# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 04 24_S137
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's doctrine pass away now and nevermore."

Published by the German Ev. Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and other States.

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 11.  St. Louis, Mo., April 24, 1855.  No. 18.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who must pay in advance and bear the postage.— In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 cents.

Only those letters which contain communications for the paper are to be sent to the editor; all others, however, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent hither under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

(Sent in by Pastor Wyneken.)

The Distress of the Lutheran Church since the Death of Luther, and her Deliverance from it through the Religious Peace of Augsburg concluded on the 25th of September, 1555.

A historical contribution to this year's celebration of the Peace Jubilee on the coming 25th of September.

Continuation.

Maurice's Invasion of Electoral Saxony.

Maurice, Duke of Saxony, son of Henry the Pious, the same who introduced the Reformation into the Meissen lands, had been brought up like a prince at the Electoral Saxon court, and was treated by the Elector as his own son; and, like his father, he was also in many ways under obligation to the Elector. Nevertheless, or rather precisely for that reason, he felt an aversion to the Elector. For to ambition, unless it is united at least with a kind of natural magnanimity, the consciousness of benefits received is burdensome and oppressive. Ambitious, however, Maurice was, although he knew very well how to hide the deep schemes of his ambition, in which he had no confidant but himself, behind the pleasure which he showed in the knightly pursuits then customary. His distinguished bravery in the field, as well as the extraordinary care and prudence which he showed in the administration of his land, indeed already early revealed that there was more in him than the desire to distinguish himself in tournaments and drinking bouts, hunts and amusements of knightly and court life. It certainly did not escape his political penetration what fate Germany, so proud of her freedom and independence, was approaching under Emperor Charles, any more than that the Smalcaldic League, in its inner weakness, was not in a position to avert the threatening danger. Just as his princely pride did not permit him, even as a highly favored man of the Emperor, to look on calmly at the enslavement of Germany, so little did his prudence allow him to join the Smalcaldic League. He formed his plans for himself, and ran his own hidden course in order to carry them out. And since he seemed to know no considerations except those of prudence, we must not wonder that, in spite of the displeasure, indeed the loud reproach of the most wretched ingratitude toward the Elector, and of the most shameful treachery to the Church, he now allied himself with the Emperor, in order through him to attain the power and standing which seemed to him necessary to wrest from the Emperor himself the victory he had won, to restore the old independence of Germany, and thereby at the same time to prepare a free place once more for the oppressed Gospel. By the standard of politics that was certainly grand; whether it was so by the standard of the Gospel is, to be sure, another question.

Maurice had long since known how to establish himself not only in the favor but also in the confidence of the Emperor. That he fitted excellently for the execution of his plans with the Protestants, the Emperor saw well, for he was assuredly the shrewdest and most energetic among the princes, so that he could do him harm — the Emperor thought too highly of himself and his power for the thought ever to have occurred to him. Besides, Maurice was a master in the art of dissimulation, and had had in the school of the Emperor himself the finest instruction, and that he could deceive his own master was proof enough what a teachable pupil he was.

At the Diet of Regensburg Maurice was present only a short time. He had many secret conferences with the Emperor, in which the alliance between the two was set up. Maurice promised fidelity and obedience to the Emperor, to the Roman King Ferdinand, the Emperor's brother, and to the Austrian and Burgundian House — that is, to the Imperial House — all devotion, friendship, and assistance; he also bound himself to submit to the decrees of the Council of Trent, in the same measure as other German princes would do likewise. The Emperor in return appointed him advocate of the Archbishopric of Magdeburg and of the Bishopric of Halberstadt, and, as the outcome showed, the Electorate of Saxony was probably already promised him here, and the execution of the ban afterward pronounced against the Elector was entrusted to him.

What impression it must have made upon him when the unsuspecting Elector entrusted to him, on his campaign, the oversight of his lands! It changed nothing, however, in his plans. Of course it had to have the appearance as if