can operate this in such only as are previously brought into this state of fear and terror. As a natural birth cannot be effected without pain, in like manner, they argue, no one could be born anew without previously, through anguish and fear, having experienced pains of the soul, more or less. Such teachers, however, fail to observe that by this example they contradict themselves. For in a natural birth, as everybody knows, only the mother has pain, not the child, while according to their doctrine the child ought to have the pain. Who, therefore, does not see that their teaching is most absurd and questionable? Now, in order to bring about regeneration in the manner they teach, it is the rule to preach the Law and its curse. To produce the required pangs of the soul, the poor people are threatened with the devil, eternal death, and hell. The intention is to cause a sinner to pray earnestly in order, by such prayer, to receive the Holy Spirit. To produce this result, joint prayers are said to contribute the most, _viz._, when a number of people gather and strain every power of body and soul in crying and screaming to move the Holy Spirit, or even to force Him, to finish the work of regeneration. They imagine that, by their own exercises in prayer, and especially by their joint prayers, they have advanced the matter and earned and obtained the Holy Ghost, and that, He [the Holy Ghost] having united with their exercises and labor, the work of regeneration was finished through the combined operation of their prayers and the gifts of the Holy Spirit acquired by them. They mistake imaginations for divine revelations. And the sensation rising from such imaginations they regard as effects of the Holy Spirit. They apply to themselves what the Apostle Paul writes Rom. 8, 16: 'The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.' They declare: We are born anew, and we know indeed that it is so, for the Spirit of God has given testimony to our spirit. But if one desires to learn how He had given this testimony, whether they had seen Him or heard Him, or in what manner or whereby He had given such assurance, they appeal to their imaginations and sensations, from which also something peculiar, like an apparition, may come to them; but whatever this is we do not know. One can be absolutely sure, however, that it is not the Holy Spirit. For as soon as you let them understand that you believe that they have been deceived and you endeavor to lead their attention to the testimonies of Holy Scripture in order to obtain from it reliable testimonies, immediately their anger begins to rise, their countenance becomes disfigured, and, alas, with some already a fist is clenching with which they strike the table or their knees and declare defiantly: 'I don't care anything for what you say; it is none of your business; I know that I am born of God, and will suffer it to be taken