# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1846 08 17_S102
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

[Page 102]

-ing to recognize the essential nature of church discipline as it had already begun to be exercised by Luther. Luther, too, seems to have formed a less favorable opinion of them during this period.

But when, in 1532, the Bohemian Brethren issued an apology (defense) of their doctrines and practices, Luther published it the following year with a fine preface. In it he did not deny that the Bohemian Brethren had for a time been suspect to him, as though they denied the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Lord's Supper; but from personal conversation with them (so it seems the Brethren had again been with Luther around this time) he had found that they do believe Christ's body and blood are present in the Lord's Supper, only that they used different expressions, which sounded suspect and which he could not approve either; yet he did not wish to rush or press them to speak in his manner, so long as they were and remained one in the matter itself, until God should further direct according to his will. Therefore, he concludes, I commend this little book to be read and judged by all godly Christians, and ask that they join with us all in praying to God our Father for unity of doctrine and faith; and should there be anyone for whom this little book does not do full justice, let him consider how humbly they offer themselves, and even if they deserve nothing else by it, it is nevertheless only fair that one should let them be a bruised reed and a smoldering wick, for none of us ourselves are so entirely whole and perfect either.

In 1535 the Bohemian Brethren presented a detailed confession of their faith to King Ferdinand; Luther had this printed with a preface, in which he gives them this excellent testimony: "The wall that formerly stood between us and them is now torn down, so that we have become one flock, even though they are not yet of one mind with us in every respect concerning ceremonies and celibacy." From this time on a lasting friendship remained between the Bohemian Brethren and Luther until his death.

In 1536 they visited him again, in order to confer with him especially about church discipline and church government, matters on which, as already mentioned, they seem to have placed a predominant weight. According to the report of the delegates, Luther is said to have lamented that good church discipline was still lacking among his own people, and to have wished to see one similar to that of the Brethren introduced.

In 1542 the Brethren visited him for the last time: it was the foremost of their preachers, Johann Augusta, together with another preacher and a member of the Bohemian nobility. They were received most cordially in Wittenberg and reported how the Hussite congregations in Bohemia and Moravia were gradually going over to Lutheranism, but unfortunately were adopting only the doctrine of the Gospel without at the same time showing a corresponding zeal for a Christian life, and how this was proving greatly detrimental to the churches of the Brethren. They believed that so great an abuse of the Gospel could no longer be tolerated. In the presence of the entire faculty of professors, Luther is said to have answered: The papacy could not have been shaken except by the overthrow of everything that savored of human superstition and compulsion of conscience; now that the world was rushing into the opposite extreme, one must indeed resist and re-establish church discipline. They wished to give the matter serious consideration. When at last, after a confidential gathering of almost fourteen days, the envoys wished to depart again, Luther invited them once more to a banquet, and at the final parting, in the presence of many professors of the university, spoke these memorable words: "You are the apostles of the Bohemians; I and my people will be the apostles of the Germans. Carry on Christ's work there, as opportunities present themselves to you; we will do the same here, as they present themselves to us."

A few months later Luther wrote to the aforementioned Johann Augusta, among other things: Further I exhort you in the Lord that you persevere with us, even unto death, in the unity of the Spirit and of doctrine, as you have begun, and that you fight with us through word and prayer against the gates of hell.

This history is encouraging and instructive, and sets before us, in the Bohemian Brethren, an example worthy of imitation in their diligent zeal to cultivate unity of spirit with other orthodox churches, and in Luther, an example worthy of imitation in his love that bore with the weaknesses of the weak. Luther has been accused of partiality, in that he dealt far more leniently with the Bohemian Brethren than with the Swiss (the Zwinglians). But the reason for Luther's mildness toward the Bohemian Brethren and his severity toward the Swiss is to be sought not in partiality but in the difference between the persons involved, just as St. Paul likewise gives two entirely different rules: Receive him who is weak in the faith (Romans 14:1), and: A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject (Titus 3:10). The Swiss were not to be regarded as weak, but were stubborn defenders of their error and spread it as far as they possibly could; against these Luther set an adamant firmness and did not yield to them for a single hour, so that the truth of the Gospel might stand fast, just as Paul also did (Galatians 2:5). The Bohemians, however, were unlearned people who still stumbled in many ways in their understanding, yet they had open hearts for the truth; they took no conceited pleasure in their error but offered themselves to be instructed better. Therefore Luther receives the weak in faith, has patience for a time with their infirmities without approving them, serves them with his gift of understanding, and so experiences the glorious victory of winning them over to the full truth.

Resignation from Office.

Already in No. 23 of our paper it was reported, in the communications from Saxony, that among the writings recently published in Leipzig there was one entitled: "Lament of a Departing Preacher, or a Scripture- and Experience-Based Consideration of Whether an Evangelical Teacher in the Kingdom of Saxony Can at Present Assume and Administer a Pastoral Office without Violating His Conscience."

This writing now lies before us. It is a farewell sermon, preached at the voluntary resignation of two pastoral offices on the 21st Sunday after Trinity, October 12, 1845, and published with necessary notes by Ernst Friedrich Höpfner, Licentiate of Theology, formerly pastor in Remse and Weidensdorf near Waldenburg in the Principality of Schönburg, Kingdom of Saxony.

We cannot refrain from communicating something from this sermon to our readers. We hope that not only Saxons will read what is shared here with interest, but also those who have immigrated from other regions of Germany, since the ecclesiastical condition of Saxony is the same as that prevailing in Germany generally.

Mr. Licentiate Höpfner gives, in the sermon before us, three main reasons for which it would be "against his conscience" to continue holding a pastoral office in the Kingdom of Saxony any longer. The first reason is: "That clergy, since they are meant first of all to be servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God, have at present rather become servants of the state, or tools of secular power." Mr. H. shows, in developing this point, that according to Article 28 of the Augsburg Confession, which he himself has sworn to uphold, "the two governments, the spiritual and the temporal, are not to be mixed and confounded with one another, but are to be distinguished"; but that in Saxony, through the new constitution, the church has been made into an institution of the state, and that a minister of the church must therefore obligate himself to act within the church according to the prescriptions of the secular authority. "All clergy," he writes, "must vow, upon entering their office, that they will render obedience to the existing civil laws, regardless of whether these agree with the Word of God or not, regardless of whether the necessary freedom of conscience in their calling is left to them or taken from them, regardless of the fact that this new legislation, insofar as it abolishes the sworn distinction between the temporal and the spiritual government, already contains within itself a breach of oath. — If now, in the discharge of a preacher's office, a grave case of conscience arises in which he believes he cannot comply with the orders of the secular power, and he turns to his superintendent and says, for instance: 'What am I to do in this case? The matter is surely against God's Word?' — he receives the answer: as a servant of the state church you must do it, for so