# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 03 18_S114
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

114

truth is never recognized, and yet, nevertheless, by reason of such false, hypocritical friendliness it is held that the injury is healed. Thus is fulfilled the saying Jerem. 8, 11: They comfort my people in their misfortune, that they should make light of it. And once more Chap. 23, 14: They strengthen the wicked, that none should turn from his wickedness.

I hope that we have never so conducted ourselves that it could be charged against us that we lacked love to receive and to bear with the weak: neither do we lack gentleness, kindness, peace and joy, if any one receives our word, though he cannot all at once be perfect. For in the meantime we are content if he has only recognized the truth, and does not resist it, or has not condemned it. What we do thereafter is a work of Christian love, which admonishes him that he also do what he has recognized.

But toward those who despise the doctrine and office of the Word, craftily persecute and condemn them, we have neither grace, love nor favor. Although the highest love is precisely this, that one resist their godless raging with all one's powers, in every manner and way.

Do you seek such a man in Luther, who would look through the fingers at all that you have in mind, if only he is smeared over with a flattering letter? Seeing that you are engaged in such unspeakably evil undertakings, and are not content that we are ready to forgive you, and for love's sake to have patience with you!

Why do you also demand that we should justify you, that is, be so godless as to deny the doctrine? You try me, my Fabricius, enough, and more than enough. I answer you also kindly enough, and more than enough: though you well deserved a sharper answer, since you keep on in your doings and moreover mock and laugh, and gloss it over, as you suppose, with very glittering colors, but in my opinion with very clumsy colors.

We will defend the divine doctrine with all our powers, though heaven or hell be angry. Therefore you have in Luther, as before, always a submissive, obedient servant, so far as you are friendly to the divine doctrine; but, on the other hand, a free despiser, where you and your Cardinal shall continue to make sport of God's Word.

In sum, so it shall remain. My love is ready to die for you. But he who touches the faith touches the apple of our eye. Here stands love; this you may mock or honor, as as you will; but the faith, or the Word, you shall adore and hold for the Most Holy. This we will have from you. Expect from our love all that you will; but our faith fear in all things.

God keep you, my dear Fabricius, and doubt not that my heart is upright toward you.

You see yourself that the cause is great and holy. By this we must be guided, that we may not love our brothers and sisters more than Christ.

From my Wilderness, on St. Anthony's Day 1522.

Little Cabinet
of some
remarkable falsifications of history, which are found in the St. Louis "Friedensbote," together with the necessary proof.

Second Piece.

There was once, as is well known, a shoemaker who was praised above many others for his love and liberality toward the poor, but of whom it finally became known that he had stolen the leather for the shoes which he gave to the poor. How do you like, dear reader, the shoemaker's charity? You will say: Well, a fine, kind hand, which first makes long fingers and then, with another's goods, puts itself in the odor of holiness and love toward poverty! You are right. But what this shoemaker did with bodily goods, that many now do even with the spiritual, divine goods, with the holy doctrines of the divine Word. For what do the Gentlemen Unionists, who seek by their relaxing of the doctrine to procure for themselves the name of "dear, peaceable people," do otherwise than take what belongs not to them but to the dear God, and give it away liberally? — We hold, therefore, that this liberality is not much better than that described Matth. 4, 9, and that it is better that one hold us for cruel and hard-hearted than that we should thus, with another's goods, and indeed God's goods, make the children of the world our friends. Esaj. 61, 8. — Let this suffice for the present as a preface.

In our last number we communicated to our readers the first little cabinet piece of the falsifications of history, of which the "evangelische Friedensbote" here has already made so many for the promotion of the Union, and we promised to bring still more of them to light from time to time, partly in support of the truth generally, partly in the hope that this one or that one who has been seized by the union-intoxication of our days might perhaps thereby recognize on what evil foundation the much-lauded Union must be built, if it needs such means for its support.

A second falsification of history which the aforesaid "Friedensbote" permits itself consists in this, that it tells its readers that even the unaltered Augsburg Confession was really, precisely in the disputed article on the Holy Supper, nothing other than an instrument by which men wished already in 1530 to introduce the now-favored Union! One scarcely trusts one's eyes when one reads in the third number of the first year of this paper, among other things, the following:

"The Reformers were earnestly concerned not to let the dissension over the Holy Supper become a rupture. This the Augsburg Confession proved, which was presented to the Emperor in 1530 at Augsburg in German and Latin. Read in it the 10th Article; it reads: ""Of the Supper of the Lord it is thus taught, that the true body and blood of Christ are truly present under the form of bread and wine in the Supper, and are there distributed and received. Therefore the opposing doctrine (—namely the Catholic—) is also rejected"". The disputed points are here passed over in silence, and this tenth Article was therefore to be regarded as another, though incomplete, act of union; was also so regarded and signed with a good conscience by John Calvin *)". Further below it even says that it was "stated sharply and definitely by Luther himself that the difference in doctrine justifies no churchly separation.

*) In the last number we communicated Calvin's own confession that he signed the Augsb. Conf. only with a secret reservation.

We truly scarcely know which to wonder at more here, whether at the purpose leaping to the eye from this, to create such a confusion that at last no one can any longer distinguish black from white and white from black, and is to regard truth and error as things of equal meaning, or at the means which the "Friedensbote" here employs to attain that purpose. Many a simple reader may well think that the "Friedensbote" here shows itself ready to enter into a union on the ground of the Augsburg Confession, and that this is very good. But would that it were so! Then, truly! we would not be the last among those who would extend the hand of brotherhood to the "Friedensbote"! But the "Friedensbote" is as far from such thoughts as heaven from earth. For to what end would it then make its new Union? Such a union has existed for three hundred years already, in the Church of the Augsburg Confession. No, this is what the "Friedensbote" is after: it would persuade its readers that the Augsburg Confession and Zwingli's Confession, Luther's Catechism and the Heidelberg Catechism, Lutheran faith and Reformed faith, are all at bottom one, that the alleged differences of doctrine are not worth mentioning, that each may remain in his own faith, and that one great Union Church be formed out of all existing and separate ones, in which each may teach what seems good to him; that this was also the mind of Luther and of all the other so-called Reformers.

But in order to bring about this Babylonian confusion and to build this Babylonian tower, the Messenger makes use of the means of asserting that the passage of the Augsb. Confession in which the Reformed false doctrine is rejected in clear words is directed against the "Catholic" (or rather Roman) Church.

This falsification of history is so clumsy that it seems almost superfluous to wish to expose it. For the sake of the simple, however, let us be permitted to point to the following.