# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1855_S91
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

How the Fox Was Lured Out of His Hollow Tree. 91

We know people who until now have firmly and steadfastly believed that Pastor Mann in Philadelphia is a friend of the church just as Christ is a friend of sinners, since the former is, after all, the editor of the “Kirchenfreund.” We have never believed it, and we have often been deeply saddened to observe that here within our church so many good-natured souls indulge in the sweet dream that the formerly United Evangelical “Kirchenfreund” is now—oh, joy!—edited by a man of our church. To be sure, these people could often have discerned already what spirit Pastor Mann is a child of. As is well known, American foxes only too frequently stick their faces out into the daylight through the openings of the hollow trees in which they reside. But even this has failed to help many people because, unfortunately, they have made poor studies of ecclesiastical natural history. We therefore resolved to employ the usual American method by which a fox is lured out of its den—namely, to “smoke” him out. So in the prospectus for “Lehre und Wehre” we wrote that this periodical was not to be a Kirchenfreund, or “friend of the church,” but rather a servant of the church. And behold! The method worked. Fearing suffocation, the fox leaped from his hollow tree at those words with lightning speed.*) For that Lutheran declaration of ours so disconcerted the “Kirchenfreund” that now, in its latest monthly issue, the March issue of this year, it attacks Luther in the manner of Eck, Emser, Cochläus, and similar “friends of the church,” not only putting him in the pillory as a dangerous heretic because he distinguishes between the Homologoumena and the Antilegomena,**) but even branding him as a universalist—

filled with [illegible] concerning the, as I fear, temporarily victorious Lutheran current that is on the way to corrupting the lifeblood of Lutheran faith, causing our treasure to be reviled among our enemies, placing a yoke upon our congregations, and, through false practice, reacting most harmfully upon our sound doctrine. What is needed here is faith and patience, prayer and the struggle of believers. May the Lord enlighten those of His servants who surely mean well by His cause but bring strange fire to His altar!” — — The union with the Reformed—we added to that concern—will then soon be left behind, while union with the Papists will come to the fore; for that is where German Lutheran Puseyism, like Anglican Puseyism, is leading. G.

*) He seems to have thought: if such ideas should take hold among the Lutherans—that it is not even a good sign when someone merely calls himself a “Kirchenfreund”—then this name might be worth about as much to him as a passport is to a wanted man pursued by warrants.

**) Every theologian knows that this distinction has always been maintained in the church; that only the church of Antichrist, which forges new dogmas, arrogated to itself the power to decree and reclassify Antilegomena as Homologoumena and absolutely canonical books; and finally, that many today refuse to acknowledge the distinction only because,