# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1855_S61
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lutheran-theological Pastors' Library. 61

biography that he came to a firm faith only through reading Luther, and then
adds: "It seems to me I must say plainly that I must set this book of
Luther's, the Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, above all
books (excepting Holy Scripture) that I have ever seen, because it is so
excellent and so fitting for a wounded conscience." (See: Bunyan's tract
"The Tenderest Heart of the Love of Christ," Appendix, p. 84.) Likewise
the founder of the Methodist communion, John
Wesley, confesses that when he first traveled to Georgia in 1735 to
convert the Indians, "I was not myself converted" (Works, Vol. III, p.
55), but that he was afterward converted when, at a meeting the Moravians
held on Aldersgate Street in London, he heard Luther's preface to Paul's
Epistle to the Romans read aloud! — Even papists have been unable to
resist the power of truth and have had to confess the incomparable worth
of Luther's writings.

When in the year 1520 an episcopate was offered to Erasmus if he would
take up the pen against Luther in defense of the papal authority, he
answered at that time still: "Luther is too great for me to write against
him. Luther is too great for him to be understood by me. Indeed, Luther
is so great that from reading a single little leaf of Luther's writings I
learn and profit more than from all of Thomas." *) Melanchthon writes in
his preface to the third part of the Wittenberg edition of Luther's Latin
works: "I recall that Erasmus of Rotterdam used to say that there is no
more skillful or better expositor among all whose writings we possess
since the apostles." (See Walch edition, XIV, 539.) **) The renowned
papal scholar Andreas Masius (d. 1578), co-editor of the great Antwerp
Biblia Regia, declared frankly in the monastery at Weingarten, before a
large gathering of papists and Lutherans: "There is more sound theology
on a single leaf of Luther than at times in a whole book of one of the
church fathers." ***) — To cite more testimonies of this kind to the
altogether incomparable worth of Luther's writings, from people of almost
every confession and from every period since Luther wrote, is more than
the purpose of our essay allows, though folios could be filled with them.
†) Luther's works are

*) "Major est Lutherus, quam ut in illum ego scribam. Major est Lutherus,
quam ut a me intelligatur. Plane tantus est Lutherus, ut plus erudiar et proficiam
ex lectione unius pagellae Lutheranae, quam ex toto Thoma." [Luther is too great
for me to write against him. Luther is too great to be understood by me. Luther is
simply so great that I am more instructed and profit more from the reading of a
single little Lutheran page than from the whole of Thomas.] (Gerhard, Conf. Cath.,
fol. 59.)

**) "Neminem esse interpretem dexteriorem omnium, quorum extant scripta post
apostolos Luthero." [That there is no more skillful interpreter than Luther among
all whose writings survive since the apostles.] (As above.)

***) "Theologiae solidae plus esse in uno Lutheri folio, quam interdum in toto
libro alicujus Patris." [That there is more sound theology in a single leaf of Luther
than at times in an entire book of some one of the Fathers.] (Osiander, Centur. 16.
hist., p. 837.)

†) Despite the almost boundless praise, however, that has been lavished on
Luther and his writings, none is to be found among it like the praise given to
Calvin, of whom the Reformed writer Jacob Verheiden wrote in the year 1602:
"Ipsa a quo potuit virtutem discere virtus" [one from whom Virtue herself could
learn virtue] — that is, one from whom virtue itself could learn virtue! (See Elogia
theologorum, p. 80.) Is this not to exalt him above Christ?