What is said here of hearing it must be understood in the same way as the earlier account of seeing: not merely the outward bodily hearing, but also the inward hearing of the mind, together with the outward. To make myself rightly understood, I speak of God’s true and pure Word, not of human glosses or the leaven of old and new scribes. Lamentably, people now prefer these to God’s true Word, or at least mix them with it like mouse droppings among pepper, and want them heard and accepted as the preaching of the divine Word. No: I do not mean such human chatter, mere talk that fills the ears. As stated, I speak of God’s true, refined Word, Psalms 19 and 119, which proceeds from God’s mouth, Deuteronomy 8; Matthew 4, and is still preached through the Holy Spirit. It is not a bare echo and empty sound, as some speak of it contemptuously, but spirit and life, a saving power of God, John 6, to all who believe in it. The royal prophet David also speaks of this hearing: “I will hear what the Lord will speak within me.”

From this inward and divine hearing of God’s Word, as from a spring, there certainly arises and flows true, living faith, active through love, Galatians 5. For, as Paul says in Romans 10: “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through God’s Word.” If God’s Word is pure and clear, hearing too may be pure and clear, and consequently the faith arising from such hearing may be pure and unadulterated and active through love: towards God, in humble obedience to his holy commandment and will, and in prayer, praise and thanksgiving; towards one’s neighbour, in the beneficent practice of every kind of good work. Love is therefore not the least, but, as Saint Paul says, the greatest virtue of all. Christ the Lord himself diligently exhorts us to practise this love in the long farewell sermon at his departure, John 13, earnestly enjoining and leaving it to us as his last charge: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples.” Likewise 1 John 2: “Whoever says he knows God and does not keep his commandments is a liar, and there is no truth in him; but whoever keeps his Word, in him the love of God is truly perfected.” Further, 1 John 4: “God is love, and whoever abides in it abides in God, and God in him.” From this we see that love is the true bond of perfection through which we are incorporated into God with Christ, so that he is and wishes to be in us, just as in heaven he is in his Father and the Father in him. He testifies further to this in the place mentioned: “Whoever keeps my commandments is the one who loves me, and I will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” 1 John 5: “If you keep my commandments, you abide in my love.” This love extends further to one’s neighbour, as is also beautifully written in 1 John 4: “If someone says he loves God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For whoever does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God whom he does not see? And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God should also love his brother.” Saint Paul describes the character and properties of such love in 1 Corinthians 13 with these words: “Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous; love does not act wantonly; it is not puffed up, and does not grow weary of doing good to its neighbour.”

From this it can readily be seen and understood that we can possess no true love if we do not through love serve our neighbour with good works. Yet very many among Christians boast of it in vain. It is also true from this that good works pleasing to God do not exist and precede faith, but follow it as fruit follows the trunk and tree. If the tree is good, it also brings forth good fruits. Consequently, works do not make faith good and pleasing, but faith makes works so. Thus—and this is the chief point here—we become righteous and saved solely through faith.

When a person born anew shows and conducts himself in this Christian and godly manner in his life and conduct, it cannot remain without fruit. Like the compound in the earthly work, such a person is placed by God in the furnace of tribulation and beset with every kind of cross, suffering and adversity, until he has died to the old Adam and the flesh and rises as a truly new person created according to God in true righteousness and holiness. As Romans 6 says, we are buried with Christ through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the Father’s glory, we too should walk in a new life. When this happens and a person daily bids farewell to sins so that they no longer rule over him, there begins within him the solution of the added body of gold, as described above in the earthly work, and the putrefaction: spiritually he is wholly dissolved, ground down, destroyed and putrefied. This solution and putrefaction happens earlier to one than another, yet must still take place in this temporal life. That is, such a person is so thoroughly digested, cooked and softened in the fire of tribulation that he despairs of all his own ability and powers and takes comfort solely in God’s grace and mercy. During this continuing fire or furnace of the cross, he acquires, like the earthly body of gold, a true black raven’s head: that is, he becomes ugly and disfigured, merely despised and mocked before the world, Wisdom 5, not merely for forty days and nights or years, but often for the length of his life. Thus he must possess and experience more suffering than joy, more sorrow than gladness in his life.

At last, through his spiritual dying, his soul is wholly drawn out and, as it were, borne upwards. That is, while his body is still upon earth, his heart and spirit—which no longer live to the world but to God and delight in spiritual rather than earthly things—long for eternal life and the fatherland. He orders his conduct so that, as far as possible in this present time, it is heavenly rather than earthly. He lives no longer according to the flesh but according to the spirit, no longer in the unfruitful works of darkness but, as in daylight, in the works of light, doing and enduring all things, shame and honour, in God. As stated, this separation of a person’s body and soul takes place in the spiritual dying to sin, not in the bodily death of sinful flesh. For, as the solution or dissolution of body and soul proceeds in the person born anew, body and soul are, as it were, separated and drawn off from one another in the glass, yet remain close together. The soul continually refreshes the body and preserves it from final destruction until God’s appointed time; they remain inseparate from one another still. Thus the exhausted and, as it were, dead body of the person in this school of the cross is not wholly abandoned by the soul, but is continually moistened and given drink, comforted and preserved by the Spirit from above with heavenly refreshment and divine nectar whenever the heat of tribulation threatens to become too great. This heavenly refreshment and revival of the earthly body, deadened within the person, fittingly corresponds in number to the wondrous ascent and descent in the earthly work, which takes place about seven times. For our temporal death, the wages of sin, Romans 6, is not true death, but a natural dissolution of body and soul, indeed rather a gentle sleep; and the union of God’s Spirit and the soul—understand this of the godly—truly is and remains henceforth unceasing.

For there are also found six thousand years of tribulation and temporal toil, the length of time the world is to endure. Throughout them, the Spirit of God has abundantly raised, comforted and strengthened comfortless human beings at all times amid cross and adversity. Thanks and praise be to God, this still happens daily and will continue until the great universal Sabbath and day of rest of the seven-thousandth year breaks forth and begins. Then this spiritual refreshment and revival will cease and reach its long-awaited conclusion, and in its place—since God will be all in all—everlasting joy will come and begin.

Meanwhile, during the digestion and cooking of the spiritually deadened body within a person, many and various colours and signs will appear, as may be seen in the earthly work: that is, every kind of cross, misery and tribulation, especially the temptations already mentioned that are caused by the Devil, the world and our flesh. Yet all these together give good indications that such a sorely afflicted person will reach a blessed outcome. Holy Scripture also testifies that all who wish to live godly lives in Christ Jesus must suffer persecution and that through much tribulation we must enter God’s kingdom. Saint Augustine likewise says: “Do not be surprised, brother, if, after you have become a Christian, crosses and tribulations vex you everywhere. For Christ is the head of our faith, and we are his members. We should therefore follow not only him but also his life. Yet Christ’s life stands before us filled with every tribulation, extreme poverty and hunger, mocked by scribes and Pharisees and finally handed over to the most shameful death. From this it can readily be understood that, if God bestows a similar life upon you and disciplines you with similar persecution, he wishes to place you among his elect. For without such tribulations we cannot come to God. Consider: all who intend to enter Paradise must pass through fire and water. Whether it be Peter, to whom the keys of heaven were given; Paul, God’s chosen vessel and instrument; or John, to whom God’s mysteries were revealed, they must all say: Through much tribulation we must enter God’s kingdom.” Thus far Augustine.