# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 03 27_S125
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

125

Letter
of
an upright Lutheran mother,
the Landgravine Elisabeth Dorothea,
widow of Landgrave Louis VI of Hesse-Darmstadt, to her son, when he had married a Catholic woman and in consequence had accepted the Catholic religion.

A Warning against Entering upon a Mixed Marriage.

(The mother was the daughter of Duke Ernest the Pious of Gotha, or the so-called "Prayer-Ernest"; her son was Prince Philip; he had married the Princess of Croy and Havre at Brussels in 1693 without his mother's knowledge. A copy of the following letter the mother had sent to the prince's former tutor, the later chancellor in Holstein, Gregorius, Herr von Nitzsch, from whose written papers the late Kapp communicated the letter. See Beiträge etc. of the year 1775, p. 805 ff.)

Disobedient child, forgetful of God and honor!

Nothing in my whole life has so dismayed and grieved me as your latest letter to me, dated Brussels, 26 March, in which you inform me that you have married a Brabantine princess. But before I begin to write of the main matter, I am greatly astonished that you can be so effronté (impudent) as to write to me in such a matter, since you know that by your evil conduct you have offended me in the highest degree, acted against my respect, transgressed the fourth commandment, and above all angered God the Almighty and brought upon yourself His temporal and eternal punishment (which will certainly not fail to come). But as to the main matter, you ought to be ashamed in your heart that without my foreknowledge and will you have contracted a marriage, and that with adversaries in religion. *) You are, so to speak, still a veritable boy, who does not know how to conduct himself (to behave properly), how then will you be able to govern a whole family! You are poor and until now have not been able to get by respectably and in a manner befitting your rank on your allowance, to say nothing of your being able to support wife and child on it. Yet the disgrace which you have shown me, and the calamity into which you have plunged yourself, are not to be considered, in view of the fact that toward the true living God (to whom for your godless doings you will certainly have to give a heavy and crushing account) you have become a perjured man, in that on the 23rd of March at Brussels in the Jesuit church you publicly abjured the true saving faith, the right way to salvation (which from your youth up I have had shown you with great care), and for the sake of a woman have gone over to the Catholic religion. Ah, how all the hellish evil spirits will have rejoiced on that same 23rd of March when they got your soul into their snares! Ah, how they will torment you for your dissolute doings in and after your life! But the greatest thing, at which I am most astonished and grieved in this sad occurrence, is that you seek to conceal and cloak your wicked apostasy (defection) even from me, while the children in the streets know of it, and even the Catholics themselves are scandalized over your unheard-of prostitution (dishonoring). I know very well that you likewise deny it to our co-religionists, and under this pretext (pretense) still attend the Lutheran worship. *) But God is not mocked; and His Word also is and remains true: "Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven." You write in your letter that they let you be in libertät (freedom) as regards religion, wherefore I need not be troubled. Yes, I quite believe that they now let you be content and in liberty, since they have now obtained what they sought; they also see that you have been such a simple fool and, like Solomon, for the sake of an idolatrous woman have forfeited the salvation of your soul. Shame on you, you liar and woman's milksop, do you think still to deceive me? — You write further in your letter whether I would permit your wife to write to me hereafter: so just tell your dissolute wife that I do not acknowledge her as a daughter-in-law, that I would as little let her as you ever come before my face, and that therefore she should not trouble me with letters hereafter; seeing that she took a husband without my consent and thereby gave an indication of a dissolute mind. Therefore I also fully imagine that God's punishment and curse will follow hard upon your heels in this step. I do not ask to sign your marriage contract; for if you had no need, by your own pleasure, of my consent and blessing, then I too shall trouble myself very little hereafter about your fortune and misfortune, and shall regard you as though you were dead while living, as indeed you are in fact. For upon your fidelity and oath no lord, nor honorable man, will be able to rely hereafter, since whoever is not true to God will certainly be much less true to men. The King of England will not leave to you, as a slack (lazy) fellow who for the sake of a woman has apostatized and forsworn his fellow-believers, the regiment which you have hitherto commanded taliter qualiter (so-so), and the more so because you have carried on your soldiering with a bad reputation. You never rightly sought the advancement of your regiment and its upkeep, but rather took your pleasure in waiting upon the ladies, so that all your subordinate officers have at all times complained of you; you have hitherto handled your revenues (income) imprudently, squandered them, gambled them away, and sometimes spent them on unnecessary things; on the other hand you have lived disreputably in company, always sponged, so that the other officers have called you the clockwork of the army. The honest people whom I gave you, you did not follow upon their good counsel, and treated them so coldly that none desired to remain with you longer; you have at all times followed your haughty, capricious head, which has now also led you into the misfortune in which you live. You may indeed think: now that I am Catholic, the Emperor and the Empress will surely take me up and help me forward — but I assure you that the whole imperial court will make sport of your poltronnerie (spinelessness); and if I were Emperor, I would not entrust you with a company, †) still less a regiment, since I should always be in anxiety lest, if you came to the Turks, you would also adopt their faith, and all the more readily if pretty womenfolk were to be found with such an army. A year ago you made me believe that you loved the Princess of N., persuaded me on that account also and tormented me with lamentable letters, so that I sent my tutor to you, to the neglect of my own affairs and at great cost; but now I see that all this was intrigues (schemes) and that you wanted to lead your good mother by the nose. Now, the LORD be judge between me and you; I herewith take my leave of you forever, and, notwithstanding that you are no longer worthy of my intercession, I include you with the deepest sighs in the wounds of JESUS Christ: may the Most High enlighten you by the power of His salvation and good Spirit, that you may be brought back from error to the right way of salvation, and not at last fall wholly to the devil and into his kingdom. God grant to this end His grace and blessing through JESUS Christ. Amen!

*) How often is this sin committed here, that children, especially when they are of age, marry without the knowledge and consent of their parents. And how many a preacher sets the seal upon this horrible sin and so bears the chief guilt in such a shameful transaction! The Ed. of the L.

*) It happens very often that the Jesuits permit those who have fallen away to them to conduct themselves for a time as if they still adhered to their former religion, when policy requires it. Indeed, it has happened that Lutheran preachers who had secretly become Catholic received permission to remain in the Lutheran ministry until death, in order that they might the more seduce. Only after death was it seen from the testament what had happened. The Ed. of the L.

†) The Jesuits managed to bring it about that the Emperor finally made their fine convert Governor-General of Mantua, in which capacity he died here in the year 1736. The Ed. of the L.

Elisabeth Dorothea,
widowed Landgravine of Hesse,
born Duchess of Saxony.
Butzbach, the 28th of March 1693.