# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 08 05_S198
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

198

previous article, and content ourselves with having furnished, in the passages cited above, some specimens of the clear and irrefutable proofs hinted at in our previous article, that the Christian Church, which gave to the four canonical Gospels the names kata Matthaion, etc., understood thereby that Matthew, etc., wrote them.

In Mr. S's words: “Is the whole of Greek usage forthwith to be judged accordingly (according to 2 Maccabees and Epiphanius a. h.)?” he lets his light shine once more. For either he does not know at all what he is saying, since in the question what kata means in the superscriptions of the Gospels it is not a matter of the whole of Greek usage but of the ecclesiastical; or he knows nothing of the difference between classical Greek and ecclesiastical Greek usage, which is yet so great that it has called forth a literature of its own.

Connected with the present article by Mr. S. stands another, entitled “The Church Fathers are Right.” The purpose of the article is to get the Church Fathers off his neck, who in his scribblings about the Bible have begun to become most inconvenient to him. To this end he makes his way through a truly diverting introduction, which reads thus: “Drive a priest into a corner by means of rational grounds, sound logic and undeniable facts; show him with hair-splitting exactness, etc.” Oh yes, to be sure, Mr. S's proofs are indeed, as the kind reader will already have felt, so hair-splittingly exact that one’s skin almost shudders.

Then he explains how he feels now, indeed, at the sight of the Church Fathers, yet how he intends to help himself by banishing the so-called historical conscience and putting on a brow of iron, saying: “One sees and recognizes at the first glance that one has (in the Church Fathers) just nothing, nothing at all before one but a hollow death’s head, which can frighten only children and hare-hearts, and which the sensible man, without the least fit of fear or respect, throws among the other dead men’s bones.” Oh, what then becomes here of the view of history so highly praised before?

According to what lies before us, sound common sense must be at least as much disgusting to Mr. S. as the dear Church Fathers, since the same has exposed Mr. S. still oftener and worse than those. Therefore it is not improbable that Mr. S. will soon, perhaps in a companion piece to the article “The Church Fathers are Right,” also formally bid farewell to the rules of sound human understanding, and declare him a child and a blockhead who still heeds such antiquated principles as: that a thing cannot at the same time be and not be, that every thing must have a sufficient cause, etc., but, on the contrary, professes to have raised himself up to that degree of intelligence at which it is quite natural for one to dish up, now himself, now to swallow, such propositions as “Man went forth by himself out of nothing, and was the creator of his subsequent greatness.”

We do not go into other matters in the article last touched upon, since we think that with this, at least for the first, we have done what seemed to us a duty toward the world, the wavering and the weak among Christians. The writer of this believes that in this article, in connection with the earlier ones, he has shown in a clear and convincing manner — for which, however, he ascribes the merit not to himself but to Mr. S.’s all too great weakness, — that Mr. S., in all the articles considered by us in his paper, which sets itself the task of attacking the Bible and undermining the faith of Christians, has displayed great narrowness of understanding, ignorance and dishonesty, and further, that the more Mr. S. has expatiated on one and the same point, the more of those evil qualities has come to light. There is no need now, we think, so far as our articles have become known, for the world to be confirmed in its security against the judgment to come by Mr. S.’s “Freie Blätter,” nor for the wavering to be brought to a fall, nor the weak to be grieved; for all may think: Mr. S.’s Bible-hostile articles have proceeded only from weakness of understanding, ignorance and dishonesty, and the more he has expatiated on a point, the more have the sources become manifest from which those Bible-hostile articles come; therefore the same are rotten prattle, and shall not trouble us, but serve us only as a testimony of the sad condition of those who in their perverse mind go their own ways, and walk not in the way of peace.

(Contributed.)

Judgment of an Older Approved Teacher of Our Church on the Church Union of the Protestants.

The following letter of the dear theologian of our Church, Dr. Ernst Salomo Cyprian, formerly Church and Consistorial Counsellor at Gotha, contains a short but powerful testimony against the union attempted at the expense of pure doctrine between the Lutherans and the Reformed. To recall once more to memory such a testimony, which bears so openly upon it the stamp of honesty, fear of God and truthfulness, will certainly be held superfluous by no one; for although the circumstances under which the Union was then to be introduced do not precisely fit our time and the ecclesiastical conditions of our country, yet the lessons and experiences which Cyprian sets forth in reference to the work of Union are still today perfectly applicable and worthy of heed. For the Reformed have to this day not yet recanted any of their old errors; they still insist upon their old symbols, which pronounce the harshest doctrines of a Zwingli and Calvin; they take the union of faith, down to the present day, only as a pretext for spreading themselves the more and securing currency for their opinions of faith; they still bitterly assail our Lutheran doctrine of the holy Supper, of the person of Christ, of the election of grace, and we should truly be grievously deceived if we let ourselves be persuaded that they acknowledge the Scripturalness of our doctrine in these points. Who will deny that among the Reformed teachers there were then, as now, good exceptions, who are not far from the truth and with sincere heart long for a union; but it is not they from whom the more recent efforts toward union have proceeded, for these have, as experience has proved and still proves, only the suppression of the Lutheran confession as their aim.

The testimony of Cyprian must have the more weight because even from enemies the praise of a gentle, peaceable and loving theologian must be given him, who perhaps would never have written anything on the matter of the Union if he had not been compelled to it by the repeated attacks of opponents upon him. The letter here communicated, which became the occasion of the excellent book on the church union of the Protestants written later by Cyprian, may serve at the same time as a short epitome of the same. The occasion of the letter itself was given by the famous Chancellor of the University of Tübingen, Christophor Matth. Pfaff, a man who then stood at the head of the union movements. He had turned to Cyprian in a courteous and benevolent letter and asked him to open to him his opinion on the union proposed by him. How greatly I wished, he wrote to Cyprian, to know your sentiments on this matter. I know how much you can do at Gotha. And truly, only by such acts of peace can the evangelical cause be rescued from the danger in which it hovers today. Write to me, therefore, by all means, what you, most renowned man, think about this matter. It is of great weight and worthy to be carefully considered. What I have written for it has been fully approved by the English and Berlin courts. How greatly I wished that like good tidings might come to me from the Saxon courts. Your judgment will cast the greatest weight into the scale, if the proposals of peace, as I believe, should meet your approval.”

The answer of the faithful and honest Cyprian, who would not