# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1856_S240
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

240 Lutheran-Theological Pastor's Library.

1586, on the 8th of April, he died. That a Lutheran should praise the divine gift which was given to our precious Church through this man, not only once but for all time, is the less necessary since even our adversaries have seen this gift shine so brightly before their eyes that they could not help but bestow upon our Chemnitz praises verging on the incredible. Well known is the saying of the Papists: Vos habuistis duos Martinos: si posterior non venisset, prior non stetisset — that is, "You (Lutherans) have two Martins: had the second not come, the first would not have remained standing." Another remarkable judgment on Chemnitz from the side of a Roman Catholic is perhaps less well known. Löscher relates it in his Unschuldige Nachrichten. "When, namely," it is said there, "about the year 1578 the princely Brunswick councillor Dr. Joachim Götzen was staying at Trent as an envoy, and one day was dining there with three cardinals, one of them, who among them all seemed the most learned and the best disposed, put to him the question which of the German theologians was now held in the highest esteem. Götzen answered that some gave the preference to Heerbrand, Schnepf, Osiander, Jacob Andreä, Heshusius; there were, however, many others besides, praised by many no less, who were unknown to him. The Cardinal replied that in Germany there was a certain Martin Chemnitz, a Doctor of Theology, in a city called Brunswick, a man of quite outstanding learning and probably the foremost among the theologians of Germany. This man, he said, had written a certain book against the Tridentine Council, from which it plainly appeared that through the negligence of the bishops many dreadful and exceedingly grave errors had crept into the Church, which they themselves, whether they would or not, were compelled to admit. He must also freely and openly confess that among all the theologians of Germany there had until then been none who, since the death of that Martin Luther, had done more harm to the Roman Church than that Martin Chemnitz had done through that writing of his. He therefore paid him his admiration and freely granted him, before all the theologians of Germany, the palm in learning, and wished for nothing more than once to see him and to be able to converse with him about the whole religious controversy." Dr. Götzen thereupon charged a friend of Chemnitz's to make this publicly expressed judgment known to him in writing, whereupon Chemnitz, under date of September 14, 1579, replied among other things as follows: "'Your report of the judgment of certain Papists has been agreeable to me — not that I took so much delight in my own praise (for the older I grow, the more I perceive how paltry, indeed how sullied, are all those writings with which I have hitherto, in no ill spirit, sought to serve the edification of the Church), but because I gratefully admire that goodness of God whereby, through things foolish and weak, as Paul says in 1 Cor. 1:27,