# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 11 09_S44
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

44

dancing, and convince themselves that only men with deranged senses can make the highly enlightened Dr. Luther the patron of this sinful pleasure.

But those with whom all this does not suffice, because they want to know everything better, let them know that all this is not written for their sake. Should I write them a little verse in their album, it would be about that which Luther brings home to those who among other things rejected private confession, without giving anything better in its place. This little verse runs thus:

Master Bridle, the clever man,
Who can bridle the horse in the rear,
And rides backwards on his way,
His bagpipe's blare
Is the very best sound.

Must not the Holy Scripture itself let itself be abused in many ways by the children of this world for the glossing over of their ungodly nature? How gladly do people who otherwise do not ask at all after the Bible appeal to the saying Eccles. 3: "A time to dance," without considering that killing, hating, strife and other things also have their time, as is written there; without God's having thereby commanded it, or even merely permitted it. Is it to be wondered at, then, if Luther's writings also, as we have seen in that passage from the Kirchenpostille, have had to serve, to let themselves be misused against himself and against the truth? He himself complains of this in the Preface to the Smalcald Articles with the following words: "I am still alive, preach and read daily, yet there are found such poisonous people, not only among the adversaries, but also false brethren, who would be on our side, who presume to turn my writing and doctrine straight against me, letting me look on and listen, though they well know that I teach otherwise, and want to adorn their poison with my work and seduce the poor people under my name; what will become of it after my death?"

Should those finally who appeal to Luther in defense of dancing choose him as teacher in other, more needful things, they would not fall into such follies and thereby seduce themselves and others. If they would and could examine themselves, then they, who prate so much of faith and love, would rather feel desire and impulse to leap about with the idolatrous Israelites around the golden calf, and with the crafty, voluptuous daughter of Herodias to demand the head of a witness of the truth, than with David to fetch the holy Ark of the Covenant dancing and rejoicing, or with the holy virgin Agatha for Christ's sake to go into dungeon and death as to a dance.

K.

(For the Lutheraner.)

So long as the Buffalo Synod persists in its contradiction against the Lutheran doctrine, it helps it as little to appeal to the age and experience of its congregations,* as it helped the Apostle Peter that he had known the Savior longer than Paul, when Paul accused him of a similar, only not so gross offense against the article of evangelical liberty of Christians, as the Saxon brethren have proved to the Prussian Lutherans. Rather it proves only that it is grace, even when the senses are never so well exercised to discern the truth from error, not to stray upon a false track, as the proverb says: Age protects not from folly.

*) This has namely occurred in the Informatorium. Ed.

Now the revelation of the errors to which they do homage in Buffalo, and of which No. 5 of the Kirchl. Informatorium furnishes a new proof, comes for the most part from members of the congregations who stand in connection with the Buffalo Synod. Why are such not allowed the right to examine the doctrine, for which they are indeed qualified according to the confession of the Informatorium, to the same benefit as the Yea-sayers?

Besides, neither experience nor deep knowledge of the Word of God is needed to see that it does not rhyme to prove the efficacious power of the office in the sacrament by the plowing of the husbandman. In the end the oxen also come and presume that the seed has ripened, and one will hardly bring them to reason with 1 Cor. 3, 7: "So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase." It seems indeed to be as little to the purpose with the members of the Buffalo Synod: therefore silence is perhaps the best answer to the wonderful assertions about the power of the office which No. 5 of the Kirchl. Informatorium brings.

K. R.

When a wanderer looks down from the summit of a mountain into the valley, the next step goes downward, and whoever wants to keep him above warns him of it. But when he wants to climb up again from the deep plain at the foot of the mountain, it would be foolish to forbid him the way, which indeed leads downward from the summit, but upward from the valley. Only he should not stand still upon such a way.

R.

It is peculiar and essential to the Lutheran Church that it lays the chief weight on pure doctrine of the Word and right administration of the Sacraments, because it knows that one has part in Christ only so far as one has part in His pure Word. It confesses that only from the preaching and from the faith of the preaching can a holy life-power and life-fellowship, a communion of saints, proceed, as truly as love and its edification can proceed only from faith, and this communion of faith and Holy Ghost in the heart is to it alone (proprie, principaliter) the Church. Hence also its full conception of the Church, Augsb. Conf. Art. 7: "It is also taught that at all times there must be one holy Christian Church, which is the congregation of all believers, among whom the Gospel is purely preached and the holy Sacraments are administered according to the Gospel. For this is enough for the true unity of the Christian Church, that the Gospel be preached in harmony with a pure understanding and the Sacraments be administered in accordance with the divine Word." And this further explained in the Apology, Art. 4: "But the Christian Church stands not only in fellowship of outward signs, but stands chiefly in fellowship of inward eternal goods in the heart, as of the Holy Ghost, of faith, of the fear and love of God. And the same Church has also outward signs, whereby one knows it, namely where God's Word goes forth pure, where the Sacraments are administered in accordance therewith, there is surely the Church, there are Christians." ... Apology Art. 12: "For the right outward ornament of the Church is also right preaching, right use of the Sacraments, and that the people be accustomed to it with earnestness and come together with diligence and decency, learn and pray.... For there is no thing that keeps the people more in the Church than good preaching. But our adversaries preach the people out of the Church..." etc. In this direction of the Lutheran Church, turned toward the inward as the essential and true, that it chiefly (principaliter) wants to be an inward Christendom, and knows only as many true members of the Church as are saints, that is, such as are truly converted by the Holy Ghost, that is, stand in faith, there must be to it also the preaching of the Word, which awakens faith and gives the Holy Ghost, the primary thing (the chief matter), all outward institution (order) must appear as the secondary (the minor matter). Yet it is not indifferent toward outward form, rather it holds it necessary that the Church have a body, as the soul must have a body. Apology Art. 4: "And we speak not of a fictitious Church which is to be found nowhere, but we say and know for a certainty that this Church, wherein saints live, is truly on earth and abides, namely, that there are some children of God here and there in all the world, in all sorts of kingdoms, islands, lands, cities, from the rising of the sun to the going down, who have rightly known Christ and the Gospel, and say that the same Church has the outward signs, the office of preaching or the Gospel and the Sacraments. And the same Church is properly, as Paul says, a pillar of the truth, for it retains the pure Gospel, the right ground." (1 Tim. 3, 15.) Just so it knows