# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 03 27_S122
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

122

Council, to commit acts of violence, then indeed no prince might support him therein, for thereby he would himself sin against the faith; but neither might one refuse to open the land to him and to let him proceed therein according to his will. He repeated that if the Emperor should summon him and the others, they would appear; the Elector should have no concern on their account. For every one must believe at his own peril. Brenz held that the princes were as little entitled to take up arms against the Emperor as the peasants once were against nobility and prelates. This opinion for the most part prevailed at that time, at least in Saxony, Nuremberg and Brandenburg. The Chancellor Vogler assured them that his master was resolved, if the Emperor should invade him, not to defend himself but to endure everything that God should lay upon him. Thus nothing came at that time of the league which seemed destined to shake Europe. Ranke, the excellent historian, remarks hereupon: "One may censure this if one will, as it has so often been censured. It was not politically wise.

But never perhaps did pure conscientiousness appear more regardless of consequences, more grand.

One sees the enemy approach in arms, one hears his threats, one is not deceived about his intentions, one is almost convinced that he will attempt the utmost.

One would also have opportunity to form a league against him which might shake Europe, at the head of which one might confront with might him who aspired to universal dominion, and challenge fortune; but one will not do so, one scorns it.

And that, not from fear, from doubt of one's own capability; those are considerations which these souls do not know. One does it not, wholly and solely out of religion.

First, one will not unite the defense of the faith with other, foreign interests; one will not let oneself be carried away into things which one cannot survey.

Further, however, one will defend only the faith which one himself believes: one would fear to sin if one allied oneself with those who differed, though only in one point, yet in an essential point.

Finally, one doubts the right to resist the sovereign, to violate the ancient ordinances of the Empire.

Thus, in the midst of the tumultuous, conflicting interests of the world, one assumes a bearing which is taken counsel of with God and conscience alone. Thus one awaits the danger. 'For God is faithful,' says Luther, 'and will not forsake us.' He cites the saying of Isaiah: 'If ye kept still, ye would be helped.'

Certainly, that is not prudent, but it is great.

Afterwards the question was taken in hand by the jurists, and it was proved from the Imperial laws themselves that one might offer resistance to the Emperor. The theologians were quieted thereby. They remain by the doctrine of the Gospel: Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; but since the Gospel does not reject the outward bodily government but confirms it, they too could not in this case hinder the secular law, where the jurists should find that imperial laws in this case teach resistance. The jurists furnished the proof; the theologians, though far from advising to take up arms, yet could not, according to the Gospel's own doctrine, by burdening of consciences hinder the course of law, and keep the princes from that which their princely office, according to the law valid in the Empire, laid upon them. Thus among the protesting princes and cities, though not all, there came into being an alliance for defense itself, if need should require, against the Emperor. That is the so-called Smalcaldic League. Saxony, Hesse, Lüneburg, Wolfgang of Anhalt, the two Counts of Mansfeld, the cities of Magdeburg and Bremen were the first who united for this purpose, on December 31, 1530. Soon several joined. In the year 1531 the League already embraced seven Upper German and seven Lower German cities. It extended to the outermost borders. Strasburg in Alsace, as well as Riga, Dorpat and Reval in the Baltic provinces of Russia, sought in this League, under God, protection against the threatening attacks of papistical arrogance.

But however important the League may be in the political history of Germany, however great its significance even for the unity of development of the doctrine and spirit within the Protestant territories of German tongue thus united, so utterly useless did it prove itself in the hour of danger for the averting of which it was established. The Lord would show here also, although there were certainly among the allies His dearest children, who in His fear had joined together for the defense of the eternal truth and for the honor of His name and for the protection of their cruelly oppressed subjects, that the sword of the Spirit, and not the bodily sword, is the weapon of His warriors, and not the league of the strong and mighty, even of the most pious, but He Himself, the living God, is their sure fortress, their helper and deliverer. According to human reckoning the League, and with it the afflicted Church, must conquer in the hour of decision now come; according to His counsel it must succumb, and the Church nevertheless come forth victorious from the conflict.

(To be continued.)

(Sent in by Pastor Röbbelen.)

The Revelation of St. John.

The Eleventh and Twelfth Chapters.

"In the 11th and 12th chapters, between such evil woes and plagues, two pictures of comfort are set forth, one of the two preachers, and one of the pregnant woman, who brings forth a man-child in spite of the dragon. Thereby it is shown that nevertheless some pious teachers and Christians shall remain, both under the two former woes, and the third woe to come. And now the last two woes run together, and attack Christendom at the last at once, and the devil thereby at length knocks the bottom out of the cask." (Luther.)

The angel who represents the Roman Antichrist concluded his speech in the preceding chapter with this, that the papacy would put a new doctrine in the place of the apostolic preaching. Just as this at the same time contained in veiled manner the prophecy that indeed once more the true Gospel, the doctrine of the apostles, would break forth out of the night of papistical darkness as a repetition of what the witnesses of the resurrection of the LORD had already accomplished, as indeed, for example, in the time of the Reformation the preaching of Christ was something new to the world, so also in this chapter the speech of that angel is at the beginning in a certain measure ambiguous, but later takes such a course that the latter reference, to the true kingdom of God kept hidden under the scepter of the Pope, is administered and it is not hard to recognize that the angel who here makes himself heard has only for the warning of the children of God, in his assumed form, furnished a mirror which must betray the devil's secret practices, just as a clear lake shows in its mirror not merely the firmament with sun, moon and stars, but also the clouds that pile up before the sun and the rapacious kite that lies in wait for the fishes, but is in fact a messenger of the LORD and brings divine revelations.

Ch. 11, v. 1. As prophecy of the antichristian kingdom this verse has the meaning: The measuring line of the Word of God, with which according to the doctrine of the apostles the Church is to be governed, will be exchanged for a ruler's staff, and accordingly the sanctuary will be enclosed in the circle of human ordinances, measured off by human reckoning and, as in trade, meted out to the buyers. How could the papacy be better described? The "reed," the Holy Scripture, which on account of the arrows of the Law that it has for the hearts of sinners, as well as because it was written with the stylus (formerly made, like arrows and pipes, of reed), and as a lovely playing of harp and pipe in the godly sorrow of repentance refreshes the souls (cf. Matth. 11, 17), which bore this name, was by Roman fraud changed into a staff such as a mortal king and his beadle carry. Earthly power, that is to say, took the place of the discipline of the divine Word and yet adorned itself with the Word, wished to derive its rapacious and tyrannical pretensions from Holy Scripture and to be regarded as though he transgressed God's Word who rose up against it. It claimed "the temple of God" for itself alone. "Here," it was said, "is the temple of the LORD" and nowhere else. It also knew quite exactly how far it extended [illegible] That was possible for it because it understood thereby a building which human wit had erected. Above all, however, it had to do with the "altar":