understood only by the moving look of its eyes. The looking upon our own selves makes us sick; but in the looking upon God is our healing. Let us, then, accept the discoveries of our miseries as true grace from God, and hold out with good courage before the face of Him who is called Saviour, without seeking comfort in any other place! The Lord knows the right hour. Waiting, too, is an unremarked going-forward. Dispiritedness is a fruit of self-love. Our weaknesses and miseries should make us distrust ourselves, but never God — whose pure love can consume our miseries sooner than fire a straw, when we give ourselves over in trust.

Now, my friend, nothing new is befalling you. The very like sufferings pass over your brethren in this world, though not in all alike heavy and long. Expect nothing from yourselves, but all from the goodness of God, which is so intimately near. This is a common temptation in such states: that souls think this or that does not suit them; that another does not so know all their circumstances; that one judges too favorably of them — and whatever else there is of the kind. Do not detain yourselves with such reflections. I do not point you to yourselves; I know that you are a child of Adam, as I am. Your way, too, is not yet completed, but it goes rightly onward; and God's eternal love waits only for this — that you let yourselves, with me, fall into her bosom, just as you are. Amen, so be it!

Mülheim, the 7th of January 1744.

❦

German

Der zweiundvierzigste Brief.

Gründliche Anweisung, wie man aus Gnaden heilig und selig werde.

In der Gnade JEsu herzlich geliebter Freund!

Euer Angenehmes vom 2ten December wie auch Voriges vom 23ten November habe zu recht erhalten. So viel Zeit und Schwachheit zuläßt, will diesesmal darauf antworten.

— 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).

Translator’s notes

What this letter is. A pastoral answer to a friend — a certain Feldhovius, of Homburg — who had written twice (in November and December) evidently describing his own inward state. Tersteegen takes that self-description seriously ("your state is tolerably well described in Romans 7") and builds the whole letter on it: what it really means to be made holy out of grace, why it is so much harder than people suppose, and what the one remaining remedy is.

Tersteegen sets himself against a cheap account of grace. "To be made holy and blessed out of grace is not so easy as people think." The trouble is that our own effort cannot reach the "deep root-damage": if we cannot get forward we grow "dispirited and fretful," and if we do get forward, "then one's own righteousness comes up" and the secret self-love defiles "even its best." So the soul is caught — "it is to go forward, and cannot; it is to give something, and has nothing" — and mere resignation to being "a poor sinner in this life" he calls, bluntly, "a desperate comfort." The way out is not upward but downward: "that the soul creep to the cross, and, with humble confession and consent to its helpless condition, cease from its own doing — so that God may have His work in it." Then, in "resigned and believing turning-to and turning-in," it waits for "the blessed hour," and "this mighty Redeemer" fulfils in it "the righteousness which the law requires." This, he says, is exactly what the "enlightened writers" mean when they point us to inward prayer and to seeking help "only in stillness and trust" — his own tradition of quiet, the stille im Lande.

With characteristic pastoral care he adds a safeguard: the friend may read the mystical writers profitably, "only with this one safeguard" — that their talk of "higher ways of purification," where the soul can no longer even actively gather or deny itself, "is not yet for you at present, if I know you well." The active turning-in is still the friend's work; the passive heights are not to be seized before their time. And the turning itself must be gentle: "no straining of the head, or other vehemence… rather an inward but resigned hungering." The letter's close returns to the theme that runs through so many of these letters (compare the fourth): the look must go to God, not to the self. "Do not take your corruption for the proper object of your regard… The looking upon our own selves makes us sick; but in the looking upon God is our healing." Even the discoveries of our own wretchedness are "true grace." So too waiting: "Waiting, too, is an unremarked going-forward; dispiritedness is a fruit of self-love." He ends not with a signature but with a benediction: that the friend let himself "fall into her bosom" — the bosom of God's eternal love — "just as you are. Amen, so be it!"

A few words and echoes.

your state… described in Romans 7. Romans 7:14–24 — the divided man who wills the good he cannot do; the letter's diagnostic frame.
He gave Himself for us, that He might sanctify us. Ephesians 5:25–26.
not come to dissolve the law, but to fulfil it. Matthew 5:17.
Himself fulfil in it the righteousness which the law requires. Romans 8:3–4.
help only in stillness and trust. Isaiah 30:15 — "in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength".
through the blood of Jesus we have this boldness of access. Hebrews 10:19.
cleansed… from all defilements of the flesh and of the spirit. 2 Corinthians 7:1.
the sole ground. Tersteegen writes der einige Grund — an older sense of einig = einzig, "the only, the sole."

Cite this letter

Gerhard Tersteegen, Geistliche und erbauliche Briefe, Zweiter Band, III. Theil, Brief 42 (Solingen, 1773–75); trans. Jarred Fenlason, https://gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdii-thiii-042.html.

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