# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 11 14_S41
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

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

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

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 5.  St. Louis, Mo., November 14, 1848.  No. 6.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who are to pay for it in advance and to 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 to this place under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

(Contributed by Prof. P. Wolter.)

The Mendacity of the Catholic Kirchen-Zeitung in Baltimore.

The Catholic Kirchen-Zeitung has lately taken pains, in a series of essays composed in the form of a dialogue between two Lutherans, to demonstrate that Dr. Luther taught in complete agreement with the Roman Church, and that therefore an honest Lutheran, if he does not wish to belong to the great multitude of those who have fallen away from Luther's doctrine, can do nothing better than to go over to the Roman Catholic Church with all speed. We had already begun to set a reply against that dialogue; but as one continuation after another kept following, we should have been obliged to give our reply likewise a proportionate length, and thus to claim the "Lutheraner" for a considerable time for an article which could have been of only slight interest and profit to Lutheran Christians, because so countless a number of perversities, deliberate distortions and contradictions are to be found in that dialogue that the demonstration of them would necessarily have become tedious and unedifying. We therefore content ourselves now with the following brief dismissal: Either the Catholic Kirchen-Zeitung is really of the opinion that Dr. Luther taught in complete agreement with the Roman Church, in which case it itself bears witness that it was the greatest knavery of the popes and their party to thrust Luther and the adherents of his doctrine out of the Roman Church and to persecute them with fire and sword; or the Catholic Kirchen-Zeitung is not really of the opinion that Luther taught in agreement with the Roman Church; then it has made itself guilty of the greatest hypocrisy and villainy, in that it apparently furnishes proof from Luther's writings that Luther agrees with the Roman Church in doctrine, while the author of the aforementioned dialogue is yet clearly conscious that this is by no means so, and he thus seeks to make a lie into truth by means of sham proofs. Let him therefore turn now as he will, he has once for all most manifestly caught himself in his own snare, as sooner or later it must happen to all who out of malice of heart set lying-nets for the truth. Moreover we see from the oft-mentioned dialogue that its author not only agrees heartily with the fine Jesuits, but has also already learned from their practices and artful tricks many a pretty little piece.

We have also still to take notice of this friend of the Jesuits on account of an article in No. 23 of the Catholic Kirchen-Zeitung, lately. He sets forth therein, to begin with, the comical conjecture that the "Lutheraner" in St. Louis, Mo., has a superstitious fear of the Jesuits. — In reply to this let it serve, that in the first place one can have a superstitious fear only of something which either does not exist at all or at least does not exist in the manner in which one imagines. Now neither of these is the case with the Jesuits; for that there are Jesuits even the Catholic Kirchen-Zeitung does not deny, and that there are more of them than most men suppose is very probable, since those reverend gentlemen do not always think it advisable to confess their name, but would rather make the words of our Saviour applicable to themselves, John 3:20: "For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved," that they may play the more undisturbed under cover. But that the Order of the Jesuits, according to its principles, is a monster of hideousness not merely in the imagination of the Protestants, of this there are countless documents available, and history has proved it more than enough. This, to be sure, the Catholic Kirchen-Zeitung will not admit, but one seeks a counter-proof from it in vain, precisely because it cannot furnish one. For no reasonable man will consider it a counter-proof when to passages of Jesuit theologians cited literally and at length the answer is given, with indescribable impudence and shamelessness: "the books from which those passages are taken did not exist at all"; or when it is asserted: "the citing of such passages is worn out and has long since found its settlement." One sees from this sufficiently how greatly the Catholic Kirchen-Zeitung feels its inability to clear the Jesuits of the reproaches made against them, for which reason it also imitates the example of street urchins and throws abusive words about it, so as not to let it be noticed that it lacks better weapons. — Of a superstitious fear of the Jesuits there can therefore be no question at all, inasmuch as the "Lutheraner," by God's mercy, is the farther removed from every superstition the more firmly it is grounded in the entirely right faith conformable to the Holy Scripture, a faith which knows nothing at all of fear of men, and especially laughs to scorn and mocks all the secret and open enmities of the adversaries of God, however devilish they may be, insofar as they threaten destruction to the body and to temporal goods. Yet every sincere Christian can and may well have a holy fear of the soul-murdering poison of hypocrisy and false doctrine, which Satan seeks to scatter abroad through his manifold accomplices, among whom the Jesuits have from of old not occupied the last rank. And even though every right and truly believing Christian is as certain of this as of his own life, that even the most malicious, most persistent and most cunning adversary nevertheless cannot overcome the Church of God, but that it shall abide forever and at last must triumph over all enemies; yet he learns, partly from the Word of God, that many let themselves be seduced to a falling away from the truth, will worship the image of the beast and receive the mark of it (Rev. 13:16), and partly he infers the same from the corruption and faintheartedness of the flesh, and therefore he is filled with holy fear and concern for all souls,