# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1846 09 19_S7
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall pass away neither now nor ever."

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 3.

St. Louis, Mo., September 19, 1846.

No. 2.

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Terms: The Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at a subscription price of one dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who must pay half of this in advance and must also bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single issue is sold for 5 cents.

Dr. Martin Luther's Proof that the Lutheran Church Is the Old Church, and that, by Contrast, the Roman Catholic Church Is a New Church.

(Luther's treatise against Duke Henry of Brunswick, under the title "Against Hans Wurst,"*) from the year 1541. See Luther's Writings, Walch edition, vol. XVII, p. 1656.)

*) Luther gave his treatise this title because the duke had written that Luther called the Elector "Hans Wurst" [a buffoon].

Let us take up the matter itself, namely, why the papists, through their Heinz, call us heretics. It is this: that they claim we have fallen away from the holy Church and have set up another, new church. To this the answer is: since they themselves boast that they are the Church, they are obliged to prove the same. If they can prove this with any good reason (I do not ask for many reasons), then we will surrender, come forward, and say: peccavimus, miserere nostri, that is, we have sinned, have mercy on us. But if they cannot prove it, then they must confess (whether they do so gladly or unwillingly) that they are not the Church, and that we cannot be heretics for falling away from a church that is null and void; indeed, since there is no middle ground here, either we must be the Church of Christ and they the church of the devil, or the reverse. Therefore everything hinges precisely on this point: that one prove which is the true Church.

As long as this proof is not given, it is useless for one party to boast that it is the Church, and for the other to call it heretical; one side must be false and in the wrong. For there are two kinds of churches from the beginning of the world to its end, which St. Augustine calls Cain and Abel. And the Lord Christ commands us not to accept the false church, and himself distinguishes two churches, a true one and a false one, Matthew 7:12: "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing," etc. Where there are prophets (teachers), there are churches in which they teach. If the prophets are false, then the churches that believe and follow the prophets are false as well. Now, up to this point we have never yet been able to get the papists to prove why they, after all, are the true Church; instead they stand upon the saying of Matthew 18:17, that "one should hear the Church (congregation)," or else be lost—although Christ does not say there who, where, or what the Church is, but only that where it is, there one should hear it. This we also confess and say; but we ask, where and who is the Church? Non de nomine—we ask not about the name, but about the essence.

It is just as if I were to ask a drunk man, a man half asleep, or a fool: Friend, tell me, who or where is the Church? and he answered me ten times over with nothing but this: One should hear the Church! How, then, am I to hear the Church, if I do not know who or where it is? "Yes," they say, "we papists have remained in the old, former Church since the time of the apostles; therefore we are the rightful ones who have come down from the old Church and have remained in it until now; but you have fallen away from us and have become a new church against us." Answer: But what if I were to prove that we have remained with the old, true Church—indeed, that we are the true old Church—while you, on the other hand, have become apostate from us, that is, from the old Church, and have set up a new church against the old Church? Let us hear this.

First, no one will be able to deny that we, as well as the papists, come from Holy Baptism, and are called Christians because of it. Now baptism is not something new, nor invented by us at this time; rather, it is that very same old baptism which Christ instituted, in which the apostles and the early Church, and all Christians afterward down to the present, have been baptized. Since, then, we have this same baptism, the first and old one (and, as the Creed states, catholicae, that is, of the whole Christian Church), and are baptized in that very same baptism, we certainly belong to that same old and whole Christian Church, which is one with us and we one with it, coming from one and the same baptism, so that as far as baptism is concerned there is no difference. But baptism is the foremost and first sacrament, without which all the others are nothing, as they themselves must confess. Therefore the papists cannot, with truth, call us another or a new church, or brand us heretics, since we are children of the old baptism, just as much as the apostles themselves and all of Christendom—Ephesians 4:5, "one baptism."

Second, no one will deny that we have the Holy Sacrament of the Altar, exactly as Christ himself instituted it, and as the apostles afterward and all of Christendom have used it; and thus we eat and drink, together with the old and whole of Christendom, from one and the same table, and receive with them that same one old sacrament, having made nothing new or different in it; therefore we are with them one church, or, as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:13, "one body, one bread," we who eat of one bread and drink of one cup. Therefore the papists cannot call us heretics or a new church without first having to call Christ, the apostles, and all of Christendom heretics—which, in truth, they also do; for we are, with the old Church, one and the same church, in one and the same sacrament.

Third, no one can deny that we have the true, old Keys, and use them for no other purpose than to bind and loose the sin committed against God's commandment, just as Christ instituted them, Matthew 16:19, John 20:23, and as the apostles and all of Christendom have used them down to the present; we thus have the same keys as the old Church, and therefore we are that same old Church, or at any rate are within it. For we make no new keys, we make no new laws, nor do we thereby exclude or admit kings and lords with respect to their worldly dominions, but only sinners with respect to the kingdom of heaven—just as the old Church did, by the Lord's command. In this the papists again falsely lie about us; indeed they slander and brand as heretics the old Church, the apostles, and Christ himself, in branding us.

Fourth, no one can deny that we have the pastoral office and God's Word, pure and abundant, and diligently teach and practice it, without any admixture of new, self-devised, human doctrine, just as Christ commanded, and as the apostles and the whole

*) This the new American Lutheran Church, which with its General Synod denies the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Holy Supper, cannot hold up against the Roman Church; it must therefore confess that it is a new, apostate church.

**) On this point too, the new American Lutheran Church must surrender, when it is charged by the Roman Church with being a new and therefore a false church.