# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 05 14_S149
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

149

in the purest being and nature of the one Godhead. How can that be reconciled? How is it possible that the one whole, perfect Godhead of the Son should so divide or part itself, that it is at the same time united in the manhood? And that at the same time one and the same Godhead in Christ is one person with the manhood, and not the Father or the Holy Ghost. Oh, how they shall rave, reel and rage then, when they come to this. There they shall find something to interpret; as I hear indeed that they are already going on boldly and gallantly in that direction, with Eutycherei and Nestorei.*) For I thought as much, and said so too, that they would have to come to this; the devil cannot rest, where he founds one heresy he must found more, and no error remains alone. When the ring is broken in one place, it is no longer a ring, holds no longer, and keeps breaking on and on, etc.

And though they boast ever so much that they believe this article of Christ's person, and chatter much about it, you shall not believe it; they surely lie in everything they say about it: “With the mouth they say it well enough (as the devils in the Gospel also call the Lord the Son of God, Mark 5, 7.), but the heart is far from it,” Matt. 15, 8., that is certain. Just as the Jews swore by the living God, yet swore falsely, says the prophet. The Turk also boasts of the name of God, but in dying they find out who their God is. For it is certain, whoever does not rightly believe one article, or will not (after he has been admonished and instructed), believes none with true earnestness and faith. And whoever is so bold as to dare deny God, or give Him the lie in a single word, and does so wilfully, against and beyond what he has been admonished or instructed once or twice, he will also dare (and surely does) deny God in all His words and give Him the lie.

Therefore it must be said, plainly and purely, all believed or nothing believed. The Holy Ghost will not be severed nor divided, so as to teach or let believe one piece truly and the other falsely. Except where there are weak ones, who are ready to be instructed, and do not stubbornly contradict. Otherwise, if it were to hold that it need do no one harm to deny one article, so long as he held all the others to be right (though at bottom this is impossible), then no heretic would ever be condemned, nor could there be any heretic on earth. For all heretics are of this kind, that they first begin at only one article, and afterward they must all follow, and all together be denied: just as the ring, if it gets a crack or a flaw, is good for nothing at all any more, and where the bell is cracked in one place, it also rings no more, but is wholly useless.

Let the examples teach you this. Arius took up this one article, that Christ was not God, but a creature; the other articles all, and especially that God the Father is one only God, Creator of heaven and earth, that Christ died for our sins, that there are Baptism, Sacrament, Keys, resurrection of the dead and life everlasting, he believed, as his words sound, more devoutly than the true Christians believe: yet the Holy Scripture stands there and testifies that he did not believe a single article. For thus says St. John, 1 John 2, 23.: “Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also,” etc. Now if Arius has neither Son nor Father, then he has no God either, nor Creator of heaven and earth, that is, it avails him nothing that he names and highly praises with his mouth God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth, although there is no other God who is Creator of heaven and earth than he whom Arius names with his lying mouth: yet to him, to Arius, He is not a God, because he denies and blasphemes His only Son Christ, that He is not God.

Thus to him Baptism is no more Baptism, forgiveness of sins no more forgiveness of sins, Sacrament no more Sacrament, that is, it profits him no more, though he had before been rightly baptized and had received right forgiveness, right Sacrament. Thus he has lost all the articles of faith, because he has denied the right God of faith, Christ, and no article is of any use to him, and he cannot believe any article with true earnestness, but must use them all together to his own damnation, as the second commandment says: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,” Ex. 20, 7. There you hear that even the right holy name of God does not help, but harms those who do not believe rightly, but misuse it. Hence also the ancient fathers disputed whether the baptism of the Arians was also true baptism. Thus one misfortune ever comes out of another.

*) Nestorei is the error of Nestorius, who separated the Godhead and manhood of Christ.

(Conclusion to follow.)

Correspondence from Germany.

(Conclusion.)

To pass from these matters, which especially concern our Bavarian national church, to the movements in the Protestant churches of Germany in general, an uncommon zeal has been shown above all in Prussia to bring the various confessional churches nearer to one another, indeed, if possible, into a mutual alliance. That nothing comes of the union in favor since 1817 and 1830 is gradually perceived after all — although a fair little band is still faithful to it for shame's and honor's sake — therefore men would like to go about the matter a little better, and be no longer united, but confederated. You have doubtless already heard of these confederation ideas, as they were hatched in September 1848 and ’49 (chiefly by Stahl, Nitzsch, v. Bethmann-Hollweg and Wichern, superintendent of the “rauhes Haus” near Hamburg), and so I need not write much about them. The difference between this confederation and the earlier union (which, to be sure, has not yet been legally abolished in Prussia) consists briefly in this, that in the union it was sought to bring the Lutheran and Reformed church (not a few would gladly have the Roman Catholic one in too, and consequently it also belongs in this clover-leaf) under one hat by church government and liturgy, in the confederation however by common works of love. That honest Lutherans take no part in these confederation endeavors you can easily imagine. To be sure, the scolding at their exclusiveness and harshness begins anew — but what does it matter? Let those swimmers swim on the sugar-water of their saltless love, which embraces everything with tenderness, even the lie and the most obstinate error; the time will yet come when they will say of their confederation the very same thing that they now say with a shrug of the shoulders about the praised union, namely that it will not work in this way. Let us boldly hold alone with the One and pure truth: whoever still holds with it, with him we need conclude no union and no confederation, but we are with him what those seek and do not find, namely, one. — These are on the whole also the principles which the members of the conference held at Leipzig in August 1848 and September 1849 declared to be their own. For the Lutheran church also was not sluggish in these times of agitation; here also, as in the political and social field, those of like kind have found one another. Probably you have also already heard the main thing about this conference, how it would gladly have realized the fair thought of One German Lutheran church, no longer cut up by any national border, how however it declared itself quite decidedly against the Wittenberg confederation ideas, etc. From this you will doubtless have gathered that on the whole little was accomplished by them. “Much ado about nothing” is the motto for all the movements of the last two years in the political field as well as in the churchly. In most circumstances it stands worse than two years ago. Therefore the revolution also cannot yet be ended, and is not; the contrasts that are found in Germany must yet burst upon one another quite differently, and when that happens there will be a hard struggle, for it is a matter of “To be or not to be.” How deep and significant the contrasts are, one has clearly perceived from the completed stage of the German revolution — as I already hinted to you at the beginning of this letter. Socialism undermines the state; German Catholicism and the Friends of Light have the same in mind against the church. Yet the latter has so far on the whole as yet little