# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 12 09_S60
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

60

and pastors for their spiritual usufruct, yes, so that in the end the Gospel and the holy Sacraments would exert their spiritually blessing and quickening power only when they were administered by the ordained priests. For between this delusion and the simple evangelical truth concerning the power of the keys imparted by the LORD Christ to the Church, and not to the so-called spiritual estate, as this truth is unanimously testified throughout, on the ground of the Scripture, by our ecclesiastical Symbols — between that delusion and this truth there is, as said, no middle position which would not prove untenable under the attacks of acute papists.

Whoever has grasped this truth, which in turn rests on the evangelical knowledge of the nature of the Church, only loosely, or even lets it go, and does not recollect himself in his straying, does not return in haste to the right evangelical fundamental conception of the nature of the Church and hold it fast thenceforth the more unmoved, must consistently, from step to step, be driven ever deeper toward that delusion which has its origin from hell and is begotten of the father of lies.

Testimonies of Roman Catholic Writers concerning the State of the Church, corrupted by the Papacy, before the Dawn of the blessed Reformation, together with a Memorial of this Dawn.

(Continuation)

The common people, however, sank through the perverted doctrine of their priests into the deepest ignorance concerning the way of salvation and the order of salvation of God, and fell into the most senseless and immoderate superstition. They believed in truth in the supremacy and plenitude of power of the pope, yes, that he is God on earth and has the authority, as the essential possessor and holder of the Holy Ghost, to determine the sense of Scripture, to appoint the priestly estate, to set up doctrines and to command laws, ordinances and ceremonies, which on pain of the loss of salvation were to be kept by all Christians just as inviolably as the institutions and ordinances of the LORD Christ Himself, yes, that he has power to change these themselves and to withdraw the cup from the people in the holy Supper. They believed that the pope, by divine right, stands above the councils of the church, and that he — and not the holy Scripture and the Church enlightened by it — is the supreme judge in all controversies of faith and doctrine, and that all must submit to his highest and final decision; they believed that his administration of office has nothing to do with his personal disposition, and that he, although perhaps living in gross and open vices, nevertheless possesses the Holy Ghost, and that therefore his utterances, and not those of the holy Scripture, are unerring and infallible; they believed that the heart's shrine of the holy Father at Rome — and not that of the LORD Christ in heaven — is essentially and properly the seat of the keys and of their power, which he exercises through his servants, the bishops, and that his ban, be it right or wrong, in any case excludes from the Church of God and delivers to Satan. They believed that in truth, in the manner already mentioned above, an indulgence treasury of grace exists, and that the pope is the essential and original administrator of the same, and that one can buy forgiveness of sins committed or yet to be committed from him for money just as well as the permission to eat butter or meat on fast days; they believed that the pope by divine right has also the authority over all kingdoms of the world, that he can set up and depose kings, regulate worldly kingdoms, release the subjects of all princes from their oath and obedience toward these, etc.

Finally, however — and that is indeed the most dreadful of all — the people believed that this their faith in the pope and the outward obedience to his decrees, statutes and ordinances would infallibly merit them salvation. Was and is not that — for many millions of souls who even now lie in the darkness of the papacy have indeed no other faith — the summit, or rather the abyss, of papistical idolatry and of soul-murdering superstition?

And ought it not to be recognized plainly enough also by this horrible effect that the holy Father at Rome — thought of not as a perishable individual, but as a standing official person — is essentially and personally the Antichrist, who, robbing Christ of the honor and abolishing God's commandments by his commandments, and under the semblance of humility yet as it were the incarnate devil of spiritual pride and lust of domination, has seated himself in the temple of God and presents and shows himself as if he were God? —

What wonder, then, that from such horrible superstition a wild and waste condition followed, and the poor deceived people, through the guilt of the godless doctrine, showed itself in its life and conduct to be a crooked and perverse generation? For was not their disobedience to God's commandments covered by obedience to the pope's commandments, and unbelief toward Christ exceedingly expiated by faith in the pope; could they not obtain indulgence from the indulgence-hawkers of the pope for sorcery at 2, for murder at 8, for church robbery and perjury at 9 ducats! Why should the people need to fear the distant invisible God, since they had the visible God, the pope, always at hand in his servants, who could readily heal their perhaps terrified conscience by his indulgence-grace, and whose ban was to be feared solely for the sake of disobedience against him! —

Moreover, they could, over and above, buy from the begging monks who ran about the merits of their orders for money, and a dying man need have no scruple about going up at once joyfully to heaven, if he had previously bought the shabby cowl of a monk and was clothed in it.

How then — someone might ask — was the light of the divine Word in the Church of the LORD wholly extinguished in this fearful darkening by the abominable papacy? Was the voice of Christ in His Church then quite and altogether suppressed by the servants and panegyrists of Antichrist? Was there in this Sodom of papistical corruption no witness of the truth at all, no rebuking Lot any more? Was there in this Babylonian captivity of the Church under the antichristian papacy no people of the LORD any more, and had He left in the so terribly run wild garden of His Church, covered with papistical weeds, no blessed seed at all, no tree of righteousness, which rooted downward and bore fruit upward?

Yes! praised be the LORD! — there were still such; for the Church had indeed the promise of her faithful and almighty LORD Christ that the gates of hell shall not prevail against her, and that the little flock, His saints, should at last take the kingdom. And hence it came that in the midst of His unsearchable judgment which He imposed through the papacy upon His Church, yet the light and the lamp of His Word, and especially of His gracious Gospel, did not wholly go out, but pieces of it, holy Baptism, the apostolic Creed, the holy Lord's Prayer, remained in His Church; and from this there grew up and gained strength, in the midst of the wildernesses and wastes of the papacy, the blessed seed, children of God scattered here and there from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof, who stood in the fear of God, believed in the LORD Christ childlike and simply, and from faith in Him walked in works of love, bore His cross after Him in patience, and through special preservation of the Holy Ghost were rescued from the soul-murdering power of the papistical false doctrines.

Manifold in form, fragrance and color, these flowers and trees of the LORD in the garden of His Church were for the most part hidden from one another, and surveyed only by Him, the heavenly Gardener, at one glance, kindly irradiated by the sun of His countenance, watched over by His eye, refreshed by the dew of His mouth, wholesomely cleansed by His hand through the knife of tribulation and of the cross. There were hidden violets, the baptized infants in the cradle and the lisping little ones, out of whose mouth He prepared for Himself a praise; there were slender lilies and fragrant roses, namely also these and those noble and tender cloister virgins, whose prayers and songs from believing heart and holy