# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1857_S46
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

46 Lutheran-theological Pastor's Library.

"Great people also have lofty thoughts and their own peculiar temptations, into which we simple folk cannot always fit ourselves. Moses in his wrath smashes the two tablets on which the ten commandments stood written. Phinehas in his zeal stabs the unchaste Israelite. Samuel puts to death the king whom Saul, under a great show of piety, spared against God's word. St. Paul delivers the Corinthian incestuous man to the devil. God and his people also have their fiery zeal and burning wrath; just as it indeed often grieved our Doctor sorely at heart that his writings rushed forth like cloudbursts, and he many times wished that he could rain down as gently and sweetly as Master Philip and Sir Brenz;*) but one and the same spirit has manifold effects. We who travel the highway or the common footpath cannot and should not pursue those who leave the carriage-road and the beaten path and take their way cross-country through marsh, water, forests, hill and valley. Much less should we judge lightly of great men's earnestness, ardor, zeal, and vehemence; they have their own regulator and steward within them in the heart, who often gets the upper hand over them and stirs them up, drives them on and leads them often where they had not thought to go, just as God also grants good fortune to their ways

*) Matthesius no doubt refers here to what Luther writes in the preface to Brenz's exposition of the prophet Amos, namely: "But apart from the glorious testimony of the Spirit, I think so highly of your writings otherwise that my own books stink altogether by comparison when I hold them against yours and those of your like. And I do not flatter you in this; I invent nothing, nor do I speak anything in jest (that is, I am not joking either), so that I am not deceived in my judgment. For I do not praise Brentius, but the Spirit, who in you is far friendlier, more lovely and more peaceable than my spirit, and adorned besides with all manner of arts of eloquence. Hence your speech also flows far purer, clearer, and plainer than other people's; therefore it is also more pleasing to the reader and goes more to the heart. But my spirit, besides being untrained and unpolished in the liberal arts, does nothing but spew out a great forest and heap of words. So it has also had this fortune, that it is tumultuous and stormy, and is thus a fighter, and must forever be battling countless monstrous beasts; and if one may compare great things with small, then I have received, of the fourfold spirit of Elijah (1 Kings 19), the wind, the storm, and the fire that rends the mountains and shatters the rocks, while you and your like have received the lovely rushing and blowing, the still, gentle breeze that cools." (Luther's Works, XIV, 190, 191.) However sincerely meant this was, without doubt, on Luther's part, when he preferred Brenz's writings to his own, Brenz himself could not accept this praise. He answered Luther on this, among other things, as follows: "My Amos I have received, most reverend father; but what you ascribe to me in the preface I neither accept nor can I acknowledge it. Gladly indeed would I concede it, and I wish it with the deepest sighing, that Christ's Spirit might dwell in me, unworthy as I am among all shepherds. But when I read that you ascribe to my stammering (infantiae) I know not what arts and ornaments of speech, I turn red with shame; for I know full well that I have never attained such gifts, nor do I dream of them even in my sleep. You yourself, however, appear all the more admirable the more deeply you cast yourself down beneath both my stammering and that of my like, and in truth fulfill that word of Christ: whoever is least among you all, he shall be great. Luke 9." (Unschuldige Nachrichten, year 1743, pp. 643, 44.)