# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1846 09 29_S13
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall never pass away."

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 3.

St. Louis, Mo., October 3, 1846.

No. 3.

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Terms: Der 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 bear the postage themselves. — 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 the Roman Catholic Church, by Contrast, Is a New Church.
(Conclusion.)

With this we have now proven that we are the true old Church, one body and one congregation of saints together with the whole holy Christian Church. Now you too, papists, prove that you are the true old Church, or that you are its equal! But this you cannot do; rather, I will prove that you are the new, false church, which is ever apostate from the true old Church, and becomes the devil's school and whore.

First, you do not remain with the first, old baptism. For you have newly invented many other baptisms, and teach that the first — a new, other baptism, or washing of baptism — is afterward lost through sin, and that one must make satisfaction through one's own works; especially through monastic life one becomes as pure as if one had just come out of the baptism of Christ; and so you have filled the world with churches and monasteries. And this article, the satisfactio (making satisfaction), is the beginning and origin, the door and entrance, to all the abominations in the papacy, just as in the Church baptism is the beginning and entrance to all grace and forgiveness of sins. For where baptism is not, there sacrament, keys, and everything else are of no help at all. Had this doctrine of satisfaction never arisen, indulgence, pilgrimage, confraternity, the mass, purgatory, monastic life, endowed foundations, and the greater part of all these abominations would never have been invented, and the papacy would not have grown so fat and thick. Therefore they have indeed rightly called it a baptism in their church, since it has produced many baptisms, sacraments, and forgivenesses of sins — indeed, even high holiness. That is what it is: one's own righteousness, the holiness of works, of which we have written much. Who commanded you to do this? Or where is it written? Where do you find it in the old Church, that you may invent such a new baptism and holiness? Who is the heretic, the apostate, and the new church here?

Secondly, you have driven indulgences throughout the whole world, as though they were a baptism — indeed, a flood that washes away sin — so that there is no corner in the world where your indulgences have not been sold or given away; the whole world is full of your seals and letters. Who commanded you to do this? Or where is it written? Where do you find it in the old Church, that you may found such a new baptism and washing away of sins? Who is the heretical new church here? Are you not the devil's whorish church?

Third, you have brought holy water and salt not only into all the churches but into every corner, as a washing away of sins or a baptism, and have taught great sorcery with it besides (as distinct. 3, Aquam sale, proves). Who commanded you to do this? Where is it written? Where do you find it in the old Church, or in the institution of the apostles? Who is the new apostate church here?

Fourth, you have instituted pilgrimages by which to earn indulgence or forgiveness of sins, which, because it happens without the office of the keys, through one's own merit, is itself also a sin. Who commanded you to do this? Where is it written? Where do you find it in the old Church, that you should institute such a new forgiveness or baptism? Who is the new apostate church here?

Fifth, you have founded confraternities without number — so many that you have filled the whole world with your seals and letters — all for indulgence and forgiveness of sins and for merit, which belongs to the office of holy baptism and the sacrament alone. Who commanded you to do this? Where is it written? Where do you find it in the old Church, that you may institute such a new forgiveness? And who can even recount the many kinds of new devices you have newly invented for forgiving sin in exchange for money or one's own merit? Who is the new church here, with new doctrines and sacraments, of which neither Christ, the apostles, Scripture, nor the old Church ever knew anything?

Sixth, who could recount all the horrible innovations you have invented concerning the venerable holy sacrament of the body and blood of Christ! Who commanded you to do this? Where is it written? Where do you find it in the old Church, that you may, first, take and rob this sacrament from the whole Church, and leave only the one kind, appropriating the whole to the priests alone? Second, that you have turned even this one remaining kind not into a teaching and increase of faith, but into a work of obedience to the church? Third, that you have turned the whole sacrament (where it is even still a sacrament at all) — not into a remembrance of Christ, to be publicly preached and to thank him for his suffering — but into a priestly sacrifice and the self-earned merit of some wicked fellow, to be sold to others and applied to souls in purgatory, and used for every temporal need, transforming it, like a heathen idol-service — indeed, like a shameful bargain-market — into the most abominable and blasphemous thing possible, so that the remembrance of Christ (for which he indeed instituted it) has been silenced and blotted out? And even if you were otherwise as pure a church as the apostles themselves, or even purer still, this one horrible, dreadful article alone — which you have newly invented at the devil's counsel — makes you the new apostate, heretical church, indeed the devil's arch-whore and a school of hell. For this article is so desperately, thoroughly evil that in this life no tongue can fully express it, nor any heart comprehend it, until the Last Day appears.

Read, gather, and collect together all the evil that the devil, together with all of you, can invent against us, and lie a thousand times as much again besides — still it will not amount to so much as a small splinter compared to this beam, which without doubt not one but all the devils and all the worst rogues have hewn together over six hundred years. This is one of those very things that Christ calls an abomination in the holy place, Matthew 24:15. Therefore not only must we flee from you as from the greatest wrath of God, but heaven and earth are appalled and recoil in horror from such a pit of murder; for this article alone does not merely fail to leave any church standing, but turns it into the very worst stench-chamber of the devil that exists on earth. The Turks, the Tartars, and the Jews are nowhere near so evil a den of murderers as the papal church is in this respect; for they merely deny Christ and turn their backs on him — but these take him up for themselves in this, spit upon him, mock him, blaspheme him, defile him, and torment him, and play out with him a far more horrible passion than what was done to him bodily by the Jews. Go now, then, and boast of the holy Church from which we have supposedly fallen! May the devil remain with you in such a church, and with all those who wish to be Heinzes! God preserve us from that, just as he has graciously