# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 12 27_S65
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's doctrine shall never pass away."

Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 6.  St. Louis, Mo., the 27th of December 1849.  No. 9.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for subscribers living at a distance, who have to pay the same in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 Cents.

Only those letters which contain communications for the paper are to be sent to the Editor; all others, however, which concern business, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent hither under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

The Inaugural Address of Dr. Sprecher.

(Conclusion.)

Dr. Sprecher continues in his address as follows: "Seven years after the presentation of the Augsburg Confession (the only symbol ever generally received by the Lutheran Church), namely in the year 1537, the Protestant princes charged their theologians at a convention at Torgau to examine the Augsburg Confession once more by the Scripture, and to alter everything that might be found in it not to stand the test of this infallible rule. (See Dr. Tittmann, "Die Evangelische Kirche," Leipzig, 1831, p. 3.)"

Dr. Sprecher evidently wishes by this notice to give a hint how the Lutheran Church herself was always uncertain whether the Augsburg Confession, in its articles of doctrine, could endure a strict examination according to God's Word, and how it was therefore her mind that this her Confession should be examined anew again and again by her more enlightened descendants, and purged of its errors and improved.

That the learned speaker, misled, as it seems, by Tittmann, gives the above historical notice, in which Torgau is even confounded with Smalcald, we are quite willing to forgive him, since it does not seem to be his province to study history from the sources, and since he could not know that his authority, whom we counted among our teachers in the year 1831, looked oftener deep into the champagne glass than into the sources of the history of the Reformation. The matter, however, stands as follows. Pope Paul III had promised to summon a general council, and had invited the Protestant princes to appear there in their representatives, so that the disputed religious controversies might at last be settled. On the condition that the council should be a "free and Christian" one, the Protestant princes and theologians were also not disinclined to appear, yet not because they thought it necessary that a council should examine and purify the publicly confessed doctrine of the Protestants, but that the Word of God, which they had recognized, might shine farther into the lands and kingdoms still benighted by Popery. When therefore, among others, the papal nuncio Peter Paul Vergerius appeared at Wittenberg on the 6th of November 1535 on business of the council to be convened, Luther said the following to him: "We are by the Holy Ghost certain of all things, and have no need at all of a council, but other poor people have, who are oppressed by your tyranny; for ye know not what ye believe. Well then, if ye have a mind to it, hold one; I will come, God willing, even if I knew that ye would burn me." (Luthers Werke. Hall. A. XVI, 2294.) When now the said Pope had, in the year following, called a council to be held at Mantua in May of 1537, the Protestants in February of that year convoked a convention at Smalcald, to deliberate on a definitive answer to the question whether they also would take part. On this occasion, according to the report of the late Dr. Tittmann, the Protestant princes are said to have given their theologians the charge to read the Augsburg Confession through once more with care, and to strike out whatever they should find in it irreconcilable with the Holy Scripture. Tittmann, in his work "Die Evangelische Kirche," which, alas! is not in our hands, has doubtless taken this account of the matter from Johann Aurifaber's brief "Bericht, was sich mit Luthero begeben," in which something of the kind is indeed reported, and at the same time it is stated that nevertheless "the theologians, and among them Bucer also in the name of the whole Strasburg ministry, again subscribed the Augsburg Confession and its Apology with their own hand," and that this took place on the 24th of February 1537. Suppose, now, that Aurifaber had really grasped and reported correctly what was then at stake, still only so much could rightly be concluded from it, that some Protestant princes had then thought it possible that something erroneous might yet be found in the said Confessions, and that they therefore, as it was to come to the final decision by a general assembly of the Church, deemed a final renewed revision (review) necessary. We, however, have no doubt that the good Aurifaber, as he has notoriously not shown himself a critical genius by his collection of Luther's Table-Talk, has also misconceived the matter that was here at stake. To this it must be added that Aurifaber, at the time when the convention at Smalcald was held, was still a youth of seventeen years, and only afterwards went to the University of Wittenberg to study theology there. He speaks therefore not as an eye- and ear-witness, but relates the matter as he heard it. But how do the eye- and ear-witnesses express themselves? Luther first states the command received, in the preface to the Smalcald Articles, in these words: "(It) was commanded me to draw up articles of our doctrine, and to bring them together, 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 persist and abide."*) Further, Melanchthon writes of it in a letter to Camerarius on the 1st of March, still from Smalcald, as follows: They had come together by command of the princes, "that it might be resolved on which articles they should hold fast, and maintain them to the uttermost, setting aside the common peace and all human things; and which, on the other hand, they should

*) It is to be noted that Luther, when the Augsburg Confession, which had been sent to him for revision before its public presentation, in May 1530, returned it to the Elector with the answer: "I have read through Master Philip's Apology; it pleases me almost (that is, very) well, and I know nothing in it to improve or to alter, nor would it be fitting; for I cannot tread so softly and gently."