# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 07 23_S188
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

188

be and go under the authority; and lets me let all other authority sit, and does not assail me therein, nor gainsays it, provided I sit there in the light with right and divine order; for robbers and murderers may sit secretly and in darkness in another's dominion; but they are truly called to account, as those who are not subjects there.

25. Hold (sayest thou), there will I give thee one. Why then dost thou not believe that the Pope is thy lord, but makest an Antichrist of him; since all the world testifies that he is the head of Christendom, and proves it to thee also by deed; for he sits indeed in the government? Answer! There thou hadst nearly caught me. But let me tell thee: If thou canst show me these three things in the papacy, which I show thee in parents and authority, I will hold the papacy for a work of God, and gladly be obedient and believe the work of God. But if thou canst not do that, dear friend, then let it be to me a human fiction, without God's Word and work, which is not to be believed at all. But that it is a human fiction, I will prove mightily.

26. First, God's Word tells me well that there are to be parents and authority, and that I should and must have parents and authority; as has been heard. But there is no Word of God that says there is to be a Pope, and I must have a Pope, or be subject to the Pope. Since then Scripture commands nothing concerning the Pope or his government, there is also no papacy that is a divine work, seeing that Scripture bears witness of God's works. Therefore I have said above: Men one should believe where they testify and show not their own fiction or work, but God's Word or work. For ante quaestionem, quid est, oportet quaestionem, si est, definire.*) Before one teaches me who the Pope is, one must first make me certain that there is a Pope by divine right. But if he cannot be, one asks not who he is.

*) That is: "Before one asks what a thing is, it must first be decided whether it is."  Ed.

27. In the second place, although many men testify of him, yet such testifying is not only vain, because it cannot make or prove a work of God out of the papacy, but also is not full and complete. For there have hitherto testified and spoken against it not only the whole Christendom in the East,**) but also many subjects of the Pope himself, who have been burned for it, and are still daily murdered. So that such government has never yet been accepted and remained unchallenged, or come to a peaceful standing, as the government of parents and authority, as related above.

**) Namely the Greek-Oriental Church, which has not recognized the Pope at Rome.  Ed.

28. In the third place, there is also no work of God there: for he performs no office to the profit of his subjects, yea, he persecutes the Gospel and the Christians; to say nothing of his teaching and maintaining it. He teaches indeed his dung and poison, as man's doctrine, lets the Gospel lie under the bench; yea, he persecutes it, although it avails him nothing. He makes of the sacrament a sacrifice, of works faith, of faith a work; forbids marriage, meat, time, clothing and place, and perverts and misuses all Christian goods, to the hurt of souls: as we have sufficiently proved all this elsewhere. Since then all three marks are lacking in the papacy, one must hold it for mere human fiction, which is not to be believed at all, and in no way to be compared with the estate of parents and authority.

29. So here also: baptism is a work of God, which no man has invented, but God has commanded and attested in the Gospel. In the second place, there are people who testify this of thee, that thou art baptized, and no one gainsays it, nor proves the contrary. In the third place follows the work, that thou art reckoned in the number of Christians, art let come to the sacrament and all Christian right, and to enjoy all this: which would not be done if thou wert not baptized, and if it were not certain to everyone. All which are also mere testimonies of thy baptism: for all the world knows and sees that everyone is baptized while he is a child. Whoever, therefore, would not believe all this, would do just as much as if he believed not God himself, since God himself says, "In the mouth of two witnesses shall one believe." And yet he never punishes such witnesses, who nevertheless leaves no false witnesses unpunished and undisgraced.

30. Hereby, I hold, it is proved enough that no one may doubt his baptism, as though he knew it not, and that he sins against God who would not believe it. For he is much more certain of his baptism through the testimony of Christians than if he had seen it himself, since the devil could easily confuse him in his head, so that he would think he was in a dream or a phantom, and not rightly baptized, and would yet have to hold to the testimony of Christians, and be set at rest; which testimony the devil cannot so confuse or make doubtful.

(To be continued.)

(Communicated.)

Of the Methodist Grace of Sanctification.

Motto: Thou darest, Novatian, to call thyself pure? and even if thou wert pure in thy works, by this one word thou wouldst become impure.  Ambrose.

That there are among the Methodists many blinded people who imagine themselves freed from all sins, yea, even from every evil desire, the dear reader will certainly, to his heartfelt regret, have heard already more than once. Sad it is that the Apologete lends itself to confirming such poor blind persons still further in their proud, soul-destroying delusion, by teaching that a man through the grace of the Holy Ghost can attain here on earth to a state of perfect sinlessness. Thus it says in No. 13 of this year of the sanctified: "Although his soul is free from that which the Bible calls sin, yet he has his infirmities and unavoidable faults, which come from the fall, wherefore he must every moment claim the atoning blood of Jesus and the merit of his death: forgive me my debts, as I forgive my debtors."

Can the "perfectly sanctified" among the Methodists now rightly say of themselves: We have no sin? No, rather they thereby speak a great lie. For God's Word says, 1 John 1:8: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Hence it is indisputably certain that the Christian on earth does not yet become perfectly sinless. For as soon as he says that he has no sin, so soon the thunder-word of Holy Scripture strikes him: "that he deceives himself and that the truth is not in him."

These words teach us also how we are to regard those Methodists who imagine themselves free from sin, namely as such people: "who deceive themselves and in whom the truth is not." Let such a one shine ever so fairly outwardly, glitter ever so holy, and bear himself ever so piously, humbly and spiritually: God's Word says of him: he has deceived himself. And even if he appeals to the plainest feelings and experiences as proof that he is free from sin, he deceives himself, in that he believes his false heart and the lying voice of Satan, which whispers it to him therefrom, more than the Word of God. It also avails him nothing if he twists God's Word most craftily, to produce thereby the appearance that one could already become sinless on earth: God's Word says of him: he deceives himself and the truth is not in him.

Therefore woe, woe to the unhappy man who dares to say: I have no sin. Alas! we have not tears enough to weep over his blindness, over his eternal ruin. The truth is not in him! He has lost the truth, he has lost Jesus. Extinguished in his inner being is the blessed light of truth, on the contrary he is filled with the darkness of lies and error; it is night within him. And indeed this darkness is the more terrible because the imagined saint does not see it, or at least will not see it. How dreadful may the disillusionment of such a man be in death! For since no truth is in him, since by the guilt of his pride he has lost Jesus, he cannot be saved. Therefore, whoever is stuck in this error, let him repent before it is too late.