The New Living Way Prepared by Christ

to blow as He willed; and he rejoiced with all his heart that the Lord had awakened me to this. In the Market Church, however, nothing but Ishmaelites A common early modern pejorative for those perceived as legalistic or spiritually barren; original: "Ismaeliten" and taskmasters hold the office in their own names. They began immediately, in their pride and tyranny of conscience, to resist the Spirit of God through external force and the arm of the flesh, and had me led out of the church by a city officer. Four weeks later, I was further compelled by the fire of divine love to assert the freedom of the Spirit in that very same Market Church for the fourth time through a prayer that I had to speak aloud, as the Our Father is usually prayed in silence between the entrance and the sermon original: "Tractation". The superintendent at that time, however, had already arranged for two city officers to seize me at his nod and lead me from the church to prison, just as I was praying aloud with these words: that God might have mercy upon all of Christendom, overlook the time of ignorance, and powerfully command all men through His grace to repent. In particular, may God have mercy upon this poor congregation and its preachers! Thereupon, there arose not the slightest disturbance from without, save that the Spirit of God awakened some souls to repentance and the fear of God, set some in wonder, and caused others to subsequently reveal the evil ground of their hearts through godless judgment. But the perverted order and hypocritical praying of those godless preachers were most disturbed by this: for they exhort the people to call upon God with them for the Holy Spirit merely for the sake of appearances, so that they might think and say what is right through His holy inspiration, while they have already smeared together the entire sermon from postils collections of sermons and commentaries on the Bible, according to the compositions of the fathers, written them on paper, and learned them by heart. They also, as animal-men those ruled by base instincts; original: "Thier-Menschen" who have never died to their brutish desires of pride, avarice, lust, anger, and envy (and do not even have the will to let God crucify and kill these within them, because they do not believe, according to their paternal statutes, that God would or could do such a thing), cannot and will not receive the Holy Spirit, John 14:16–17, as long as they remain in their sins and continue therein. Indeed, they blaspheme daily on their