# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 11 14_S43
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

43

time remain small in number of members, yet the Church remains for that reason eternally one and the same in her essence and confession; she has tears of sorrow for all who have fallen away from her, and holy, fervent prayer for all who do not recognize the truth, but she concedes membership in her body to no one who rejects her confession or even assails it. If, therefore, Dr. Luther himself had ever made such utterances as run contrary to the truth of the Gospel, they would be rejected from the outset by the Lutheran Church, even if an angel from heaven were to come and approve them. —

The Catholic Kirchenzeitung now promises to communicate such utterances of Luther as, in its opinion, contradict the Gospel, as a return of thanks for any exposure of the Jesuits in the "Lutheraner," and has already made a beginning thereof in No. 23 of this year. Let each one judge for himself whether this is a suitable procedure for answering reproaches that have been made, or whether it does not rather betray plainly enough the complete inability to give a proper and thorough answer. — We, for our part, should be glad enough to be content with this kind of thanks, and might hope that the readers of the Catholic Kirchenzeitung would have only profit from it, if sentences really spoken by Dr. Luther were communicated unmutilated and without additions; but from the first sample we see that this is not to be expected, and that the Catholic Kirchenzeitung has either struck out of the number of the ten Commandments of God the eighth Commandment: "Thou shalt not bear false witness" (much less cause it to be printed) "against thy neighbor," or has turned it upside down in genuine Jesuit fashion, which will be plain to every one if he will follow us a few minutes longer. As follows, namely, runs the first sentence drawn from Luther's Table Talk in the Catholic Kirchenzeitung:

"We have no free will except only to milk the cow."

"I confess and say also, quoth Dr. Martinus, that thou hast a free will to milk the cow, to build a house, etc. But no further. (Table Talk, Leipzig ed., Förstemann, II, 54.)

Instead of this the sentence, copied exactly, runs thus:

"I confess and say also, quoth Dr. Luther, that thou hast a free will to milk the cows, to build a house, etc., but no further than so long as thou sittest in security and freedom, art without danger and stickest in no distresses; then thou thinkest well enough that thou hast a free will which can do something; but when the distress is at hand, so that there is neither food nor drink, neither store nor money any more, where then is thy free will? It loses itself and cannot stand, when it comes to the encounter. But faith alone standeth and seeketh Christ."

The Catholic Kirchenzeitung has therefore not only added a thoroughly incorrect heading, without indicating that it does not proceed from Dr. Luther, but has also not scrupled to break off in the midst of a sentence, to put a full stop after the words "but no further," to omit the clause belonging thereto, and thus to compel the reader to refer the said words, which manifestly belong to what follows, to what precedes, whereby an entirely different sense must result from that which lies in Dr. Luther's intention and expression. That is the honesty and love of truth of the Catholic Kirchenzeitung. Verily, one is strongly tempted here also to think again of the notorious Jesuit maxim: the end sanctifies the means; for unintentionally such a gross, manifest falsification cannot be committed by a man who has sound senses.

That Luther's words run as we have exactly given them, every sincere Christian will acknowledge to be right, especially if he will take the trouble to read for himself in Luther's Table Talk; for there he will find that Luther in the immediately preceding passage speaks of the complete unfreedom of the human will in spiritual things, and by way of contrast to this, in the words cited above, concedes to the free will that it has some freedom in outward, worldly things, as, for example, milking cows, building houses, etc., although even this is still very much restricted. For Luther continues, after the words cited, as follows: Therefore the free will is quite another thing than faith; yea, the free will is nothing and faith is everything. Come, try it, if thou art bold, and carry it through with thy free will, when pestilence, war, dear times befall. In time of pestilence thou canst begin nothing for fear; then thou thinkest: Ah Lord God, were I there or yonder. Couldst thou wish thyself a hundred miles of road away from it, there would be no lack of will. In dear times thou thinkest: Where shall I get food? These are the great deeds which our free will accomplishes, that it does not comfort the heart, but causes it to despond more and more, so that it fears even a rustling leaf. (Luth. Tischred. Stuttgart and Leipzig 1836. Vol. I. p. 349.)

Whoever knows the Augsburg Confession even to some extent will at this point at once recall the 19th Article of it, which reads literally thus:

"Concerning free will it is taught that man has in some measure a free will to live outwardly honorably and to choose among the things which reason comprehends; but without grace, help and operation of the Holy Ghost man is not able to become pleasing to God, to fear God heartily, or to cast the inborn evil lust out of the heart; but this is done through the Holy Ghost, who is given through the Word of God. For Paul saith, 1 Cor. 2:14: The natural man perceiveth nothing of the Spirit of God."

"And that it may be recognized that no novelty is here taught, these are the plain words of Augustine concerning free will, as now written down here from the third book of the Hypognosticon: ""We confess that in all men there is a free will, for they all have natural, inborn understanding and reason, not that they are able to do anything with God, as: to love God from the heart, to fear Him, but only in the outward works of this life have they freedom to choose good or evil. Good, I mean, that nature is able to do, as to work in the field or not, to eat, to drink, to go to a friend or not, to put on or take off a garment, to build, to take a wife, to follow a trade, and to do the like of something useful and good. Which all, nevertheless, is not and does not subsist without God, but all is of Him and through Him. On the other hand, man can also undertake evil of his own choice, as to kneel before an idol, to commit a murder, etc.""

The agreement of this Article with the words of Luther cited above and with the Holy Scripture is so clear that it needs no further proof.

With this one proof of the mendacity of the Catholic Kirchenzeitung we might let ourselves be satisfied, since every one can now recognize sufficiently how much faith one may put in its words, and how great its honesty is, since it purposely gives "false witness." But we will, for good measure, bring forward one more good example.

As the third sentence from Luther's Table Talk the Catholic Kirchenzeitung (No. 23 of this year) cites, under the godless heading made by itself: "God sins in us," the following words: "God works also evil works in us, for not as we, but as He wills, so we speak, do and suffer all things." Jena ed. I. p. 311. We have unfortunately not at hand the Jena edition of the Table Talk cited, and have searched two other editions in vain for those words, and are therefore not in a position to state whether they are correctly copied. But this does not matter here, for even if the words were thus spoken by Luther, the heading is a thoroughly malicious one, and manifestly set with the intention of misleading the reader from the outset into a false understanding of the words standing beneath it. In and of itself, namely, the sentence says nothing incorrect, for God does indeed work evil works in us, only He does not sin, nor does He work the sin. In other words: Because it is God in whom we live, and move, and are, Acts 17:28, and also no murderer can lift up his hand to murder, no thief to theft, etc., without God's giving the ability thereto, therefore God cooperates in all the works of men, however evil they may be, but that which He works therein is not sin. Yea, still more, God works and brings it to pass by His omnipotence and providence that the wickedness of men should manifest itself precisely in the manner that God wills, but the wickedness itself God does not work, but the devil and the perverted will of man. (Augsb. Conf. Art. 19.) An example of this in the Bible is Shimei, of whom it is said in 2 Samuel 16:10, when he had thrown stones at King David and cursed him in the most shameful manner: "The LORD hath it him