# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 03 06_S106
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

106

never seen, face to face.

"To my only surviving son I leave of earthly goods little, but withal an honest name, of which he will have no particular cause to be ashamed. . . .

"My son knows that from his tender childhood I gave him to the Lord my God as His own, that he is to become a servant and preacher of His holy Word; in this he shall now abide, and not mind that he may have few good days in it, for the dear God knows well how to provide for that, and can fully make up for the outward tribulation with inward heart's delight and joyfulness of spirit.

"Study holy theology in pure schools and at unadulterated universities, and beware of Syncretists, for they seek the temporal, and are faithful neither to God nor to men.

"In your common life follow not evil company, but the will and commandment of your God.

"In particular

1) do nothing evil, in the hope that it will remain secret, for nothing is spun so fine, but it comes to the sun.

2) Outside your office and calling, do not be angry. If you perceive that anger has heated you, then keep perfectly silent, and say not a word until you have first prayed through the ten commandments and the Christian faith.

3) Be ashamed of fleshly sinful lusts, and when at some time you come to such years that you may marry, then marry with God and with the good counsel of pious, faithful and prudent people.

4) Do good to people, even though they have nothing to repay you with, for what men cannot repay, that the Creator of heaven and earth has long since repaid, when He created you, when He gave you His dear Son, and when in holy Baptism He took you up and received you as His child and heir.

5) Flee covetousness as hell; be content with what you have gained with honor and a good conscience, even though it be not very much. But if the dear God bestow upon you something more, then pray Him that He would preserve you from the wretched misuse of temporal goods.

"In sum: pray diligently, study something honorable, live peaceably, serve faithfully, and remain steadfast in your faith and confession, and so you will one day also die and depart from this world willingly, joyfully and blessedly! Amen."

This beautiful testament is at the same time a testimony that Paulus Gerhardt remained faithful to the pure Lutheran confession to his end, and even at the last preserved the same abhorrence of half-heartedness and indecision in matters of faith which ten years before was the cause of his dismissal. "Study holy theology in pure schools and at unadulterated universities, and beware of Syncretists, for they seek the temporal, and are faithful neither to God nor to men." These words, spoken in the face of death, after such a life, were a solemn, holy legacy for the son, and since their publication also for the whole Evangelical Lutheran Church.

The circumstances which brought about the deposition of Paulus Gerhardt from his office are best read in E. L. G. Langbecker*) and Otto Schulz**).

The Reformed Elector Frederick William, in order to give ecclesiastical peace at last to his land, so long disquieted by the struggles between the Lutheran and the Reformed clergy, had invited the two parties to a religious colloquy, to see whether perhaps a reconciling adjustment of the points in dispute might be found. Paulus Gerhardt promised himself little from these meetings; he declared himself against them in an opinion drawn up in strictly logical form, because nothing could come of it but the same Syncretism, that is, the same mingling of two kinds of confessions, into which the Rintler theologians had allowed themselves to be seduced, a peace which would be no true peace. Nevertheless the meetings began. The Berlin clergy did not depart one step from the Formula of Concord; the Reformed, on the other hand, would not let it stand.

Paulus Gerhardt was the soul of the Berlin clergy. His official business was to draw up the writings of attack and defense; these are composed with the greatest skill and sharpness, not seldom even with wit, and furnish a new proof that a keen understanding may very well be united with a poetic temper. For when one reads these articles, so strangely interlarded with Latin according to the taste of the time, one would scarcely suppose that the same man at the same time was composing the most beautiful spiritual songs for his own comfort and that of his family.

The meetings had no success. The great Elector saw himself disappointed in his expectations; he saw the parties, instead of being reconciled, part from one another only in antagonisms become still more clearly marked. In addition, the Berlin clergy took under their protection a bearing of their spokesman Reinhart, displeasing to the Elector, in the next-to-last session on the 22nd of May, 1663, and acknowledged and approved it as done in accordance with their mind. This drew upon them threats of the Elector's disfavor. It is supposed that P. Gerhardt composed at that time the hymn: "If God be for me, let all things straightway rise against me."

The great Elector thereupon issued, on the 16th of September, 1664, an edict, in which the clergy of both parties are strictly and sharply commanded, on pain of dismissal from office and other punishment, neither to vilify one another with insulting names, nor yet to impute to one another by mere inferences doctrines that are absurd or godless, and which are also denied by the opposite party; least of all might either be done in the pulpit. The clergy, however, were to bind themselves by issuing written pledges to obey the electoral edicts. Of the Lutheran clergy of the city of Berlin, the provost Lilius and the archdeacon Reinhart were the first to refuse to sign such a pledge, and were immediately, in April 1665, deposed from their office; Lilius, who at the beginning of the following year allowed himself to be moved to issue a pledge, was at once reinstated in his office.*)

**) "The same decree by which Lilius was reinstated in his office contained also the commission to the Consistory to call upon Paul Gerhardt to sign the pledge, and in case of refusal to announce to him his dismissal from his office. However moderately Paul Gerhardt may have shown himself in the pulpit and in life, it was fixed in the mind of the great Elector that at the religious colloquy in the years 1662 and 1663 he had been, next to Reinhart, the most violent opponent of peace between the Reformed and the Lutherans. When Reinhart was reproached in the Consistory that he misled his colleagues to insubordination, he had declared with some warmth that it was not so; he himself had rather urged Reinhart, when he wished to yield, to do so; he was older in years and older in office, and it would grieve him if he should be the first to follow others. During an illness that befell him he had also invited his colleagues to his house and earnestly admonished them not to sign the pledge; at all events all these circumstances had been reported to the great Elector, and so it appeared quite suited to his purpose that, after the removal of Reinhart and the withdrawal of Lilius from the contest, the most important and, as was believed, the most violent opponent of the Reformed, who was at the same time the soul of the Berlin ministerium, should be made harmless in some way.

"Paul Gerhardt was summoned on the 6th of February, 1666, together with Lilius, before the Consistory, and called upon to issue the pledge. At first he was granted a time for reflection of eight days for the delivery of his declaration, and in the first moment of consternation he accepted it also, but declared in the same session that he had long since considered, and would probably not change, whereupon the deposition from his office was announced to him in the name of the Elector.

"Had the deposition of the aged Lilius and of the esteemed, but less beloved Reinhart caused among the magistracy and the citizens great consternation

*) Leben und Lieder von Paulus Gerhardt. Berlin 1841.

**) Paul Gerhardt's Geistliche Andachten u. s. w. Berlin 1842.

*) It is well known that Lilius, on account of this unfaithfulness, afterward fell into great distress of conscience, indeed to the very brink of despair, but at last, after a penitent confession of his misdeed, fell asleep under Gerhardt's evangelical exhortation with the comfort of forgiveness in the Lord.

The Editor.

**) Paul Gerhardt's Geistliche Andachten etc. by Otto Schulz. Berlin 1842. p. 67 ff.