# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 09 14_S10
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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toward his readers again so obligingly as to add the few little words: "Understand the ban of the Christian Church, which has been executed lawfully according to Christ's order, Matth. 18., whether it oppress or strike you justly or unjustly."(!) The dear man may well have suspected that no man in the world would understand Luther's words as he wants them understood; therefore he added his "Understand" to both passages; for what man, we will not say with Christian knowledge, but only with sound understanding, will say that an unjust ban could have been pronounced and gone forth in a lawful manner" according to Christ's order, Matth. 18.? We will not repay our opponent evil with evil and call this perversion a malicious fraud, as he is forever imputing to us; but one sees plainly from this to what absurdities a partisan, contentious strife leads. In such a strife one becomes so blind that one can no longer distinguish the simplest concepts from one another; for what is more generally known than the difference between orderly and lawful? Who does not know that something may well have proceeded according to order without having been executed lawfully — but who does not know that something has precisely not been executed lawfully when, with all outward observance of the prescribed order, nevertheless crying injustice has been done to someone, the love of the neighbor violated, and action taken against God's holy will? Instead of adding his glosses and his "Understand" to Luther's words, our Herr opponent would have done better to make it easy for himself and add Luther's own exposition, if he really thought that the reader might otherwise not rightly understand Luther's plain words. For example, to the first testimony our opponent could have added the words of Luther following shortly after it by way of explanation: "Behold, that is, the true catholic common Christian Church, she will surely not put us under the ban, nor persecute us, but will gladly accept our doctrine from the heart and confirm it, and hold us for her dear brethren. Whether, besides, the Pope bans us and condemns us to hell, that we can bear cheerfully and despise; but we wait for the Judge from heaven, our Lord and Savior, that he may part us, and adjudge to us and give us the right name of the Church (which they now take from us,) and show her openly as the Devil's bride, eternally severed and cast out from his kingdom." Also to the other testimony of Luther a gloss from Luther himself for fuller understanding might well have been found, if only our Herr opponent had been willing to take the trouble to seek it. He could, for example, have cited besides these also the words of Luther following a few lines farther down in the same place: "Therefore the Pope's tyranny is all the more to be cursed, who has misused the ban, even if a poor man could not at once pay on a certain and appointed day, yea, even if one had not kept his ordinances, as, if one had not fasted, not confessed, etc. Secondly, it is certain that the Pope's ban is not the ban of the LORD Christ, because it does not take place nor is it undertaken according to Christ's institution; therefore it also counts for nothing in heaven. But nevertheless it brings to him who misuses this command of the Church certain harm and ruin. For it is such a sin that God's name is blasphemed thereby." (VI, 2407.) It is indeed a strong presumption that our Herr opponent should have preferred these expositions of Luther's words by Luther himself to his own, for thereby he would have overthrown his own assertions; but the truth is worth more than keeping one's point! The reader must not think, however, that perhaps our opponent could have added other utterances of Luther's, to be found in his later writings, which declare that the unjust ban of a congregation gives no right to separate from it. No; for in the first place it is already a contradiction in itself to say that one may not separate from a congregation which has put one under the ban unjustly, that is, has excluded one from its fellowship. That means nothing else than that one must remain in the house from which one has already been thrown out unjustly! Such nonsense Luther naturally never taught. And then our Luther is also not so forgetful or double-tongued that on the one side he should have written of the unjust ban as cited above, and on the very next page should have conceded the opposite. Finally, however, whoever knows Luther's writings somewhat more exactly knows that in the later ones of them not one little letter is to be found of what our Herr opponent asserts, and that our Herr opponent has only thereby created among uninformed readers an appearance for his assertion, as if Luther agreed with him, that our Herr opponent has patched his own words onto it, indeed, on page 19 has furnished his (our opponent's) words with quotation marks, so that the simple or even merely inattentive reader must believe that these are Luther's words! We will not judge how this is to be regarded: we leave the judgment of it to God, who alone can search the heart and try the reins. Jer. 17, 9, 10. Mr. Pst. v. Rohr has indeed so artfully arranged the passage that to a keen-sighted reader the supposition remains possible that he (Mr. Pst. v. Rohr) wished the words to be regarded as his own summary; our Mr. opponent has therefore indeed left himself a back door for his defense, should the matter be uncovered; but, as said, the LORD Himself, the Searcher of hearts, may judge why our opponent furnished his words with the marks of a foreign speech and thereby, as we have already learned, brought even theologically educated men to the thought that this was really a quotation from a later writing of Luther's, namely from the exposition of John 16, of the year 1538. The words of Mr. v. Rohr are as follows: "If you are unjustly banned, see to it whether it has happened from the true or from the false Church; the ban of the false Church regard as nothing, but the also unjust ban of your mother, the true Church, by no means despise, but suffer it," etc. Before these his own words, however, Herr Pst. von Rohr places the following: "(Luther) teaches on the contrary on these words of Christ, John 16, 2. 3. in his exposition of the whole 16th chapter, Part 5, Altenburg ed., p. 181.: 'If you are unjustly banned' etc., as stated above. To be sure, thereupon, after an interlude, Herr Past. von Rohr writes: "Thus run the words of Lutherus," and now he lets Luther's own words follow. But how few readers will there be who from these later words will conceive the suspicion that the former words, furnished with the marks of foreign speech, are not, as stated, Luther's, but Mr. v. Rohr's own words!! — We should not have deemed this matter worthy of a remark, if it were not evident that perhaps most readers could thereby be misled to impute to Luther a doctrine of which he, later, when he had come to full knowledge, never thought, to say nothing of his having taught it publicly in writings. —

Herr Pst. von Rohr indeed seeks to prove that Luther published his Sermon on the Power of the Ban of the year 1518, in which Luther still set forth a similar doctrine of the unjust ban as the Grabauan faction, with a preface still in the year 1545, that is 27 years later, one year before his death, and therein confirmed it anew. But on what does our Mr. opponent ground his assertion? On this, that in the supplementary volume of the Altenburg edition of Luther's works of the year 1702, p. 116, it is said of the sermon in question: "And such a sermon was confirmed in 1545, the year before his death."

Because now Mr. v. Rohr in his ignorance really means in earnest that it is so, this gentleman, of course, according to the well-known Grabauan manner, exploits his alleged discovery to his heart's content, falls upon the poor editor of the "Lutheraner" visibly with the sweet feeling of being able to still his hot thirst for revenge for once and to feast himself on the disgraceful exhibition of his victim at the pillory of his Informatorium-whipping-post, and now cries out with a triumphant mien: "Do we not see God's judgment here?" Who will not here be reminded of the Davidic prayer: "Let them not say in their hearts: Ah, so would we have it. Let them not say: We have swallowed him up." Ps. 35, 25. Poor men! suppose we had in this