# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 12 09_S61
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

61

fervent love toward the Bridegroom of their souls, a sweet savor before the LORD — sometimes, however, also bursting forth like the prophetesses of the old covenant and rebuking the godless popes with the Word of the LORD; there were also among the teachers of the higher schools, and among the priests, high and low, here and there sound, fruit-bearing fruit trees, witnesses of the truth, whose voices we have already heard above; there were among all sorts of estates manly, vigorous oaks and youthfully bold beeches, who in their station and calling, though with feeble understanding, yet showed themselves, in upright faith in Christ, to be plants of the LORD to His praise, children of the one holy Christian Church, which lay hidden under the papacy. These noble fruit trees and graceful ornamental plants in the garden of God, in His holy Church, scattered here and there in that dreadful wilderness and among the weeds of the papacy — these saints of the LORD it was who, in view of the monstrous corruption of the Church in doctrine and life, complained without ceasing and sighed to God: "Watchman, what of the night?" It was they who with heartfelt sighs and tears lifted up their prayer to the LORD and cried out movingly: "Oh that the salvation were come out of Zion, and the LORD would bring back the captivity of His people, then Jacob would rejoice, and Israel would be glad."

And how? Should the gracious and merciful God, who by His Holy Spirit had put into the heart of His captive Church such supplication and sighing, such prayer and intercession, not at last also let the help so long and anxiously longed for appear, and turn the captivity of His people? Yes, certainly! But how then did such deliverance come about? How did He lead His spiritual Israel out of the Babel of the papacy, and break their cords and set them free from their bonds? Perhaps by councils of the Church and their decrees, as this and that witness of the truth hoped for amendment from that quarter and knew no other counsel or help? Not so; for these, even in the best case, and if the popes out of human prudence had yielded for a while, would yet only for a time have abolished this or that gross abuse and lanced a few boils that had come to a head, without yet thoroughly healing from within the sickness that had crept into the innermost marrow, and without pouring new powers of life into the languishing and wasting Church.

No! By human wisdom and human strength help was not possible here; and as the father of lies, by raising up the antichristian papacy, had suppressed and falsified the pure Word of God and the doctrine of the Church, so the thorough cleansing and healing of the Church from within was possible only if the Father of lights let His enlightening and healing Word, and especially the saving Gospel of His grace in Christ, which faith alone lays hold of, shine again in its purity and sincerity into the papistical darkness, to break through it and to present the antichristian monster of the papacy, in the shame of its nakedness, in clear light before the eyes of all who were willing to see.

But how did this come about? Perhaps through hosts of evangelists, as in the time of the apostles, who went forth at the same time to all the corners and ends of the corrupted Church, accompanied by signs and wonders done by their hands? Or perhaps through the cooperation of learned and renowned teachers of the Church who recognized the prevailing corruption?

Not so. For it pleased His wisdom to make use, for this new shining forth and breaking through of His almighty and renewing Word, of an instrument very small and poor in the eyes of the world, that all honor and glory might remain with Him alone and with His Word.

But as John the Baptist was beforehand in the wilderness, there prepared and made ready by the Spirit and Word of the LORD in stillness and solitude, before he was to come forward with his herald's voice and with his testimony of Christ before the children of Israel: so also the LORD beforehand reared for Himself, in the quiet cloister and in the lonely monk's cell, that witness of the truth, our heartily beloved father in Christ and teacher, Dr. Martin Luther, and prepared him in the school of His Holy Spirit through His Word and thereafter at the same time through all sorts of outward experiences and inward trials, before he was to lift up his voice, orally and in writing, as a preacher of righteousness, like a trumpet, in order, endued with power from on high and in a manner with prophetic plenitude of authority, to testify to the evangelical truth fearlessly and unceasingly with irresistible force.

But first he had to experience thoroughly in his heart, in the seclusion of the cloister, the consuming holiness and the curse of the divine Law, together with the powerlessness of the papistical ordinances and works to remove this curse; this hammer of the Law, which requires back from man the divine image given in Adam by God, and, since it finds it nowhere, pronounces temporal punishments, death and eternal damnation upon all men as the righteous judgment of God — this hammer of the holy Ten Commandments had first to break and crush to pieces in him all natural self-righteousness and work-righteousness, and that which he had added in monkish fashion. The consuming zeal of the holy and righteous God against the sinner in Adam, even if he had hitherto lived ever so upright, honorable and decent before the world, had first to consume, as it were in a moment, the cobweb garments of papistical penance and its meritorious satisfactions, together with all monkish praying, fasting, watching, mortifying, wrestling and struggling *), and scorch him to the very marrow, so that he lay there as one powerless and dead under the wrath and judgment of God, under the curse of the Law, in the anguish of conscience, in the fear of death, under the terrors of Satan and in the foretaste of the pains of hell. For thus he had to experience thoroughly in his heart and conscience, by the working of the Holy Spirit through the Law, the spiritual death of his hereditary corruption, the inviolable holiness and punitive justice of God, intolerable to the sinner, the complete powerlessness of all self-help and of all papistical means of atonement, in order that he might utterly and altogether despair of all his own strength, ever to work out even in part the righteousness before God and to merit for himself forgiveness of sin, life and salvation, in short, to become just the poor sinner in Adam.

*) "I myself also," says Luther, "was a monk for twenty years, and tortured myself with praying, fasting, watching, freezing, so that I might well have died of cold alone." — "When I sought God with great labor and wearing down of my body by fasting, watching, singing and praying; for I would have tortured myself to death with it, had it lasted longer;" — "yet the more I sought and thought to come nearer to Him, the farther I got from Him. No, He will not be found thus; He will remain unfound before us; He must first Himself come to us and seek us at home; by our running after Him and hunting He lets Himself be neither caught nor taken." (Luther's Works, Altenburg ed. 7, 53. Leipzig ed. 11, 53. 14, 351 b. 21, 21.) Herein is at the same time contained the refutation of the venomous papistical lies — for he wrote such things and the like at a time when quite a few of his former cloister companions were still living, who could then have charged him with lying and ruined his whole reputation — as though Luther had been from the start a merry man of pleasure, who left the cloister only for the sake of marrying, in order thereby, though against all historical and well-known truth, to make him hateful and contemptible to the Catholics.

Nevertheless the faithful God, who as a father trains His own, and who thus prepared this His chosen instrument, had taken care that under this years-long demanding, threatening, cursing, killing and condemning of His holy Law, and in the constant anguish and travail of Luther's soul, the little spark of faith was not extinguished, which had been in him from holy Baptism, and which the LORD then, by His Holy Spirit through the Gospel, blew into a bright flame, after the Law had done its work upon him in the main, and he had utterly despaired of all his own reason and strength, so as to obtain by their exertions a gracious God and to merit for himself, even in part, forgiveness of sins, life and salvation.

Then God sends him, in his struggles and anxieties, when all his saying of Mass will give him no comfort, an old brother in the cloister as father confessor; he comforts him heartily — as Mathesius writes — and points him to the third article of the Apostles' Creed: I believe "the forgiveness of sins;" and this was a living comfort in his heart, as he often mentions this his father confessor with great honor.

Then God puts into the mouth and heart of Dr. Staupitz, Luther's spiritual superior, the words at once rebuking and comforting, when to him