# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 01 06_S76
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

76

much on the misery of the countless false, idolatrous, murderous doctrines in the papacy, that is, in your new beautiful Church.

Ninth, who has commanded you to make this wanton innovation in the Church, which is a spiritual kingdom, that ye set up a bodily head, and call him the Most Holy? when yet there can be no other head than a spiritual one, which is Christ. This is the third worst abomination in your most holy, yea most hellish new Church: for the old Church knows nothing of it, has remained with her Head, just as we. But that it is the devil's own business, and was to come because of sins, she knows, and has declared it plainly, 2 Thess. 2, 3. 4: "The man of sin, and child of perdition shall set himself in the temple of God, and set himself forth as if he were God. For he also lets himself be called by you an earthly god. So Daniel also has said, ch. 11, 37. he would despise the old Church and the God of his fathers, and establish another new god and new churches (which help to strengthen his new god). Who now has a new apostate Church? Have the ancients and we, who have remained with the old true Head, and flee and shun the new devil's head? Or are they those who worship the new devil's head, kiss his feet, let themselves be blessed by his two fingers, exalt his doctrine above the Word of God, and do not honor the old true Head with one bow of the knee, and also scarcely ever think of Him, and do not regard His blessing, which He has won for us with His whole body and blood? But this abomination is too horrible for speaking little of it to avail, and yet to speak of it rightly the tongues of angels are not enough. What God's own mouth calls an abomination, that must be a greater abomination than all tongues can utter.

Tenth, who has commanded you to set up this new idolatry? that ye institute the worship of saints, canonize saints, appoint fast-days and feast-days to honor them, as if they were God Himself, so that men rely on their merit and take comfort in it, more than on Christ Himself, and on all His blood and merit; whom ye have pictured to us as a judge, whom we must reconcile through His mother's and all the saints' merit and intercession, together with our worship of saints, and obtain grace. So that your Church in this point has become nothing other than the church of the heathen, who worship Jove, Juno, Venus, Diana and other dead men, and as the Romans had a Pantheon in their city Rome; so also have ye built a Pantheon in the Church, that is the church of all devils. This ye shall not find in the Apostles' writings, nor in the young Church afterwards, which in former times would not suffer even the images of the saints, and much blood was shed over it: not to speak of their being supposed to worship or invoke the saints, which belongs to God alone. —

Eleventh, who has commanded you to make this innovation, that ye condemn the estate of marriage, blaspheme and pronounce it unclean and unfit for divine service? Have ye that from the Apostles, or from the first old Church? Yea, to be sure, for St. Paul says, 1 Tim. 4, 1 sqq. that ye would come hereafter, who would separate and run away from the faith and the old Church, as a true devil's harlot, who would receive such doctrine from the devil, and preach against the estate of marriage, and yet themselves live in false hypocritical chastity, that is, in all manner of uncleanness. This innovation we see with its noble fruits, that the earth will no longer bear you, and GOD has begun with His judgment to lay hold, and to consecrate such new holy Church to the fire of hell, and it will not suffer itself to be turned aside; this we know, God be praised!

Twelfth, who has commanded you to make such innovation, that ye govern and make war with the worldly sword, and use it most to shed innocent blood? Have ye seen it, ye sharp-sighted bats, that the Apostles or the old Church conquered the world with the sword, or increased the churches with war? Whence then come ye, who boast yourselves heirs out of the old Church, and call us the new apostate Church, we who hold with the old Church, and come out of it; but ye come out of the runaway devil's harlot, your new murderous Church of lies.

There are yet many more of the new pieces, as purgatory, relics, consecrating of churches, and the whole dunghill and dung-valley of vermin, and besides countless books full of sheer new inventions, of which the old Church knew nothing, nor the Apostles. For who can recount all the multitude of this sand or dirt, yea poison and devil's lies? Let this be enough for this time, to prove how shamefully the Papists lie through their Heinzes, when they call us the new apostate, heretical Church: but such their whetted sword goes through their own heart, and it is found that they have forsaken the old Church and her old Bridegroom, as an arch-devil's harlot, have become apostate, and are not only heretical (for the word is too slight and too honorable for such a shameless wench,) but antichristian and opposed to God, yea, one who exalts herself above GOD, (as her bridegroom in heaven also would do,) the devil's last and most shameful bride. But we, since we shun and flee all such devilry and innovation, and hold again to the old Church, the virgin and pure bride of Christ, we are certainly the true old Church, without all harlotry and innovation, which has remained until us, and we come out of her, yea, are again born anew of her, as the Galatians of St. Paul, Gal. 4, 19. For we were formerly also stuck in the hellish harlot, the Pope's new churches, with all earnestness, which is a grief to us, having spent so much time and trouble in that hole shamefully. But GOD be praised and thanked, who has redeemed us from the red blasphemous harlot.

How the Heathen Socrates, by the Light of Reason and of the Natural Knowledge of God, also Puts to Shame the Atheists and Fallen Christians of Today. *)

*) Translated from the Greek, from Xenophon's Memorabilia Socratis, that is, Recollections from the Life of Socrates.

Should anyone entertain the opinion, as some also have expressed it orally and in writing as a conjecture, that Socrates indeed had great ability to exhort men to virtue, but was by no means fit to lead them to it by his own example: let him consider not only the questions which he put to those who thought they knew everything, in order to convict them of their ignorance and to chastise them by such shaming; but also the discourses which he held in daily, familiar private intercourse with his disciples and friends, and he will be able to judge whether he was fit to make them better men.

For this purpose I (Xenophon) will now relate a conversation of his with Aristodemus, called the Little, concerning the divine nature, which I myself heard. For when he perceived that Aristodemus neither prayed to the gods nor sacrificed to them, nor consulted any oracle, but on the contrary laughed at those who did these things, he said to him: Tell me, Aristodemus, are there men whom thou admirest on account of their wisdom? Certainly, said Aristodemus. Then tell us their names, said Socr. Arist. For his excellence in epic poetry I admire at least especially Homer; for his dithyrambs Melanippides, in tragedy Sophocles, in sculpture Polycletus, and in painting Zeuxis. S. Which of the two seems to thee to deserve more admiration: one who makes images without sense, feeling and motion, or one who can produce living beings endowed with understanding and active powers? A. Rather he, surely, who produces living beings; if only they have not arisen by chance, but are the work of an ordering and creating wisdom. S. But since there are many things of which it is evident that they are there for the benefit of man, while of others again we cannot show so exactly and definitely why they exist? which of the two kinds dost thou hold for the work of chance, and which for the work of wisdom? A. It will become one to regard such things as works of the