# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 04 12_S111
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

111

to say how I believe in it, whether so, like the Catholics, or like the Reformed, or like the Friends of Light, and so forth. Therefore, from the very beginning, when Luther came forward and many princes and much people fell to him, it was quite necessary to give a plain declaration and to put briefly together in what manner the Evangelicals believed in Holy Scripture, and so they drew from it, from God's Word, a short sum of their faith, and thus the first Confessional Writings arose. These contain nothing new, made by men, but what has stood in God's Word from of old and has held good among many pious and believing people, that they put briefly together; they are meant and wish to be nothing else than a short compendium of our pure faith drawn from God's Word and thereby confirmed and strengthened. If you point me to these Confessional Writings, say to the Small Catechism or the Augsburg Confession, as your books of faith, then I know at once whom I have before me, that is, a Lutheran and not a Catholic, nor a Reformed, nor a Baptist, etc.

See, therefore it is not enough to confess: I believe in the Bible, because it is not yet thereby said to which of the many churches and sects, that speak just so, you belong.

Second, — it is also not enough for this reason, that nowadays the Bible is greatly perverted and corrupted with all sorts of human inventions.

We have already spoken before about how so many strike out of Holy Scripture whatever does not please them. It is pitiful to look on at the thing so. There stands the full, glorious tree of Holy Scripture with its rich ornament of leaves and stretches far out its fresh branches, on which golden apples in silver bowls hang in multitudes, — it is a delight for a Christian heart to see the holy tree of life in all its glory. Now the poor little men come and the tree is too big for them; so they take a tree-saw and a sharp knife, which are their poor human understanding and the so-called reason, which is really unreason, and saw and cut off one branch and bough after another from the great holy tree and hew the trunk to pieces besides, — until at last a poor stump stands before them which one can scarcely recognize. Then they leap merrily around it and think they have played an exceedingly clever trick. Has it not sometimes seemed so to you also?

But the clever people can do still more; they can twist the clearest, plainest words of Holy Scripture so that it is astonishing. Each one fixes up God's Word for himself as it suits him, turns it now so, now so, — wholly at pleasure.

If it stands in Holy Scripture: "I and my Father are one (John 10, 30) or: "He that seeth me seeth him that sent me" (John 12, 45.) — then it is said: that is not really meant so, — that is only to signify: I have a special illumination from God.

If the Lord says: "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth" (Matt. 28, 18) — every simple Christian understands it just as it actually reads, that Christ here declares himself almighty; but the very wise say: that is not meant so, but it means only that Christ is the leader of mankind in this and in the other life! I have heard with my own ears how a pastor so doctored and twisted the great word, — and the man wants to preach Christ, when he will not let the Lord's own word stand? That I call a wolf in sheep's clothing!

If the Lord says, John 5, 23: "That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him", — every simple Christian understands by it that Christ wants to be honored as the Father, that is, just as highly and as much. But the cunning word-twisters make out of it: one should indeed honor him, Christ, as a very pious man, but yet he is and remains a man. That Christ here demands divine honor of us, they will not notice. — If Christ says: "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world!" — (Matt. 28, 20) then the I here is to mean: my Word or my power. Well, could the Lord Christ then not speak rightly? If he had wished to say: my Word is with you, — well, he could surely have done so; but he wished to say and did say: I am with you, — that is He, the Lord himself will be with us, not only his Word, his power. If the Lord promises, Mark 21, 27: "And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory" — then that is to be figuratively spoken.

If the Lord declares, John 6, 53—56, four times in succession, His flesh and blood to be the true meat and the true drink unto eternal life, then that is again to mean: his doctrine. Only open the words once and read them attentively, that you may rightly notice how foolishly and ridiculously the people talk who say that by Christ's flesh and blood His doctrine is meant. It is truly lamentable how the people twist and quibble at Christ's simple words.

If the Lord says at the institution of the Holy Supper: "this is my body" and "this is my blood" — then He is supposed to have meant to say: that signifies, — as if He could not very well have said that, if He had wished it so.

In sum, — thus the sad, very wise word-twisters of this time, in learned books, on pulpits and in schools, twist and quibble at the simple, firm, great words of our dear Savior Jesus Christ, make him who is the true God and eternal life (1 John 5, 20.) into a poor child of man, drag Him down from the throne of His glory into the dust, — and then nevertheless take their stand and say: I believe in the Bible!

(To be continued.)

From a Private Correspondence.

A preacher of the Lutheran Church of Prussia writes among other things the following:

"That Wedemann's brother-in-law Hasert, pastor in Bunzlau, has fallen away from the Lutheran Church and turned to the Roman Church, you will also have learned. The latter Satan has blinded, and his own wicked, self-righteous heart; but the blessed Wedemann is not to blame for his defection, as he would now accuse him in the grave and excuse himself. To be sure, Wedemann had in many doctrines (especially of Baptism and of the spiritual office) views which seemed to be not far from the Roman doctrine in these points, and so he might well have come to the (so-called) Catholic opinion on these doctrines, but by that not at all to the Catholic Church, whose manifold errors and departures from God's Word he well recognized and abhorred.*) He lived and died in the Lutheran Church. The Supreme Church Council, in consequence of Hasert's defection and in view of the fact that Hasert in the Catholic church paper untruthfully represents the late Wedemann as the first occasion of his step, has caused a letter to the Lutheran congregations to go out in our church paper, in which it sets forth the true state of the case. Mrs. Hasert, by God's grace, is true to the Lutheran Church, although Hasert is now already employing all power and art of persuasion to draw her over to the Catholic Church. Satan rages very much against our Church, which does him so much injury and damage and calls him and his servants in the world by the right name. In Baden the persecution of the Lutherans continues. Pastor Eichhorn is banished to his birthplace Kembach, lonely there, and in addition put under imprisonment — without hope that it will soon be otherwise. The children are led away there daily into the united religious instruction by policemen — beaten! if they do not go willingly. Our first synodical circular letter to the congregations, which for the awakening of the greatly sunken spiri-

*) It is, alas! only too certain that when One error of Popery or of another sect is consciously adopted, then the remaining shrinking from the other abominations of Popery no longer protects against defection. A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump! — Many, to be sure, teach popishly and yet zealously oppose Roman Popery, because it is more convenient for them to play the Popes themselves than to play a then subordinate role in the Roman Church.

D. R.