# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 09 14_S12
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

12

extricate oneself, which the whole world confirms with its example and which have been turned, through long-continued habit, as it were into nature. Ah, how true it is what is said in the common proverb: It is hard to forsake that to which one has long been accustomed . . . I had at that time" (1519) "read the Holy Scripture now into the seventh year with great diligence at home by myself and taught it publicly, so that I knew almost everything by heart, and had besides the firstfruits of the knowledge and faith of my LORD Christ, namely, that we become righteous and saved not through our works, but through faith in the LORD Christ; yea, I defended publicly also this, of which I am now speaking, that the Pope was not jure divino" (by divine right) "the head of the Christian churches. Nevertheless I could not yet see what follows further from this, namely, that necessarily and certainly the Pope must be of the Devil; for what is not of God is certainly and necessarily of the Devil. Now, so was I" (in the year 1519), "as said, under the example and title of the holy Christian churches wholly and altogether swallowed up, and partly also, through long-continued habit, my own prisoner . . . Hence it comes that I am not so hard in anger with those who still hold and cling so fast to the papacy, but especially with those who have read neither holy nor unholy Scripture, since I clung so fast to it, who yet had read the Holy Scripture many years with great diligence . . . This I relate for this reason, that, when thou, most dear reader, shalt run through my books, thou mayest know to remember that I too am one of those who, as St. Augustine writes of himself, have grown by writing and teaching." (XIV, 428.)

Here the dear Lutheraner-reader sees in what sense Luther "confirmed" his earlier writings, and therefore also his Sermon on the Power of the Ban of the year 1518, as that obscure editor of 1559 writes and our Herr opponent mistakenly copies after him.

May then Past. Grabau and his followers let this affair, in which, intoxicated with false thoughts of victory, they have so grossly offended against truth and love, serve them as a warning henceforth not to pronounce judgment so hastily, and, if they do think they have convicted their opponent of an error, not at once to burst out with the reproach of malicious lying, yea, with wanton ban, curse and threats of judgment; it might otherwise happen more often that they, as in this case, must in the end be ashamed of their ignorance as much as of their betrayed vindictiveness, and fall into the pit which they were digging for their supposed enemies; yea, it might otherwise be that the ban which they hurl at others so presumptuously and wantonly may finally fall back upon themselves and their poor congregations, whom they seduce to take part in their unjust ban by consenting; for thus, on the ground of the divine Word, Luther writes already in the year 1521: "The unjust ban brings harm not so much to him who has outwardly been put under the ban, as rather solely to him who has put him under the ban and to those who hold with him;" in which utterance Luther already at that time clearly asserts that one must not hold with the unjust banners, but must separate from them, if one would not become partaker of their sin and their certain punishment. (XIX, 1121.) It is remarkable here, by the way, that Luther could prove that thesis also from the canon (Papal) law; for even in this law it says: "An unlawful ban does not injure the one affected by it, but condemns the one who bans." (Compare conf. cath. Gerhardi, f. 715.) May our Herren opponents further give room to the grace of God and, by an upright confession of their wrong, remove the offence they have caused, so far as lies with them, and thereby testify publicly that they have also sought and found grace with God for their sin. May they finally recognize that their error concerning the ban is rooted solely in their false doctrine of the Church; for if they would hold fast with our Symbols that the Church, when one speaks of her properly,* is the congregation of the saints, which truly will not unjustly put children of God under the ban, they would not assert that one must remain with those who ban unjustly, endure this as a weakness, and remain deprived of the enjoyment of the means of grace. A frivolous or fanatical preacher may well ban unjustly, and his adherents; from these one must then, if they do not repent, separate; if one does this, one does not separate, say, from the Church under such tyrants, (since the Church precisely does not ban unjustly,) but solely from those tyrants and their consorts, that is, from the false church, which only misuses the holy keys. With the true Church among them one remains nevertheless united in spirit and faith.

*Pastor Grabau has indeed mocked publicly in his Synod at our distinction of the Church in the proper and the improper sense, probably because it did not come to his mind at once that this distinction is symbolical and is already applied in the Augsburg Confession.

Yet on this we intend, perhaps in the next number, to let an old Lutheran theologian speak in our stead, who proved to the Jesuits already nearly 200 years ago that, and how far, one can and should separate on account of an unjust ban.

Finally we earnestly beg the dear readers that they will not become impatient at these unpleasant controversies. We shall not easily again treat such matters so extensively, but, now that we have shown by one example how our Herren opponents proceed with their citations, shall henceforth let it rest there, indicate the false as briefly as possible and then leave the gentlemen to their fate. Once such an extensive demonstration was necessary, and it will, we hope, at least have the fruit that our opponents will no more be able, with show of right, to pervert Luther's doctrine of the unjust ban, which is so important, whether it be from ignorance or from ill will.

There are, moreover, still a mass of accusations and fabrications in the von Rohr article, (for instance, we are said to be a Kossuth and Kinkel man, because we had asserted that the preachers should also punish the ungodliness of princes! etc.,) which are, however, so silly that we cannot possibly deem them worthy of an answer.

Whether the Mission (that is, the Preaching of the Gospel among the Heathen) Is Still Necessary Today.
Continuation.

When some time ago I read in No. 1 of the Informatorium the essay entitled: "The So-called Missionaries or Apostles of Today," I at once intended to answer it in detail; for although Herr Pst. Grabau admits in this article that it is not the right Christian love which "lets Jews, heathen, Papists and other sectarians run on in their errors and abhors them", yet there is much in it that at least needs closer discussion, and cannot be accepted without further ado as Scripture truth. I was meanwhile detained by illness, and in the meantime received the "Lutheraner" No. 24, in which the mission sermon of Past. Nagel, delivered at the mission festival at Leipzig, is printed. This sermon now relieves me of a detailed answer to this article. Not as if this sermon corrected the article in question, that would not well be possible. For this reason, theologians in Germany do not dispute whether the preaching of the Gospel among the heathen is still necessary today or not. That is to them just as settled and certain as that the preaching of the Gospel among Christians is still necessary. The preaching of the Gospel to every creature, consequently among Christians and non-Christians, remains necessary until the last day, and only here in the land of extremes can a dispute arise about it. But this sermon speaks of the mission in such a manner that whoever has read it with attention will hardly ask any more whether the mission is still necessary. To this sermon, therefore, I would have everyone referred, and content myself with answering briefly only the beginning and the end of the essay.

The very first sentence in the said article teaches that the "mission work derives from the papacy." This sentence is now altogether to be rejected, and indeed, if there were no better ground, already on the ground of history. And I should think Herr Pst. Grabau would be too well acquainted with the history of the spread of the Church, long before the existence of the papacy