# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 10 26_S36
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

36

In some editions of Luther's Hauspostille, namely, there stand after the words "worse and worse" the following: "and it is nevertheless not the fault of the doctrine, but of the people." Then follow the words quoted: "Now the people are possessed with seven devils, etc." The words printed large give the key to the words which follow, which, as is well known, contain only an application of the words of Christ, Luke 11:24-26, to prove that the people who fall away from the right doctrine become worse than they were before, as one sees this in Judas the betrayer and in the rise and growth of the Papacy, yes, also in so many inconstant Lutherans in the last 300 years, and it is nevertheless not the fault of the doctrine, but of the people.*) Now the Catholic writer thought probably thus: If you add this or that clause, you destroy your whole argument yourself, that the wicked life among the Lutherans is supposed to proceed from their doctrine; yes, you thereby tacitly concede that their doctrine is not heretical and devilish, but wholesome and good. That, however, you can and may never concede, therefore you prefer to leave out the whole sentence. Yet again you want to write down quite exactly that the Lutherans were formerly possessed with only one, but later with seven devils, for over that they will be sorely vexed, but the Catholics will laugh up their sleeves. But gently, dear man! do you not see how you thereby pronounce the sharpest sentence upon yourself and your party? By the little word "formerly" Luther understands nothing else than the time under the Papacy; then, he means to say, the people were possessed only with one devil, who had made them, like those poor possessed persons, spiritually blind, deaf and dumb. But the Papacy, then and now, is still one and the same; consequently it still has now, as then, at least one devil, but where even only one devil reigns, there is the whole kingdom of hell, there cannot at the same time be the kingdom of heaven or the Church of God, there must be the church of the devil.

*) as is also written in 2 Pet. 2:20. In other editions there stands, after the words "worse and worse": "That is the wicked devil himself." Whereby the corruption is ascribed not to the doctrine, but to the devil and his seduction.

So much for this passage itself; and now a word yet about the context in which it stands with what goes before and follows, whereby both the purity of the Lutheran doctrine and the slanderousness of its Catholic opponents appear in so much the clearer light.

Before this, namely, Luther had spoken of Christ's office, that He daily takes off from us sin and death and in return puts on us His holiness and life, and then continues: "This sermon one ought justly to hear with great joy and receive with hearty thanksgiving and afterwards also be godly. But it turns out, alas, the other way, and the world becomes only worse and worse from this doctrine, etc." But after those words, that the people became worse than before under the Papacy, Luther himself gives the cause of it, saying: "What makes it? Nothing else, but that men do not receive this sermon with joy, but everyone throws it to the wind, cares more for money and goods than for the blessed treasure which our LORD Christ brings to us."

In the case of the other two passages which are to be discussed here, there is likewise not the least indication where they are to be found, and I almost believe that the unnamed Mr. T. did not know himself, or he thought, you had rather not write it down, else one or another might come upon it, look up the passage and slap you on the mouth. We Lutherans, however, are once for all not such credulous people that we should let ourselves be fooled by the assurance: "Luther said that" — or be led about by a pair of little strokes before and behind, in German: quotation marks. Therefore we also want to look at those two passages somewhat more sharply.

The one of them the author introduces immediately at the close of the one before mentioned with the following words: To such a fearful social transformation the irrational religious doctrines of the unauthorized Reformers had indeed to lead, which again no one sets forth better than Luther, himself not excluded: "So we made sects and factions, where we thus among the rabble, into the mad, unreasoning people, without any distinction, spit and sputter: God's Word, God's Word! Many great and excellent people have failed therein, and many great preachers now stumble at it, know not how to preach Moses, cannot even accommodate themselves to it, are senseless, rage, rave and rant, prate among the people: God's Word, God's Word, God's Word!"

Here are two passages which stand in different places, joined with one another according to one's own pleasure and torn from their context. Both stand in Luther's Instruction how one should conduct oneself with regard to Moses; the first §. 32., the other §. 38. Shortly before the former Luther speaks of how all depends on this, that one know to whom God has said this or that word, so that one may not rush in with the rebellious peasants and think: you must slay the prince, for God commanded it to Joshua — and then he continues: "And where we shall understand it otherwise (namely God's Word as said to us, when it does not concern us), so we make sects and factions, etc." Here everyone who can read sees that Luther expressly sets an "if," thus a condition, as if he would say: If we interpreted the Word of God so wantonly as the rebellious peasants have done, then we should, as they do, make sects and factions; now Luther has not done the first, for he has punished the peasants' undertaking here and elsewhere, consequently the second also cannot take place, that he should have confessed, himself included: we made sects and factions. That appears still more clearly from the words which follow next upon the sentence indicated; for these read thus: "Yea, dear fellow, not so, it depends on whether it was said to you or not." By this Luther plainly rejects the perversion of Holy Scripture by peasants and sectaries.

The other passage, found in §. 38., reads from the beginning thus: "Of this enough has now been said, and it is well to be noted, for the power lies in it" (namely how one is to conduct oneself with regard to Moses); now follow first the words quoted above: "and many great preachers now stumble at it, etc." But Luther speaks here also of no others than precisely of those who pervert God's Word, namely Moses, and adds for that very reason yet the sentence which Mr. T. has again left out: "they seduce the poor people and push them into the pit."

Finally there is cited, in the often-mentioned article, still a third passage from Luther's writings, or, to speak more exactly, communicated from a biography of Luther which an apostate Lutheran, Caspar Uhlenberg (he died 1617), has written, who, however, is called a renowned and truth-loving man. He says among other things: Luther knew well how to appraise Schwenkfeld's influence, vented his bitter scorn upon him and indicated in forcible strokes the consequences of it. "I am anxious," says Luther, "that more of the same enthusiasts will come, going about in gray coats, hanging their heads, looking sour, drowned in their thoughts and gloomy, remain stiff in their delusion, yield to no one and despise the spoken word." These words indeed stand in Luther's Tischreden, chap. XXXVII, §. 85, but they contain not only a description of the Schwenkfeldian error, but also of the whole Papacy, so that one must call to Mr. T. St. Paul's words, Rom. 2:1: Wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself, for thou that judgest doest the same things, that thou judgest, "For the Papacy also is a mere enthusiasm, in which the Pope boasts: all rights are in the shrine of his heart, and what he judges and bids with his church shall be spirit and right, even if it is above and against the Scripture or the spoken word. That is all the old devil and old serpent, who made Adam and Eve also enthusiasts, led them from the outward Word of God to spiritualism and self-conceit, and does it also by other outward words." (Luther in the Smalcald Articles, Part 3, 8.)

One thing more! If you should occasionally write to the editor of the Catholic Kirchenzeitung, then set a prize upon it, for whoever can show you where the also by us un-