# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 03 13_S114
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

114

but what God bestows out of His grace, He can just as easily take from us in righteous wrath over our ingratitude and our lukewarmness. Our fathers have had to learn this by a hard lesson, under great anguish and much tribulation. To us, their children, it now becomes all the more fitting to esteem that doubly high, and in word and deed to prove true fidelity toward what they wrested again, with sighs and supplications, from God also for us, and what He, for Christ's sake, bestowed anew upon them through the Peace of 1555: the purity and freedom of the confession. But now to the history itself.

Introduction.

What the congregation sings of the Word:
Silver tried in the fire seven times
Is found to be pure;
On God's Word one shall wait
Likewise at all hours.

"It will be tried through the cross," etc., this she must also experience in herself, and confess of herself. That we can enter into the kingdom of God only through much tribulation is a general rule of the kingdom, from which no exception takes place.

So it was impossible that, at the time of the Reformation, the light should be set again upon the candlestick without the devil raising up a tempest to blow it out again. The city which, through the newly preached pure Gospel, shone anew upon a high mountain, had to be assailed, besieged and stormed. Indeed, the building up itself could proceed only amid constant perils and persecutions. All that the Protestants (so the Lutherans were called since the Diet of Speyer in 1529) could obtain was only a temporary armistice, renewed from one Diet to another, until the final union in religion, which, however, could be revoked at any moment by the Emperor and his papistical Estates of the Empire, as soon as a fitting opportunity presented itself. For an "eternal and unconditional peace," even if one could not agree in matters of religion, which the Protestants proposed at every Diet, they would not grant them. The Recess of the Diet of 1530, according to which all "innovators in religion" were to be punished as disobedient persons and disturbers of the public peace, remained constantly in force. That the Emperor did not at once strike out in Germany lay in his political embarrassments. He needed the mighty Protestant Estates of the Empire, princes and cities, against the French, the Turks, and even against the Pope, with whom he lived in almost uninterrupted feud, as with those. He also seriously intended to make his dominion in Germany hereditary, and to bring the imperial crown and dignity to the House of Habsburg. So he had to deceive and put off the Protestants by good words and temporary concessions, until his plans were ripe, and the time and opportunity should offer, to undertake with full force the annihilation of "the new doctrine," which he kept constantly in view in all his affairs of state, wars and treaties of peace. Luther's prayer it was, no doubt, chiefly, by which this moment was put off so long; as he himself often foretold both, that Germany would be filled with war and bloodshed, and also that, as long as he lived, he would prevent it by his Lord's Prayer. With Luther, peace and quiet were carried to the grave in Germany. After the dam of his intercession had been broken through by his death, the flood of tribulation and persecution broke forth like a dammed-up stream, but had to prove, after the Lord had spoken His "Hitherto, and no further" to the proud waves, as before, so now also, that the house of the living God is not built by a fool upon sand, but by the self-subsisting Wisdom upon a rock, and indeed upon the Rock of Ages. "And the rain descended, and the floods came, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock." Matt. 7:25.

The Diet at Regensburg, 1546

revealed to the Protestants what could indeed no longer have been a secret to them, that the Emperor had nothing else in view than to extirpate the Gospel by force. Everything was well prepared. His enemies had been defeated in part, and indeed with the help of the Protestants, and in part brought to quiet for the moment at least by armistices or alliances. The Council, long demanded and promised, with which, according to Luther's expression, the Pope had so long carried himself about, like the cat with her kittens, had at last been opened at Trent, so that in this respect also every excuse had been cut off from the Protestants — only in appearance, however, since they had from the beginning protested against such an unfree Council, since the Pope, instead of being a defendant, was to act as accuser and judge. With the Pope himself secret negotiations had been begun for the vigorous and violent suppression of the heretics. But even here the Emperor sought to deceive as long as ever possible. For appearance's sake a Colloquy was still announced by him before the Diet to be held, but at the same time care was taken that from the Roman side such men should appear as one could foresee would not let it come to a proper disputation. Moreover, such conditions were afterwards prescribed as the Protestants could not accept. It was visibly designed to vex them and, as it were, to force them to break off the Colloquy, whereupon one could then complain of them, and cast the appearance before the world upon them, as if they had wantonly frustrated all means of peace proposed by the Emperor. So it came about. The Lutheran participants in the conference departed, leaving a protest behind. The presidents complained bitterly of the arbitrary proceeding of their opponents; the Emperor feigned great anger over the broken-up Colloquy, and sent forth his plaints and complaints about it into all the world. Everyone, however, writes Sarpi, a Romanist who knew the circumstances, found these complaints ridiculous, "since the Emperor himself had caused the withdrawal of the Lutherans by the whole arrangement of the Colloquy, and had also soon shown that he had only wanted to detain the Protestants until he could throw off the mask entirely."

Also the Landgrave of Hesse he sought shortly before to make quite secure. On his journey to Regensburg he invited him to Speyer, had a friendly and confidential conversation with him, assured him among other things that He, the Landgrave, had wholly removed from him the suspicion that something was being undertaken secretly against him, and was well content when the Landgrave in this conversation poured out to him clear wine about many things, and let him depart with the consolation that he had nothing to fear from the Emperor. "The heart different, the words different," wrote the Landgrave, however, concerning this conversation to the Elector John Frederick.

This soon revealed itself plainly enough at the Diet itself. The Protestant princes, a few excepted, had not appeared in person, but had sent only their envoys. When, after the Emperor's address, it came to deliberation, the Roman Estates, contrary to custom, separated from the Protestants and deliberated by themselves alone. They urged with the Emperor that, since the matter of faith now lay before the Council at Trent, he should compel the Protestants to submit to the decrees of the Council. The Evangelicals demanded quiet and peace, an impartial administration of justice on the part of the Imperial Chamber, and protested, as before, against the Council at Trent, which indeed had had nothing more pressing to do than to condemn at once, in its first sessions, the chief articles of the Protestants. When, at the close of their address, they assured the Emperor that "the gates of hell should not prevail against their confession," the Emperor is said to have smiled scornfully. Yet in the end he has had to experience the truth of this saying in his own case.

He now suddenly broke forth with his designs so long kept secret. The alliance with the Pope was concluded during this very Diet. A multitude of officers he sent with recruiting patents to various recruiting places in the Netherlands and Germany, to bring troops together, and when the Protestants inquired of him about these armaments, he caused answer to be given them: "The Emperor had at all times with much pains endeavored to preserve and to establish peace in Germany, and was still not otherwise minded. He would also in future show his imperial grace to the obedient Estates, but would deal with the disobedient as imperial authority and the laws required. The Protestants needed no further explanation of these words; they knew well enough against whom it was aimed. At the same time he was very careful to turn away the appearance, as if religion had anything to do with his preparations for war. He issued several writings to the cities, in which he let them know that he was in-