# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 04 16_S130
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

130

to bring forward and to make more widely known, which set in the brightest light his unfeigned reverence for God's Word and his faithfulness to the confession founded thereon — traits which stand in the sharpest contradiction to the unionistic flabbiness and fawning of present-day preachers and theologians, who originally belonged to the Lutheran Church, and which may serve them as a wholesome mirror of repentance.

It is well known that the evangelical princes and cities which presented their confession of faith to the Emperor at Augsburg in 1530, and those which joined later, formed the so-called Smalcaldic League — a defensive alliance which they entered into not as mere individual members of the evangelical Church, but as Christian princes and magistrates, whose duty it was to protect their subjects and subordinates, also with weapons in hand where necessity should require, against the threatening assaults of the Emperor and the powerful Catholic princes aimed at the extirpation of the evangelical doctrine and the restoration of the papistical abominations. Now it would have been, according to human opinion and reckoning, no small strengthening of this League if the Upper German cities, which held with Zwingli and the Swiss in doctrine, had also been taken in as members. The Landgrave Philip of Hesse, the other head of the League, inclined not a little thereto, as indeed he now and then made flesh his arm. Not so, however, the dear Elector; since those cities had given room to the false doctrine and had departed from the simple sense of the words of Holy Scripture, and, in spite of all thorough refutation, especially through Luther's writings, persisted in their false doctrine, John Frederick opposed their admission most decidedly, for they were once for all not one with the adherents of the Augsburg Confession in God's Word and faith, and held articles of doctrine which ran contrary to Holy Scripture; accordingly, one could not with an unwounded conscience unite with them even for the mere outward defense against foreign force, and God's blessing could not possibly rest upon such a union.

What would this God-fearing and conscientious prince say to it, if he were now suddenly to rise from the grave and see how at present even Lutheran preachers and congregations in crowds, seized by the unionistic spirit of giddiness and delusion, unite themselves ecclesiastically with the erring and, without settling the offensive doctrine, form a so-called united church? How justly must he be horrified at the dull conscience, the dreadful levity and the contempt of the divine Word, if he heard how the very spokesmen and scholars of the so-called United, who are supposedly believers, dare to regard the doctrines in dispute, as for example those concerning the holy Sacraments, as secondary doctrines, and the holy and certain institutions and gracious ordinances of the LORD Christ in such a way that it should be left to the caprice and pleasure of each individual how he will understand and interpret them, either as the words read and contradict carnal reason, or as they please the latter and contradict the simple sense of the words? O how wholly otherwise stood the confession-faithful Elector, who was far from the shameful levity as if any article of the doctrine of salvation were a secondary doctrine, and who in the highest degree abhorred the blasphemous delusion and satanic jugglery as if God's Word and the truth unto salvation had somewhere an uncertain, ambiguous, if not indeed contrary sense, and were not like a rock, but like the shifting wave of the sea.

For when the legate of Pope Paul III, P. Vergerius, informed him in 1535 that the Pope was intent upon calling a council as soon as possible, and when the envoy at the same time warned the Elector against too great confidence in Luther and his doctrine, John Frederick replied: "Our doctrine, by God's grace, needs no great improvement, justification or judgment of a council, for it stands not upon the fancy and wisdom of men, which can err and fail, but upon the hard, strong and firm rock of the Word of God, which abideth forever, and which even the gates of hell are not able to overcome." That is indeed another and more honest speech than the present promoters of union are wont to bring forward. For although in their hatred of the Lutheran Confession and in malicious suspicion of it, as if it would place itself alongside of, if not above, Holy Scripture, they ever put this latter forward and make much display of their reverence and love for God's Word, yet there is no sincerity and purity behind it. Or how else could they, for example, regard the words of institution of the holy Supper as indefinite and uncertain, and deny the one firm, certain and unchangeable truth of the same to the extent of asserting that these words could have this or that (Lutheran and Reformed) meaning, according as they might be understood? —

But the noble Elector revealed most gloriously the steadfastness of his faith and the fidelity of his confession in the time of misfortune and tribulation. Until then, namely, the dear God had set now from the west King Francis I of France, now from the east the Turkish Sultan, Soliman II, upon the neck of the mighty, strictly Catholic Emperor Charles V, whose favorite thought it was to be the temporal head of the undivided western Christendom and of the one holy Roman Empire, now entangled him in strained relations with the Pope or even with the Catholic German princes, and thereby hindered him from making war upon the confessors of the Augsburg Confession and suppressing them by force of arms. For God desired to give the purified doctrine and the renewed Church time and peace to spread and build, to take root below and bear fruit above, to pervade lands and peoples with its sweet savor and to gather them under its shadow. Also the intercession of Luther, the man of God, had held back the greater tribulations until then, as he indeed, as is well known, testified that so long as he lived no greater war should break in. But when this righteous man, more grieved and troubled by the carnal mind and the ingratitude of so many mouth-Christians among the Evangelicals than by the hatred and malice of the enemies, was taken away from the evil to come and fell asleep in peace in the Lord, and when at the same time the purified Church had grown so strong and firm as to be able to bear stronger storms and precisely thereby to be purified again from many kinds of impure new admixture: then God ordained it so that the Emperor broke the power of the evangelical princes and cities and subdued them one after another with victorious arms. Then also the Elector John Frederick was defeated and taken prisoner by the Emperor in 1547 at Mühlberg on the Elbe, in order that in such a night of misfortune the light of his faith might shine the more gloriously, and his faithfulness to the confession in the five years' captivity that followed might become a strengthening of faith on all sides in the days of tribulation which now broke in upon the Church.

First the Emperor had him sentenced to death "as an outlaw and rebel" contrary to all existing laws of the Empire. This sentence was made known to the Elector while he was just playing chess with Duke Ernest of Brunswick, who had been taken prisoner with him. He heard it with the greatest steadfastness and undaunted courage and answered nothing but: "he thought His Imperial Majesty would deal somewhat more graciously with him; but should it be in earnest, they might surely tell him so, that he might yet make the necessary arrangements on account of his wife and children."

Thereupon he continued playing again with all presence of mind, and, as he won the game, expressed the joy which one is otherwise wont to feel, with the most unconcerned mind, at the winning of such a victory.

Through the intercession of the Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg and of Duke Maurice of Saxony, however, it came about that the Emperor desisted from the execution of that sentence. Yet the Elector had to enter into the most oppressive conditions, as for example to surrender the electoral dignity and all his lands, except the castle, town and district of Gotha, and to remain the Emperor's prisoner so long as it should please him. All this John Frederick granted; but in the article concerning religion he remained firm and immovable.

For the Emperor demanded that the Elector should bind himself to accept everything that the Council (convened by the Pope) at Trent (where the Pope was not a party, but