# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 01 23_S83
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

83

And oh! how much has it cost before the Church came, little by little, to this treasure of orthodox interpretation of Scripture! It is the spoil which the Christian Church has carried off from a conflict of more than a thousand years with the world, with the heretics, and with the devil. Millions had first to seal with their blood the confession of these doctrines before it could be recorded so purely, clearly, and brightly in our Symbols. It is for the most part the dearly purchased fruit of the Reformation. Through what terrible inward struggles and temptations had a Luther first of all to wind his way, how diligently and unceasingly had he first to search in God's Word day and night, amid many thousand tears, sighs, and prayers, and how many had to arm themselves with him against the whole world, and against its might and cunning to fight their way through with God's Word alone, before these pure Confessions could come to light! How many princes and kings had first to stake land and people, yea, to let whole countries be laid waste (I recall only the Thirty Years' War), that these Confessions might be handed down to us as an inheritance!

What? And these Confessions, so dearly won for us from our fathers by such unspeakably heavy sacrifices, worked out and fought for, should we now, at the outcry of the unbelievers, or of the enthusiasts, or of the indifferent religion-mixers, or of the false brethren of our own name, throw away as something altogether worthless? Should we squander away wantonly the fruit of the Reformation, the spoil of the thousand years' conflicts of the whole Christian Church of all ages, the spiritual inheritance of our spiritual fathers? Should we now faithlessly deliver into the hands of the enemies that for which so countless martyrs have bled, and which the Church at last, after enduring the most cruel persecutions, has set up as her trophy of victory, and offer it up to the lukewarmness of these last times? God forbid!

But, it is said, would it not be good after all to go back to the Bible? Is that not enough? If the doctrines of the Symbols are taken from the Bible, will not everyone even now be able to find it also without the Symbols? We answer: To hold fast again to the right Symbols is precisely nothing other than to return to the Bible, for the Symbols are precisely nothing other than testimonies of the Church for the Bible. How, moreover, can a man hope that he shall now find alone the light for which Christendom has searched so earnestly through long centuries? Will God, in this time, give us the Holy Ghost for this purpose, that we may find that which God has already let His Church find, if we will not accept what has already been found, but will first seek for ourselves? No, whoever will not accept the pure doctrine, as a humble pupil, from the Church, to which God gave it already 1800 years ago and revealed it in a specially glorious manner 300 years ago, to him God will not give light and grace to find it himself.

God distributes His gifts variously; He gives not to everyone all; He gives not at every time all; He gives to every Christian and to every age its particular measure. Therefore a Christian is to make use of the gifts of another, and the later generation of the gifts of the earlier! Yea, it is so God's holy, wise, and blessed will, that all men, as they are one great bodily family, whose later generations descend from the earlier, so also become one great spiritual family, whose younger members are begotten of the older. Therefore St. Paul says in the name of all believers of the Church: "Which is the mother of us all"; and therefore Christ represents His Church, in the various times and countries, not as a number of several trees standing beside and after one another, but compares it to a single tree, which has sprung from one small seed, yet through all the centuries grows ever higher and higher, puts on ever more annual rings, and at last spreads so far that the birds of the air come and lodge in its branches. The Church of the present is therefore to stand to the former in the relation of daughter to mother, and we all are to be her children, sons and daughters, branches of this tree, stones of this building, members of this body. The faith of the old Church is to be the faith also of those now living; her doctrine, her speech, and her confession also our doctrine, our speech, and our confession; her victory over the opponents of the truth also our victory, the treasures of her knowledge also our possession.

O let us therefore, dear fellow believers, guard against the conceit of those who wish so to stand on their own feet that they will not go on building upon the old structure of the old Church, but wish to erect something new. Let us consider that, as the Apostle writes to the Ephesians in the 4th chapter, there is but one body, one faith, and one baptism, therefore also but one true Church and but one right doctrine, which is not first now to be found, but always was and remains unchangeable to the end of the days, so that therefore all new doctrines and new churches are false doctrines and false churches. For the Church has the promise: "My words which I have put in thy mouth shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever." Is. 59, 21. "Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged," Is. 51, 1., namely our Church, and hold fast to her Confession as to our own. Thereby we place ourselves in rank and file with all the children of God and witnesses of the truth; thereby we prove ourselves to be children of equal birth with our believing fathers; thereby we join ourselves to the true Church of all times and countries; thereby we take part in the victory of all honest fighters for the unadulterated Word of God, and become partakers of the full blessing of the Reformation. —

One thing more there is to which we wish to call the attention of our readers before we close. As clear and plain as Holy Scripture is, so that, as regards the chief doctrines which are necessary to be known for salvation, a child can understand it, yet there were soon, in the beginning of Christianity, men who indeed pretended to believe also in Christ and in the Bible, and who nevertheless so often twisted the clearest passages of Holy Scripture that they easily persuaded, especially simple, forward, and novelty-seeking people, that Holy Scripture teaches something quite different from what it teaches.

By such crafty falsifiers of the pure doctrine even the disciples of the Apostles were therefore moved to comprehend the whole Christian doctrine in a short confession of three chief articles, which is called the Apostolic Symbol, and which has therefore been received as the first also among the Symbols of our Church. By this simple Symbol even the simplest was enabled in the first three centuries to recognize, already then, false teachers creeping in, and to guard against them. But when afterwards, in the fourth century, a new heretic, named Arius, arose, who denied that Christ is true God from eternity, then the so-called Nicene and Athanasian Symbol was drawn up in the name and with the consent of the whole Christian Church, so that now again even the simplest could easily distinguish from these Confessions whether his preacher held with that and other heretics then raging, or not. O, it is not to be expressed how important it has been that these three first universal (ecumenical) Symbols have remained in the Church! Through them, even in the darkest time of the papacy, the right doctrine of the most holy Trinity, of Christ's Godhead, of His works, of His atonement, in short, the most important articles of faith, the most indispensable to salvation, were preserved, although the Bible had been almost wholly wrested out of the hands of the people. What enemy of the Symbols can deny this, and who can be a Christian without praising and extolling God for it?

But when God, 300 years ago, again purified His Church through Dr. Martin Luther, how important it was also then that, in the name of all who in that time confessed the pure doctrine, new Confessions of the truth that had been obscured were again drawn up, from which everyone, even the simplest, can see which is indeed the right doctrine of the true Church! How many millions have, in particular, learned to know and believe the saving truth from the Small Catechism of Luther and from the Augsburg Confession!

We see further from the history of our Church how soon after Luther's death the greatest