# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 06 25_S175
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

175

no light or trifling matter), that you do not incur guilt with the church robbers, and a share of the curse go not out upon you also.

Do you ask now what you are to do herein? I indeed know not much to advise; yet I think it good, and exhort you faithfully, that in the matter you do as I would do.

First, you shall summon the uncalled and intruded preacher before you, in the presence of the other of your assistants, and kindly, yet with earnestness, set before him the council's wantonness and presumption; and further declare to him that he is not called by you (to whom the church is entrusted), and therefore comes as a thief and murderer, and yet teaches and rules in that same church of yours, for which you must give account. He shall therefore know that he intrudes himself by force, and robs your pastorate, without your knowledge and consent. Wherefore you admonish him to desist from such robbery; or else he is to see with what conscience he can preside over such a robbed office? For the church is entrusted and committed to you. Wherefore without your will no one has the right to exercise therein either doctrine or government.

If he turns not to this admonition, which was undertaken with him especially in the presence of few persons; then declare to him: You will announce just the same, which you have set before him in particular, to an honorable council also. Do this in this manner: Summon them either to you, or go to them. First ask them whether they acknowledge you as their pastor and as curate of the church at N.? If they say, Yes; then set before them with earnest words the office and danger of a faithful pastor, and how you must give account for the same church of yours, and what toil, care and labor it costs, to care for them all one's life long, and to stand in every distress, in time of pestilence, or other diseases that may occur; as was in part cited above. But whereas you are to expect no better reward for such bitter, heavy labor of your office than that they thrust upon you a preacher (of whom you know not how it stands with him as to his doctrine and life) without asking you, yea against your will, and have expelled the former one behind your back, without any judgment of the law, shamefully and wickedly; then you would have it testified before them that you have never consented to this their presumption and wantonness, nor now consent to it, and will nevermore consent to it.

You shall also admonish them besides, that they may well take heed whom they hear, since he is not called, but is intruded by force, and therefore comes as a thief and robber of a divine office. Testify also that you will be excused and clear of the blood of those who undertake such violence and robbery of your office, consent to it and confirm it. That you shall do this, necessity requires, so that you make not yourselves partakers of another's sin. If such admonition, between you and them alone, moves them not; then declare to them that you will not leave such a thing unannounced to the people publicly from the pulpit. As you shall also do, with these or like words:

Dear people, you know that I am your pastor, and must give account for you, and every day venture my body and life for you, against the devil and every danger of souls, for which reason I also ought and must provide the preaching in this city. Now you have driven away a preacher, before he was convicted before a court, and without my concurrence, though I above all should have had a hand in it; and moreover have installed another in my office, without my will, whereby my pastorate is taken from me. Now since I am pastor, and must be, I will not flee from it, nor give them up, until I am deposed with right. Neither can I meanwhile flee from it, or give them up; but this I will do, as Christ teaches, Matt. 5:40, Luke 6:29, when the cloak is taken, I am to let the coat go also, and am to suffer all robbery and violence. So will I now also do, and stipulate hereby that this parish is mine, and that the preaching office is committed to me to provide and to order; I will not let such office be given up. But since it is taken from me by force and wrested from me, I will suffer it, and let myself be robbed and despoiled, and so depart for a time from hence, until God restores it to me again; I will meanwhile look on to see who will be so bold as to seat himself in my despoiled and robbed parish, and with what conscience he can hold my office.

When you have blessed them in this manner, then depart for a time, either hither to us, or elsewhere. For the wicked people will moreover boast of it, and slander us before the sovereign, as though we would intrude upon their temporal authority, and call us rebels thereby, and in the highest degree, if one can be called anything worse; whereas they know well that they do wrong in this and lie. They are Sacrilegi,*) not like those whom one breaks upon the wheel for stolen church property, which we can bear, and may well leave them unpunished for it; but such Sacrilegi are they who rob the Holy Ghost of his office and honor, and make themselves the Holy Ghost, since they depose and install preachers at their pleasure, wish to be pastors themselves, and to order the preaching office; thus they learn the Gospel.

*) Church robbers.

I have faithfully communicated my counsel to you, may GOD give you a strong courage to follow it; then, if GOD will, it would not go without fruit. For I undertake nothing herein with wrong or violence, but advise that everything be begun and done in kindness with humility (yet also with proper earnestness) and from the need of conscience. When you have thus taken your leave, N.**) might also protest, if it pleased him, that he will not preach in churches treacherously taken away and robbed, wherein duly called persons have been deposed by force from the preaching office, in order that he be not burdened also with foreign church robbery and sins. This might perhaps be a way to restore the ban and interdict. For if anyone should intrude into your place, I will so frighten his conscience with my writing that I hope he shall not readily remain there." Dated 17 April, anno 1531.

**) Cordatus, another preacher at Zwickau.

Much and Little.

In Hesse there was once a rich nobleman, a magistrate in the county of Nidda, who had an only son, who would not marry, much as his father wished it, and indeed for the sole reason that he was anxious lest he lack the means to keep a wife suitably to his station. All the entreaties and representations of the father were in vain for several years; the clever son always knew how to find new difficulties, and did not weary of devising all conceivable misfortunes that might befall him and his future wife and children, so that at last, he thought, they might perhaps have to go begging. In short, he did as the clever Elsie did, who would not marry for the reason that she feared her future son might some day be struck dead by a falling pickaxe. Already the father feared that his fine estates would one day, since the son after the father's death would certainly have married still much less, come partly into strangers' hands, partly at least be broken up, since they lay in the lands of various lords, to which they must revert after the father's death.

But it happened that a poor farm hand wooed a maid who was a native of the county of Nidda, and who therefore had to have the magistrate's consent, or, as one now says, to be entered at the office.

Now when the farm hand appeared before the magistrate with his bride, the magistrate's son was just in the room with his father. The magistrate asked: How much money do you two bring together? how far does your property extend? The farm hand said: Mr. Magistrate, I have nothing from my parents, my bride also nothing. But I have saved fifteen gulden from my wages, and my bride six gulden, that makes twenty-one gulden together, with that we will make a beginning. How will you support a wife with twenty-one gulden? said the magistrate. I know a young man who will have every year more than twenty-one thousand gulden, and yet does not trust himself to support a wife with it. O! said the farm hand, he must be a rogue indeed, he must never have been in church, and heard that God will feed us all, and keep body and soul well also. The magis-