# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 11 25_S50
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

50

therefore it will, viewed from this side, do no harm to let her own children speak out of her own bosom concerning her condition, so deeply corrupted even before the dawn of the blessed Reformation.

The other reason for adducing such testimonies is this: to stir up us lazy, ungrateful Lutherans, who by God's grace confess and teach the faith, the confession and the doctrine of the one holy Christian Church purely and sincerely out of God's Word, that we may become more diligent and more thankful toward God, and a little more zealous and lively also for the spreading of this good confession. For it is much to be feared that we have here and there become somewhat rusty and moth-eaten in this, and it is very questionable whether, e. g., the Lutheran Synods here in this country and the Lutheran churches over there have as much zeal for the spreading of the pure evangelical truth, in a right and God-pleasing manner, as the Jesuits over there and here have for the spreading of the papistical errors in all manner of ways, since, according to their principle, the end sanctifies the means.

Or should it not be our chief concern to do the one thing and yet not to leave the other undone, that is, not merely to feed and water our church children faithfully and honestly upon the green pastures and with the fresh water of the pure and unadulterated Word of God, in doctrine, reproof, comfort and exhortation, and to defend them against the crafty assaults of the Papists and fanatics, but at the same time also to show true earnestness and zeal, partly to care spiritually for our fellow believers still scattered here and there in the forests and prairies, partly to win also the churchless, if God will, for the pure doctrine of our Church, from which then the sound faith in the LORD Christ also follows?

Should it then really be so impossible, not only to be divinely certain, now as before, of our doctrine, which rests altogether upon God's Word, and to defend it at all times courageously and powerfully against Papists and fanatics, but also to spread it actively and energetically, and in an upright manner — not after the practices of the sects and enthusiasts — and in this labor of love also to prove ourselves lively and active in deed?

Should we not be much more zealous to make the dead and spiritually wild nominal Lutherans, or churchless people, into Lutheran, that is, orthodox and orthodox Christians, than the Jesuits and Methodists are zealous to remold all sorts of people in all manner of ways into Methodists and Papists? Since, however, the ingratitude toward God is in no small part the cause of such sluggishness, who through and in our fathers has also given to us the bright light of the evangelical truth again, through Luther and the services of his followers, and has thereby delivered us out of the darkness of the Papacy, it will, we hope, do us no harm, but rather encourage us to new thankfulness toward the LORD, our God, if we set before our souls anew, out of the testimonies of zealous Papists, the picture of the corrupted Church before the dawn of the Reformation.

If we look back, then, into the fifteenth century, there meet us first three church assemblies, that at Pisa of the year 1409, that at Constance of the year 1414, that at Basel of the year 1431, which all confess the prevailing corruption and bear manifold witness to the desire for a reformation of the Church "in head and members," although it remained hidden from all that so great and difficult a thing was not to be attained by resolutions of councils, but that God had reserved it to the almighty, regenerating power of His Word.

The Cardinal Peter de Alliaco writes plainly enough in his book on the Reformation of the Church, which he presented in the year 1416 to the Council at Constance: "The reformation of the whole body of the Church and of the particular (individual) church at Rome touches the important points which concern the faith. For its general deformity affects the faith more than moderately, and consequently also its restoration." And he adds: "it would be far too dangerous to entrust our faith to the discretion of one man (namely, the Pope)."

And like these councils, so also individual writers in the Roman Church, some of them renowned, testify, partly from the fifteenth, partly from the following centuries, to the corruption of the Church and the need of its healing.

Thus, e. g., the Jesuit and Cardinal Bellarmine, a decided enemy of the Lutheran doctrine, writes: "A few years before the heresy of Luther and Calvin arose, there was in the church courts almost no earnestness, no discipline in morals, no learning in the Scripture, no reverence in divine service, indeed there was almost no religion left."

The Popes of that and of the earlier time also belonged among the greatest abominations and monsters of mankind. Sixtus the Fourth, who had himself called God on an inscription, filled his coffers by the establishment and protection of public brothels at Rome; Innocent the Eighth, called by one of his poetical parasites the Father of his Country, begot fifteen children by his harlots; Alexander the Sixth was an incestuous man and poisoner, and his whole reign a chain of crimes crying to heaven and of gross vices. Julius the Second was a man given to drink, ambitious, instigating and waging unjust wars, a liar, yes a perjurer; Leo the Tenth, finally, a luxurious, pomp-loving worldling, educated by the writings of the heathen, smooth, refined, but withal so unbelieving that, in view of the great treasures which flowed to Rome through the shameful traffic in indulgences, he said to his friends: "Behold what riches the fable of Christ has brought us."

The bishoprics and the larger spiritual offices — very significantly called beneficia, benefits — were by the Popes for the most part sold for money to ignorant and contemptible people, or given away by favor; and Pope Hadrian the Sixth himself testified to it without concealment in his letter which he sent to the German Estates through his legate Franz Cheregatus, "that the church offices in Germany had long been given to unfit persons and more often to comedians and stable-boys than to learned men."

These bishops now, who had thus come into their positions by purchase or favor, naturally had neither desire nor ability to attend to their office, and especially to preach and to teach the people. Instead of this it was their prevailing custom in all things to conduct themselves like the worldly princes; they took up arms, went to war, rode to the chase, lived in riot and revelry, lust and luxury, gluttony and drunkenness, harlots and knaves. Of this the papistical bishop Martinus Cromerus testifies thus: "No one does his office, and the most do not even understand it. We all neglect the divine service and the salvation of the people entrusted to us, and shamefully misuse the goods of the poor and the inheritance of Christ: we cast our official duties upon the vicars, and would to God that we, in appointing them, looked to the fear of God and learning, and that these did not again hire other vicars. But what is still worse, matters have gone so far that we are ashamed to be regarded and held as priests. We give ourselves up to all kinds of vices and knavish tricks without shame, and glory in our sins."

Hence the Cardinal Petrus de Alliaco testifies against the Council of Constance that the dreadful saying was now heard here and there as a common remark: "The Church has come to such a state that it deserves to be governed by no others than people rejected of God."

These hired vicars of the bishops were just as ignorant and unfit for the conduct of the holy preaching office as the bishops themselves, so that most of them did not know the holy Ten Commandments, the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, but only like parrots prattled over the Latin church prayers, and merely mechanically, like hodmen and day laborers, performed the church service.

Of their sermons, however, J. Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, a decided enemy of the Lutheran doctrine, writes thus: "The most of them preached (in the time of Luther) of nothing but of indulgence, of pilgrimages, of alms which must be given to the monastics, and thus made these works the ground of godliness, which are yet mere by-matters. They did not speak sufficiently of the grace of Jesus Christ, as would properly have been fitting." And that same Cardi-