# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1845 11 29_S26
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

in doing so. You then venture further, with your lies and deceit, to obscure and darken divine truth and knowledge, and lead people astray through false doctrine, so that they cannot come to the knowledge of Christ. Likewise, you praise and boast of your own holiness and righteousness; but the holiness of Christ, through which alone we become holy and righteous, you curse and condemn in the worst way, just as if it were altogether a wholly godless and devilish thing."

Finally I testify that I have written this neither out of party hatred, nor have I wished to insult anyone's person. But should it nevertheless be so construed by our opponents, let them not forget that there is still One above us who judges rightly, who roots out all hypocrisy and the tongue that speaks proudly. I would much rather wish that our opponents give the honor not to us, but to the divine truth whose sting they feel in their conscience. Otherwise it will go as hard for them to kick against the pricks as it once did for Saul. It does indeed grieve us that they too join with the world in hating and showing enmity toward the poor little flock that holds fast to the truth of Jesus Christ; but all the dearer to us is the comfort that the Lord will not cast off his people nor forsake his heritage, for right must after all remain right, and to it all pious hearts will rally.

G. A. Schieferdecker,
Evangelical Lutheran Pastor.

Calvin and Luther Regarding Their Doctrine of the Holy Supper.
At the Same Time a Continuation of the Reply to the Most Recent Defense of the Union.

I.

How Did Calvin Conduct Himself, During Luther's Lifetime, With Regard to the Controversy over the Lord's Supper?

When, in the first volume of Der Lutheraner, we bore witness against the union-effort now being pursued everywhere, we showed above all that the gulf lying between Lutherans and Reformed is too great for them to be able to join hands across it in brotherly fashion for ecclesiastical union. How great this gulf is, we demonstrated, among other articles, also with regard to the doctrine of the Holy Supper as it was set forth by the heads of the Reformed party, a Zwingli and a Calvin, and into which they led their disciples astray. In doing so we made no distinction between Zwingli and Calvin, but spoke of them as spiritual twin brothers. This Mr. Nollau took no small offense at. He solemnly protests against the notion that the Evangelicals are Zwinglians and wish to enter into an ecclesiastical union with them. He writes the following in his little book "A Word for the Good Cause of the Union": "Our opponents intend an ignoble deception, by mixing Zwingli's unbiblical doctrine of signification together with the doctrine of Calvin and the German Reformed Church so thoroughly that the uninformed can no longer distinguish between the two, but must believe that all Reformed deny the real sacramental presence of Christ in the Supper, and that the entire Reformed Church, as well as the Evangelical Church, in the doctrine of the Holy Supper, adheres to the Zwinglian dogma (article of doctrine). We must, however, solemnly protest against such a dishonest procedure, which we find in the polemics of the ultra-Lutherans."

We unfortunate Lutherans, to be sure, did not expect such a stern lecture when we gave the censured account. Since the gentlemen Evangelicals, as is well known here, make not the least difficulty about admitting a Zwinglian, indeed even a rationalist, among the members — indeed even among the leaders — of their congregations, we poor sinners were of the simple opinion that they could not have so great a horror of the Zwinglian doctrine of the Supper. It is, however, indeed true that Zwingli, as far as the point in question is concerned, expressed his unbelief and his hostility toward all who take their reason captive under the obedience of Christ and his clear words so crudely that in his day not only did Calvin not trust himself to accomplish anything under his banner, but one cannot even blame the gentlemen Evangelicals if they, at least in theory, disavow him — although in practice they do not seek to carry this through, lest the good cause of their union suffer harm.

Since, however, the beloved union, that is, the ecclesiastical union of Lutherans and Reformed, rests on firm ground only once one has first become quite clear as to what the difference between the two actually consists in, the Evangelicals will agree with us that it is well worth the trouble to examine somewhat more closely whether an essential difference exists or not between Calvin and Zwingli and those who follow the one or the other, and whether Calvin really stands so close to Luther that, although no union could be formed between Lutherans and Zwinglians, one could nevertheless be formed between Lutherans and Calvinists.

But before we examine more closely the relationship of the Calvinist doctrine of the Supper to the Lutheran doctrine, as it existed shortly before Luther's death and still exists today, we ask our readers first to observe with us Calvin in the period during which Luther still held sway in Germany. It will become apparent in what follows that such an observation is not unhelpful for our purpose of coming to know the true relationship of Calvin to Luther in the doctrine of the Holy Supper.

What we demonstrated in No. 13 of the first volume of this paper concerning Zwingli — namely, that he was at first entirely of one mind with Luther — this, from everything we know of Calvin, appears to us to have been the case with him as well.

As early as 1535 Calvin published his so-called "Institutes"; this is a book in which he presented the whole of Christian doctrine in its coherence. The first edition of this book is, to be sure, not in our hands, but we read in the writings of older theologians who possessed this edition that Calvin there still set forth the pure Lutheran doctrine of the Holy Supper in the most unambiguous terms, and that he did not come forward with his own peculiar new doctrine on this subject until the later editions. If this can indeed be demonstrated from still-existing copies of the first printing of the aforementioned "Institutes," then it is quite undeniable that Calvin was at first a Lutheran, and only later, through speculation of reason, allowed himself to be led away from the Lutheran faith resting on the simple words of Scripture.

That Calvin, like Zwingli, was at first a Lutheran seems to us, moreover, quite indisputable for several other reasons. The first thing on which we rely here is the country of Calvin's birth and early education. He was, namely, as is well known, a born Frenchman; he was born in 1509 at Noyon in Picardy of distinguished parents, studied law at Orléans, was made attentive by a certain Olivétan to the evangelical doctrine then newly arising in Germany, came to a living knowledge of it, and therefore, out of love for the Word of God, went on to study theology as well (especially from the year 1533 on); but since he now confessed his faith freely and publicly, he was forced to leave his homeland in 1534; he fled to Basel, where he then published his Institutes, in a certain sense as a public defense of the faith he had confessed. Now since it is established that the first Protestants in France arose through the spread of Lutheran, not Zwinglian, writings, and were thoroughly Lutheran in disposition; and that among them, in the early years, not one was a Zwinglian, though many were put to death by the papists as Lutherans for the truth's sake; and since it is furthermore established that those men who exercised the greatest influence in France on Calvin's theological formation, such as Volmar (a German) and Faber Stapulensis, also agreed with Luther in the doctrine of the Holy Supper — one cannot expect otherwise than that Calvin too, in such circumstances and under such influences, was at the beginning likewise devoted to the Lutheran doctrine even on the point of the Holy Supper.

Calvin himself admits this when he writes: "When I began to emerge from the papal darkness, and had acquired a little taste for the holy doctrine, I read in Luther that, according to Oecolampadius and Zwingli, nothing was left in the sacraments but bare and empty signs; this, I must confess, so thoroughly disgusted me with reading their books that I long abstained from them.