# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 12 26_S70
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

70

person or other reasons require to change. There the multitude also follows along in concord. Because it (as said) makes no Christian holier or unholier.

Although the Pope has scribbled the world full of books concerning this, and has made out of it nothing but snares, laws, rights, articles of faith, sin and holiness, so that it were well worth while to burn his Decret with fire once for all.... Such outward free things we will esteem like a christening-gown or swaddling-cloth, in which one wraps the little child for Baptism. For the little child is not baptized or made holy by the christening-gown, nor by swaddling-cloths, but solely and alone by Baptism, but yet reason dictates that one wrap it in a little cloth. When the same becomes unclean or torn, one takes another, and the little child grows without any help of the swaddling-cloths or christening-gown; yet that here again one keep measure, and not take too many christening-gowns or swaddling-cloths, lest the little child be smothered. So the ceremonies also shall have a measure, that they may not at last become a burden or labor, but remain so light that one does not feel them. Just as at a wedding no one feels a burden or labor, when he holds and conducts himself like the others.

(Sent in.)

"They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us." 1 John 2, 19.

The dear readers will still remember from No. 7 of the 4th volume of the "Lutheraner" (p. 53) that the Fairfield District Preachers' Conference of the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States published in its report, among other things, that it had been obliged to punish the former pastor at Marion (Ohio), Schneider, who belonged to it, on account of his unconscientious resignation of his office, but that it could declare, to the praise of God, that the punished man had perceived and confessed his wrong. With a saddened heart, however, we must now bring to public knowledge that the good hope which we then conceived for Pastor Schneider's repentance and amendment, and for the sake of which we then did not yet wish to expel him, has not been fulfilled. It has become ever more manifest that the said man had not so much wished to feed his flock as rather to rule it. Everything that seemed right to him he had introduced into his congregation by his own authority, without in the least sparing consciences. In short, he had wished to set up a little papacy in the midst of the Lutheran Church. With such a mind Mr. Schneider certainly did not find his account in our fellowship. The constitution of our Synod, in which the rights given by Christ to the congregations are so earnestly safeguarded and all priestly dominion so entirely excluded, could be only an intolerable burden to so priest-proud a man as Mr. Schneider revealed himself to be. As pride has always been the mother of heresy, so it was also with him. This summer, namely, the unfortunate man joined the Roman Church and is at present in a priests' seminary at New York. We must now indeed be prepared for this, that the malicious among our adversaries will cry: Behold, a new proof that the old Lutheranism leads to Rome! But we are of good cheer, for a child knows that the old Lutheranism has led Christendom not into the papacy, but out of the papacy, and that precisely the most violent present enemies of the old Lutheranism have to thank no one else, next to God, that they no longer kiss the Pope's slipper, than our old Luther and the Reformation brought about through him. Whoever says that the old Lutheranism leads to Rome, because already men who formerly held with the Lutherans have become papists, must maintain that all church communions lead to Rome, for there is probably none from which members have not fallen back again into the papacy; yea, were that conclusion correct, then faith must lead to unbelief, truth to error, godliness to shame and vice, Christianity to the devil, for not a few fall away now from faith to unbelief, from truth to error, from godliness to shames and vices, from Christianity to the devil. Let him therefore blaspheme our Church, also on account of the present apostasy of a man who first held with the Lutheran Church and has now seated himself in the lap of the Babylonian harlot, whoever cannot leave it alone, we say with John: "They went out from us, for they were not of us"; he was indeed in the Church, but not of the Church, as the filth is indeed in the human body, but does not belong to the human body and is therefore cast out by it.*) Finally we remark further that Mr. Schneider was no disciple of Löhe in Bavaria, but the emissary of a union-minded society.

In the name of the Fairfield Conference
A. Ernst.

Marion, Ohio, in November 1848.

*) Let us be permitted here to recall a saying of the holy Augustine; he writes in the third tractate on the first Epistle of St. John: "Heretics are in the body of Christ as the evil humors; when these are cast out, the body feels relieved: so the Church also feels relieved when the wicked go out from her, and she says, when her body casts them out: Those humors have gone from me, but they were not of me; what is this: they were not of me? They are not cut off from my body, but they burdened my breast while they were still within."

The Editorial Staff.

Margarita Marchant.

At Valencin there lived in peaceful and harmonious wedlock Ambrosio Marchant with his wife Margarita, born Vieronne. But through a wicked maid whom they had taken into the house, the peace was disturbed and happiness undermined. For when Mrs. Margarita could no longer endure the grievous wickedness of the said maid, she dismissed her from house and service, in agreement with her husband. But she, enraged over it and driven by violent vengefulness, went to the court of the Inquisition, and accused Mrs. Margarita there, that she had not been to Mass for many years, but kept One Bible in her house, with the reading of which she spent most of her time. The Inquisition was not slow to bring the matter before the secular authorities, whereupon Mrs. Margarita was arrested and thrown into prison. Here the secular judges spoke kindly to her, and promised her that she should go free out of the prison if she would only comply with them in one small matter. "That I will gladly do," said the prisoner, "if what you require of me is not against the honor of God, nor contrary to the salvation of my soul." Thereupon the judges replied: "No! but you shall be led upon a scaffold erected beside the town hall in the great market-place, and there you shall ask God and the authorities for forgiveness. Then you shall, without any contradiction, throw your Bible into the fire and burn it to ashes." — "Tell me, pray," answered Margarita, "sirs, is my Bible not right?" — "Yes, it is right!" was the unanimous answer of the judges. — "Now, sirs," said Margarita further, "if you all confess that it is right, why then should I burn it in the fire?" — "In order that you," was the answer, "may only satisfy the Fathers of the Inquisition; consider, moreover, that what you are to burn is mere paper, so you save your life, and can surely buy yourself another Bible afterwards." In such manner the judges tried for more than two hours to persuade the woman.

But their trouble was in vain, the brave godly woman remained firm and unshaken, and persisted in her resolve: "I would rather that they burn me myself than that I should burn my Bible."

Thereupon she was put into a hard and severe confinement, and scantily supplied with water and bread, to see whether she might in such wise be made to waver in her steadfastness; yet all in vain. A long time she passed in this misery, upheld by the power and fidelity of her faith, and no one knew even where she had gone, yea, among many people there went the rumor that she had been secretly put out of the way in the prison. The judges tried everything to make her compliant, and for that purpose sent also the learned and eloquent Doctor Vineboine to her, that he might bring other thoughts to her. But even to him, with all his art of speech, it did not succeed, and the same afterwards also confessed that he had found in her no cause why she should be put to death. On the 22nd of January at last of the year