# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1857_S47
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lutheran-theological Pastor's Library. 47

and blessing, and guides the journey out wonderfully, so that everyone must cross themselves and bless themselves over it." (7th sermon, p. 69.) Moreover, Luther himself knew quite well that it was not merely a lack of gift "to tread softly and gently" when his speech so often stormed forth like a thunderstorm. He himself therefore writes further, in the above-cited preface to Brenz's commentary, as follows: "Yet I comfort myself, for I hold it to be so — indeed, I know rather — that God, the Father of the household in heaven, also needs for his great household one or more servants who must be hard against hard and stern against stern. Just as a hard iron wedge belongs on a knotty branch; and when God sends lightning and flashes of storm, it is not enough that rain alone should fall upon it, to make everything moist, but thunder must also follow, to move everything, and lightning too, to purify the air, so that the earth may bear better and more fruit." (Loc. cit.) At the same time, however, in order rightly to understand Luther's polemics, one must not overlook that Luther's angry expressions were directed not so much against his human opponents as against Satan, who spoke through them, and of whom Luther knew only too well what he now had in mind, after the Reformation had done him such great harm. Luther therefore writes in his tract against Carlstadt: "I care nothing for Dr. Carlstadt; I do not look at him, but at the one who has possessed him and speaks through him." (XX, 274.) Yet, before we now name the most important of Luther's polemical writings against the Reformed themselves, allow us to share with our honored readers one more beautiful testimony to Luther's personality, from the mouth of a contemporary and disciple of his, who had much converse with the great hero of the faith — a testimony which, alongside those already shared, may serve to make our readers approach the reading of Luther's polemical writings with a heart the more open to the truth. It is a testimony from Dr. Erasmus Alberus, court preacher to the Elector Joachim of Brandenburg and finally general superintendent in Mecklenburg, who died in 1553.*) He writes in a book directed against Carlstadt: "Dr. Luther was a man who could hold back the wrath of God; no one could pray more diligently and earnestly, and call upon God; no one could console better; no one could preach better. He was a man without guile; he was hostile to liars and the double-tongued; he loved sincerity; he hated greed; he was an enemy of arrogance; drunkenness and unchastity were unknown to him. One perceived no anger in him, except when he was in the field against Papists and fanatics; there one saw the anger of the Holy Spirit, and not that of a man.**) He had a fine, clear, bold countenance and eyes like a falcon's

*) Once this Alberus asked Luther for guidance on how one ought to preach at the courts of great princes, and received the brief answer: "Nicely foolish, as his name suggests."

**) It is altogether a false notion that many have of the difference between