# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 10 25_S37
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

37

afflicted epidemic, here and there also the political potato blight, in which the powers of men were likewise made sick and inedible, like the potato tubers. In the ventricle of the brain of persons who had died of this plague, the autopsies performed revealed black, red and golden-yellow streaks; the so-called corpora striata in the brain also had such a coloration, which, however, at the admission of air and light at once turned to water. With the passing of time this plague gradually abated of itself in many regions, or took on a benign character, just as that older plague of St. Vitus' dance likewise gradually died out when it had become a bore. Much may also have contributed to its ending, that in various places where it raged very violently, particularly in the city of Vienna, they knew how to bring it quickly to an end, as formerly that epidemic of St. Vitus' dance, by blows, as well as by shooting and kicks.—

"Der Sendbote des Evangeliums."

We have just received the first 3 numbers of a new religious paper appearing under the above name. It is printed in Philadelphia and appears once every month. As its editor a certain Mr. K. A. Fleischmann names himself. Judging by the signboard, one should indeed think that the paper had set itself the task of serving no sect, and of concerning itself solely with the spread of the unadulterated Gospel. This, however, is not so. The paper bears its name in a sense in which so many other papers here bear their names, such as "Der Wahrheitsfreund," "der Herold des Glaubens," "der christliche Apologet," "der christliche Botschafter," etc. That is to say, under a generally Christian name it wants to put into circulation the peculiar doctrines of the sect which it is to serve. The alleged "Sendbote des Evangeliums" is in fact nothing less than an apostle risen again from the dead—for 'Sendbote' is the translation of the Greek word apostle—but an emissary of the German Anabaptists here, or, as they themselves like to call themselves, Baptists.

What peculiar doctrines the Anabaptists have is often hard to say, since not only do they frequently want absolutely nothing to do with any public, general confession of faith and doctrine or symbol, but they also distinguish themselves from other sects in that they have again split into a multitude of smaller sectlets, which play in the most various colors. The Anabaptists are united only in this, that they reject infant baptism and, strange enough! that they hold baptism in low esteem altogether, namely, that they regard it not as the washing of regeneration, as the Apostle Paul does, but as a mere bath for admission into their "visible church," not as a means of grace, but at most as a mere sign of grace. Otherwise there prevails among them the most motley variety of doctrine and belief. "The history of Baptism is, as Dr. Rudelbach*) quite truly says, like a thicket of thorns, which becomes the more tangled the farther one gets into it, so that many have positively given up the task of disentangling it." Even before the Reformation there were indeed people here and there in Christendom who rejected infant baptism, but no definite doctrine by which such Anabaptists, appearing here and there, would otherwise have been united can be found; rather, here they have combined these, there those errors with their Anabaptist principles. And when afterwards, in the general movements brought about by the Reformation in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Livonia, they also made their appearance, they appeared as sects diverging widely from one another. Among them, for example, the Anabaptists gathering since 1533 in Münster under Johann Matthiesen, a baker from Haarlem, and Johann Bockhold, a tailor from The Hague (called John of Leyden), fell here into errors as dreadful as they were into unheard-of abominations, which we reserve for another time to enumerate.†) A certain Menno Simons, formerly a Roman priest from Witmarsum near Franeker, did indeed seek to gather the Anabaptists scattered after the unhappy outcome at Münster, to give them a definite system of doctrine and to lead them to Christian order, but even the Mennonites (or "Taufgesinnten"), named after him, fell, still in Menno's lifetime, into great discord over church discipline, which after his death in 1561 resulted in a complete separation. For the so-called Fine ones, or the old Flemings, retained Menno's strict discipline as introduced, while the other party, the so-called Coarse ones or Waterlanders, gave it up. Later, in the year 1664, the Coarse ones again split into two parties, of whom the one, the Apostooler, held, among other things, the Calvinistic unconditional divine predestination of men to salvation or damnation, while the other, the Galenists, adopted more and more Arminian and rationalistic principles, for example denied the mystery of the holy Trinity. At last, in the year 1800, the two latter parties united again, but in such a way that the more rationalistically minded now gained the upper hand. It has gone similarly with the English Baptists as with the Dutch. Since 1633 they began to form congregations of their own in England, but already in 1691 fell out with one another, the one party, the "Particular Baptists," holding fast to the Calvinistic doctrine of election, the other, on the contrary, the "General Baptists," adopting not only the doctrine of universal grace, but also, besides the common Anabaptist errors, other peculiar rationalistic false doctrines. In North America, whither the English Baptists in particular have transplanted themselves, there are still a fair number of other Baptist parties separated from one another by different doctrines; for example the Snake-Baptists, who regard the non-elect not at all as the natural descendants of Adam, but of the serpent, namely of the devil, so that for them there is absolutely no salvation; the Seventh-day-Baptists, who instead of Sunday keep Saturday as the Sabbath; the Dunkers, the Christians, etc. ††)

From this it is evident that, with the Babylonian confusion which prevails among the Baptists themselves, one cannot of course judge the same of all. We ourselves have already met with the most diverse kinds of German Baptists. Some were, with the exception of the point of infant baptism, strictly Calvinistic; others, for example in the doctrine of original sin, Zwinglian; others so grossly rationalistic that they not only rejected faith in the holy Trinity, but outright mocked and blasphemed it.

What faith, then, does the new German Baptist so-called "Sendbote des Evangeliums" confess?

So far as it can be gathered from the first three numbers of the paper, we can report the following about it.

*) In his "theologisches Gutachten über die Frage betreffend das Verhältniß der Baptisten zur Kirche und zum Staate und die denselben zu gewährende Religionsfreiheit. Magdeburg, 1846," in which Dr. Rudelbach decides in favor of not expelling the Baptists from Denmark by force, but of granting them religious liberty.

†) The present Baptists are indeed ashamed of those carnal enthusiasts, and disclaim that their communion ever stood in any connection or contact with them. But although we by no means wish to place our Baptists here, so far as morality is concerned, beside those abominable fanatics, yet the fundamental error of both is common. Undeniable is what Dr. Rudelbach says in the writing cited: "If the Baptists are indeed right in saying of the Anabaptists before the Reformation: That is flesh of my flesh—how can they then, with any semblance of right, tear asunder the chains which bind also Thomas Münzer and the Anabaptists of Münster with the older ones? The bloody stream which rolled from Allstedt (in the Peasants' Revolt) to Münster was a point of passage which, with a judgment of God in every outcome, showed what fruits this doctrine can bear, unless the roots were pruned and purified." It is well known that Melchior Hoffmann, from whom the Dutch Anabaptist party of the Melchiorites or Hoffmannians derives, had spread the seed of the Anabaptist errors in Münster by emissaries of his own. One such emissary was, among others, Johann Matthiesen, who then, together with John of Leyden and Knipperdolling, in setting up in Münster the millennial kingdom hoped for by all Anabaptists, committed the most dreadful abominations.

††) As is well known, the North American Baptists are at present again engaged in a mutual estrangement and separation, in that a considerable number of them reject the customary English translation of the Bible and intend to produce a new one, evidently first of all only in order to introduce the word immersion (Untertauchung) in place of the word baptism, while other Baptists regard this undertaking as just as unnecessary as it is dangerous to their whole communion.