# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1846 09 19_S10
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

knowledge of Law and Gospel, sin and grace, and without establishing and maintaining a truly sound state of repentance and faith.

4) because they accordingly mislead people into clinging more to the impressions made by the divine Word than to that Word itself, into seeking Christ more in individual heartfelt experiences of the Gospel than in the Gospel itself, and into placing more value on this often so morbid emotional Christianity than on sound, biblical-churchly Christianity.

"Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake." Matthew 5:11.

The "blessed" pronounced here by Christ applies now, among others, also to our dear Pastor Wyneken in Baltimore. Not quite two years ago he was called to the pastorate of the second German Lutheran congregation in the city named; there he did what befits a Lutheran preacher, sought to fulfill most faithfully the oath he had sworn to his church, held strictly in doctrine and defense to its public confessions, and endeavored to lead his congregation toward the goal set for a truly Christian, evangelical-Lutheran congregation. The consequence of this was that Pastor W. was made an object of suspicion and hostility. Matters finally went so far that a considerable number of members of his own congregation (thirty-five in number) were induced to circulate a defamatory pamphlet against him, their own pastor, in which it was attempted to prove that Pastor W. was a Puseyite, that is, a secret Catholic who intended gradually to lead his congregation back to Rome. This mendacious libel was not only hastily inserted by Mr. Weyl — a so-called Lutheran preacher in Baltimore and editor of the notorious "Lutheran Shepherd's Voice" — into his own paper, even before that document had reached its intended address, but he also accompanied it with new lying reports, and in one of the following issues even presented his readers with a further installment of his unscrupulous slanders as a gift. Amid this campaign of lies, Mr. Nast and Mr. Weyl have also recently become good friends again, like Herod and Pilate of old. For previously these two gentlemen had accused each other, in a rather vulgar manner, of lying and deceit; but now, since it is a matter of defaming the so-called Old Lutherans, whom both hate with equal bitterness, the two make common cause as faithful comrades-in-arms. Mr. Nast, namely, in issue 399 of his "Christian Apologist," has served up an extract of the slanders contained in the aforementioned "Shepherd's Voice" against Pastor Wyneken and all so-called Old Lutherans.

As regards the charge that Lutheranism leads back to popery, on that subject we

[p. 10]

intend to write something ourselves shortly in the Lutheraner. For this time we share with our readers only what Pastor Wyneken has sent us in writing for his vindication and for publication in the "Lutheraner." From this reply, even those who have not read the relevant articles in the "Shepherd's Voice" will likewise come to know the false accusations that have been made.

Pastor Wyneken writes as follows:

1. C. Weyl is the chief instigator of the unrest in my congregation, in that he assisted the poor misled members with counsel and deed in the filthy libelous articles, and had already published them in his paper before even the slightest complaint had been submitted to the church council.

2. The libelous articles bearing the thirty-five names were never submitted to the church council.

3. I have no more to do with Pastor Löhe's instructions, as Mr. Weyl himself knows, than with the laws of the Emperor of China; and although I confess with heart and mouth the faith of Pastor Löhe and of the society he has formed in Europe — which is none other than the faith of the Lutheran Church — I nevertheless stand in absolutely no dependent relationship to the said society.*)

4. Although I wish with all my heart that a genuinely Lutheran liturgy, whether Löhe's or another, might be introduced in my congregation as in all Lutheran congregations, the worship service has thus far differed in nothing from what was previously customary here, except that at Baptism and the Lord's Supper I use the old, forceful, genuinely churchly prayers of the Lutheran Church, and not the watered-down, unchurchly ones of the Pennsylvania Agenda; nor have I ever thought of introducing the liturgy without the congregation's consent. Pastor Haesbert†) himself did not use the Agenda at the Lord's Supper.

5. Although I wish, in accordance with the custom of the Christian Church — which the Lutheran Church has retained, but has declared to be a matter of free, adiaphoral choice — to have a crucifix and wax candles in the church, in order, among other reasons, thereby to make an open, eye-catching confession that we have nothing to do with the sects, either in doctrine or in customs, I have nevertheless, fearing that some weak persons might take offense at it, opposed the wish of many members; and far from introducing them, I have prevented their being introduced. If Mr. Weyl says that they have "made their appearance" in our church, he is a liar.

*) Pastor Löhe in Bavaria, as is well known, directs an institute in which he trains young men for service in the American Lutheran Church, an institute supported by Lutherans from almost every region of Germany out of heartfelt love for their American fellow believers. To the young men already sent out, Pastor L. has naturally given a set of instructions and bound them to it. Mr. Weyl now seeks to persuade his readers not only that this instruction has been adopted by all so-called Old Lutherans, but also that Löhe has altogether founded a new secret society, formed precisely by the so-called Old Lutherans in Germany and America.

†) Was Wyneken's predecessor in office.

6. It is likewise a blasphemous lie that I am supposed ever to have invoked the Holy Virgin.

7. It is a shameful slander that I deceived the congregation before it called me. I wrote to Pastor Haesbert, who knew my standing in the Lutheran Church, that I would not adopt the Pennsylvania Agenda, but would use an older Lutheran one, particularly at Baptism and the Lord's Supper, and would, where possible, seek to introduce the old Lutheran worship service such as still exists in many countries of Europe. Indeed, far from giving up anything of the distinctive characteristics of the Lutheran Church, I would, even in this time of conflict, retain the sign of the cross at Baptism and the Benediction. This letter was read openly to the whole congregation. No one at that time raised any objection to it. Indeed, when upon my arrival I saw how terribly I had been deceived — since I found not a Lutheran congregation but a Union one — I repeatedly proposed to the church council that I wished to leave the congregation again; and only when this wish of my heart was not granted did I set about openly setting forth from Scripture the abomination of such a union, as well as the difference between the doctrine of the Reformed and the Lutheran Church — whereupon, indeed, that portion of the Reformed members withdrew who held the Reformed doctrine to be right and the Lutheran to be wrong or contrary to Scripture. Whether I acted rightly or wrongly in this — that I am willing to submit to the judgment of any honest heathen, only not to such "Christian" (!) preachers who, by their appalling mingling of religions, show plainly enough that they think nothing of God's Word, and who make the belly, rather than the divinely enlightened conscience, the judge of their actions.

8. The alleged heretical corruption of the Lord's Prayer, as it has turned out, consists in this: that I pray it at Baptism, without any ill intent, according to the custom of the Lutheran Church, just as our Lord Jesus taught us in the eleventh chapter of St. Luke. Presumably it goes with Mr. Weyl in this matter as it did with one of my opponents, who did not even know that we have two forms of the Lord's Prayer in Holy Scripture.

9. I commit and commend Mr. Weyl to the mercy of God and to the intercession of the brethren, and I wish and pray that the eyes of the Lutheran congregations of this land may at last be opened to the wretched bondage into which the ignorance or malice of so-called Lutheran preachers has brought them, together with their own equally sinful indifference toward their church and toward the salvation of their own souls and those of their children — so that, through the Lord's grace, on the path of true repentance, they may come to the faith of their fathers, that is, to the faith of the true Christian Church now called Lutheran. God grant it. Amen!