# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 04 29_S142
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

142

not delay, until we see and hear the man; for we have undertaken our journey on his account, since we understand how he would overthrow the priesthood together with the Mass as an ill-founded service of God. Since then we were from our youth destined and appointed by our parents to become priests, we would gladly hear what instruction he will give us, and with what right he proposes to bring such an undertaking to pass." After such words he asked: "Where have ye studied before?" We answered: "At Basel." He said: "How stands it at Basel? Is Erasmus of Rotterdam still there? What does he?" — "Sir," said we, "we know nothing else than that it stands well. But what he is doing is unknown and hidden to everyone; for he keeps himself quite quiet and secret." These words made us feel very strange concerning the knight, that he knew how to speak of Schürpf, Philip and Erasmus, likewise of the necessity of both the Greek and Hebrew tongues. Moreover he spoke in between some Latin words, so that we were inclined to think he was another person than a common knight. "Dear friends," he asked us, "what do they think of Luther in Switzerland?" — "Sir," I answered, "there are (as everywhere) many kinds of opinions. Some cannot sufficiently extol him and thank God that He has revealed His truth through him and made known the errors; but some condemn him as an intolerable heretic, and especially the clergy." He said: "I well suppose it is the priests." During such conversation he became quite familiar with us, so that my companion lifted up the little book which lay before him and opened it. It was a Hebrew Psalter. Then he laid it down again at once, and the knight kept it. From this more doubt befell us as to who he might be. And my companion said: "I would give a finger from my hand, that I understood this language." He answered: "Ye may well grasp it, if ye will but apply diligence; for I also desire it, to learn further, and I exercise myself in it daily.

(To be concluded.)

A Blood-Witness for the Bible.

For the divinity of Holy Scripture so many have gladly laid down their lives that they cannot be counted. Especially has this happened in the time of the Diocletian persecution. In the year 303, namely, Emperor Diocletian, just at Easter, caused an edict to be posted in the chief places of his empire: "All assemblies of the Christians for divine worship shall be dispersed, all Christian churches destroyed, all collections of the holy Scriptures delivered up and burned, all unyielding Christians shall lose their civil rights, and all Christian slaves forever the hope of manumission, and torture before the court shall also be applicable, without distinction, to every Christian who would not deny his faith." Upon this imperial edict there broke out the most protracted and bloodiest of all persecutions. They raged with unbridled cruelty. At the very beginning of the persecution a Christian servant of the imperial court at Nicomedia, by name Peter, was first torn with scourges; then they poured salt and vinegar into the wounds; finally, since he remained steadfast, he was slowly roasted over a fire. Others they crucified with the head downward, and let them live until they died thus of hunger, or they made a gentle, suffocating fire under their heads. Others they pierced through the fingers, from the tips of the nails on, with sharp awls, and poured over their backs molten lead, still glowing and bubbling. Sometimes they turned whole Christian towns into great pyres and burned all in them, men, women and children, at one time. But far from the Christians having been moved by this to deny the truth, the truth which God's Spirit had written in their hearts, it was precisely in this most terrible persecution that the very fewest were brought to apostasy through fear of the tortures. On the contrary, many Christians now pressed forward, full of longing to shed their blood for their Saviour, voluntarily to the judgment seats. Eusebius writes: "The murderous swords themselves at last grew blunt and broke as worn out; the executioners wearied and had to be relieved; but the Christians raised hymns of praise and thanksgiving to the Almighty God to the very last breath of their life." Among those who in this persecution chose the most painful death rather than deliver the holy Scriptures up to destruction, we find also a godly Christian maiden, by name Irene. She had been taken prisoner with several other Christian women, and upon two of them, by name Chionia and Agape, the sentence of condemnation to death by fire had already been carried out. At last Irene also was brought before the judge, the governor Dulcetius, who addressed her with the following words:

Thy senseless purpose is clearly evident from what thou doest, who hast kept back to this present day so many books of the Christians, which thou also, when they were discovered, didst acknowledge as such. Therefore thou must suffer thy punishment. Nevertheless mercy shall be granted thee even now, and thou shalt be free of all punishment and danger, if thou wilt at least now acknowledge the gods. What sayest thou therefore? Art thou ready to eat of the sacrifices and to do homage to the gods?

Irene answered: Never, for to those is set the pain of an eternal fire who deny JESUS.

Dulcetius: Who persuaded thee to keep back the writings of the Christians until today?

Irene: The Almighty God, who has commanded us to love Him unto death; for this reason we could not deny Him, but we would rather let ourselves be burned alive, and suffer rather all that may befall us, than deliver up the holy Scriptures.

Dulcetius: Who else, then, knew that the books were in thy dwelling-house?

Irene: God, the Almighty, who knows all things, saw it, no one else.

Dulcetius: Last year, when that imperial edict was first published, where did ye keep yourselves hidden?

Irene: There, where God willed, on the mountains; God knows it, under the open sky we lived.

Dulcetius: Where did ye obtain your sustenance?

Irene: Under the open heaven from God, who feeds all; we wandered from one mountain to another.

Dulcetius: When ye returned from the mountains, did ye not read the Scriptures in the presence of others?

Irene: They were in our house; but we did not dare to carry them out; and that was just what grieved us so, that we could not read them day and night, as we had been accustomed to do from the beginning until last year, when we hid them.

(After a shameful maltreatment which followed, in which, however, Irene was wonderfully protected by God, the judge at last addressed her again thus:)

Dulcetius: Dost thou still persist in thy presumption?

Irene: It is not presumption, but fear of God, that I persist in it. —

So the sentence was passed upon her that she should be burned alive. Presently soldiers seized her, led her out of the city to the same hill where shortly before her dear sisters in the faith had suffered death in the flames, and where a pyre had also been built for her. Commanded to mount it, she stepped upon it as upon a triumphal chariot, singing psalms and praising God aloud. The pile of wood was kindled, and after a few minutes the holy martyr had finished her course and had sealed the holy Book of the Bible also with her blood.

(Sent in.)

Rebuke.

In No. 15 of the Apologet, Mr. Ahrens pours out over us a flood of the most malicious slanders, reviling us as "Old Lutherans" and "the new Saxon sect," and asserting with regard to us: "that Jesuits are secretly working in the Lutheran Church and undermining true Protestantism." He says further: "The Roman Church asserts that only a certain party or society of