# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1857_S50
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

50 From a Letter of a Preacher of the Missouri Synod to a Fellow Minister, etc.

be, so that they drew conclusions of which the merest beginner in logic would be ashamed, and yet could no longer grasp the simplest and clearest lines of reasoning. — The fourth writing, finally, is: "Short Confession Concerning the Holy Supper, Anno 1544." Luther wrote this work after the Zurichers had shortly before published together all of Zwingli's writings along with an apology by Rudolph Walther, including even that piece in which Zwingli declared all religions to be a matter of indifference, expressing in it his joy at one day, in eternal life, seeing and associating with a Hercules, a Cicero, a Cato, and other godless heathen. In this writing, Schwenckfeld's sacramentarian fanaticism is also refuted. — In conclusion we repeat: whoever has not yet read these writings does not yet know what Christian polemics is. Let whoever can read, read them; and if he is not a stubborn, reason-proud enemy of the Word of God, his reverence for God's Word will thereby be increased, his faith mightily strengthened, the gift of testing the spirits awakened and enlarged, hatred against false doctrine and willfully false teachers kindled in him, and his insight into the coherence of the doctrines of divine revelation made greater and deeper. Whoever, however, sets the dictates of his own reason and the feelings and promptings of his heart above God's Word; his own honor and that of others above God's honor; temporal ease, comfortable living, peace and unity among men above obedience toward God and peace with God — let him not read those writings; for they would become to him a savor of death unto death, and would only increase his coming judgment. Our wish, however, is that God would grant repentance unto life to all self-wise enemies and perverters of the truth.

Amen!

(To be continued.)

(Submitted.)

From a Letter of a Preacher of the Missouri Synod to a Fellow Minister in the Prussian-Lutheran Church.

— — — You further say that "in doctrinal controversy it is easier for you to render a judgment, since you have books from both sides and could compare the writings of both parties with God's Word," etc. Dear, beloved friend, you cannot possibly have read our own writings; for where have we ever taught that confused doctrine of which you accuse us in what follows, namely that "every member of the church is a called preacher," etc. We teach now and never anything other than what is contained clearly and irrefutably, according to the plain sense of the words, in the symbolical books. Such passages as you cite, for instance, from Veit Dietrich's catechism sermons — to which many similar ones could still be added — do indeed emphasize