# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 03 05_S111
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

111

know that they cannot bring the conscience to rest.

5. Now it is truly dreadful to wish to defend uncertain doctrine as certain, and on account of such uncertain matters to give cause for great division and war.

6. For we will not conceal from Your Princely Grace that the Zwinglians here boast how they are provided with money and men, what a following they have of foreign nations. Likewise, how they mean to distribute bishoprics, and become free. And it astonishes us greatly that they otherwise boast much of love, and yet let themselves be heard in such practices, in which little love, obedience or patience can be perceived: and even if they had right doctrine, such an undertaking as they boast of would not be Christian, whereby a terrible disruption of the churches and of all government would have to follow. Ah God! one should consider the descendants, who, it is to be feared, will have no church and no government, if such an uproar should arise. Besides all this we also fear that such an undertaking of theirs will come to no good end.

7. This our simple opinion may Your Princely Grace not take ungraciously; for God is our witness that we seek not our own advantage herein, but with the highest earnestness beseech God that He would keep Your Princely Grace from error and all evil. We see that the devil has a dreadful game in mind, therefore it is needful that we do not act rashly. We have wished to answer Your Princely Grace briefly and in haste. But if Your Princely Grace desires a longer report from us, we will, as we acknowledge ourselves bound, give a report at length with all diligence. God preserve Your Princely Grace always.

The 11th of June, Anno 1530.
Philippus Melanchthon.
Joannes Brentius."

"My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not." Prov. 1:10.

Johannes Weller, the father of the well-known Hieronymus Weller of Freiberg in Saxony, was, as with other virtues, so especially most laudably adorned with that of temperance and sobriety. When Duke George of Saxony once urged him to drink beyond measure, and all entreaty was of no avail with him, our Johannes Weller finally burst out unwillingly in these words: "Even if three dukes stood one upon another, I would still not drink beyond my capacity; has it then been said by God to man or to beast: Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess"? Eph. 5:18. Struck by this, the duke desisted from his urging. — How many a one calls himself a Christian and excuses his intemperance in drinking by saying that he was too much pressed, although his tempter was no duke! Fie, be ashamed.

The young children ask bread, and no man breaketh it unto them.

Lam. 4:4.

How greatly the famine and misery increased in the times of the Swabian War in the upper part of Switzerland, toward Graubünden, may be gathered from the following trustworthy narrative of a historian and eyewitness of that time. Pirkheimer, a brave Austrian officer, who had marched with his soldiers over the mountains, gives the following description of it:

"When I came into a large but burned-down village, I met at the end of it two old women, who were driving 400 little children before them like a herd of cattle. They were all sorely disfigured and wasted by the hunger they had endured, and presented a dreadful sight. I asked the women whither they meant to lead this army of children? — They answered me with a bewildered look, and could hardly open their mouths for weariness and pain: ''you will soon see!'' — I followed them. Before the village there was a great meadow; as soon as the children arrived there, they all fell upon their knees, tore up the grass with their hands, and devoured it with the greatest greed. By habit they had already learned to distinguish the unpalatable and unwholesome grasses and herbs from the better and wholesome ones, and sought out chiefly the sour ones. — Quite dismayed at this dreadful spectacle, I stood for a while as if turned to stone, and could speak no word. At length one of the old women said: ''Do you now see what this band of misery is doing here? Their fathers are slain, their mothers have died of hunger, the enemy has taken their possessions and their huts are burned. We wretched women and these poor children alone were spared. Ah, we hope that death will soon put an end to us and to them. A few days ago there were twice as many of the unhappy little ones.'' — Hot tears streamed from my eyes at this narrative; I cursed the war with its dreadful consequences."

As soon as the money in the box rings,
The soul into heaven springs.

Herberger relates in his "Trauerbinden" the following story, which shows what fruits the deceitful doctrine of the Papists concerning purgatory and indulgence has borne. Once a cunning fellow came to an indulgence-seller and asked for indulgence for 14 deceased members of his kindred. After they had come to terms and the buyer had paid down the appointed sum, he asked whether the fourteen were now really out of purgatory? The seller swears to him an oath to God that they were now quite certainly in heaven. Then the rogue says: Sir, gold is better than silver; give me back the small coin, I will give you a ducat for it. The indulgence-man, suspecting no harm, thereupon gives the cunning fellow the money back. But he, pocketing it, says: This purse-seed is more needful to me than to you; there is no further trouble with the souls, since you yourself have sworn that they are already in heaven. Fare you well, dear sir. With which words he made off.

Retraction.

Our names, which we signed to the article directed against the Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States, and contained in Nos. 12-17 of the year 1848 of the "christlicher Hausfreund," we hereby withdraw.

Buffalo, the 21st of Jan. 1850.

Jakob Kraffert.
Kaspar Dopf.
Carl Böttcher.

Note of the Editorial Office. Even before the above was sent to us, we received a letter from a certain Mr. Carl Staufenbeil, who had come to Buffalo shortly before, when the libelous article retracted in the foregoing was to be sent by several individuals living in Buffalo to the editorial office of the late "christlicher Hausfreund" for publication, and had allowed himself to be led to sign the article with them. Mr. Staufenbeil also expresses his sincere regret at having given his signature.

Often truth itself is condemned as heresy,
Since much seems heavenly that comes from hell.
E. G. Woltersdorf.

(Submitted.)

The Love of the LORD JESUS toward Sinners.

(From Dionys. Areopagit. epist. 8. ad Demophil. [?])

When I was once in Crete, the holy Carpus lodged me (bishop there, mentioned earlier in 2 Tim. 4:13), a man, because of his special purity of mind, fitted for divine devotion almost beyond all others. He was wont never to celebrate the holy mysteries of the Supper until God had graciously made Himself known to him in prayer, which usually went before. To him, as he himself told me at that time, a certain unbeliever had done great hurt, in that he had led someone away from the faith of the Church to the error of his own unbelief. It happened that the heathen feast Hilaria was at hand (the 25th of March and following, at which season the martyrdom of Polycarp took place), on which he should have prayed lovingly for both, and by divine help converted the one from error, overcome the other by kindness, and not ceased all his life long to admonish them, until the time of repentance should be completed, and so to draw them back to the knowledge of God, until the offensive and obscure should be made plain to them, they