1. lastly, because we often encounter and are asked for consolation by some pious parents, especially by women, who were in child distress before, without their will, even against their will, and with great suffering of their husbands.
The mothers have had to suffer from miscarriages and incorrect births, so that the fruit died in childbirth or came from them dead. Such mothers, because it is not their fault, nor through their
If the fruit is neglected or careless, one should not frighten or grieve with immodest words; and here make a distinction between the women or females who unwillingly bear the fruit, courageously neglect it, or finally also viciously strangle and kill it; but speak to them thus and in such a way:
2. First, although one should not know, nor can one know, God's secret judgment in such a case, why He has not allowed such children, in which all possible diligence has been done, to be born alive and baptized, the mothers should nevertheless be content with this and believe that God's will is always better, neither is our will, although it seems much different according to carnal conceit; And first of all, do not doubt that God is not angry with the mother or others who have done this, but is a temptation to patience. So we also know that such a case was not rare from the beginning, so that Scripture also uses such a case as an example, as Ps. 58, 9, and St. Paul calls himself an abortive, a miscarriage or untimely birth, 1 Cor. 15, 8.
3 Secondly, it is also to be hoped, because the mother is a Christian and a believer, that her heartfelt sighing and thorough longing to bring the child to baptism will be accepted as a right prayer before God. For although it is true that a Christian in his great distress may not call, nor wish, nor hope for help, as he thinks, which he would so gladly and with his own life purchase with the greatest desire, if it were possible and if it were given him a consolation, the saying, Rom. 8, 26: "The Spirit helps our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for - that is, as we said above, we must not wish for it - as is fitting, but the Spirit himself represents us mightily with inexpressible groaning. He who searches the heart knows what the mind of the Spirit is, for he represents the saints according to what God pleases or wills" etc. Item Eph. 3, 10.: "He who does exceedingly above all that we ask or understand."
4. a Christian man should not be held in such low esteem as a Turk, Hei.
or godless man. He is highly esteemed before God, and his prayer is an almighty thing, for he is sanctified with Christ's blood and anointed with the Spirit of God. What he earnestly asks, especially with the unspeakable groaning of his heart, is a great and grievous cry in the sight of God, and he must hear it; as he says to Moses, Exodus 14:15: "Why are you crying out to me?" yet Moses could not well hiss because of worry and trembling, for he was in the greatest distress. Such his groaning, his heart's thorough crying, also rent the Red Sea and made it dry, led the children of Israel through and drowned Pharaoh with all his might. This and more can do and does a right spiritual groaning. For Moses also knew not what and how he should pray; for he knew not how salvation should come to pass, and yet cried with his heart.
(5) Thus did Isaiah say against King Sanherib and many other kings and prophets, who through their earnest prayer accomplished incomprehensible, impossible things, of which they were astonished afterwards, but before that they should not have wished or desired God. This means to attain higher and more, neither we ask nor understand, as St. Paul says, Eph. 3, 20. ff. Thus St. Augustine writes of his mother that she prayed, sighed and wept for him, but desired nothing more than that he might be converted from the error of the Manichaeans and become a Christian; so God gave her not only what she desired, but, as St. Augustine calls it, cardinem. Augustine calls it cardinem desiderii ejus, that is, what she desires with inexpressible sighing, namely, that Augustine should not only become a Christian, but a teacher above all the teachers of all Christendom, so that Christendom has none like him after the apostles.
(6) And who will doubt that the children of Israel, who died uncircumcised before the eighth day, were saved through the prayer of their parents, on the promise that he would be their God? [Ah, says one, God has not so bound himself to his sacraments - but by his word he has bound himself to us - that without them he could not also in another way, unknown to us, make the unbaptized little children blessed;
As under the law of Moses he saved many, even kings, without the law, as Job, Naaman, the king of Nineveh, Babylon, Egypt etc. Nevertheless, he publicly wanted to disregard the law, even to keep it, with the threat of the punishment of eternal curse.
(7) So I think and hope that the kind and merciful God will think well of these little children who, without their fault and without disobeying his public command, do not receive baptism; but that he does not want, nor has he wanted, for the sake of the world's wickedness, that such things should be preached or believed in public, lest everything he ordains and gives should be despised by it. For we see that he teaches many things because of the wickedness of the world, so that he does not bind up the godly. Summa, the Spirit works all things for good in those who fear God, but in the perverse he is perverse]. Therefore we ought to speak differently and more comfortably to Christian people than to the heathen or, which is the same, to reprobate people, even in cases where we do not know his secret judgments. For he neither speaks nor lies; all things are possible to them that believe, though they have not prayed, thought, or desired it all, as they would have liked; as is now sufficiently said. Therefore, such cases should be entrusted to God and we should be comforted that he has certainly heard our unspeakable sighing and has made everything better than we might have called it. Summa, you see mostly on it,
that you may be a true Christian and thus learn to pray to God in true faith and sigh heartily, whether in this or in other distresses; then do not be sorry and do not worry about anything, neither for your child nor for yourself, and know that your prayer is pleasant, and that God will make everything much better, neither you can understand nor desire. "Call upon me," saith he Ps. 50:15, "in trouble, and I will help thee, that thou mayest praise and thank me."
(8) Therefore such children, in whom and over whom such groaning, desiring, praying is done by Christians or believers, are not to be condemned like the others, where no faith, prayer, nor groaning is done by Christians or believers. For he will keep his promise and our prayer or sighing based on it, unregarded and unthrown, but high and dear.
(9) I have also said above, preached, and otherwise sufficiently written, how God does much through the faith and groaning of another or of others, when there is not yet faith of one's own, but is quickly given through the intercession of others; as in the Gospel, Luc. 7:11 ff, Christ raised the widow's son of Nain from death through his mother's groaning without his own faith, and freed the Canaanite woman's daughter from the devil through the mother's faith without the daughter's own faith, Matth. 15, 22. ff, also the king's son, Joh. 4, 47, and the gout-ridden man and many more, which we will not discuss here.