# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 03 13_S118
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

118

in many respects so constrained that I was moved to accept the call of the emigrants." — —

"The book 'Die Stimme unserer Kirche in der Frage von Kirche und Amt' (Erlangen 1852), which lies before me at this moment, is written out of my own heart." . . .

"Finally I beg that all letters and writings that I am to receive be sent for the present in care of Mr. Andrew Vetter, blacksmith in Round Top, Fayette Co., Texas. The mail would not find me here in my solitude in the oak forest on Rabbs Creek, where I live in the house of a brother who immigrated to Texas in the year 1853, and where the company intends to found its new home. — Awaiting an early and welcome answer, I remain, with hearty greetings to Dr. Sihler and to the Right Reverend Missouri Synod, in the Lord, etc."

Johann Kilian, Ev. Luth. Pastor.

"P. S. On the 11th of February, last Friday, a league of land was bought, on which our company intends to settle."

The Lord bless the dear brethren with their faithful shepherd, in body and soul, and through them the Church of our new fatherland!

Why do we not call ourselves simply Christians?

The old Frankfurt Senior of the Ministerium, J. Dan. Arcularius, raises in a little book the question:

"Why then do we not keep the name of true Christians alone, and let go the distinction of Papistic, Calvinistic, and the like? If the Augsburg Confession has remained with the faith of the first Church, why do we not remain also with its name?"

The answer which that sincere-hearted divine gives to this question is as follows:

"Right gladly would we do it, and comfort ourselves also with the name of Christian in truth; if only we dwelt in such a place where there were no people who also make use of this name and yet do not abide by the most holy faith, as it was taught by the apostles and confessed by the faithful witnesses of the truth in the symbols of the first churches! . . . How well it would have fared with the churches of Christ, if it could have remained with the one council of the apostles, with their wholesome words, without further explanation; but for the heretics' sake it could not be done to remain in that simplicity, says the learned Voss. The wickedness of restless, seductive people has not suffered us to stand in such a short and simple confession as at the times of the apostles. Pappus writes: If Satan and the sectarian spirits would leave the pure confession unassailed, there would never have been need of any other confession than the Bible; but because he never rests, but, when he is resisted in one place, forthwith breaks open a gap elsewhere, one must continually resist and oppose such sectarian spirits, in order that not only those who live in our time may be warned against all manner of error and seduction, but also that those who come after may be informed what the real opinion and confession of their forefathers was." (Das willige Glaubensbekenntniß oder Ermahnung zu treuer Verwahrung der wahren Lehre A. C. 1692. pp. 98, 103.)

"Mark of a Catholic."

Under this heading Mr. Oertel gives in his "Katholische Kirchenzeitung" of the 1st of March the following short report:

"There are two points now especially by which one can recognize a true Catholic. Whoever devoutly venerates the immaculate conception of Mary, and whoever especially holds the Order of the Jesuits in high esteem, is on the right path. But the Catholic who does neither of these has more the stamp of a ragamuffin than of a true Catholic."

There you have it, dear Christians: the Savior declares that one is to know His true Christians by obedience to His Word, by love, and by good works (John 10:27; 8:31, 32; 13:35; Matt. 5:16); the Papists, on the contrary, declare that one can know their "true" Christians by devout veneration of a papal figment of the brain and by esteem for the most immoral and virtue-hating gang that ever existed on the face of the earth!

The Popess Joan.

Some time ago Mr. Anstädt mentioned in the "Lutheran Kirchenbote" that once upon a time a woman attained the papal dignity, which became notorious only through this disguised female being delivered of a child at a public procession. Mr. Oertel seeks in his "Kirchenzeitung" to make Mr. Anstädt ridiculous on account of this statement. Among other things he also writes there: "Even Luther, to our knowledge, mentions nothing of the Popess Joan." Much as we are otherwise inclined, taught by experience, to hold Mr. Oertel guilty of conscious falsehood, yet we gladly believe that in this point he erred from ignorance. Luther has indeed made mention of the Popess Joan, and in such a manner that his testimony is to be counted among the great mass of proofs for the truth of that scandalous story. For thus it stands in the 22nd part of Luther's Works: "At Rome I have seen, in a great street which goes straight to St. Peter's Minster, publicly hewn in a stone a pope, like a woman with a scepter, in papal mantle, carrying a child on her arm; through that same street no pope passes, that he may not have to see such an image. For a woman, by name Agnes, born at Mainz, was once led in boy's guise by a cardinal to England and at last brought to Rome. There she was chosen pope by cardinals, but she was put to shame and exposed, in that she openly had a child in that same street. It served the rascals right; the devil has made fine mockery of them with his creature. It amazes me that the popes can suffer such an image; God Himself blinds them, that one may see what popedom is, sheer deceit and devil's work." (p. 1391.)

We reserve to ourselves to establish the matter itself at another time by indubitable historical documents; naturally not in order to silence Mr. Oertel, or in general to engage with him in a controversy, for this man has long since forfeited that honor by declaring to be sheer lie and invention what we had quoted with literal fidelity from his own authorities lying before us.

Beginning of the Salzburg Persecutions.

A Salzburger by the name of Paul Leidner relates at Gera, when the emigrants were passing through that city, the beginning of their sufferings as follows: A Jesuit said to a Salzburg peasant: Did he know, too, that the Lutheran heretics all belonged on the stake and deserved to be burned? Whereupon the peasant answered: "I am also such an evangelical Christian; so I must be burned too." Thereupon, it is said, the uproar began, since in the investigation that was set on foot an ever greater number of Lutherans who had been hidden was come upon. (See: Das liebthätige Gera gegen die Salzb. Emigranten. Leipz. 1732. Page 53.)

Into the Crumb Basket.

The narrow road leads straight into God's heart, as it comes down from it to thee. Though it is not broad, yet it is as short as possible, while the crooked ways of the serpent are long and therefore wearisome.

Our questions testify to our limits. To acknowledge these is wisdom.

Good grain does not fall through the sieve; if it wants out, it must leap over. Thus pride casts down the best.

The cross is the ink with which Christ's servants write their sermons.

It goes thus: when one picks a quarrel with men before he has learned to understand them, the devil mocks him with his own shadow.

Thy cross is only Christ's footstep; it is a milestone, which gives thee assurance that thou art still on the right way.

As one hides a jewel for children in dark corners or in the bushes, that the sudden find may surprise them, so the Lord hides under tribulation the pearl-jewelry of eternal glory.

K. Röbbelen.

A Godly Woman.

When in the year 1551 the Papists had come again to power in most of the Lutheran cities, the Lutheran preacher Bertlin at Memmingen was also summoned to the Diet