# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 09 19_S10
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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did not want to reform, and he could and must. How could he, we repeat it, without God's special guidance have been so prepared for it, how could he in that time of darkness without God's enlightenment have arrived at such an incomparable knowledge, how could he without God's strengthening have had such a heroic spirit, to be bowed by nothing, and how could he without God's protection and help have carried everything out so gloriously and at last, through a gentle and blessed death, have withdrawn as a victor from the field of battle? Well for us, Luther's work has stood Gamaliel's test: "If it be of God, it will stand; if it be the work of men, it will come to nought."

It is true, it seemed as if with the dawn of this century the Lutheran Church would at last go under after all; like a pestilence sweeping everything away, Rationalism, the religion of reason, invaded our Church, and thereupon a new church, the so-called Evangelical, was built in Germany, which seemed to wish to swallow up our Church at one stroke; also it seemed but a few years ago in America, through the unfaithfulness of those who were to be the watchmen upon the walls of our Zion here, that it was all over with our Church; the walls of our Confessions had been torn down, in the midst of our former strongholds the banner of the sects now fluttered, and already the enemy exulted that it was finished with our Church. But what has happened? The tree, seemingly already withered, which Luther's hand planted, shows at present again that it is rooted in the eternal Word of the living God; already it greens and blooms again, already thousands again make their dwelling under its shady boughs and pluck its sweet fruits.

Thus God has testified with irrefutable clearness that Luther was His servant and ambassador, namely, was called by Himself to the work of the Reformation. But if he was this, must we not therefore return to him? Is it not a grievous contradiction to admit that Luther was the chosen man of God, because one cannot deny it, and yet to forsake the Church renewed through his ministry and to attach oneself to men who have wished to reform the Reformation again according to their reason and their heart? —

Yet it is indeed true: all that has hitherto been set forth would lose its power to prove what we wish to prove, if Luther's doctrine did not agree with God's Word. For the LORD warningly says of the last time: "There shall arise false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect." Matt. 24:24. And as to the fortunate outcome and the continuance of a work, we know from God's Word that the work of Antichrist, the Papacy, shall also come to a fortunate end and continue until the return of the LORD to judgment. But we Lutherans can be of good comfort, for that which Luther taught and the whole Church named after him has confessed is nothing other than the everlasting Gospel.

If we are to designate with plain words the character of what Luther taught and did, we must say: his doctrine was the Bible doctrine, his Reformation a Reformation according to the Bible, the Christianity which he preached a Bible Christianity, the Church for which he labored and fought a Bible Church, and every strife which he conducted a strife about the Bible. But as the Lutheran Reformation flowed from the Bible, as from its own source, so also it was nothing other than a great overflowing of the whole of Christendom with streams of truth and of life out of the Bible. Luther was not, like others, aroused to the Reformation by the superstition of his time having become offensive to his reason and by his having been a friend of false enlightenment and freedom; no, before he got the Bible into his hands he was with his whole heart a Papist and tormented himself in the most anxious conscientiousness with the prescribed works of penance. Only when in his dark cell the heavenly gleam of the light of the Bible fell into his heart, then he saw with terror in what a dark time he was living; with the Bible light he therefore now illumined also everything that he found in the decayed Church, and what agreed with it, that he retained, even though it appeared offensive to human reason and the human heart, but what contended against the Bible, that he rejected, whether it might appear holy or unholy, wise or foolish.

If we consider Luther in the conflicts of his whole life, it was always a matter of his not being willing to depart from the Bible. When Luther was to have recanted before Cajetan his 95 Theses against the papal indulgence, he wrote to Carlstadt: "I will not become a heretic by recanting the opinion through which I have become a Christian; sooner will I die, be burned, banished, and cursed." (Opp. T. XV, 687.) (Luther means here the doctrine of the Bible concerning salvation by faith in Christ alone.) Well known, further, is Luther's last decision when he stood at Worms before Emperor and Empire and was to be compelled to recant his doctrine: "Unless," said he, "I be overcome and convinced by testimonies of the Holy Scripture, and my conscience be held captive in God's Word, I can and will recant nothing. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help me. Amen." The very enemies had to give Luther the same testimony. When, for example, in 1530 a confession of faith of Luther's, enlarged by Melanchthon, called the Augsburg Confession, had been publicly read in the high Diet of the Empire, Duke William of Bavaria said to the papistical Dr. Eck: "I have been told much otherwise of the Lutheran doctrine than I have today heard in their Confession itself; and you also comforted me well that their doctrine could easily be refuted." Eck replied: "With the writings of the Fathers of the Church he would indeed dare to refute this doctrine, but with the Holy Scripture, to be sure, not." "So," added the Duke, turning away contemptuously, "so, as I hear, the Lutherans have proof and grounds for their doctrine in the Holy Scripture, but we outside of it." The Bishop of Augsburg himself, Christoph von Stadion, declared on this occasion: "All that has been read out is the pure truth, that we cannot deny." Yes, even the Emperor, Charles V, when at Augsburg they urged him to use fire and sword against the Lutherans, cried out sighing: "Ah, the doctrine which the Lutherans confess must surely have more ground than we imagine."*)

It is now indeed true: the Reformed assert that, as regards the difference between them and the Lutherans, it is not a question of the truth of the Bible, but only of a human interpretation of it. Would to God it were so! But it is, alas! not so. As long as a Zwingli and a Calvin with Luther sought the reformation of the Church solely from the Bible, so long they were united; but as soon as the former wished to depart from the simple letter of Scripture and rather to follow their reason and their heart, then Luther rose also against them with the same earnestness as against the Pope and his helpers. Also in this strife Luther fought for nothing but for the great jewel, that the Bible should remain in its divine authority as arbiter. Luther knew well what the devil again had in mind among the Protestants when he sought at least to bring them to this, to make One clear Word waver; he knew that it was a matter here of nothing less than the authority of the whole Holy Scripture. When therefore Luther found that Christ says in the Holy Supper: "This is my body; this is my blood"; no sophistries could turn him from the Word, his only ground of faith; here also he thought that he had sworn upon the Holy Scripture, therefore here also he wavered not a moment to his last breath. He could therefore in his last Wittenberg sermon give the remarkable testimony: "I have had more than thirty factious spirits before me who wanted to teach me; but I refuted all their stuff with this saying: 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him!' And with this saying I have by God's grace maintained myself until now, otherwise I should have had to accept thirty kinds of faith. — I will gladly suffer all abusive words, but not depart a finger's breadth from the mouth of Him who says: Hear ye Him!"

So Luther also despised the use of every other weapon for fight-

*) The Emperor made this remark after the Electoral-Saxon Chancellor, Dr. Pontanus, in the name of the Protestant princes and estates, had made the confession with great joyfulness of faith concerning the Augsburg Confession: "They founded their doctrine upon testimonies of the Holy Scripture and therefore let themselves be frightened by no threats." See: Gerhard, Conf. Cath. fol. 178 a.