# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 03 05_S110
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

110

lets, be committed to Him who sees and knows all."

In the year after this shattering occurrence there falls, in all likelihood, the beginning of a grave illness with which Heermann was visited. It consisted in a fever which lasted three quarters of a year, and so greatly took his strength from him that for two years he could not go out of the house. Samuel had therefore scarcely gone to the university at Frankfurt on the Oder (August 1640) when he had to return on foot, accompanied by a messenger, to his suffering father. Having gone back to Frankfurt once more, he was for the same reason and in the same autumn summoned home yet again. He was now to go to Wittenberg, but could not, because a consumptive fever attacked him. After he had ventured four times to preach, he was thrown upon a sick-bed, and did not rise from it again. His conduct in it gave testimony of the true conversion which his heart had experienced. He comforted himself with the words: "My love hangs on the cross," which he had made his motto; his mouth also overflowed with other mighty sayings of comfort from the Word of God. Once he declared: "Yes, I believe steadfastly that if the sufferings and death of my JEsus were not enough for my sin, He loves me so much that He would be ready to suffer and die once more for me, before I should be lost. That is my faith, that is my comfort." How he regarded his illness is proved by a prayer of his which the father has preserved in his poetic Erquickstunden:

Ah, scourge me here, my God, and spare me yonder,
Here it is a stroke of love, there it will be a stroke of wrath.

Before his blessed departure he warned and exhorted his two brothers in a short but touching address, blessed them and his parents, and fell asleep on the 6th of February 1643. The deeply afflicted, sick father could not accompany his body to its resting-place; instead he wrote three sermons to his memory and composed for him the epitaph, which began with the words:

Here lies my Samuel buried, my most pious son,
Here lies the mother's delight, the father's comfort and heart.

These alone suffice to show what a wound the death of this son dealt him.

Opinion of Philip Melanchthon and Johannes Brentius: Whether Orthodox Christians Can Enter into Brotherhood with the Zwinglians.

It is now so often pointed out by the Unionists that there has always been in the Evangelical Lutheran Church a so-called Melanchthonian tendency, which was inclined to a brotherly and churchly union with the Zwinglians. Such a tendency, they say, therefore has its full justification even now within our Church, and it is therefore only a one-sidedness of the so-called Old Lutherans that they will not acknowledge as genuine Lutherans those who are united with the Zwinglians for the sake of such a union.

But how Melanchthon, when he still served the Lutheran Church faithfully, and with him Brentius, thought of a union with the Zwinglians, is attested by an opinion which these men gave, upon request, for Landgrave Philip of Hesse. For when the time of a decisive struggle for the Lutherans was approaching at the diet at Augsburg in the year 1530, the Landgrave desired from his heart that the Lutherans should brotherly join hands with the Zwinglians for the common struggle against the Papacy, and he consulted the said theologians about it, who now sent him from Augsburg the following answer:

"Most serene, high-born Prince — —

We have read with diligence the paper sent to us concerning the brotherhood; and we humbly beg that Your Princely Grace will graciously receive our answer. For God is our witness that we, especially in this case, act toward no one out of favor or disfavor; for this discord is grievous to us from the heart, and we have no greater sorrow on earth than this matter, that we see how men fall upon ungrounded opiniones*), whence great division in the Church, and withal uncertainty in conscience follows, whereby afterward they fall further upon other harmful thoughts; as we see happen to many now, who first allegorized concerning the Lord's Supper**), and now come and allegorize concerning more articles, as namely Campanus, Martinus Cellarius, Carlstadt, Felinus, who thereupon have no rest, but make practices how they may carry this out by force: whence not only a dreadful, great bloodshed is to be feared, but also greater divisions in spiritual matters and the disruption of governments, so that in a hundred years, yea nevermore until the end of the world, they can be mended again. Ah Lord God! what a terrible sight it is to consider such a dreadful thing. Therefore may Your Princely Grace believe us that we are truly in great sorrow, and have no desire, as men perhaps think, that we should quarrel much for the sake of our own renown. Therefore we very humbly beg that Your Princely Grace will graciously receive our answer, which we have drawn up as briefly as possible, in order not to detain Your Princely Grace long. So we think it is not necessary to answer all the parts of the paper that was sent to us. First, as concerns the brotherhood, it may be that Christians who err, and yet do not defend the error, should be borne with as brethren, as Christ Himself bore with His disciples. But those who put forth and defend ungrounded doctrine cannot be held for brethren; for one must not consent to false doctrine. Therefore all that is argued at length in the said paper, that one should bear with the weak, can mean nothing else than such weak ones as do not defend their uncertain doctrine; as Paul also received the Galatians, but yet spoke of those who put forth false doctrine: ''I would they were even cut off which trouble you.''"

*) Opinions that are only a delusion.
**) To declare figures of speech.

2. This is our simple opinion, as we think to answer for it before God. For how can we make brotherhood with our adversary, and so consent that they defend their doctrine as right and certain, when our conscience feels and holds otherwise, and is not quieted by their disputation? The writer of the said paper may mean it well, but he speaks indeed too weakly of faith; he thinks it matters not much whether one errs in some articles that are in the Scripture; and that it is not necessary that one be certain of what one holds and teaches. But truly, when the heart is uncertain, and is thus to put forth something uncertain, it is ill guarded against God's judgment; as Paul says: ''For whatsoever is not of faith is sin''; and it needs good experience how faith must be certain if it is to stand before God's judgment.

3. So also the articles concerning the Sacraments are not to be esteemed lightly. For since the whole Church is concerned with them, exceeding great offense follows where one errs herein. But we can well perceive whence such theology comes, which supposes that it matters not much what one teaches, that it is enough to live kindly and honestly before God; thus many philosophers would also have been Christians. Nor is doctrine to be reckoned according to the appearance of a civil life, but according to God's Word.

4. As to the other point, that one should work toward a council! if His Imperial Majesty proceeds*) in such manner as has been proclaimed, it might well be held for a council. But be it in council or otherwise, we are bound to confess what we believe; we are also bound not to prevent others from forbidding the doctrine which we do not certainly hold to be right. Besides this it is also necessary that we consider that we do not stop up other good and certain doctrine with this uncertain subtlety**), as is already in part happening. The Zwinglians persecute, even without a council, the Papists and Anabaptists; why should it be wrong for the others to forbid their ungrounded doctrine apart from a council? especially if thereby right and certain doctrine is furthered and peace maintained. Finally we beg for God's sake that Your Princely Grace, in this great and weighty matter of the Sacrament, will not let yourselves be turned away from the words of Christ to allegories. For in God's ordinance one must retain the proper sense of the words. If the rationes†) which Zwingli adduces quieted the conscience, so that it might rely upon them before God, we would accept those allegories also; but we

*) Proceeds.
**) Subtlety, hair-splitting.
†) The grounds.