# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 12 11_S58
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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garded, and that it was certainly in their mind to erect with it a bulwark against all sorts of people who, under the Lutheran name, might wish to smuggle all sorts of "new" doctrines into the Church. But hear further also the Apology. In the preface of the same it says, namely, among other things, that doctrine and counter-doctrine are therein so set forth, "that among high and low estates, among those now living and our posterity, among all native-born Germans, and otherwise among all the world, all foreign nations, a clear testimony may be before the eyes and remain forever, that we have taught purely, divinely, rightly of the Gospel of Christ." Further, Luther writes in the preface to the Smalcald Articles: "It was commanded me," namely by the evangelical Estates of the Augsburg Confession, "to draw up and bring together articles of our doctrine, in case it should come to a negotiation, what and how far we were willing or able to yield to the Papists, and on which we purposed finally to persevere and abide. Accordingly I have brought together these articles and delivered them to our party, who have also been accepted by our people and unanimously confessed, and resolved that they should ... publicly be delivered and our confession of faith be brought forward."

From this it is clearly to be seen that already our first symbols, recorded in Luther's time, announce themselves as binding upon everyone who wished to be regarded as a member, much more as a preacher, of the true orthodox Christian or, as it was then already called, Lutheran Church.

But it is also known from history to everyone who is even moderately familiar with the history of the Reformation period, that our public confessions have had in our Church from the beginning a normative, binding authority. This is attested to everybody even by the authors of the Formula of Concord: "We have," they write, "declared to one another with heart and mouth that we will make or accept no singular or new confessions of our faith, but will confess ourselves to the public general writings which have been held for such symbols or common confessions in all the churches of the Augsburg Confession always and everywhere, before the dissension arose among those who professed the Augsburg Confession," (thus precisely "in Luther's lifetime") "and so long as men unanimously everywhere, in all articles, remained in the pure doctrine of the divine Word (as Dr. Luther of blessed memory explained it), and held and used it." And thereupon are named all the symbols that existed already in Luther's lifetime, the ecumenical confessions, the Augsburg Confession, its Apology, the Smalcald Articles, and Luther's Large and Small Catechism. (See the Repetition. Of the Summary Content, etc. Page 514 ff. New York ed.)

But it is also a historical fact that already in 1533, at the instance of Luther, Justus Jonas and Bugenhagen, the arrangement existed at Wittenberg that all who were to be employed here at the University or otherwise, not only those taking degrees in the theological but also in the other faculties, had to promise on oath "that they would accept the unadulterated doctrine of the Gospel, and indeed would understand the same as it is comprehended in the Apostles', Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, and set forth in the Confession which was delivered to the Emperor Charles V at the Diet at Augsburg in 1530; that with God's help they would steadfastly persevere in this opinion and faithfully administer their office in the Church; finally, that, if new doctrinal controversies should arise, concerning which the clear decision of the Church was not yet at hand, they would consult with the elders in this and in allied churches." (See: Melanchthonis Oratio, in qua refutatur calumnia Osiandri.) When therefore in the following year Melanchthon drew up the statutes of the theological faculty at Wittenberg, this provision was adopted by him into the same. According to the second law of this constitution, reports Dr. Rudelbach in his historico-critical Introduction to the Augsburg Confession, "the chief care of this college should be to set forth and maintain the pure doctrine of the Gospel, which is contained in the Prophetic and Apostolic Scriptures, with which the ecumenical symbols agree; this alone true and unchangeable manner of teaching, which is the perpetuus Catholicae ecclesiae Dei consensus (the unbroken consensus of the universal Church of God), they wished to see taught and defended; it is the same which our Church has comprehended in the Confession delivered at the Diet at Augsburg; therefore it is most strictly forbidden to spread abroad and maintain any opinions which conflict with that unanimity and with the Augsburg Confession." When therefore the notorious restless spirit Andreas Osiander, preacher and professor at Königsberg, wished to poison the Church with his false doctrine of justification, but this plan had to fail because the Lutheran preachers and professors were bound by oath to the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, that restless and haughty man wrote against Melanchthon: "The Magister and Doctor made in Wittenberg is a poor captive man, ensnared and entangled in his conscience with oaths. For he has forsworn God's Word, has let a gag be bound in his mouth, so that in important matters of faith he is to say nothing conclusive unless he has first consulted with the elders who hold fast the Confession, and with these he must by his oath abide in the unanimity of the Confession, even if Holy Scripture says otherwise, or must let himself be called perjured. He is therefore a secret confederate of such a conspiracy, which looks more to men than to God's Word, and which is not a little harmful to Christendom."*) (A. Osiander's Refutation of the Groundless Answer of Phil. Melanchthon against his Confession. Königsberg, 1552.) To this Melanchthon replied, as Dr. Rudelbach again informs us loc. cit., "that the liberty which Osiander claimed was an absurdity, while Holy Scripture teaches that God is not a God of confusion but of peace; that the measure had by no means been taken without consideration or without occasion, but that they had introduced it partly to stifle the heresies then arising, partly to curb the restless spirits; finally, that in this matter also they were walking faithfully in the footsteps of the ancient Church, which as is well known likewise found such a dokimasia (examination of purity in faith and confession) necessary, and wished to be assured of the agreement of its teachers with its fundamental confession." Thereupon Melanchthon further declared of Osiander: "He departed from our churches not only in the point of righteousness (before God) but also in that of the sacrifice, and has had many other dreams besides, with which he did not yet venture to come forward; therefore he sought to undermine the Augsburg Confession."

*) It is as if one heard, from the mouth of this old troubler of the Lutheran Church, an American-Lutheran professor of the enlightened and cultured nineteenth century speak!

That, moreover, this oath of religion remained also later, when among others the Wittenberg University was flooded with Crypto-Calvinist teachers, until the composition of the Formula of Concord, we see from the history of the well-known Conrad Schlüsselburg. He had already as a student often publicly exposed the Wittenberg gentlemen; when therefore he presented himself to become a Magister and, being questioned, told the notorious Crypto-Calvinists Peucer, Creuziger and Pezel to their faces without reserve that he recognized them as such, not only did Peucer, otherwise so pious and holy-seeming, crimson with anger, with abusive language ask the Rector Magnificus to give Schlüsselburg "a box on the ear," but the whole clique, otherwise always bearing love and forbearance on their lips, also forthwith issued a writ of relegation, in which it says: "Now we hereby put him (Schlüsselburg) under the ban and curse him with our whole heart as the devil's living instrument." (See Annals of the University of Wittenberg by Grohmann. I, 145.) In a defense these secret Calvinists thereupon say: "Since this slanderer (Schlüsselburg) also knows well, and it is known to all the world, that all who are created Magisters or Doctors of any profession among us, before the whole auditorium, upon the Augsburg Con-