# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1846 03 21_S59
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

devil, nor be tormented and plagued by such great and heavy thoughts of death as those who are afflicted with a long illness. For this reason, when it was reported to Lord Luther how the pious and godly man, Mr. Nicolaus Hausmann, had been struck down by a stroke in the pulpit and had died, he said that he wished that he too might one day die in the same way and depart from this world." —

Holy Absolution, Vindicated against the Slanders of the Methodists.

Motto: The second part in confession is absolution, which the priest speaks in God's place, and therefore it is nothing other than God's Word, by which he comforts and strengthens our heart against the evil conscience, and we should believe and trust it as God himself. But whoever is so blind that he does not see this, or so deaf that he does not hear it, surely does not know what God's Word and spiritual faith or comfort are — what good, then, can he teach? But if he does see it and hear it, and nevertheless knowingly condemns confession in this respect, then he is an outright devil and no human being, since he knowingly sets himself against God, and hinders people from being told God's Word, and from having their hearts comforted and strengthened in faith; such a one may rightly be regarded as an enemy of God and of all mankind, and especially of holy Christendom. And wherever such preachers are found, there all devout Christians should truly guard themselves against them as against the devil in the flesh, for God's Word must be free, and must go forth both publicly and privately, teaching and comforting everyone.
Luther.

In No. 371 of the "Apologist," the well-known Methodist newspaper, of February 13 of this year, two articles on holy absolution are found; the first is by a Methodist missionary in Fort Wayne named Mulfinger, the other is the work of Mr. Nast, the editor of the said paper. There are chiefly three reasons that move us not to pass over these articles entirely in silence. First, because, since we have occasion to speak, we do not wish to make ourselves partakers, through silence, in the terrible sin of blaspheming God and his holy Word, for it is written: "If a soul sin in that he hears a curse, and is a witness, or has seen or known of it, and does not report it, he is guilty of iniquity." Second, because our office and calling especially require us to warn the flock entrusted to us against the false prophets who come to us in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravening wolves. Third and finally, because the doctrine of holy absolution that has been attacked is, alas, not recognized even by many Lutherans of our day in its incalculable importance and in its inseparable connection with the whole doctrine concerning God's counsel for our salvation, so that there is danger that the unspiritual, loose chatter of the Methodists may eat its way like a cancer even among Lutherans (2 Tim. 2:16–17), unless a serious stand is taken against it.

Although, based on the experience we have had
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of the nature and doings of the genuine Methodist preachers of our time, we could never believe that they are driven by the Spirit of truth, still we did not expect that they would ever themselves make so plain, in the light of day, what spirit's children they are, as has happened in the articles mentioned above. For in both, the writers do not merely set forth misgivings they have about holy absolution or its abuse; rather, they do not shrink from calling it outright a "reed of Egypt," indeed "a chief trick of the devil," and from pronouncing a ban, with these words, upon those who take comfort in the absolution spoken to them, at Christ's command and in his place, by a servant of Christ, in the name of the triune God: "Cursed is the man who trusts in man and turns his heart away from the LORD."

We confess that, when we read such words, we were truly horrified at heart that Methodist preachers, who otherwise pretend to be so earnestly zealous for God, could utter such horrible blasphemies before all the world, declaring God's eternal Word to be a wavering and brittle reed and a most holy institution of Christ to be a chief trick of the devil, and thereby making the very Son of God into a devil. Oh, that the pen did not fall from the writers' trembling hand in the very moment they wrote such things! Oh, that they were not, having this word before them — "Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them" — thrown down upon their knees by this sunbright word of the living God, to beg God's forgiveness with tears of repentance for their undertaking, as futile as it was wicked, to darken these clear words and to contradict, to his face, the true and faithful God who speaks in them! As for us, even if we knew nothing further about absolution than that a Luther and a thousand other honest and highly enlightened witnesses of the truth confess to have received, through absolution, in their deepest distresses and anxieties of conscience, comfort, light, life and strength and the testimony of the Holy Spirit — we would, for that reason alone, be ashamed of the shameful, stinking arrogance of exalting ourselves above such men and presuming, with such audacity, to charge them with having stood in an accursed, fleshly trust in human trumpery, indeed with having employed a chief trick of the devil to fashion for themselves a false comfort. But suppose Mr. Mulfinger and Mr. Nast consider themselves so highly enlightened that they think they may look down with pity upon a Luther, Melanchthon, Brentius, Chemnitz, Arndt, Paul Gerhardt, Scriver, Heinrich Müller, Conrad Rieger, Schade, Woltersdorf — in short, upon all Lutheran theologians — as superstitious people who resort to chief tricks of the devil to help themselves along; should they not at least tremble before the temptation to twist and condemn a holy, precious Word of God?

But let us proceed to the matter at hand without further digression.

In three places of Scripture we hear our dear Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, make three important and remarkable statements, which plainly concern one and the same matter. According to Matthew 16:19, after Peter had confessed that he was the Son of the living God, he says to Peter: "I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Further, the mouth of truth, according to Matthew 18:18, says to all the apostles: "Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Finally, according to John 20:21–23, Christ, when after his resurrection he stepped for the first time as victor over sin, death, the devil, and hell into the midst of his disciples, says to them: "Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained."

These words are so clear that they need no explanation. Whoever would first try to make them clear by his own interpretation would be doing nothing other than one who tried to light up the sun with a burning tallow candle. That the words "remit sin," or forgive, mean: to acquit someone of his guilt and of the punishment thereby deserved, and that the words "retain sin" mean: not to forgive someone his sin and therefore to condemn him to the punishment deserved — this everyone knows. The expressions "bind, loose, keys," which Christ uses in the first two passages, are indeed metaphorical, that is, figurative, pictorial expressions, but they are not therefore ambiguous or uncertain; rather, they are so clear that even a Christian schoolchild can perceive that they are meant to signify the very same thing that is stated in the last passage. For it is well known that sins are very often compared in Holy Scripture to cords and chains, with which Satan binds and holds people captive unto their damnation (Prov. 5:22; 1 Tim. 6:9; 2 Tim. 2:26). If, therefore, someone is given the power to loose people spiritually, this is nothing other than the power to forgive them their sins and thus to loosen the bonds of sin and damnation with which they were bound; and if someone is given the power to bind people spiritually, this is evidently no other power than that of retaining their sins and thus leaving them in the bonds of damnation and condemning them to the captivity of hell. Finally it hardly