# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 11 07_S42
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

42

and not upon Peter's person; in whose person it would have a straw foundation; the Rock is Christ Himself, and Peter is called in Matthew 16:18 a rock as a confessor of the true Rock; whoever like Peter confesses, has also the power to loose; whoever does not believe, binds and locks the door of the kingdom of heaven against himself. In vain did the many monks and priests in Schwäbisch-Hall spew venom and gall at him on account of such preaching; they had to depart. The monasteries were converted into schools, and the teachers were paid from the revenues of the monasteries. Thus a fine beginning toward the Reformation had been made, when in 1525 the rebellious peasants, who were then laying waste Central and South Germany, advanced also against Schwäbisch-Hall and demanded of the city surrender and acceptance of the 12 Articles in which the peasants had set forth their demands. The danger was the greater because the first of those articles demanded free choice of preachers and pure preaching of the Gospel, and was therefore well calculated to awaken in simple people the opinion that the peasants were really contending for the good cause of the Reformation; the remaining articles also seemed to ask nothing unjust. Many small towns had already been won over to it, castles and monasteries laid in ashes, counts and lords murdered, but in Schwäbisch-Hall Brenz preached equally against all rebellion against the authorities and against the arrogance and unfaithful government of the authorities, and his preaching prevailed. Assured by it of their good right, the citizens of the city beat back the rebellious mob, but treated the prisoners and wounded with mildness. Soon quiet was restored throughout the whole district. At Christmas 1525 the holy Supper was for the first time distributed under both kinds, that is, in such a way that all communicants also drank the cup, and at Easter 1526 the first evangelical church order was established, with which were also connected a marriage ordinance, a school ordinance and a poor-chest ordinance; the poor, it says in the last, are closely akin to the Christian Church. Thereupon in 1527 and 1528 Brenz issued a twofold Catechism, the "Fragstück des christlichen Glaubens für die Jugend zu Schw. Hall," and with it provisionally concluded a work of reformation which, among others, filled Dr. Luther with special joy. Although in the next years he had much to contend for in carrying through the evangelical church order in the city despite the resistance of a Roman party and of many lukewarm persons, yet according to the will of God he henceforth had to employ his excellent gifts for far weightier and more extensive labors.

In the year 1525, when Dr. Luther had just put an end to the fanaticism of Karlstadt, Oecolompadius, then preacher at St. Martin's in Basel, sent a book "on the scriptural explanation of the words: This is my body, etc." to Brenz and other evangelical preachers in Swabia: in it he had tried to prove that one must understand the words body and blood of Christ in the holy Supper figuratively, as though by them only the fruit of Christ's atoning death were signified, and this offered for spiritual enjoyment by means of faith. Johann Brenz immediately drew up a writing against it, in which he confessed his faith, that by virtue of the words of institution of the Lord Christ the body and blood of Jesus Christ are truly present in the Supper, offered and received, so that neither does the faith of the recipient first bring forth the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine, nor may the words of institution in any way be interpreted figuratively. Fourteen preachers in Swabia, among them Erhard Schnepf in Wimpfen, signed at an assembly in Hall the book of Brenz, which was therefore called the Swabian Syngramma, and in northern Swabia and Franconia the pure doctrine of the holy Supper gained such a firm footing by it that the efforts of Oecolompads and afterward also of Bucer of Strasbourg to win the Swabian and Franconian preachers for the Zwinglian doctrine remained without success. Agricola translated the Syngramma into German, and Luther wrote a fine preface to it, in which he heartily commends it to all Christians; Melanchthon also praised the steadfast confession of Brenz and his friends to the pure doctrine. We need not therefore wonder if we find our Brenz taking part in all the important acts of the Reformation in Germany. Margrave George of Brandenburg saw to it that in 1529 he appeared at the colloquy which Luther held with Zwingli at Marburg. As he had looked up to Luther with admiration when a student in Heidelberg, so he stood at Marburg, when he saw him again for the first time since, on Luther's side, and made on all present, as Melanchthon writes to Jonas, a very favorable impression. Here he became acquainted also with the prince who was later to be his protector, Duke Ulrich of Würtemberg, who, driven out of his duchy, lived with Philip of Hesse and there had been converted to the Gospel. To the Diet at Augsburg in 1530 Brenz likewise came with George of Brandenburg and was chosen on the evangelical side, with Melanchthon and Schnepf, into the committee which, after the presentation of the Augsburg Confession and the reading of the papistic Confutation (Refutation), was charged to deliberate on an agreement between the Evangelicals and the Papists. However firmly Brenz had previously withstood Landgrave Philip, who urged the Evangelicals to a union with the Zwinglians, in the negotiations of that committee he and Melanchthon incurred the reproach of having made too many concessions to the Papists, so that these themselves became suspicious, and for that reason the whole undertaking failed. Yet we know of him also that on that occasion he replied to a Papist who appealed to "Mother Church": "Why, you must not forget the Father also, the dear God, along with her"; and it is certain that in his whole later life he never again showed such weakness and fear of men toward the Papists. Indeed, at the end of the Diet he advised the Council at Hall to protest against the unjust decree of the Diet and to appeal to a general Council, with the resolve never to resist the Roman Imperial Majesty with force; in matters of faith, however, the Emperor was no judge. While therefore Hall on the one hand protested, it yet did not enter into the Schmalcaldic League, which a great part of the evangelical Estates of the Empire concluded with one another in order to defend themselves with arms if the Emperor should attack them on account of their confession; Brenz resisted with the Word of God all those who then thought that for resistance at least one might take up the sword for the sake of faith. The Emperor could not root out the faith; the more one pruned the branches of a palm tree, the higher they strove upward; for confession the Christian has his mouth, not the sword. The same principles Brenz applied in another direction. When, as everywhere in Germany, so also in the territory of Schw. Hall Anabaptists began their sectarian doings, the question arose whether the authorities should offer them resistance and in particular punish obstinate heretics with death. Brenz thereupon declared that if heretics raised insurrection, the authorities should proceed against them according to the laws on sedition and rebellion; but if the unbelievers and heretics lived before the world as honest folk, the worldly penalty had no right to them. Truly, that Brenz was an Evangelical.

Soon after his return from Augsburg Brenz married Margaretha, née Gräter, widow of the councilor Wetzel; by her he begot six children, of whom 2 daughters and 1 son, Johannes, afterward professor at Tübingen, survived him. Just thirty years old he was then, already a man esteemed throughout Germany, who was in the liveliest correspondence with Luther and Melanchthon, and whose writings, such as the expositions of several biblical books and collections of sermons, were read to great edification. Thus Luther wrote a preface to Brenz's exposition of Amos, in which he says among other things that of the fourfold spirit of Elijah (1 Kings 19) the storm wind had fallen to him (Luther himself), which rends the mountains and shatters the rocks, but to Brenz the gentle sighing of the air, which cools. In particular he valued it highly that Brenz presented the chief article, the righteousness of faith, so faithfully and purely. — In