# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 09 12_S2
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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collegiate church may be abolished." (Works, Halle ed., XIX, 1443.) Again, when in 1530, after the Diet at Augsburg, a sharp imperial edict came out by which papal abuses were to be confirmed, Luther wrote boldly against it, and at last added: "I am called and compelled to this, that I had to become a Doctor, against my thanks, out of sheer obedience; there I had to accept the doctorate and swear to my most beloved Holy Scripture, and vow to preach and teach it faithfully and purely. Over such teaching the Papacy has fallen in my way and has wanted to hinder me . . . (But) I will in God's name and call go upon the lion and adder, and tread the young lion and dragon under my feet, and this shall be begun in my lifetime and carried out after my death." (Ib. 2061.) In another place he writes: "Here perhaps thou sayest to me: Why, then, dost thou teach with thy books in all the world, when thou art only preacher at Wittenberg? Answer: I never did it gladly, nor do I yet do it gladly; but I was in such an office first compelled and driven, when I had to become Doctor of Holy Scripture, against my thanks. Then I began, as a Doctor, by papal and imperial command, in a common free high school, as it behooves such a Doctor according to his sworn office, to expound the Scripture before all the world and to teach everyone, and have also thus, having come into such a business, had to remain therein, and cannot yet with a good conscience go back or desist, though pope and emperor should ban me for it. For what I have begun as a Doctor, made out of their command and call, I must truly confess to my end, and can now no longer keep silence and cease. Nevertheless, even if I were no such Doctor, I am yet a called preacher, and have well been permitted to teach mine own with writings. And if now others, too, have desired such writings of mine and have asked me for them, I was bound to do it; for I have nowhere thrust myself in with them, nor been desired or asked by anyone to read the same."*) (Ib. V, 1062. 63.) Finally Luther writes: "I have often said, and say it still, I would not take the world's goods for my doctorate, for I should truly at last despair and be in despondency in the great, heavy cause that lies upon me, if I had begun it as a sneak without call and command; but now God and all the world must testify for me that I began it publicly in my doctorate and office of preaching, and have carried it on until now by God's grace and help." (Ib. XX, 2080.)

*) In the passage cited Luther continues: "Just as other pious pastors and preachers write more books, and hinder no one nor drive anyone to read, and thereby also teach and call in all the world, and yet do not sneak, like the loose, uncalled knaves, into other men's offices, without the knowledge and will of the pastors, but have a sure office and command that drives and constrains them." May the dear brethren in the office feel themselves aroused hereby, if God has given them gifts, to serve the Church also with writing, so as to trade faithfully, also to the profit of our "Lutheraner,"!

Yet had Luther had no other and higher call than the ordinary call to the service of the Church as preacher and Doctor of Holy Scripture, he would indeed have had the right to rebuke publicly the errors then in vogue; but would he on that account have possessed the capacity to carry through so great a work as the Reformation was? Certainly not. But Luther was also called and chosen by God in an extraordinary manner to carry out this work; for this we see, partly from the extraordinary gifts needed for it, with which God had equipped him, partly from the glorious success, far surpassing all human thought, with which at last everything he undertook in the name of the LORD was crowned.

He through whom a true Reformation was to be accomplished must naturally possess both a deep insight into the corruption that had broken in, and also a living, more than ordinary knowledge of the saving doctrine, a penetrating eloquence, a comprehensive knowledge of the holy original languages, the most heroic faith, and the most distinguished self-denial. All this, however, we find met together in Luther. God ordained it, first, that he must convince himself with his own eyes and ears of all kinds of the corruption then prevailing. He had to be trained, therefore, not only in lower and higher schools, that here he might observe the blindness of the highest watchmen over the doctrine of the Church; he had also himself to spend a long time in the lurking-places of the monks, that here he might see how the most abominable service of sin was veiled in the garment of work-righteousness, and that, as he himself says, no one should have to brag against him as one who condemned unknown things. He had to be sent, by God's ordering, also by his brethren of the cloister through all Germany and Italy to Rome, to the steps of the papal throne, that here he might himself see that everything, from the Pope and his cardinals down to the lowest priest, was full of hypocrisy, lying, deceit, mockery of religion, and the most filthy sins. Amid all these experiences of the deepest decay of the Church, however, God brought Luther also to the knowledge of his own corruption and his own need, awakened in him a vehement longing for deliverance from the papal darkness and for the right doctrine of the way to salvation, let him at last find the holy Bible, and, after the severest temptations and anguish of heart and conscience, powerfully feel and experience the divine power of the Gospel itself, to comfort, to refresh, to strengthen, to cleanse, and to sanctify his heart, in a word, to make him blessed; so that he could say with David: "I believed, therefore have I spoken," that is, what I preach I have myself experienced. God, then, first reformed Luther's own heart thoroughly, before He used him as the instrument of the Church Reformation. But God also enlightened him so that, according to the unanimous testimony of all the divines who have arisen after him, even of a Zwingli and a Calvin, he understood Holy Scripture so thoroughly and knew so well how to wield this sword of the Spirit as no teacher of the Church before or after him, not excepting even an Augustine and other highly learned Church Fathers. Zwingli once wrote: "Luther is so excellent a warrior of God as there has never been on earth in a thousand years." Calvin writes: "This, I pray, will ye consider, what a great man Luther is, and by what great gifts he is distinguished, with what skill and penetrating power of teaching he has hitherto been diligent to overthrow the kingdom of Antichrist and at the same time to spread the doctrine of salvation. I am wont often to say: though he should even call me a devil, I would yet show him so much honor as to acknowledge him as an eminent servant of God." Even a man regarded by the Papists as the greatest scholar of his time, Erasmus by name, has confessed: "A more correct expounder of Scripture, among all of whose writings are extant since the apostles, there is none than Luther. He is so great that by reading one page of him I learn more than from the whole Thomas." The blessed, renowned Württemberg theologian Brentius writes: "Luther alone lives in his writings; we all are, in comparison with him, like a dead letter." The great Netherlandish philologist Masius has confessed: "On one leaf of the writings of Luther there is more thorough theology than often in a whole book of a Church Father." To this distinguished knowledge of the doctrine of salvation, and gift of presenting and defending it, there came in Luther also an exceedingly thorough knowledge of the ancient languages, so that he was able to translate the Bible into the German vernacular so gloriously, so plainly, and so fluently that the simplest can read and understand the Word of God, and the most learned can find more in it already than in many hundred prolix commentaries (expositions). If we take now, in addition, the small Catechism of Luther, we must say that if Luther had accomplished nothing else than the translation of the Bible and the small Catechism, he would already have to be regarded as the most influential Reformer of all times, confirmed by God Himself, for the influence of these two works on the transformation of all Christendom is altogether incalculable.

Yet God has impressed upon Luther still more seals that He had chosen him as the Reformer of His Church and called him in an extraordinary manner, and to this belongs especially the unexampled heroic faith, joined with the most distinguished self-denial, which God had given him. A weak-faithed and timorous man would plainly not have been fit for a Reformer; a Reformer had to