# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 08 19_S201
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.
"God's Word and Luther's doctrine pass not away now nor evermore."
Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.
Edited by C. F. W. Walther.
Volume 6.  St. Louis, Mo., August 19, 1850.  No. 26.
Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for subscribers living at a distance, who are to pay the same in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 Cents. Only those letters which contain communications for the paper are to be addressed to the Editor; all others, however, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent here under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

Dr. Martin Luther's Letter to Two Pastors, concerning Rebaptism.
Anno 1528.

(Continuation.)

55. It is as if a maidservant took a husband, with ill will and wholly without a wifely heart toward the man; she is certainly not, before God, his true and wedded wife. Now after two years she comes to love him as a wife: should one here also arrange anew a betrothal, a new wedding ceremony and a new marriage feast, and allege that she had become his wife without wifely faithfulness, and that therefore the former betrothal and wedding were nothing? One would certainly say, you are a fool, seeing that everything here is now quite right, since she has come to herself, and keeps now rightly the man whom she had taken wrongly.

56. Likewise, if a grown person let himself be baptized falsely, and after a year became a believer: Dear friend, do you think that such a one should be baptized again? He has received the right baptism wrongly. So I hear well enough that his wrong is to make baptism wrong, and that human abuse and wickedness are to be stronger than GOD's good and indestructible ordinance.

57. GOD made a covenant with the people of Israel on Mount Sinai, Exodus 34:10. Some of them received that covenant not rightly and without faith. If these afterward came to faith, dear friend, should the covenant also have been wrong, and GOD have to come to each one anew upon Mount Sinai, and renew the covenant?

58. Likewise, GOD has His Ten Commandments preached, but because some take them in only with the ears, altogether wrongly, they are therefore not Ten Commandments, are good for nothing, and GOD would henceforth have to give other new Ten Commandments in place of the former, and it would not be enough that the people should truly be converted and keep the former Ten Commandments. That would turn out for me a strange business, that GOD's Word, which abideth for ever, should have to be changed so often and become a new one, as often as men change and become new; whereas it is for this very reason steadfast and eternal, that those who now do not cleave to it or fall away from it may have a sure and steadfast rock to return to and to hold fast by.

59. If subjects did homage to their lord, intending to kill him, and after three days repented of it, and gave themselves truly in obedience from the heart: dear friend, would it be needful here also to do homage anew and otherwise? No indeed, since they now render rightly the homage which they had done falsely.

60. If they want to go that way, we shall have enough baptizing to do every hour. For I will take up the saying ("he that believeth"), and wherever I find a Christian who has fallen or is without faith, I will say: This man is without faith, therefore his baptism must be nothing, and I will baptize him again. If he falls again afterward, I will say again: Behold, he is without faith, therefore his former baptism is nothing, he must be baptized also a third time. And so on, as often as he falls, or there is doubt whether he believes, I will say: He believeth not, therefore his baptism is nothing, in short he must let himself be baptized so long until he can nevermore fall or be without faith, that he may satisfy the saying ("he that believeth"). Tell me, what Christian will ever be baptized sufficiently, or have his baptism come to a certain end?

61. If now baptism can remain right and sufficient, though the Christian should fall from faith a thousand times a year, or sin; and it is enough that he himself turn back again and become a believer, and need not be baptized again so often: why should not also the first baptism be sufficient and right, if the Christian afterward becomes right and a believer; seeing there is no difference among baptism without faith; be it before or after, without faith, it is without faith. If it is without faith, then one must change it according to the saying ("he that believeth"); as the Anabaptists rave.

62. I say this for this reason: Even if the Baptizers could prove their case, that children are without faith (which they are not); yet they would thereby have gained nothing more than that the right baptism, which is instituted by GOD, is not received rightly, but in abuse. But he who proves no more than abuse proves also no more than that the abuse is to be changed, and not the essence of the thing. For abuse changes the essence of no thing. Gold does not become straw because a thief steals it and misuses it; silver does not become paper because a usurer gains it by fraud.

63. Since, then, the Anabaptists point only to the abuse of baptism, they act against GOD, nature and reason, in that they renew and change baptism together with the abuse; just as all heretics do also with the Gospel: because they take it up falsely, and so hear it in abuse, they rush in, and change it, and make a new gospel of it.*) Thus, whichever way you turn the Anabaptists, they do wrong, blaspheme and dishonor GOD's ordinance, call it a wrong baptism, on account of the wrong or abuse of men; although they also cannot prove such wrong and abuse of men.

*) The sects do this still. They see how horribly the doctrine of faith and of justification by grace is abused. What do they now do? They add to it their doctrine of one's own preparation, feeling and perfect sanctification, in order to fence in the way to heaven somewhat more than the dear God has done.  D. R.

64. But there is a work-devil among them, who puts forward faith, and yet means the work, and with the name and semblance of faith leads the poor people to trust in works. Just as it happened to us under the Papacy, when we were driven to the Sacrament as to a work of obedience, and no one went to it in order to feed his faith; but, when we