# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 01 06_S73
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.
"God's Word and Luther's doctrine shall pass away now and nevermore."
(Rev. of John, Chap. 14, v. 6, 7.)
Published by the German Ev. Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.
Edited by C. F. W. Walther.
Volume 8.  St. Louis, Mo., January 6, 1852.  No. 10.
Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for subscribers living out of town, who are to pay the same in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 Cents.
Only those letters which contain communications for the paper are to be sent to the editor; all others, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent hither under the address Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

Luther's Proof that He and His Fellow-Confessors Are the True Old Church, and the Papists on the Contrary a New False Church.

(From the writing: against Hans Worst. Walch XVII. 1656-1671.)

Of the Church.

But that we may not spend the time altogether with Heinz's devil's dung, but also lay before the reader something useful and edifying, not for Heinz's sake, nor for the sake of those who set him on; for they are suo judicio condemnati, aures habent, et non audiunt, (condemned by their own judgment, they have ears and hear not) we will take up the matter itself, namely, why the Papists through their Heinz call us heretics? And it is this, that they pretend we have fallen away from the holy Church, and have set up another new Church. To this we must answer: Since they boast of themselves that they are the Church, they are bound to prove the same. If they prove it with any ground (I ask not many grounds,) we will give ourselves up as prisoners, come and say: peccavimus, miserere nostri (we have sinned, have mercy upon us). But where they cannot prove it, they must confess, (whether they do it willingly or unwillingly,) that they are not the Church, and that we cannot be heretics, in that we fall from the right Church:- yea, since there is no middle way, we must be the Church of Christ and they the Devil's Church, or the other way about. Therefore the whole matter lies in this point, that it be proved which is the true Church.

So long as the proof is not there, it is in vain that the one party boasts of being the Church, and the other party calls them heretics; the one party must be false and wrong. For there are two kinds of Church from the beginning of the world to the end, which St. Augustine calls Cain and Abel. And the LORD Christ bids us not to accept the false Church, and Himself distinguishes two Churches, a true and a false, Matt. 7, 15: "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing," etc. Where there are prophets, there are Churches, in which they teach. If the prophets are false, then the Churches are also false, which believe and follow the prophets. Now we have until now never been able to obtain from the Papists that they would prove why they are the true Church; but they stand upon the saying Matt. 18, 17. that one should hear the Church, or must be lost: whereas Christ there does not say: Who, where, or what the Church is; but, where she is, there one shall hear her. That we also confess and say; but we ask, where and who the Church of Christ is? non de nomine, not about the name, but about the essence we ask.

"Just as if I should ask a drunken man, a half-sleeping man, or a fool: Dear friend, tell me, who or where is the Church? and he answered me ten times over nothing else than this: One shall hear the Church. How shall I hear the Church, when I do not know who and where she is? Yea, they say, we Papists have remained in the old former Church, since the time of the Apostles; therefore we are the true ones come out of the old Church, and have remained therein until now: but ye have fallen away from us, and have become a new Church against us. Answer: But what if I proved that we have remained with the true old Church, yea, that we are the true old Church; but ye have become apostate from us, that is, from the old Church, and have set up a new Church against the old Church. Let us hear that.

First, no one will be able to deny this, that we as well as the Papists have come from holy Baptism, and are named Christians from it. Now Baptism is not a new thing, nor invented by us at this time; but it is exactly the same old Baptism which Christ instituted, in which the Apostles and the first Church, and all Christians after them, until now, have been baptized. If, then, we have the same Baptism, the first old (and as it stands in the Creed, catholicae, that is, of the whole Christian) Church, and are baptized in the very same: then we certainly belong in the same old and whole Christian Church, which is like us, and we like her, having come from one and the same Baptism, and there is on account of Baptism no difference. The