# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 08 16_S180
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

180

superiors. What now shall the poor laity do? In the Hebrew and Greek original and in the Latin Vulgate, which moreover is also falsified, they cannot read the Bible, because they do not understand these languages; true translations in their mother tongue they dare not read, because they might then learn to understand the difference between God's Word and men's word; Roman Catholic translations, such as that of van Eß, which also does not faithfully render the original, or that of Allioli, whose annotations rather falsify the text than explain it, they do not wish to read, and so they must at last leave the Bible wholly unread.

Had the Pope commanded that no one should hear his own natural father speak in his mother tongue, all the world would be horrified at it; but is it not still far more horrible to forbid a Christian to hear the voice of his heavenly Father? — Therefore that persecution of Bible-reading Christians ought to rouse us afresh to thank God for the unspeakable benefit that we are not only permitted to read the Bible, but that we can also read it in the unsurpassed translation of Dr. Luther, which indeed all Roman Catholic translators have silently made use of, yea, often copied word for word, although this is manifestly against the Pope's law, since Luther's translation also stands in the Index of Forbidden Books. But alas, how very few thank God for such a benefit, to be permitted to read the Holy Scriptures unhindered! How very few use them faithfully and diligently! How much fewer still become obedient to the Word of God which they have read, from the heart and in all things, and how at last only the very fewest would be ready to suffer bonds and death for it, like the Madiai family?

When one considers the mass meetings which have been held in several cities of America to give expression to sympathy for the fate of this family, one might almost believe that an uncommon zeal for the Bible, and especially for the reading of it, prevails here; but, closely examined, all that has been nothing more than an outbreak of indignation against the Catholic clergy, for by far the greatest part of those multitudes asks nothing about the Bible, and still much less about the reading of it, but rejects all that as old superstition and relic of priestly tyranny, yea, pelts the Bible and all who believe in it with all manner of blasphemies.

But if those who read the Bible against the papal prohibition are punished with hard imprisonment, what far worse punishments do those deserve who do not read it against the commandment of the great God?

May the gracious and merciful God, who has led those Christians to the Bible and has preserved them in it in all tribulation, be pleased to send them also such an interpreter as was once sent to the eunuch of Queen Candace in the person of the holy Philip (Acts 8:26 ff.), that they may not, rescued from papal errors, be entangled in others likewise dangerous to the soul, but may attain to the knowledge of the full Bible truth and praise God with joyful mouth for all that He has done for their soul!

K.

Who Can and Will Give Us Information?

In the assembly held from the 3rd to the 7th of April of this year of the German Ev. Luth. Ministerium of Pennsylvania and the neighboring States, this body adopted, upon the proposal of Pastor Mann, the following resolution:

"Considering:

a. That our Evang. Luth. Church has in recent times come to a clearer knowledge of its doctrinal and other peculiarities;

b. That we feel ourselves entitled to expect from this essential advantages for the inner and outer welfare of our Church;

c. That we recognize the importance of a historical confessional foundation of our Church;

Therefore resolved:

A. That we, with the Ev. Luth. Church of our fathers, acknowledge all the symbolical books of the same as the historical confessional documents of the Evang. Luth. Church, and that we also, with the Ev. Luth. Church of the past, concede to the unaltered Augsb. Confession and Luther's Small Catechism a special weight among the other symbolical books;

B. That we make it the duty of all preachers and candidates of our Church to make themselves more and more thoroughly acquainted with these venerable documents of the faith of our fathers than has hitherto been the case with many;

C. That thereby the absolute authority of the Holy Scriptures among us is by no means diminished, but rather is to be set in its brightest light, and that we by the Symbols by no means lay a constraint upon consciences, but rather wish to bind them by the same to the Holy Scriptures as to the divine fountain of truth." —

What does the Ev. Luth. Ministerium mean by this, when it declares that it acknowledges all the symbolical books "as the historical confessional documents of the Ev. Luth. Church?" Does this body intend to say only so much (as the words can at first be interpreted): that the symbolical books are acknowledged as historical documents of what the Lutheran Church has believed and confessed? Or does the Synod mean to say that it acknowledges the Book of Concord as the written document of what every one must believe and confess who wishes to be a Lutheran, as the derived norm of doctrine to which all teachers of the Lutheran Church are to be pledged?

That the symbolical books of the Ev. Luth. Church are historical or historic confessional documents of the same, in the sense that there is narrated and deposited in them what our fathers have believed and what our Church confesses, this the Reformed, the Methodist, the Papist, etc., also acknowledge.

But our fathers regarded the symbolical books quite differently. In the Formula of Concord they are called: "The unanimous, certain form of doctrine, to which our Evangelical Churches all together and in common confess themselves, according to which, because*) they are taken from God's Word, all other writings, so far as they are to be tried and accepted, shall be judged and regulated."

*) It is well to note that it does not say, in so far as, but because they agree with God's Word, not quatenus, but quia.

Already two years after the presentation of the Augsburg Confession, 1532, there was demanded at Wittenberg, upon the proposal of Luther, Melanchthon, Jonas and Bugenhagen, of those who were to be put into the office the solemn declaration: "That they accept from the heart the unadulterated doctrine of the Gospel and understand the same as it is set forth in the Apostolic, Nicene and Athanasian Symbol, and as it is stated in the Confession which our churches delivered to the Emperor Charles at the Diet of Augsburg in the year 1530, and that they promise in this understanding, with God's help, to continue steadfastly and to discharge their office faithfully in the Church. Likewise, if new disputes arise concerning which no clear decisions yet exist, that they will confer about them with other elders in our and the allied churches." (See: Melanchthon's "Oration in which the Calumny of Osiander is refuted, who finds fault that those to whom a testimonial of doctrine is granted make a promise." (Of the year 1533. Corp. Ref. XII, 6.)

When all the symbolical books at last, in 1580, had been collected into the Concordia or Book of Concord, the oath to be taken upon it then ran as follows: "Ye shall promise and swear that ye will abide and persevere steadfastly, without any falsehood, in the pure doctrine and Christian confession of these lands, as the same is comprehended in the first unaltered Augsburg Confession and repeated, explained and guarded against all falsification in the Christian Book of Concord, and will practice nothing secretly or publicly against it, and also, where ye perceive that