Note 1438 — Chapter XXVIII

In this remarkable passage of his exposition of 1 Cor. xv. (1534, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 51, pp. 102-104), he exhorts all to “hold fast to the doctrine and preaching for which we have both sure Scripture and also inward experience. These should be the two witnesses and the two test-stones of true doctrine.” He here inveighs against the fanatics because they taught, “what not one of them had experienced,” “an uncertain delusion of which not one of them had had any experience.” “None of the fanatics are able to prove their contention either by their own experience or by that of others.” Of himself, however, he could say: “I have experienced it; for I too was once a pious monk,” etc.; then follows the legend of his life in the monastery and of how, before his discovery of the sense of the text on which his new teaching rested, he had never known what it was to have a “gracious God.” “Hence, whoever wishes not to err, let him look to these two points, whether he is able to bear witness to his doctrine out of Scripture and a sure inward experience, as we can to our doctrine and preaching.”