# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 08 05_S199
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

199

be dazzled by, runs now, translated from the Latin, as follows:

“Since you have already twice desired to know my opinion concerning the union of the Protestants, I will declare it to you sincerely, and indeed in such a way that I keep before me how I may perhaps, after a few days, have to give account of it before the judgment-seat of God in the dreadful hour of death. You, however, will know how to take in good part my candor, as I show you all honor and respect and shall always show you.

I believe now that we cannot enter into one and the same church fellowship with the Reformed until they have laid aside their errors, at least the chief of them, unless we are willing shamefully to betray the truth of our religion and the civil security of our posterity.

You acknowledge that they cherish not slight but grievous errors, and that they will not even agree with us concerning the Testament of Christ. To be sure, corrupt reason has in this matter something which it, apart from the slander of Capernaism, might reproach us with; but the very same it will also reproach the Reformed with in the doctrine of the Trinity and of the person of Christ. (He means to say: as the doctrine of the holy Supper, so also the doctrine of the person of Christ and of the holy Trinity is infinitely exalted above the conceptions of limited and perverted reason. The Reformed are therefore very inconsistent when in one article they concede to reason a right which they yet do not allow it in others.) But right reason, which confesses that it has not comprehended the true essence of things, however small they may be, from the beginning of the world, but must be content to admire their external accidental forms, will with justice make still much greater reproaches against them with respect to their system of the divine counsels, namely that they assail almost all the perfections of the most gracious God. Therefore you have wisely never taught that we, in order to learn the truth, must be fused with them into one church. I will say nothing of the fact that the Reformed have not a single common confession, and one therefore cannot know at all with whom one is actually to unite. This, however, those, in my opinion, have the highest need to know who are not minded to take into their own house so many chief controversies, nor, under the name of the Reformed religion, to extend the hand of brotherhood to countless Socinians and Arminians, who are tolerated in the English Reformed church and entrusted with public church offices.

Neither can the hope of peace, of advantage and of security ever counsel a union with those who hold the most various opinions. For what, as I remember, Dr. Rechenberg answered at a breakfast at Leipzig to the most praiseworthy King of Prussia, Frederick I., when he requested him to help promote the union of the Protestants, namely that he feared such a peacemaker would make four churches out of two; that I also fear, so long as the foundation of brotherly love, namely sincere acknowledgment and confession of the truth, is wanting among the Reformed in the most important doctrines. I confess and experience daily that the plague of indifferentism, with which the politicians are for the most part thoroughly infected, makes negotiations for peace far easier than was formerly the case. But whether the art of believing nothing will do more faithful service to the kingdom of Christ, and whether it becomes those who are to follow Him who is the way, the truth and the life, to obtain the peace which the world cannot give by the help of human wisdom, which has in view not heaven but earth alone, you, as one so well versed in Holy Scripture, will know how to judge even without me. For my part I would rather be accounted a silly man who cannot adapt himself to the spirit of the age than fall from the grace of Christ. The Roman clergy has such a rage as does not permit the Protestants to neglect political unity; but I find that religious unity does little or nothing toward the strengthening of it. For as the Spaniard threw the most praiseworthy Emperor out of Sardinia, so the King of Prussia too would not have omitted taking possession of Pomerania, even if the Swede had been wholly and entirely devoted to the Reformed religion. Most princes consider it to their advantage to take the pretexts for their actions from religion, but the causes from elsewhere.

I acknowledge that the kings of England and Prussia, as also other princes of the Reformed, cherish the kindest sentiments toward us, and I shall always praise it with the most humble expression of a grateful heart; from the theologians, however, who follow Calvin’s opinion, I expect no security for our church, but rather a great defeat, which will be inflicted upon us under the pretext of a union the more easily the more negligent we are in considering the history of former times.

My brother! by the immortal God I ask you whether two can sit on one and the same seat? Wherever in the Roman Empire a Reformed man sits, there, as is not unknown to you, the Evangelical has had to give place. But that this principle has been asserted by us against the Papists is a pure slander; since it is known how at the beginning of the Reformation the Germans were so weary of the papacy that it was almost unnecessary to drive anyone out; the princes and subjects freely accepting the purer religion, but bearing with fair indulgence those who wished to persist in the old superstition. The Reformed, on the other hand, who according to the report of Sculteti had in the year 1580, in which the Formula of Concord was published, only 2 little churches in the Roman Empire, at Bremen and Neustadt; behold, how many chairs of the Evangelicals, how many town halls, how many courts they now possess and direct! I do not believe that you are so carried away by the flatteries of certain statesmen that you could think it fair that in the whole University of Frankfurt on the Oder scarcely one, and that a professor of law, is tolerated of our religion. The Church of the Holy Ghost in Heidelberg, for the recovery of which the King of Denmark and our princes fought bravely, has been taken from us by the Reformed, as the public records attest; merely for the reason that John Casimir, the administrator of the Palatinate, asserted it was convenient for him on account of the visit to the court. Under what pretext the cathedral at Halle was taken from us in our own lifetime, you know. And sensible people may not think that the Reformed theologians have today assumed another disposition or a greater fairness. By no means. When in the past year I lamented with bitter tears the misfortune of the Reformed at Heidelberg (at that time the Reformed in the Palatinate were hard pressed by the Catholics), the renowned Dr. Mieg promised me that they would show themselves fair toward the Lutherans. But never have I seen those theologians more zealous in making their skirts large than since that time. While everything has been taken from us by their forefathers, not the least has been restored. My dear brother! I beseech you for the sake of the wounds of our Saviour that you would consider what growth the Reformed religion has had at your court within a few years, what progress it has made and will make in the future? What have they brought you, or what will they bring you? Whether the condition of your fatherland under the governors of a foreign faith is more flourishing than it was under the Swabian men, who had the most distinguished praise of a noble disposition and of the greatest virtues, it is not for me to inquire. But this I know, that the Reformed theologians wish to give us nothing, and themselves much. Consider that saying of Vegetius: Hypocritical covenants of peace have harmed the credulous oftener than hostile arms. If they sought nothing else than fellowship of faith; if they thought we did not err in the ground of salvation; they would certainly not lately have refused to celebrate with us the jubilee (1717), which they yet did 100 years ago, when there was no hope of peace whatever. I readily believe that your counsels are received by the courts with great applause.