# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 05 22_S154
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

154

lost sheep, yea for lost and condemned sinners and enemies of God and of His eternal truth, bled to death on the cross for their salvation, Rev. 17, 1—6.

In this manner, to be sure, nothing could be managed and ruled in Germany. Here he had to do with princes jealous of their freedom and sovereign rights, who, even if many among them gladly saw and promoted the suppression of the Protestants they hated, would nevertheless not have allowed that the Emperor should without more ado, out of his own absolute power, have undertaken it. And he in turn also had need of the Empire against the encroachments of the Pope. For Charles felt himself man enough to be a true Roman Emperor after the old fashion, one who, if need be, would also put the Pope within proper limits. He was by no means minded to use the authority which he had just won in the Empire, as a humble subject of the Pope, for the Pope's exaltation, but rather to bring it about that the right relation between Emperor and Pope, as it had prevailed in the earlier times of the Church, be restored. When, therefore, the papal legate at Bamberg tried in genuine Roman fashion to persuade him to turn his victorious arms now against apostate England, in order to bring it back, like Germany, to obedience to the Pope, the Emperor said that he had little desire to take over once more the post of captain in the service of a man who had left him in the lurch in need and danger in the midst of the last undertaking; and when the nuncio thought he must remind him of the duties which he owed to religion, the Emperor answered him that he only wished that others might fulfill their duty in this respect as well as he did his. He declared the Pope to be an old jealous man who had already given him more trouble than all his other enemies. Naturally; how could the Pope look on with composure while the imperial power wished to assert itself again beside his own, and made the most vigorous preparations with full energy to that end. Especially a Pope who, on the news that the Emperor had occupied Piacenza after the murder of his (the Pope's) son, did not shrink from crying out that he must have Piacenza back again, even if it should be done with the help of the devil.

Despite the considerations which the Emperor had to observe in Germany, means were found even here to reach his goal.

The Diet at Augsburg, 1547.

It is remarkable that it pleased the Lord, in this city where seventeen years before His name had been proclaimed before emperor and kings by His Church, to let that same Church be humbled to the lowest depth and her enemies celebrate a triumph. The Estates also could grasp with their hands that their freedom was gone. Their disgrace was brought before their eyes plainly enough in the two captive princes whom the Emperor led into the city under a strong escort of Spaniards. Philip of Hesse had even been set upon a horse, his brave sword tied with cords to the scabbard, and so he had to ride into Augsburg amid the laughter and the insults of the papistical rabble. Warning enough for the princes to show themselves obedient to the Emperor at this Diet, which was made still more emphatic by the Emperor's having the free imperial city occupied with his troops. Yet even here the Emperor was to have the experience of what German faithfulness is in comparison with Spanish. His Spaniards demanded their back pay. Then the Emperor entrusted himself to the German foot-soldiers. A Spaniard now wanted to wrest the banner from one of the foot-soldiers; but the latter at once cut him in two, "like a turnip." In the street fighting which now became general the German foot-soldiers protected the Emperor's dwelling; he was in danger for three hours, and at last satisfied the Spaniards by payment of their pay, but had the ringleaders hanged and beheaded. Yet such occurrences could not make him waver in his plans.

In the proceedings of the Diet itself it was first made truly plain how the relation of the Estates to the Emperor had changed. The Protestants were subjugated, the Romans bound to him in the highest degree, still more those Protestant Estates which had been received again into his favor. Therefore he could carry through whatever he wished. He forbade, indeed, right at the beginning, that the Estates, as had formerly happened, should deliberate on the common affairs in separate meetings with one another. What they could with full right demand of the Emperor according to the electoral capitulation, namely to remove again from the land the foreign troops which he had brought into the country contrary to the laws of the Empire and had quartered here and there, and about which the greatest and most just complaints were made, they laid before him in the most devout terms as a humble petition, and thanked him for the "most gracious" answer of the Emperor, which was nevertheless at bottom a refusal. Also the joint intercession for the captive princes was in vain. On the other hand, Maurice was at this Diet invested with the Saxon electoral dignity, before the eyes of the old Elector John Frederick,* and Adolf of Schaumburg with the Electorate of Cologne, in place of Archbishop Hermann of Cologne, who had been deposed for introducing the Reformation.

* The old Low German Lübeck Chronicle remarks on this: "On the 24th of February Duke Maurice at Augsburg has mercedem iniquitatis (the wages of unrighteousness) — I would say, has obtained the glory; the good old Elector has looked on, and laughed that one should earn such glory with faithlessness."

When at the very beginning of the Diet the deliberations on the ecclesiastical affairs came up, voices were raised asking whether the matter could not be brought to an end most briefly and easily by putting everything back in its old state. The imperial confessor still held it to be necessary and feasible. He thought that one should in any case clear out of the way the tinder of all heresies, the Lutheran preaching, and put an unconditional end to it, but reintroduce the Roman worship and restore the church property confiscated by the Protestants to its former use. Everyone might then believe what he would; everything would soon come back by and by into the old rut. King Ferdinand recognized the impracticability of such a thought; he replied that one could do that if one had courage, strength and means to plunge into a new war, which would however turn out still more dangerous than the one just ended. Besides, there was not a penny in the treasury to begin even the war. So they came back again to the Council as the true way to put an end to the division. What were the Protestant Estates to do? Formerly they had freely confessed at all the Diets: "They desired a free Christian Council, by which the Church might be reformed in head and members and purified of all abuses, in which not the Pope and his following, who is himself a defendant, but God's Word should be judge. A papal Council, however, such as the one recently summoned, was no right, no Christian one, nor conformable to the recesses of the Empire, but a dangerous and deceitful one, inasmuch as the crowd which condemns the pure doctrine of the Gospel and cruelly persecutes and murders innocent people on that account cannot be called the General Christian Church, but is the race and crowd of the bloodthirsty and accursed Cain. Hence it also followed that they would have to be quite out of their senses if they were to agree or consent to so dangerous a Council, especially since such a Council, according to the recesses of the Empire, was to be held in Germany, whereas Trent lies in Italian lands and moreover is subject to a Cardinal who binds the Pope with obligations, and is therefore anything but a free imperial city." Now, however, they had to submit, at least with silence, to everything that the Emperor demanded. Some dissenting voices were indeed raised, particularly on the part of the cities, yes, the latter even handed their objections to the Emperor in writing; nevertheless everything was so rigged that the Emperor as the final result of the deliberations could report to the Pope that what he had now so long sought to attain had at last been accomplished with great effort. The whole Empire, Electors, princes and cities, were willing to submit to the Council.

But with the Council itself things looked precarious, and this was one occasion for laying a snare for Protestantism, by which the Antichrist, as far as human foresight could tell, would at last have strangled the life out of it, had not the Lord Himself torn it to pieces.

(To be continued.)

The Pilgrim Writer,

that is, the publisher of the Saxon church people's paper which bears the title: "Pilger aus Sachsen," Pastor Rühle at Lausa in Saxony, writes in the issue of March 10 of this year, among other things, the following: "P. Grabau, whose third word was: Beelzebub, factions, ban, did not take me for himself and his cause