# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 10 15_S29
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

29

of the saving knowledge of God that I feel, I do not doubt, if indeed together with the true God thou hast not also denied thy ever faithful mother, thy childlike heart would break at my frequent tears. O son of sorrows! My tears are now indeed my meat day and night, since I, a poor mother, must sigh and lament not over temporal goods, but over the loss of thy salvation, the highest harm to thy soul. I weep with Rachel for my child and will not be comforted, for it seems to be all over with him; but if all duty toward the fourth commandment, all childlike love toward thy mother, be extinguished by thy adopted errors, ah, then hear me, since I speak with thee by this letter of tears! My son, thou son of my body, hear me! that thy God also may hear thee; I am thy mother, my son, thou flesh of my flesh, from me thou hast had, as my conscience confesses to me, all motherly, heartfelt love. So thou canst surely promise thyself of my motherly faithfulness, that in such things as concern us Christians most, and touch the eternal joy and salvation of a soul, I shall seek and desire thy best. Accursed the mother who, whether from an inconsiderate rashness, a blindly adopted opinion, or regard for temporal honor, likewise the gossip and scorn of her fellow believers, or other temporal considerations, should have betrayed her child, who is upon the way of life, into the way to everlasting perdition and the hellish pool of brimstone! Woe to such a mother! she would have to be justly hated, according to Christ's command, Luc. 15, 26., and honored by no child, nor freed from the suspicion of such dreadful conduct; and my well-instructed, innocent conscience bears me witness, which the strict Judge of the quick and the dead, my Jesus, shall one day lay open, that I have labored to bring my child out of the claws of Satan to my bleeding Jesus, through the unfailing Word of the living God. And so compel thyself, dear son, to hear obediently thy mother, who casts herself at thy feet with many thousand tears. In the care that thou must bear for thy salvation, despise me not, my child, at the instigation of thy seducers, because I am a woman who presumes to judge of religious controversies and to treat with thee. Thou knowest indeed, dear child, that the infinite love and grace of God let me be born in such a church, where, after the manner of the old, holy, apostolic churches, women also are willingly permitted to search the Scriptures and to seek eternal life. Where also women, like the grandmother and mother of the holy Timothy, Eunice, of whom Paul speaks in praise, 2 Tim. 1, 5., are required, on pain of the loss of their salvation, to learn the mysteries of the faith, for every righteous one, be he man or woman, shall live by his faith, Hebr. 10, 38. How I have always observed this admonition, and let the Word of God be the joy and delight of my heart, thine own conscience will convict thee; according to this very true and unfailing Word of God I form my judgment of thy new doctrine. Upon this Word of God, which even the gates of hell cannot prevail against, my pronouncement is founded and rests, and I write with a broken heart that thou, unhappy one, hast let thyself be seduced into such a faith as draws after it nothing but eternal damnation and the torment of hell. Our divines have long since refuted thy seducers more thoroughly, more fully, and more acutely. I abide by such proofs as my Christian prudence learns from her Bible. Should that be a holy and saving doctrine and religion which shrinks from the holy Bible (the only book from which we can learn our salvation, Joh. 20, 31.), and is violently afraid of the Bible as of its sworn enemy, will by no means submit to its judgment, lest one come behind its falsehood and deceit; which tears out of its children's hands the Bible, though Jesus has commanded all men to read it, Joh. 5, 39., as a harmful book, and forbids searching in it under threat of the most cruel curse? O damnable doctrine! If they have despised it, it will, according to Christ's saying, curse and condemn them at the last day, Joh. 12, 48. Should that be a holy and saving doctrine which mocks the means of our salvation? Must thou not thyself confess this to me, poor, seduced child? Tell me what thine eyes have seen and thine ears have heard, where does the cup remain in the partaking of the Supper, which our dying Jesus so earnestly ordained and instituted? Does one not mock such an ordinance quite scornfully, does one not withhold it from the communicants, in defiance of Jesus, and hold the proceeding needless? It seems to me the Holy Ghost has pronounced a judgment upon this doctrine: whoso takes away from the ordinance of Jesus, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city. Offenb. Joh. 22, 19. Hast thou not heard how man must merit his salvation also by his good works? How thereby the blood of sorrow of the martyred Jesus is mightily blasphemed, as though it had not been fully sufficient for the salvation of men, whereas my Bible assures me that by the blood of Jesus alone we are saved? Apostelgesch. 4, 11. 12. But they who seek heaven by their works draw upon themselves the eternal curse. Röm. 3, 20. (Gal. 3. 10.) Should that be a holy doctrine, leading to heaven, which directs its children to wanton, countless idolatry, invocation of the saints, falling down before images? when it is the clear declaration of God that the idolaters shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. Offenb. Joh. 21. 8. Behold, wretched child, for I must conclude and pass over in silence other errors worthy of damnation, because the tears ever hold back the pen. Such an accursed doctrine, whose end is damnation, thou hast alas accepted, and in such hellish chains thou goest about in thy popish faith. Ah, dear, dear child, if the Bible still remains so dear to thee, which thy Jesus, who loves thee ardently, himself is: then loose thyself again from such snares of the devil, go out from the popish darkness, that thou receive not also their plagues, and I adjure thy conscience, confess the truth to me, as also the thoughts of thy heart, which my all-knowing Jesus will one day reveal. Is it not true? Nothing has enticed thee to the acceptance of this doctrine but temporal gain, the promise of an office of honor and ample maintenance? But despise all these promises. What would it profit thee, if thou shouldst gain the whole world and suffer loss of thy soul? Thinkest thou that even the greatest riches could prosper with thee, when, because of thy wickedness and thine offense against God, I am constrained by God himself to curse thee? Knowest thou not that the mother's curse pulls down the houses and substance of children? We Evangelicals have a rich God, who can and will richly provide for and nourish all who trust in him and live piously, who also, when it is needful for us, hears the afflicted and fills the hungry with good things. So also, dear child, my motherly heart stands open to thee, which will take thee in at all times. Ah, then have mercy, my son! My son, thou son of my body! whom I carried under my heart with so great travail and nourished so carefully! Have mercy upon thine own poor soul, have mercy upon thy poor mother, whom thou wilt otherwise bring with heartache into the grave, and return again to the evangelical truth, that I may not alone here, but also yonder, with thy blessed fathers, live with thee in eternal joy with Jesus! In default*) thereof I would wish that my body had been thy grave, that I might not have to behold thee in hellish darkness out of the bosom of my Jesus. Now return again, dearest child, that God, thy heavenly Father, who for Christ's holy and steadfast confession's sake will surely forgive thee thy grievous fault, as he forgave Peter who denied him, and I, thy hitherto afflicted mother, may rejoice: this my son was dead and is alive again. Luc. 15, 24. Blessed tidings that shall inform me of it, and therefore will I call upon God's goodness day and night, and doubt not that God will hear my prayer and tears, for a woman cannot forget her child so as not to have compassion on the son of her body. Therefore will I in no

*) Refusal or denial.