# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 04 15_S133
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

133

he work the faith in thee, otherwise thou wilt remain forever without faith; thou composest and doest what thou wilt or canst."

(Submitted.)

A Word on the Genuine, Thorough Lutheranism of the Kirchenbote, Formerly Weyl's, Now Anstädt's.

In the last number of the past volume of the said periodical, the former editor, Mr. Weyl, took a touching farewell, since he is now stepping down from the stage of his nine years' editorial career. That he has mingled into his sorrowful tears of parting some gall against the Lutherans faithful to the Confession, whom he is accustomed to call, with others, Old Lutherans, need not surprise us particularly in this man. For the said Old Lutherans, provoked by his wanton distortion and denial of the truth, have at times shone the light of truth rather sharply into his eyes, and thereby have wounded his wide heart, which is closed only to the full truth. What wonder, then, that at his departure he must once more warn against the notions and the spirit of these uncouth people, and in his accustomed manner must once more portray them as those who have cast the torch of discord into the Church and go on in a bitter spirit to break and shatter everything that does not suit their bigoted trumpery. For they have, as he laments, scornfully attacked the liturgy and the new hymnal of the Generalists, as also the men to whom the same were entrusted for preparation, have rent congregations asunder, wounded the hearts of the brethren, and wherever they came, left behind tokens of destruction and disunity. He must needs compare them to the Puseyites of the English High Church, and prophesy to them that in the end they will yet turn Roman. He must needs, therefore, as a faithful watchman upon the walls of the General-Synodical Zion, sound the alarm and cry to the people: Be on your guard! Let yourselves not be led astray by choir surplices, candles, crucifixes, crossings, private confessions, etc., but abide firmly in the simple doctrine of the Gospel (??) and the simple divine service of the Lutheran Church (?). —

Now we indeed do not think it worth the trouble to refute these assertions and slanders, scattered abroad in the world without any proof. That would be doing them too much honor. But since it is plain that Mr. Weyl has thereby once more grievously sinned, we should nevertheless like to do him, at his departure, one more kindness, and, if it were possible, to help him by a few remarks and questions to the recognition of his sin. He charges us with having cast the torch of discord into the Church, and says this evidently with reference to the controversy over the Symbols, which he mentioned shortly before. Now Mr. Weyl knows, after all, that we did not first make and invent the Lutheran Symbols. So he ought also to know that it is precisely they, by which, as by their public Confession, the Lutheran Church distinguishes herself from the Romanists, the Reformed, Methodists, and other sects, and that every one who wishes to be not a Romanist, Reformed, Methodist, etc., but precisely a Lutheran, must confess himself to them. Yea, if Mr. Weyl himself were a sincere Lutheran, he would also know how joyfully and confidently one can do so, seeing that our Symbols, and indeed they alone, teach in all parts in accordance with the Scripture, and confess nothing but the true, one Christian faith. Then he would indeed also understand the pain which the unfaithfulness of those causes us, who deny the precious faith of the fathers, and sacrifice upon strange heights, and under all groves play the harlot. But that is just what Mr. Weyl will neither understand nor acknowledge, and against which he so obstinately struggles. Therefore we cannot indeed lay hold of him by his Lutheran knowledge and conscience, but must put the question to him on the ground of common honesty: who then begins the strife, whether he who maintains and holds fast the truth, but rebukes error, or he who denies the truth, contradicts it, and defends error — whether he who preserves the pure Confession, or he who assails it. Mr. Weyl would even have to scoff at the sound common sense so much extolled by the Generalists, and at all sense of right, if he wished to assert the former. Now let him but apply this to the case before us, and he will hardly be bold and presumptuous enough to assert that we are against, and they for, the Lutheran Confession, whose purity has hitherto remained untouched even by open enemies. Nevertheless it would first of necessity have to be proved that the good old Lutheran Confession, which we preserve, is not the pure but a false Confession, and that they have only recently brought forth the right and genuine one, before it could be laid to our charge that by our holding fast to the old we were brandishing the torch of discord and fighting against the truth. But to be sure, we have to do with a learned man, who demonstrates to us from church history that the Formula of Concord, even in its origin, produced utter devastation, estrangement of minds, and a rigid, icy-cold formalism, and that by its promulgation the contending parties did not come a hair's breadth nearer to one another. Yet how? Here the learned gentleman is evidently speaking of contending parties which were already in existence, and did not first need to be called forth by the Formula of Concord as by a torch of discord. And everybody knows, of course, that there were Reformed even then, who with their clever reason burst into the Scripture, and therefore could not grasp, and so would not believe, many important articles of the holy Christian faith. Now, according to Mr. Weyl's wise counsel, one should have shut one eye and kept silence, even when one had recognized the truth through God's grace from His sure and true Word. But the Church of Christ, which is indeed a pillar and ground of the truth, has never done so, nor can she do so, but at all times she has lifted up her voice like a trumpet against every error. Let Mr. Weyl read, for example, a little of the history of the Council of Nicaea, and see how poorly the party of the mediators fared there, and how gloriously, on the contrary, the pure, full truth held the field in the struggle with the Arian heresy. To be sure, the obstinate Arians were thereby not a hair's breadth better, but only the more heated and furious. But certainly not because the divine truth, to which they needed only to submit simply in order to put an end at once to all strife, was not set clearly enough before their eyes, but because they wantonly resisted it. So it went also in the days of the Formula of Concord, and so it goes today still. Who would be so brazen as to lay that to the charge of the Church of God, and to accuse her of having brought about and caused the Arian controversy, or the struggle with the Reformed in the sixteenth century? Just as little, however, does she bear the blame, nor do her faithful sons, for the strife with the false Lutherans in the nineteenth century, and even today it is far from true that her joyful confession in the face of all error and all heresy is a firebrand which only lays waste and destroys everything. On the contrary, it grieves us indeed very much that also today the old game is renewed, and the false brethren, the more we rebuke them with the Word of truth, only become the more senseless, and the more they suspect, mock, and revile us. But shall we on that account keep silence, and deny also the truth recognized by God's grace? Never! That cannot, that may not be; the words of the LORD forbid us, where He saith: Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven. And so it will avail Mr. Weyl nothing that he heaps reproach upon us for our faithful holding fast to the Confession and our open testifying against all lies and error, and brands us as disturbers of the peace, Vandals, and Puseyites. It all falls upon his own head, and the right hand of the Lord yet gets the victory. But it is droll that a man who has already openly expressed his unbelief with regard to the Holy Supper several times, who also here again makes but a half confession, in that he confesses himself only to that which he holds to be essential, that such a man exhorts and calls to steadfast fidelity in the simple doctrine of the Gospel at the simple divine service