for letters and seals from others commending us to you, or from you
commending us to others, in order to seduce people after gaining
their good will in your church and in others as well. Such is the
practice of the false apostles, and many even now present letters and
certificates from honest preachers and Churches, and make them the
means whereby their unrighteous plotting may be received in good
faith. Such letters, thank God, we stand not in need of, and you need
not fear we shall use such means of deception. For you are yourselves
the letter we have written and wherein we may pride ourselves and
which we present everywhere. For it is a matter of common knowledge
that you have been taught by us, and brought to Christ through our
ministry."

PAUL'S CONVERTS LIVING EPISTLES.

5. Inasmuch as his activity among them is his testimonial, and they
themselves are aware that through his ministerial office he has
constituted them a church, he calls them an epistle written by
himself; not with ink and in paragraphs, not on paper or wood, nor
engraved upon hard rock as the Ten Commandments written upon tables
of stone, which Moses placed before the people, but written by the
Holy Spirit upon fleshly tables--hearts of tender flesh. The Spirit
is the ink or the inscription, yes, even the writer himself; but the
pencil or pen and the hand of the writer is the ministry of Paul.

6. This figure of a written epistle is, however, in accord with
Scripture usage. Moses commands (Deut 6, 6-9; 11, 18) that the
Israelites write the Ten Commandments in all places where they walked
or stood--upon the posts of their houses, and upon their gates, and
ever have them before their eyes and in their hearts. Again (Prov 7,
2-3), Solomon says: "Keep my commandments and ... my law as the apple
of thine eye. Bind them upon thy fingers; write them upon the tablet
of thy heart." He speaks as a father to his child when giving the
child an earnest charge to remember a certain thing--"Dear child,
remember this; forget it not; keep it in thy heart." Likewise, God
says in the book of Jeremiah the prophet (ch. 31, 33), "I will put my
law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it." Here
man's heart is represented as a sheet, or slate, or page, whereon is
written the preached Word; for the heart is to receive and securely
keep the Word. In this sense Paul says: "We have, by our ministry,
written a booklet or letter upon your heart, which wi