rough other outward words.
Just as also our enthusiasts [at the present day] condemn the
outward Word, and nevertheless they themselves are not silent,
but they fill the world with their pratings and writings, as
though, indeed, the Spirit could not come through the writings
and spoken word of the apostles, but [first] through their
writings and words he must come. Why [then] do not they also
omit their own sermons and writings, until the Spirit Himself
come to men, without their writings and before them, as they
boast that Me has come into them without the preaching of the
Scriptures? But of these matters there is not time now to
dispute at greater length; we have elsewhere sufficiently
urged this subject.

For even those who believe before Baptism, or become believing
in Baptism, believe through the preceding outward Word, as the
adults, who have come to reason, must first have heard: He
that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, even though
they are at first unbelieving, and receive the Spirit and
Baptism ten years afterwards. Cornelius, Acts 10, 1 ff., had
heard long before among the Jews of the coming Messiah,
through whom he was righteous before God, and in such faith
his prayers and alms were acceptable to God (as Luke calls him
devout and God-fearing), and without such preceding Word and
hearing could not have believed or been righteous. But St.
Peter had to reveal to him that the Messiah (in whom, as one
that was to come, he had hitherto believed) now had come, lest
his faith concerning the coming Messiah hold him captive among
the hardened and unbelieving Jews, but know that he was now to
be saved by the present Messiah, and must not, with the
[rabble of the] Jews deny nor persecute Him.

In a word, enthusiasm inheres in Adam and his children from
the beginning [from the first fall] to the end of the world,
[its poison] having been implanted and infused into them by
the old dragon, and is the origin, power [life], and strength
of all heresy, especially of that of the Papacy and Mahomet.
Therefore we ought and must constantly maintain this point,
that God does not wish to deal with us otherwise than through
the spoken Word and the Sacraments. It is the devil himself
whatsoever is extolled as Spirit without the Word and
Sacraments. For God wished to appear even to Moses through the
burning bush and spoken Word; and no prophet neither Elijah
nor Elisha, received the Spirit without the Ten Commandments