# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1846 10 13_S21
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

...spoken, and we will return to this at another opportunity.

Another proof of how great the ignorance now is among us Lutherans is this: some, when they hear the long-silenced doctrine of the old Lutheran church being preached again by certain preachers, and see the outward worship service held again as it was held in the old Lutheran church, some, I say, then declare: Why, that is half-Catholic! Indeed, it has come to such a pass in America that even preachers and newspaper writers who call themselves Lutheran are so ignorant that they preach and write: the old Lutheranism leads to Rome — that is, whoever adopts the old Lutheran doctrine and the old Lutheran customs is on the way to becoming a subject of the Pope at Rome, a so-called Catholic or Papist.

This was not, in former times, held against Luther and the Lutherans, since everyone knew that it was precisely Luther through whom God revealed to groaning Christendom the mystery of iniquity — namely, disclosed to it the Antichrist at Rome — and led it out of the Roman Babel. (Compare 1 Thessalonians 2:1–12 and Revelation 14:6–11.) It is true, however, that all the heretics and fanatics who founded sects among the Protestants maintained that the Lutheran church still retained many popish remnants; that not Luther, but they themselves, were therefore the true reformers whom God had called to reform the church thoroughly. Among these belongs, among others, the well-known Dr. Andreas Carlstadt. For when Luther was absent from Wittenberg for a time in the years 1521–22 and had to keep himself hidden at the Wartburg, Carlstadt stirred up a dreadful tumult in Wittenberg, declaring that everything that had arisen under the papacy was godless and must therefore be abolished, and that the Reformation was proceeding too slowly. He accordingly had the images and altars in the churches smashed and thrown out, abolished private confession, ordered that the bread and the cup in the Holy Supper be taken with the hands, rejected the taking of doctoral and master's degrees and learning in general, and went about among unlearned, simple craftsmen asking them for guidance on difficult passages of Scripture. (When these objected that a learned doctor surely could not seek instruction from unstudied, simple laymen, he answered that it must be so, for Christ said that God had hidden his mysteries from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes. Matthew 11:25.) This fanaticism infected many students, who now abandoned their studies as carnal and harmful; the university fell into great decline — indeed the boys' school there was, on Carlstadt's advice, abolished altogether, and out of the buildings belonging to it benches were made for the bakers. After this Carlstadt moved to the countryside, took up farming, and would allow himself to be called nothing but "neighbor Andres."

21

This notorious Carlstadt was the first to reproach the Lutherans with being half-Papists, on account of the ceremonies they retained, and later also on account of the doctrine that in the Holy Supper the body and blood of Jesus Christ are truly present, and that by partaking of it one obtains a seal of the forgiveness of sins.(*) Luther mentions this in his last confession concerning the Holy Supper of 1544, in which he writes, among other things, that Carlstadt had reviled the Wittenbergers as "new Papists" on account of the elevation — that is, because they still, according to the old custom, raised the host aloft at the consecration. We find this also in Carlstadt's surviving writings. Among other things, Carlstadt writes in his "Exposition of the Words of Christ: This Is My Body," of the year 1525, that the Lutherans and their preachers are "double-dealing new Papists who act like senseless donkeys and horses"; Luther himself, however, he calls, on account of his retaining images, the crucifix, and the like, "the patron of idols," and, on account of the doctrine of the Holy Supper, "the new sophistic Papist, the Antichrist's begotten friend, the huckster of Scripture who, like the devil, wants to lead men out onto thin ice," and the like. Already the year before, Carlstadt had written in the tract "On the Anti-Christian Abuse of the Lord's Bread and Cup": "those who seek forgiveness of sins in the sacrament were indeed as mad and wicked as the popish priests . . . those who pay heed to the sacrament in order to receive Christ through the sacrament would do better to eat figs instead, etc." When, however, Carlstadt later fell into great distress, he recanted and wrote: "Had he foreseen these perilous times, no one should have gotten any of his books from him even with a wood-axe; he had therefore had to wander about in misery." Yet he fell back again into his error, and finally died at Basel, out of fear and terror, while the plague was raging there, in the year 1541.

This, then, is the first unfortunate fanatic who wanted to reform the church more thoroughly and who reproached the Lutheran church with remnants of the papacy. Following Carlstadt in this were the so-called Anabaptist heavenly prophets, Nic. Storch, Marcus Thomä, Marcus Stübner, Martin Cellarius, and Thomas

(*) It is remarkable that Carlstadt confesses to having arrived at his doctrine of the Holy Supper in a manner similar to Zwingli (see: Lutheraner, Vol. 1, No. 13, p. 3, note). For Carlstadt writes the following in his "Dialogue on the Dreadful Idolatrous Abuse of the Most Worthy Sacrament of Jesus Christ," of the year 1524: "he had learned it from one whose voice he heard, yet whom he did not see, and did not know how he came to him or went from him." As to the way in which truth is to be sought and found, Carlstadt had already indicated a year earlier, in his little book "What It Means to Be Resigned," as follows: a resigned man must also let go of Holy Scripture and not concern himself with the letter, etc. If one does not understand something, etc., he should earnestly desire from God his skill, hear what God wishes to say to him, and then fleeting thoughts will occur to him, which he should then confirm by the testimony of Holy Scripture. — Is this not the way of all our present-day fanatics, in how they seek and find truth? Whatever quickly runs through their heads as they pray, that they take for God's revelation, and to confirm it they then drag in Scripture by the hair.

Münzer of Zwickau, the latter of whom later became the head of the rebellious peasants in Swabia. When Luther refused to be dazzled by the great halo of sanctity that they spread about themselves, but rather exposed them, declared the divine revelations they claimed to have received to be diabolical inspirations, and would not go along with their rejection of infant baptism, these fanatical spirits then also slandered the work of the Lutheran Reformation and maintained that through Luther's "outward, literalistic character," as they called it, "a new papacy" was being introduced. — Here belongs finally, alongside other false teachers and adversaries of the Lutheran church, Zwingli, who likewise, like Carlstadt, declared the innocent ceremonies retained by Luther — the crucifix, the sign of the cross, the images, the altars, the priestly vestments, and the like, indeed also the doctrine that Christ is present in the Holy Supper — to be remnants of the papacy. To cite just one testimony to this: Zwingli, among other things, allowed the words to be woven into his confession intended for submission to the Emperor at Augsburg, "the Lutherans look back to the Egyptian fleshpots."(1) This too, therefore, belongs among the points of contention over which, for three hundred years, the entire Reformed church has disputed against the Lutheran church — whether the Lutheran church has the freedom to retain its ceremonies, or whether it must set them aside as something belonging to the antichristian nature of the Roman papal church. For example, in the Reformed Heidelberg Catechism, to the 98th question, "But may not images, as the books of the laity, be tolerated in the churches?" the following answer is given: "No: for we ought not to be wiser than God, who wills that his Christendom be instructed not by mute idols but by the living preaching of his Word." With this the Reformed thus declare the images which we Lutherans hang in our churches to be idols; they hereby deny us the freedom to use them, and thus attribute to us a worship service just as idolatrous as that of the Papists.

From this historical survey, which we believed we had to give before answering the above question, the kind reader will see from what sort of persons the accusation now being made again — that the old Lutheranism retains popish remnants — has always been raised, namely from our enemies.

(To be continued.)

(1) How far, indeed, Zwingli's truly senseless and ridiculous zeal for reform went with regard to church ceremonies may be seen from the fact that he even wanted, with all his might, to abolish the singing of hymns in church. To carry this through, he composed a petition addressed to the Council of Basel, which he did not read aloud in its presence but rather sang. When the Council expressed its astonishment at this manner of bringing a request before it, Zwingli replied that he had done it for the very purpose of convincing them, by the deed itself, how absurd it must also seem to God when one sings a petition to him. From this one sees where a man ends up when he follows, unexamined, the first impressions of his own perverse heart.