“From our doctrinal standpoint,” we there read, “it is plain that the teaching of the Synergists is false, who allege that man in spiritual things is not _altogether_ dead to what is good but merely badly wounded and _half_ dead.... They teach wrongly, that after the Holy Spirit has given us, through the Evangel, grace, forgiveness and salvation, then free-will is able to meet God by its natural powers and ... co-operate with the Holy Ghost. In reality the ability to lay hold upon grace (‘_facultas applicandi se ad gratiam_’) is solely due to the working of the Holy Ghost.” What then is man to do, and how are the consequences described above to be obviated, on the one hand libertinism, on the other fear of predestination to hell? Man still possesses a certain freedom, so the Book of Concord teaches, e.g. “to be present or not at the Church’s assemblies, to listen or close his ears to the Word of God.” “The preaching of the Word of God is however the tool whereby the Holy Ghost seeks to effect man’s conversion and to make him ready to will and to work (‘_in ipsis et velle et perficere operari vult_’).” “Man is free to open his ears to the Word of God or to read it even when not yet converted to God or born again. In some way or other man still has free-will in such outward things even since Adam’s Fall.” Hence, by the Word, “by the preaching and contemplation of the sweet Evangel of the forgiveness of sins, the spark of ‘faith’ is enkindled in his heart.”[198] “Although all effort without the power and work of the Holy Spirit is worthless, yet neither the preacher nor the hearer must doubt of this grace or work of the Holy Spirit,” so long as the preacher proceeds according to God’s will and command and “the hearer listens earnestly and diligently and dwells on what he hears.” We are not to judge of the working of the Holy Ghost by our feelings, but “agreeably with the promises of God’s Word.” We must hold that “the Word preached is the organ of the Holy Ghost whereby He truly works and acts in our hearts.”[199] With the help of this queer, misty doctrine which, as we may notice, makes of preaching a sort of Sacrament working “_ex opere operato_,” Luther’s followers attempted to construct a system out of their master’s varying and often so arbitrary statements. At any rate they upheld his denial of any natural order of morality distinct from the order of grace. It was to remain true that man, “previous to conversion, possesses indeed an understanding, but not of divine things, and a will, though not for anything good and wholesome.” In this respect man stands far below even a stock or stone, because he resists the Word and Will of God (which they cannot do) until God raises him up from the death of sin, enlightens and creates him anew.[200]