# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 07 08_S177
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.
"God's Word and Luther's doctrine pure shall now and evermore endure." (Rev. of John, chap. 14, v. 6, 7.)
Published by the German Ev. Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and other States.
Edited by C. F. W. Walther.
Vol. 7.  St. Louis, Mo., the 8th of July, 1851.  No. 23.
Terms: The Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for subscribers living out of town, who must pay 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 sent to the editor; all others, however, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent here to the address Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

Of the chief article of our whole Christian doctrine: that is, of the justification of the sinner before God through faith in Christ; item: the fiercest assailants of this doctrine: the Tridentine Synod and the Order of the Jesuits; item: the origin and purpose of this Order.

From Chemnitz, Examen Concilii Tridentini. — Translated from the Latin by J. G.

Continuation.

In the decisions of the Council of Trent the whole rubbish of scholastic opinions concerning inherent new qualities of righteousness, by which man is and is to be made acceptable to God, and that he is received unto eternal life by his good works which proceed from those new qualities, is forced anew upon the Church, and that as a doctrine which was taught by the Son of God Himself, the Sun of Righteousness, and moreover with an express warning and prohibition appended, that from now on no one shall presume to believe, preach, or teach otherwise. O unhappy Church! to which it is forbidden by the Council of Trent to believe, to preach, and to teach the blessedness of the man to whom God imputeth righteousness without his own works; which blessedness is confirmed and assured by the testimony of Moses, David, and all the other prophets! But, someone might say: if the design and purpose of the Fathers of the Council was this, that they should merely repeat the condemnations of the doctrine of our churches and give to understand that they would not and could not by any means accept or permit any reformation of their doctrine, of whatever kind it might be: then they might have dispatched the matter more briefly, and would not have needed so many and long deliberations through so many months. And indeed certain people are of the opinion that this was done only, as the saying is, pro forma, or for show, namely, that one might put forward a certain pretense that those decrees and doctrinal definitions concerning justification were by no means drawn from preconceived opinions, but were framed and established after long, earnest, and mature deliberation and consideration out of the sources of Scripture. But I find from the communications and reports of my Andradius (a Jesuit and chief opponent of Chemnitz, who wielded the pen at the Council of Trent) and especially from the decrees of the Council itself, that there were chiefly two causes of so anxiously careful and protracted a deliberation: first, because the light of the testimonies of Scripture (which teach that we are justified before the judgment of God, that is, absolved from sins and received unto eternal life, not for the sake of our qualities or virtues, but through the imputation of the righteousness, obedience, and merit of Christ, of grace and freely) — is so great that it enlighteneth even the unlearned, strengtheneth the godly, and shineth also upon the adversaries, against their will, into their eyes with so great a splendor: therefore they had to be intent upon arts and intrigues, that they might obscure it again through some mist and darkness, that it might not shine quite so brightly into men's eyes. And because this had to be done with a tolerable semblance, it certainly required more than a month's time for such deliberation. Secondly, because the Scholastics philosophize so grossly and clumsily about the merit of man, who does as much as lies in his power, and about justification without the Holy Scriptures, and dispute and treat of it in no other way than as if they were philosophizing in Aristotle's school about physical (natural) motions, — but the Council of Trent nevertheless wished to retain that doctrine of the Scholastics, while at the same time it also saw that men, through the reading of the Holy Scriptures, in spite of the whole power of the antichristian kingdom, had already advanced so far in their Christian knowledge that they had a loathing and abhorrence of that profane, that is, unchristian, heathenish manner of teaching and speaking and expressions, and wished to have everything explained and decided according to Scripture, so it certainly required much and great labor and long deliberation, a