# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 09 02_S6
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

6

times; and stand by us and our posterity still further with Thy grace; that we may live in Thy fear, give Thee the honor, and walk worthily in the Gospel of Christ.

Closing wish:

May the merciful God graciously guard and preserve us and our posterity from Antichrist and his following, especially the bloodthirsty Jesus-foes, Calvinists and Sacramentarians, and all heretics and babblers who would lead us away from this our confession of faith, and grant us His grace that we may hold alone to His Word, which points us to Jesus Christ, the way, the truth and the life, that through His merit we may be made righteous and saved.

This give and grant to us all, with eternal mercies, God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, God blessed forever, Amen!

Beneath it stands:

Placent homiliae istae per omnia, et dignas judico, quae typis publicis exprimantur.

12th of May, 1632.

d. Hoe.

that is: these sermons please throughout, and I deem them worthy of the press.

Dr. Hoe (first court preacher).

Notice. The foregoing sermon is drawn out and compiled from 3 Jubilee sermons which were held at the first Augsburg Confession Jubilee in the year 1630, on the 25th, 26th and 27th of June, in the Electoral Castle Church at Dresden, by M. Christoph Laurentius, court preacher appointed to His Electoral Serene Highness of Saxony. A hundred years later, in 1730, "promoted to a new edition at the second Augsburg Confession Jubilee" by M. Joh. Christian Langbein, Deacon and Noon Preacher at the Holy Cross in Dresden, 1730.

M. Langbein now gives the following report concerning this: the blessed author of them was at that time the second court preacher in order. For the office of chief court preacher was filled, as is well known, by the excellent theologian Dr. Matthias Hoe von Hoenegg, who has left us a full account of the jubilee of that time; and the third court preacher was M. Christian Willius, afterwards superintendent at Colditz. Our M. Laurentius also held in the year 1632, on the 7th of September, a fine sermon of thanksgiving on account of the great victory won at Breitenfeld near Leipzig in the year before, on that very day, by Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, and the Serene Elector John George the First, of most Christian and mildest memory; which sermon he dedicated to these two high Evangelical heads. As for the three Jubilee sermons themselves, which came into my hands some time ago together with the sermon of thanksgiving, they were held upon the Augsburg Confession; and although they had to be composed briefly, yet the benefit and edification will not be small, if one seeks thereby to awaken also his jubilee joy. The Publisher has taken pleasure in furnishing them anew to the lovers of the unaltered Augsburg Confession.

And truly, M. Langbein continues, our godly forefathers have in many ways shown a special high regard for the unadulterated Augsburg Confession. On the contrary, in our times the shameful disesteem of the same will the more make itself felt. Very many causes of this might be pointed out, if one wished to make a thorough consideration of it. Some of them shall be pointed out in the

following continuation.

The Departure of Johannes von Winkler from Popery to the Evangelical Church.

The faithful witness of the Lord, Johannes von Winkler, was born in the year 1656 at Klein-Glogau in Upper Silesia. His father, Valentin von Winkler, belonged to the papistical-Catholic, but his mother, a née von Linken, to the Lutheran Church. She was, as he himself relates, a Lutheran with her whole heart. He was educated from his youth in all the liberal arts and sciences. Among all studies, however, none was dearer to our Winkler than that of theology. This he pursued until his seventeenth year at home, but afterward six years more at Breslau under the direction of the Jesuits. From there he was called home by his parents, and by his father, yet against the will of his mother, who shed many tears over it, was put into the Franciscan monastery at Polnisch-Freistadt. Here he remained thirteen years, in which time he administered for five years the office of a Prädikator (preacher) and Confessionarius (father confessor). He himself relates that he had in this service good, lazy days, all abundance in kitchen and cellar, and never felt what it means to suffer want. Though such a life well pleased him at that time, yet God the Lord had heard the prayer of his mother, and so it came to pass that through diligent reading in the holy Scriptures he was enlightened by the Holy Ghost, recognized the blindness in which he had been sunk, and let go the blind leaders of popery, turning instead to the right way of the alone-saving doctrine of Jesus Christ. As soon as this knowledge had become living in his soul, he also considered ways of escaping from the hands of his soul-murderers, which became possible for him in that in the year 1692 he fled to Wittenberg, where he was received kindly and willingly on all sides. In the next following year, that is 1693, he justified himself concerning his departure from the papistical church in a Revocation-Writing, which shall now follow word for word, for instruction, for comfort, for warning and admonition of all who will let themselves be counseled and warned:

Revocation-Writing.

When I rightly lay to heart the ruinous and damnable danger of body, and chiefly of soul, in which I have hitherto hovered in the erring and darkened popery, with such groundless human folly and idolatrous doings, and on the other hand consider the wonderful calling of God and enlightenment of the Holy Ghost, I comfort myself that even that God who said to the patriarch Abraham has also said to me: "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee" (Gen. 12); for in this land men serve other gods; or: "because they serve many gods, and not the one God of heaven." (Judith 5).

Because my conscience found itself wounded, and the same, led away by sorrowful errors from the way of salvation, was brought upon a trackless path, on which I, as if fallen among thieves, had been wounded with a two-edged sword; I could not so easily be healed until the heavenly guide, Jesus Christ, who is "the way, the truth, and the life," and without whom no man cometh unto the Father (John 14), led me again upon the right way to heaven, set me on his beast, and, as the best physician, poured out of the healing fountain of Israel the gentle oil of His holy Gospel and alone-saving Word into my feeble conscience, whereby it was healed, and I confessed the religion grounded in and contained in the Augsburg Confession, and can now say joyfully and confidently: Fare thee well, O fatherland! Good night, ye dear parents, ye good friends and kinsmen! I go out from you and go to my God and into the right fatherland, in which I shall be refreshed and quickened from the little well of Israel, until God shall receive me with all the blessed and elect into the everlasting habitations, and feed me with the true heavenly manna. Now I can confidently say with that old father: "Inter brachia salvatoris Jesu mei et vivere et mori cupio, that is: In the arms of Jesus, my Saviour, will I live and die."

Because the pious Abraham was obedient to God, God also rewarded him so richly that He made him a rich man, and so blessed him that he has become a true example of that which our dear Lord Christ says: "Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life."

From which I also can conclude, and comfort myself with certainty, that though I have already all in popery-