# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 06 05_S161
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.
Rev. John, Chap. 14, v. 6. 7.
"God's Word and Luther's doctrine shall pass away nevermore."
Published by the German Ev. Luth. Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.
Edited by C. F. W. Walther.
Year 11.  St. Louis, Mo., June 5, 1855.  No. 21.
Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who pay for it in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 cents. Only the 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 its Deliverance therefrom through the Religious Peace of Augsburg, concluded on the 25th of Sept. 1555.

A Historical Contribution to this Year's Celebration of the Peace Jubilee on the coming 25th of September.

Continuation.

The Interim.

During the disturbances of the war the papal machinations had succeeded in transferring the Council from Trent to Bologna, and the Emperor was unable to move the Pope to open it anew at Trent. This led to an open breach between Emperor and Pope, and there was no prospect that, so long as the old Pope remained alive, the matter would turn out otherwise. Already earlier the Emperor had been cautioned by his brother Ferdinand not to rely too much on the Council alone; it would decide nothing else than a complete restoration of the old Catholic order, with which the Protestants would not be satisfied; he should rather take the matter into his own hands, and with the various proposals which the colloquies held hitherto had furnished, it would surely not be difficult to bring about an agreement which the Protestants would accept and which the Council also would not simply reject. So once more the attempt was to be made to unite Christ and Belial and to fuse light and darkness into a twilight in which anxious consciences should grope about. He also had the men at hand who were to accomplish such a work. There was the moderate Pflug, who was now installed by Maurice in his bishopric of Naumburg, after old Amsdorf had had to give way, and Helding, or Sidonius, suffragan bishop of the Elector of Mainz. Joachim of Brandenburg furnished the third from the Protestant side, Johann Agricola, who "would so gladly have been bishop of Camin, and had also, through the Elector of Brandenburg, made himself good hope of procuring it from his Imperial Majesty." Yes, such a ready-made draft, perhaps prepared by Agricola, was laid before the Emperor, perhaps by Joachim of Brandenburg. At least he boasted, when he mounted the carriage in Berlin that was to bring him to Augsburg, "that he was now going forth as a reformer of the whole German land"; he also wrote from Augsburg to his good friends "that he had not only helped in the work, but had presided at the deliberations on the Interim"; indeed he was so deceived by the vanity which seeks its honor in shame that he boasted: "he had now opened a great broad window for the Gospel, he had reformed the Pope, converted the Emperor and made him Lutheran, now a golden age would come, the Gospel should be preached in the lands of all the bishops and in all Europe."

The Emperor entered into this plan that was laid before him, and the more readily could he do so since the Estates, when he asked what was to be done to settle the confusions of the church until the Council should have closed its sessions? (which was indeed a long way off, since it had not even been opened again at Trent) had put the whole matter into his hands. The work was now entrusted to the three men mentioned above. The last touch of the file was given at the Emperor's command by two Spanish Dominicans, Malvenda and Dominicus a Soto, who so remolded the already wretched botch-work of the father of lies that even Pflug did not deny that much idolatry stood in the Interim, which would be confirmed if it were adopted, but that this did not come from the first workers, but from the Spanish monks. But even before this revision Bucer, whom the Elector Joachim had caused to come from Strasburg in the hope that he would subscribe to it, confessed that it confirmed the whole papacy, and neither splendid offers nor threats of the stake, which Granvella hurled against him, could move him to approve it; he left Augsburg secretly and reached Strasburg again only under great dangers. This book, which according to the Emperor's will was now to be a rule of conduct by which one should hold oneself in the church until the disputes should be settled by the Council, and which is therefore usually called simply the "Interim," was now excellently fitted, though not at once to knock the bottom out of the cask, yet to prepare the way for removing the composed Augsburg Confession from the eyes and from the heart of the people