# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 12 10_S59
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

59

standest above me, and thou makest it muddy for me? In short, the sheep had to pay for it, it must have made the water muddy for the wolf. So also my fanatics: they have kindled the fire, as they themselves boast right gloriously as a benefit, and now would shove the blame of the disunity off upon us. Who bade Dr. Carlstadt begin? Who bade Zwingli and Oecolampadius write? Have they not done it of themselves before him? We would gladly have had peace, and still would, but they would not allow it! Now the blame is ours: that is right. But I would nevertheless gladly, if such fanatics would not fear God at all, that they would at least be a little ashamed before men, and not write such shameless lies. They say that one should have peace, and themselves do not cease to increase such unpeace, as everyone sees and hears; it is also their joy, the further it goes. Item, they say it is a trifling matter, and yet there is now no point which they drive, press and urge so hard; the other points all lie still. Here they become martyrs and saints; whoever does not rave with them here is no Christian and understands nothing in the Scripture nor in the Spirit, so excellent a great art is it, to be able to say Bread and Wine; in this art the Holy Ghost alone is now working; but in truth it is nothing else than that the wretched devil through them mocks us besides, as if he would say: I will with deed bring about all misfortune and disunity, and afterward wipe my mouth and say with words: I seek and desire love and unity, as the Psalter also says: They speak peace to their neighbours, but mischief is in their hearts, Ps. 28, 3. — Well then, since they are so utterly reprobate and mock all the world, I will add a Lutheran warning and say thus: Accursed be such love and unity into the abyss of hell; because such unity not only rends Christendom lamentably, but after a devilish manner mocks and makes a fool besides at such its misery. Now I will not interpret it so ill, that they do it out of malice, but that they are so blinded by Satan and perhaps make for themselves such a conscience as bites them, namely: We have truly caused a great offence and kindled a fire, so we will only plaster and smear it over with words and pretend, to find a fair color, it is no great matter. And if we should lose the cause, we should have forestalled it, in that we had not lost anything great and had inserted a little slit, and as is said of the singers, when they miss, only made a little pig."

"No, not with me, dear Sirs, of peace and love. If I had murdered a man's father and mother, wife and child, and wished to murder him also besides and afterward should say: Keep the peace, dear friend, we will love one another, the matter is not so great that we should fall out over it: what would he say to me? Oh how dear he would hold me! Even so, the fanatics murder for me Christ, my Lord, and God the Father in His words, besides my mother, Christendom, together with my brethren, wish to have me also dead, and say afterward: I should have peace, they will practice love with me."

From this it is clear that indeed from Luther no union of the two tendencies of Protestantism was to be expected;" But that all such attempts at union, one and all, must also be in vain, we will cite for this only that well-known passage on Ps. 110, v. 2: "Some clever fellows now (1539) begin to patch, would counsel the matters and settle the quarrel, pretend that one should yield and give way on both sides; these we let make the attempt and try what they can, we grant them the labor well; but if they will make the devil pious and one with Christ, they are the first. But I hold that it is with such patchwork just (as Jesus Sirach says, ch. 22, v. 7,) as when one would piece together potsherds; and there have already been many cobblers who have undertaken it, but have also labored in vain, and lost both thread and stitch."

Nevertheless Luther did not fail to give wholesome counsels for the furtherance of a true union, as the history of the Wittenberg Concord in the year 1536 especially shows; and when in the following year, for the confirming of the same, the two delegates of the Swiss and other congregations conferred with him at Gotha, he showed himself very friendly and affable toward them and let himself be heard, among other things, as Mathesius relates, thus: "The best thing for the cause would be that they henceforth keep silent and teach rightly and confess freely and plainly: Dear friends, God has let us fall, we have erred, let us now look ahead and teach rightly; for with cloaking and dissembling it will not do, one cannot also quiet the people's consciences with such evasion, God will also demand a strict reckoning concerning the doctrine, therefore we may in our office yield nothing of God."

When now further "the attempt at mediation of Calvin by his doctrine of the Lord's Supper" is mentioned, it is already evident enough from what precedes that we must reject this also, as well as all attempts at mediation devised sooner or later, once for all as contrary to the truth; for we simply cannot acknowledge any mediation between God's and man's thoughts and ways, for they are as far from one another as the heaven from the earth; no mediation between God's Word, which is pure truth, and man's word, which is pure lies; no mediation between the Christian faith and human reason, for they can never make peace. What is mediation between truth and error but a hybrid shape? what mediates between light and darkness but the twilight before the coming on of night? what lies between warm and cold but lukewarm? But the lukewarm will the Lord spue out of His mouth. No, we will have no such attempts at mediation, we will abide by Luther's doctrine and in Christ's doctrine, for he calls to us still today in all his writings: This is the way, walk ye in it, neither to the right hand nor to the left, and whoever will walk with us in this way, to him we extend the hand of brotherhood in the name of the one true Mediator between God and men, and know for certain that in such persons also the prophecy will then be fulfilled: Ye shall defile also the covering of thy graven images of silver, and the ornament of thy molten images of gold, and thou shalt cast them away as a menstruous cloth, and say unto them: Get thee hence! Isa. 30, 20. 21.

Is it not also a loud-speaking testimony against all such attempts at mediation between the Lutheran and Reformed doctrine of the Lord's Supper, that even among those who inclined more toward the latter it has not yet to this day come to full unity: Were the leaders of the same at the time of the Reformation, Carlstadt, Zwingli, Oecolompadius, Schwenkfeld, Campanus and others, whom Luther calls the seven-headed serpent, at one among themselves, have all the later attempts at mediation, which proceeded for the most part from the side of the Reformed, brought people of different views nearer to one another, has not each held fast his view as the most correct, and can it be otherwise, since among the Reformed, as the "Kirchenfreund" himself confesses, it is only a matter of "views," and moreover in recent times the view also knows how to gain more and more standing, as if the doctrine of the Holy Supper were no article of faith, therefore one should not quarrel about it, everyone may believe here what he will!?

But as for Calvin's ecclesiastical influence at last, Walch says of it briefly and tersely in his Einleitung to the theological controversies within the Lutheran Church: "After Luther's death the complete separation of the Reformed from our Church took place, which John Calvin in particular, together with some others, furthered. Hitherto the controversies between the Lutherans and Zwinglians concerned chiefly the doctrine of the Holy Supper; but when Calvinism arose, the other disputed points also, concerning the communication of the divine attributes and election of grace, became more and more active. To this Calvinistic doctrine various persons who outwardly professed the Augsburg Confession began to assent, which evil afterwards spread far and wide, to which Philip Melanchthon had given the chief occasion."

We must now pass on to the sad business of showing the departures of Melanchthon from the doctrine of Luther, especially with regard to the Holy Supper, and indeed according to the