Letters · Zweiter Band · Theil III (1775)

To a person who has gone over into a certain congregation. The writer, for his part, chooses rather the hidden life with Christ in God.

Bd II · Th III · Brief 44 · Der vierundvierzigste Brief

Addressee — To Sven Rosén — the Swedish radical Pietist, who had "gone over" into (been received and confirmed as a member of) a certain congregation — the local Herrnhut Moravian Brüdergemeine. Written in the intimate du (English you). Salutation Hertzlich geliebter Bruder! → "Dearly beloved brother!" (Rule B).
Date — Mülheim, 16 January 1744 — the print closes with the subscription and dateline "…schwacher Mitbruder. / Mülheim, den 16. Jan. 1744."
Provenance — *Translated from the public-domain 1775 first edition (Theil III, pp. 131–133), in normalized GS-1845 house orthography. All rendered words are from public-domain prints.

The Forty-Fourth Letter.

To a person who has gone over into a certain congregation. The writer, for his part, chooses rather the hidden life with Christ in God.

Dearly beloved brother!

—— To your letters, received at one time and another by way of Duisburg and Solingen, I find just now nothing to say. It is not the time for me to speak. I wish you meanwhile, from my heart, that it may go well with you in every way, and that you abide in love. From brother N.'s letter to P. H. I have seen that you are a received and confirmed member of the congregation there, having applied for it. It seems you thought this news would give me little joy, or else you would surely have written it to me yourself. Be that as it may, it was, for one thing, no new news to me: I marked well enough what you had in mind while you were here.

O, how gladly I let go, keep silence, and commend souls to the Lord, as soon as I mark that they are taking ways I do not understand! Be assured, meanwhile, of my unfeigned and unshaken brotherly love toward you. May it go truly well with you in the Lord! May He alone keep and lead you — not to Russia and China (as you have dreamed; nor do I hold such things any higher than other scattering fancies) — but into the essential rest of the spirit which is promised to the people of God! But whether your present conduct (at least among the readers in N.) is not an active recantation of the testimony of the truth you formerly bore — through the publishing of Bernières — is a question I must leave to God and to your conscience, and may very well leave there. I dare not look further about me; I must follow my Guide. I hope, too, that this change of yours may yet serve me — to turn myself only so much the more inward, to be grounded in Christ, and in the experience of His so unknown and suspected inner ways, which I must, with the most inward joy and full assurance (Plerophorie), embrace and confess as divine and certain, before the face of God and of all men. The little that I have testified of it in writing, I know to be truth in itself. I grudge it not to others that they should be something, accomplish something, and make a show in every way.

I choose the hidden life with Christ in God, the hated life of the cross; and in it I shall be able to walk on so much the purer and quieter, the more I am counted for nothing, forgotten, and as it were buried among all creatures. Una uni! — one soul to the one Lord! All the brethren and friends known to me greet you heartily. O. went over into eternity last Sunday, under my prayer and that of those who stood by. I shall remain, with God, unchanged,

Your weak fellow-brother, bound to you in love.

Mülheim, the 16th of January 1744.

❦

German

Der vierundvierzigste Brief.

An eine Person die in eine gewisse Gemeine übergegangen. Der Schreiber wählet hingegen mehr das verborgene Leben mit Christo in GOtt.

Herzlich geliebter Bruder!

—— Auf deine sonst über Duisburg und Solingen vor und nach erhaltene Brieflein finde eben nichts zu sagen. Mein Reden ist nicht Zeit.

— 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. One of the more revealing letters in the collection, and unusually pointed. Its recipient is Sven Rosén (1708–1750), a Swedish radical Pietist who had spent time in the Rhineland and had now — as Tersteegen has learned second-hand — been "received and confirmed" into a particular community: the Herrnhut (Moravian) Brüdergemeine. The old printed argument states the contrast the letter turns on: the correspondent "has gone over into a certain congregation," while "the writer, for his part, chooses rather the hidden life with Christ in God." It is Tersteegen defining his own vocation against the communal, organized model — courteously, but without yielding a step.

He will not quarrel. "Be assured of my unfeigned and unshaken brotherly love toward you." And he states his settled practice with those who take a road he cannot follow: "how gladly I let go, keep silence, and commend souls to the Lord, as soon as I mark that they are taking ways I do not understand." But the reservation is real, and he names it plainly: he wonders "whether your present conduct… is not an active recantation of the testimony of the truth you formerly bore, through the publishing of Bernières" — the quietist Jean de Bernières-Louvigny, whose works Rosén was helping into print. That question, he says, "I must leave to God and to your conscience, and may very well leave there." He will not adjudicate another's road; he must "follow my Guide." Against the visible community he sets a hiddenness that is almost defiant in its lowliness: "I choose the hidden life with Christ in God, the hated life of the cross; and in it I shall be able to walk on so much the purer and quieter, the more I am counted for nothing, forgotten, and as it were buried among all creatures." The Latin tag he throws down as a motto — Una uni!, "one soul to the one Lord" — is the whole letter in two words: the soul belongs to God alone, and needs no other belonging to be complete. He can even be generous to the busy and conspicuous: "I grudge it not to others that they should be something, accomplish something, and make a show in every way." The point is simply that it is not his way.

A few words and echoes.

the essential rest of the spirit… promised to the people of God. Hebrews 4:9 — "There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God".
the hidden life with Christ in God. Colossians 3:3 — "your life is hid with Christ in God" — the letter's governing text, quoted already in the printed argument.
Bernières. Jean de Bernières-Louvigny (1602–1659), the French lay mystic whose Le Chrétien intérieur was a standard of quietist devotion; Rosén was involved in its publishing.
make a show. éclatiren (from French éclater), to shine, make a splash.
full assurance. Plerophorie (Greek plerophoria), the fullness of conviction; the printed parenthesis "(völliger Zustimmung)" is the old editor's own gloss, kept here.
Una uni! — "one [soul] to the One"; the printed parenthesis "(Eine Einem)" is likewise the editor's gloss.
O. went over into eternity last Sunday. A death in Tersteegen's circle, the person named only by an initial.

Cite this letter

Gerhard Tersteegen, Geistliche und erbauliche Briefe, Zweiter Band, III. Theil, Brief 44 (Solingen, 1773–75); trans. Jarred Fenlason, https://gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdii-thiii-044.html.

← Bd II · Th III · Brief 43 Bd II · Th III · Brief 45 →