# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 01 07_S73
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.
"God's Word and Luther's doctrine shall not pass away now nor evermore." (Revelation of John, Chap. 14, vv. 6, 7.)
Published by the German Ev. Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and other States.
Edited by C. F. W. Walther.
Year 7.  St. Louis, Mo., January 7, 1851.  No. 10.
Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for subscribers out of town, who are to pay it in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 cents.
Only those letters which contain communications for the paper are to be addressed to the editor; all others, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent hither under the address Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

Calvinism.

The temptations for us Lutherans to give up again the jewel of the pure doctrine, which has been won back for us and bequeathed to us, even unto blood, through so many hot struggles of our fathers, grow ever greater and more dangerous in our days, and also in this our new fatherland. It is not the open enemies, however, from whom the greatest danger threatens us, but those who disguise themselves as our friends, as confessors of our doctrine, while they harbor the poison of false doctrine in their bosom. Above all other papers in this respect stands the so-called "Friedensbote" of St. Louis. It often speaks of the Holy Supper and of Holy Baptism in such a manner that one unacquainted with the wiles of the Calvinistic spirit can easily be deceived. It is therefore necessary that one diligently study the history of the Church and ever anew call to mind the facts which prove that it belongs among the characteristic marks of the Calvinistic spirit, in contrast to the honest, if cruder, Zwinglianism, to hold fast the false doctrine in the heart and in expressions to approach the orthodox in an almost incredible manner, in order to make them feel secure, to entice them into a union without truth, and at last, when the church union has been accomplished, to secure for the false doctrine the sole dominion. The older as well as the more recent history of the Church is rich in such facts. Some of them are related by K. Ströbel in the second volume of the Rudelbach-Guericke journal. We herewith communicate them. For Ströbel writes as follows in the said journal:

"When Bucer still taught at Strasburg, he had as a co-worker a Frenchman, John Calvin. Everyone held him to be a friend of the Wittenberg Concord, and though he was not so in his heart, he nevertheless guarded himself very carefully at that time against speaking out plainly. Since, moreover, he understood the art of expressing himself ambiguously more thoroughly, and practiced it more boldly, than any one of his contemporaries, and since Bucer also had brought him along as one of kindred faith to the colloquies at Worms and Regensburg, many of the esteemed evangelical (Lutheran) theologians of Germany stood in friendly relations and intimate correspondence with him, while he was regarded by the Swiss as an opponent of Zwingli. The Interim, in consequence of which Calvin came to Geneva, destroyed the deception. Soon after entering upon his new teaching office he united with those of Zwinglian sentiments in a Consensus mutuus in re Sacramentaria (that is, in a mutual agreement concerning the sacramental controversy), in which the evangelical (Lutheran) doctrine of the Lord's Supper and its defenders were rejected, and Zwingli's opinion, on the other hand, was acknowledged to be the right one. The words in question read: "Those who, in the solemn words of the Supper: "This is my body," press straightway upon the literal sense, as they speak, we reject as perverse interpreters. For we put it beyond dispute that they are to be understood figuratively (pictorially), so that what is said of bread and wine, it is, means what the same signifies. After this it could no longer be subject to any doubt that Calvin was a pure Zwinglian and nothing else. His talk of a spiritual enjoyment can be of no significance for the main matter, because besides it is incessantly impressed that Christ with his flesh and blood is as far removed from the Sacrament as heaven from earth. In that he is willing to acknowledge only the spiritual enjoyment of the body and blood of Christ, but rejects the bodily or oral, he denies altogether the presence and the reception of the heavenly parts of the Supper, and his cloakings are perfectly like those of a man who, for example, does not believe in the resurrection of the dead, but does not want his unbelief to become known, and therefore seeks to adorn with all imaginable colors the quite foreign article of regeneration, which according to Holy Scripture is called a spiritual resurrection, and then charges his opponents that they quarrel merely about the "modus" (about the manner and way, about the How?) of the matter, provided he only no