# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 06 06_S166
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

166

complaint that people of firm religious or churchly conviction stand isolated (solitary) and without even a legal foothold in the state church, causes no astonishment; the unionistic spirit once for all resists every decided religiosity;—whom it has lured into its snare it demands imperiously the denial of his former positive (drawn from the Bible) faith, that is, the transformation of it into an indifferentistic howling with the wolves among whom one happens to be. Here, as everywhere in history, the divine saying is fulfilled: what a man soweth, that shall he reap;—wherewith the Union has trespassed, therewith it is punished. Irreligiousness (to speak plainly) was to be the rock upon which it thought to found itself for everlasting ages; irreligiousness, irreligiosity, is the curse that weighs upon its present condition and will become the reef on which its ship goes to pieces.**) A dim foreboding of this catastrophe (unfortunate turn of affairs) and of the futility of all efforts to escape it, shoots through those members of the Union who still understand the signs of the times; they begin to despair of saving the vessel and think only of salvaging crew and cargo. They notice that the whirlpool into which they have fallen follows its magnetic pull in the direction of Rome; they see from there, where the sinking of the Union ship is expected quite near at hand, the beacon fires already being lit and Jesuit lifeboats hastening up to take in the shipwrecked and their goods. No wonder if they gradually make themselves familiar with the thought of their impending incorporation into the realm of the Pope and make friends with the ultramontane (strictly Roman) manner. For they see round about no other harbor of refuge; the going over of the congregations to Popery, which in Prussia has equal ecclesiastical rights, is the only means by which the church property can be retained for them when the Union goes down; on returning to the Gospel (Lutheranism), as a merely tolerated "sect religion," they would fall to the state. The spirit of Unionism is mightier than its bearers; it drives them against their will into the Roman Popery. Trusting in the power of this spirit, Mr. Lütkemüller breaks the first plank from the Union, already half become a wreck, and thereby gives his fellow officers the signal to follow. That many will follow his example in the very near future is not to be expected; in the long run, however, it cannot fail to happen."

human good opinion rests, and which therefore sooner or later must fall a prey to some shock! Why will those in the Union church who have been convinced of the Scripturalness of the Lutheran doctrine obstinately turn their backs on the communion which has all along maintained this their present faith, and remain in a communion in which their faith has equal standing with human opinions? To be sure, the giving up of the Union again would arouse strife; but is it not better, even with an assailed heart, to leave a house voluntarily, than to wait until a lightning flash from above strikes it and the consuming flame of divine wrath drives one out of it by force?

The Editor of the Lutheraner.

**) Had the King of Prussia, instead of wrongfully introducing the Union in 1817 and afterwards pressing it more and more upon the people, sought rather to help the church by insisting, as would have been right, that the preachers should live up to the confessions of the church sworn to by them, or lay down their offices, what quite different results would one have seen! Would that one would let oneself be warned and made wise!

The Editor of the Lutheraner.

In what follows Ströbel now says what significance the Lütkemüller writing has for truly evangelical Christendom. There he writes among other things: "Might a Lütkemüller perhaps bring about the last day of our symbolical faith? Ridiculous! 'God's Word is Luther's doctrine, therefore it will never pass away, though it vex never so sorely the devil and all his host.' Only a call to sobriety and watchfulness can and shall the present book be to us. Therefore: 'Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom resist stedfast in the faith.' Take first into sober and watchful view your church past. Do not let yourselves be made drunken and drowsy by rationalistic and unionistic cries for toleration, else you will act in your judgment of the Reformation and its instruments called of God as Judas Iscariot did to his Lord and Master. Do not by any means hold yourselves entitled to reform the Reformers! 'Sint ut sunt, aut non sint.' (Let them be as they are, or let them go altogether.) Blunt and one-sided,†) unbending as a block, rude to the point of roughness, but through and through honest, German and true, thus according to God's will the Reformation was to be; for it had to do with the Roman Popery, that Gordian-tangled web of formerly scholastic, then Jesuitical and some day perhaps still worse lying and deceit, which has proved itself at all times radically incapable of improvement, the very embodiment of intolerance and persecution, 'Antichristianity and the work of demons,' and will remain so until God burns it in the flames of the last judgment. — Many a one will perhaps believe that passionate zeal leads me, at least in expression, beyond the bounds of moderation. By no means! I am not zealous at all, keep to genuine Protestant measure, use no hyperboles (exaggerations), but speak only the 'old, correct, Lutheran style.' Yet in order not to give offense thereby to anyone without necessity, but rather to be of use to everyone according to my feeble powers, God willing, I shall in what follows speak, as well as I am able, in the trimmed words of the language of the day; but have patience if I here and there fall out of the unaccustomed role. Dear evangelical fellow brethren, just look at the Holy Ghost, as the Scripture depicts him! What is he? A rushing storm, a kindling fire, a guileless dove. Again, what is Satan? A smooth, pliant, cunning serpent, full of lies, wiles, poison and malice. Which of the two does the impetuous, stormy and yet open, honest blowing of our Reformation resemble? And which does the smooth, flattering, intriguing character of a Popery borne by scholastics and Jesuits, lurking for its time and then spewing forth ruin and violence? Therefore let us be sober and watchful, that papistic sly-heads may not seduce us into blaspheming the hidden Spirit of God as a raging storm, as a destroying flame, and into adoring in its stead the demon disguised in the shape of an angel of light. We can now show whether we possess the gift of the trying of spirits."

†) One finds fault with me for "one-sidedness." How glad I would be if no other defect weighed upon me!—What said Elijah? "How long halt ye between two opinions?" St.

Proverbs Which Once Were in the Mouth of the People Under Popery.

Flacius gives in his "Register of the Witnesses of the Truth," among other things, also a catalogue of proverbs from the mouth of the people, from which one can see how, before the Reformation, the Pope and his clergy were regarded by their people. They are these:

In Germany they had the following question and answer in their mouths: "What sort of creature is there now in the world?"—"We would not recover for the priests." Further: "The nearer Rome, the worse Christian." Alluding to the papal letters, they said: "In God's name all misfortune begins." In Italy they used to say: "As soon as a clergyman's crown is shorn, the devil enters into him." In Bavaria the saying went: "Formerly the Christians had dark temples but bright hearts; now they have bright temples and dark hearts." In other places people went about with the following sayings: "When the indulgence comes from Rome, draw your purse shut at once."—"Whoever goes to Rome once sees a rascal; whoever goes the second time learns to know him; whoever has visited Rome the third time brings the rascal back with himself."—"The Roman court seeks no sheep without wool."—"Formerly the chalices were wooden and the priests golden; but now the chalices are golden and the priests wooden."—"Many are worshipped as saints in heaven whose souls may be suffering pain in hell." In France it was said among the people: "In Rome the devil is let loose to the ruin of the whole church." Thomas of Canterbury wrote to a whole College of Cardinals: "Now it is cried aloud in all the streets