# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1846 11 17_S31
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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., November 17, 1846.

No. 6.

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.

Friedrich Myconius.

An instructive and edifying life story, newly retold from old writings.

Third Chapter.
On Myconius's Faithful Evangelical Daily Labor.

As soon as Myconius had escaped his persecutors, he now began to preach publicly the One whom he had already confessed in the monastery amid so many trials. From Buchholz he went to Zwickau — at least we find him there in the year 1524, and from there he wrote a letter of comfort to the friends of the Gospel in Annaberg. Indeed, in that same year the Lord brought him to the place of labor where he persevered until his end. At the request of the council, the congregation, the dean, the chapter, and the office, he was called by Duke John to be preacher at Gotha, and he moved there about the Feast of the Assumption (August 15). In and around the city of Gotha, as well as throughout the whole Thuringian district, of which Myconius later became superintendent, he earned the greatest merit by his planting of the Gospel there. Besides this, he also served other regions and lands with the gift lent him by the Lord, and took an active part in several important religious negotiations, as we shall now briefly relate.

Among his first labors was to put to use, for the establishment of schools and the endowment of pastorates, the parish estates that had until then been swallowed up by monks and nuns. It cost no small effort, as he himself says, "to build a new house out of the old, worm-eaten, crumbling timber," and in order to set the matter in order it was necessary to wade against the current and to pull everything out of the very midst of the fire. He had to deal with this matter into his very last years. At the same time, it was also necessary to resist those who, under a false understanding of evangelical freedom, wanted to turn everything upside down.

For in the year 1525 there arose the well-known Peasants' Revolt, which in Thuringia and Franconia was led especially by Thomas Münzer. It was then achieved, chiefly through Myconius's efforts and preaching, that all revolt was kept away from the city of Gotha and its district. Likewise he persuaded a band of rebellious peasants at Ichtershausen — who wanted to raze the castles of Gleichen, Mühlberg, and Wechsenburg and to drive out the nobility — to disperse.

For the sake of chronology it may be noted here at once that in the following year (1526) Myconius, following Luther's example, resolved upon marriage, and wed a respectable maiden, the daughter of a citizen of Gotha, Bartholomäus Jacke, who bore him nine children, of whom at most four survived him.

Further, in the year 1527 he had opportunity to preach the Gospel in many places where it had never before been heard. The reigning electoral prince of the time, Duke John Frederick — the later Elector and faithful martyr of the Gospel — made a journey at the beginning of that year into the region of Cleves, in order to become acquainted with his bride, Sibylla, daughter of Duke John of Cleves. In his retinue he had also our Myconius, who had to preach before him daily. This took place in many cities, and also at Düsseldorf, in the castle. A Franciscan monk, Johann Korbach, took offense at this, and a disputation arose between him and Myconius, in which the latter overcame the monk — quite in accordance with 1 Peter 3:15-16 — by his gentleness as well as by his understanding of the divine Word.

But soon there was more important work to do at home, for in that same year began the visitation of the churches and schools, which the Elector had carried out in his lands, and which lasted until the year 1529. Myconius was drawn into this as well, and together with Melanchthon and Justus Jonas, and the secular councilors Johann von Planitz, Dr. Hieronymus Schurf, and Erasmus von Hangwitz, undertook the visitation of Thuringia, where the work was begun. This visitation was repeated once more in the year 1533, and Myconius again took part, together with Melanchthon, Justus Menius, pastor at Eisenach, Christoph von Planitz, Georg von Wagenhein, and Johann Cotta, mayor of Eisenach.

The greatest difficulty in this visitation lay in finding where sufficient salaries for the preachers could be obtained; for the common people, although freed from all the burden and oppression of the mendicant monks, were nevertheless unwilling to yield up much to their pastors, and among the nobility some had appropriated the church properties to themselves, so that force now had to be used to wrest them again from their hands. Yet Myconius, with his helpers, managed "with great care, effort, and labor" to bring it about that every parish now had its teacher and dedicated income, and every town its school and whatever belongs to the church. "Ah, dear God" — sighs the pious man in telling this story — "thou hast granted that it is well arranged; grant also that it may be well kept and preserved."

It would take us too far afield to enumerate individually everything that Myconius helped to carry out for the church during that laborious and blessed time. Let it therefore merely be mentioned that he was present at the convention at Nuremberg (in 1532) and at that at Frankfurt (in 1539); likewise, that he attended the religious colloquy at Marburg between Luther and Zwingli (in 1529), and the meeting for the concluding of the Wittenberg Concord (in 1536). Only two of his principal undertakings from the later years of his life shall be related.

The first of these seems very honorable and important, but in the end proved very disagreeable. King Henry VIII of England — at first so zealous a friend of the papacy that he himself wrote a treatise in its defense — later showed himself favorably disposed toward the Gospel, entered into relations with the Protestant princes, and, at his repeated request, an embassy set out for England in the year 1538. It included Franz Burckhard, vice-chancellor of the Elector of Saxony, Georg von Boyneburg, a Hessian nobleman and doctor of both laws, and once again our Friedrich Myconius. King Henry appointed three bishops and four doctors of theology; with these the envoys negotiated an entire summer over the Augsburg Confession, without their being able to fault a single article on the ground of Scripture or reason, "so that throughout all England a common hope arose that Christ would there gain place and room." The king also commanded that the Gospel be preached purely, but nonetheless the sacrifice of the Mass, communion