# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 01 26_S62
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

"...is." When, therefore, the catechumens (those who had registered for baptism) surrendered themselves to the crucified Christ, their forehead and breast were marked with the cross as a sign of faith and confession of Christ. From the baptism of catechumens the sign of the cross, like most other ceremonies, passed over to infant baptism." (Loc. theol., Bapt., § 261.) "Can," Gerhard writes in another place, "the forming of the sign of the cross over the bread and the cup (in the Holy Supper) be disapproved of? Answer: this is a free ceremony; when it is used as a sign of blessing and consecration, but no spiritual power whatsoever is ascribed to it, ... one thereby renews the remembrance of the cross of Christ, that is, of the suffering of Christ on the cross, which is the source of all blessing, just as the laying on of hands is used as an outward sign at absolution and at church ordination. Chrysostom (Hom. 55 on Matthew*) and Augustine (Tract. 118 on John) mention that the sign of the cross was formerly used at the celebration of the Holy Supper." (Loc. th., S. Coena, § 156.) — This will, we hope, be enough to convince every impartial person that the marking with the holy cross is anything but something papistic.
(To be continued.)

Whoever rejects one article of faith rejects them all, and renders reprehensible everything else good that he otherwise does.

(From Luther's Last Short Confession Concerning the Holy Supper, of the year 1544.)

O dear man! whoever will not believe the article concerning the Supper — how then will he ever more and more believe the article of the divinity and humanity of Christ in one person? And if it troubles you that you receive the body of Christ orally when you eat the bread from the altar — likewise that you receive the blood of Christ orally when you drink the wine in the Supper — then it must certainly trouble you far more (especially when the hour comes) how the infinite and incomprehensible Godhead is, and must be, everywhere in essence, and yet is bodily enclosed and comprehended in the humanity and in the body of the Virgin, as St. Paul says, Col. 1:19: "In him dwells the whole fullness of the Godhead bodily."

And how is it possible that you should believe that the Son alone became man, not the Father, nor the Holy Spirit, when yet the three persons are nothing other than the one God in the one, most single essence and nature of the one Godhead? How can this be reconciled? How is it possible that the one, whole, perfect Godhead of the Son should thus divide or separate itself, so that it is at once united with the humanity, while that same one Godhead of the Father and the Holy Spirit is not united with the humanity? And yet the very same Godhead in Christ, together with the humanity, is at once one person — and not the Father or the Holy Spirit. Oh, how they will first properly rave, stagger, and rant when they come to this point! There they will find plenty to interpret; as I hear, they are already boldly and heartily heading that way with Eutychianism and Nestorianism.*) For this I already expected, and have also said, that they would have to come to this point; the devil cannot rest; where he establishes one heresy, he must establish more, and no error remains alone. When a ring is broken in one place, it is no longer a ring, no longer holds together, and keeps on breaking further.

And even though they boast a great deal that they believe this article concerning the person of Christ, and talk much about it, you should nevertheless not believe it; they certainly lie about everything they say concerning it; with their mouth they do indeed say it (just as in the Gospel the devils also call the Lord the Son of God, Mark 5:7), but the heart is far from it (Matt. 15:8); that is certain. Just as the Jews swore by the living God, yet swore falsely, says the prophet. The Turk also praises the name of God, but at death one finds out who their god is. For it is certain: whoever does not rightly believe, or will not believe, one article (after having been admonished and instructed) certainly believes none in earnest and true faith. And whoever is so bold that he dares to deny God, or to condemn as a lie, in a single word, and does this willfully against and beyond what he has once or twice been admonished and instructed, he certainly also dares (and indeed does) to deny God, and to condemn as lies, in all his words.

Therefore it is said: round and pure, whole and entirely believed. The Holy Spirit does not let itself be separated or divided — except where there are weak ones who are ready to let themselves be instructed and are not stubbornly contradicting. Otherwise, if it were to hold true that it would do a person no harm to deny one article while holding all the others to be right (though at bottom this is impossible), then no heretic would ever be condemned, nor could there be any heretic on earth at all. For all heretics are of this kind: that they first begin with one article, and afterward all the rest must, one and all, likewise be denied — just as a ring that gets a crack or a scratch is no longer of any use at all, and where a bell cracks in one place, it no longer rings either, and is altogether useless. Let the examples teach you this. Arius took up this one single article, that Christ was not God but a creature; all the other articles — and especially that God the Father is the one God, Creator of heaven and earth, that Christ died for our sin, that there is baptism, sacrament, the keys, resurrection of the dead, and eternal life — these he believed, so his own words suggest, even more devoutly than true Christians believe; and yet Holy Scripture stands there and testifies that he believed no article at all. For thus says St. John, 1 John 2:23: "Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; whoever confesses the Son has the Father also," etc. If then Arius does not have the Son and the Father, then he also has no God, nor Creator of heaven and earth; that is, it does not help him that with his mouth he calls and highly praises God the Father as Creator of heaven and earth — although indeed there is no other God who is Creator of heaven and earth than the very one whom Arius names with his lying mouth — yet to him, Arius, this one is not a God, because he denies and blasphemes his one Son Christ, saying that he is not God. 1) Thus to him baptism is no longer baptism, forgiveness of sins is no longer forgiveness of sins, sacrament is no sacrament — that is, it no longer profits him, even though he was previously rightly baptized and had received true forgiveness and a true sacrament. Thus he has lost all the articles of faith, because he denies the true God of the faith, Christ, and no article is of any use to him, nor can he believe any article with true earnestness, but must use them all together for his own damnation, as the second commandment says: "You shall not misuse the name of your God." Exod. 20:7. There you hear that even the true, holy name of God does not help, but rather harms, those who do not rightly believe but misuse it. Hence the fathers also disputed whether the baptism of the Arians was true baptism as well. Thus one misfortune always comes out of another. Macedonius, bishop of Constantinople, the heretic, also believed all the articles, except

*) By Nestorianism is to be understood the heresy of Nestorius, a patriarch of Constantinople, who taught that the Godhead and manhood in Christ were not united in one person, and who therefore denied that Mary was a mother of God. This heresy was publicly condemned at the third ecumenical council at Ephesus in the year 431. The Reformed, however, have taken up this heresy again, in that they too, like Nestorius, separate the Godhead and manhood of Christ. — By Eutychianism is to be understood the heresy of Eutyches of Constantinople, that in Christ the Godhead and manhood were fused together into one nature. Whereas Nestorius separated the natures, Eutyches mixed them together, and other fanatics have again fallen into the Eutychian heresy, which, however, was already condemned at the fourth ecumenical council at Chalcedon in the year 451. D. H.

1) Also in America (and among others also in this city) there are preachers who deny the divinity of Christ, and who nevertheless find hearers who regard them as Christian preachers. O blindness! Whoever does not hold Christ to be the true God, begotten of the Father in eternity, is, according to Scripture, an atheist — however much such a godless belly-priest may prattle on about the "dear Father in heaven"; such prating in a clerical coat is nothing but the fool's rope by which such a swindler leads his poor hearers on Sunday, so that he may get money from them to serve his true god, the beer mug, during the weekdays.