# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 02 09_S68
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

False and displeasing to God, therefore, is the union which the nominal Lutherans and the Reformed have made in our days, and which they call the "evangelical" or also the "united church." There are two faiths in one church, or rather two religions mixed and united into a third. And indeed the "United" themselves confess that they did this "for the sake of brotherly love." Thus not out of love for God and his holy Word. For truth is a matter of indifference to them, because alongside truth they also acknowledge error as valid. From which it follows clearly that indifference is the true ground of the union.

The Lutheran Church has from the beginning protested against all indifference, half-measures, and vagueness in matters of faith, by which one sought to take from the truth, for the sake of a false peace, its salting and cutting sharpness. For truth heals only then, offers leaves for health only then, after it has first wounded and divided soul and spirit, even marrow and bone. Therefore, in the struggle, it has always held up the truth before its opponents in its full divine greatness, fullness, and definiteness, because it hopes for peace with them only when they are conquered by love for the truth.

People have often misjudged the holy earnestness with which the Lutherans defended their faith; their steadfastness has been called obstinacy, their joyful confession of faith scolded as defiance, and their faithfulness, by which they fulfilled the Lord's command, "Hold fast what you have, that no one take your crown!", has been taken for self-righteous stubbornness. But in doing so it was not considered that they were fighting not for earthly but for heavenly goods, not for their own honor but for God's honor, and therefore could not yield for the sake of human considerations. And just as decisively as they rejected every sham peace, they sought a true union with their opponents on the basis of unanimous doctrine. For how can the multitude of believers be of one heart and one soul, if they are divided in doctrine and in faith? From faith, love necessarily proceeds; therefore we must strive after unity of faith, and then the bond of love will unite us of itself.

We take an example from history, in which lies for us at once both instruction and model of how we too must wage the holy struggle for the full, undiminished, and unimpaired possession of evangelical truth and for true peace: the history of the Marburg Colloquy. And let Luther's word stand here as an introduction: We gladly want to accept peace, if only we do not thereby lose the peace with God which Christ has won for us.

It is well known that it was not the Lutherans but the Reformed who began the dispute over the doctrine of the holy Lord's Supper. For Zwingli and his associates spread ruinous errors about it, which Luther of course had to refute, upholding the pure doctrine against them. Unfortunately the Reformed did not accept it, but rejected it ever more resolutely, until at last they fell away from the Lutheran Church and founded a sect of their own.

So it is plain that the Reformed are to blame that so lamentable a division arose in the church; for although Luther proved to them from God's Word that their doctrine of the Lord's Supper was false, they nevertheless did not give it up. But it is a dreadful crime to deny the truth and to found sects in which the salvation of so many immortal souls is brought into extreme danger through ruinous errors. Therefore the Reformed were continually driven by their evil conscience to make good their guilt and to restore the peace they had disturbed. Would that they had always gone about it sincerely and honestly!

The first attempt was made by Bucer and Capito, the preachers of the churches at Strasbourg, in the year 1525. They sent Chasel to Luther with the request to unite with them in the doctrine of the Lord's Supper. Luther answered: "We wish for nothing more than peace, which we have hitherto both taught and, so far as it depended on us, kept and carried with all care, as your (the Reformed's) own conscience bears witness, that we did not first begin this dispute, but answered only under compulsion." The Strasbourgers then proposed as a means of union: "That the believers be drawn entirely away from all questions about the presence of the body and blood in the holy Lord's Supper, and be exercised only in Word and faith." They thus intended only an outward union with the Lutherans, in which they would not be compelled to admit and give up their errors. "But," Luther replied to them, "that counsel is worth nothing. With us, Word and faith are not without the thing on which they rely, since the words themselves contain this very sense — whether the body and the blood are present there. And one can no longer draw the people away from it, after they (the Reformed) have let out and made common so many writings. They ought first to have kept silent. Now they demand silence too late." In the reply given to Chasel to carry back, he then refutes the Reformed false doctrine of the holy Lord's Supper, and asks the Strasbourgers, for Christ's sake, not to grieve the Holy Spirit, but to guard against error and cease leading souls astray; "for," he adds, "here is the utmost danger to souls."

Meanwhile Luther's earnest and sincerely meant warning did not have the desired effect among the Reformed, for they persisted in their error — indeed, they formally condemned Luther's doctrine of the holy Lord's Supper in an assembly at Bern, in the year 1528. Thus the division which they had brought about in the church grew ever greater and more incurable, on account of which, naturally, their conscience troubled and accused them. They therefore sought anew a union with the Lutherans. Bucer, with his Strasbourgers, in the year 1529 pressed the Landgrave Philip of Hesse to use his influence to bring about a religious colloquy between both parties. The Landgrave consented, because he hoped that the Lutherans and the Reformed would form a common alliance against the Emperor, once they had first united with one another in doctrine.

Already this manner in which the Reformed sought peace with the Lutherans inspires no confidence in their sincerity. Why did they call upon a prince to involve himself in their affair, and did not turn directly to the theologians instead? Luther saw through them, as his letter to the governor testifies: "It appears to me that they (the Reformed) are seeking, through Your Princely Grace's flesh, some little advantage from which nothing good can come.... I know well what the devil is after. But God grant that I am not a prophet in this. For if it were not a false trick but true earnestness on their part to seek peace, they would not need to undertake such a grand approach through great, powerful princes; for we, by God's grace, are not so uncouth and wild. They could long ago, and still now, have offered us in writing their humble effort toward peace, as they claim."

Therefore he hoped little from a religious colloquy. "I ask this," he writes to the Landgrave, "that Your Princely Grace would graciously consider, or also find out, whether the other side would also be inclined to yield somewhat from their opinion, so that in the end the evil may not grow worse, and the very opposite come about of what Your Princely Grace now so earnestly and heartily seeks. For what would it help to come together and confer, if both sides come with the intention of yielding nothing at all?... For I know well that I will not yield to them in the least, nor can I, because I am fully certain for myself that they are in error, while they themselves are even uncertain of their own opinion. For as I have sufficiently learned all their grounds in this matter, so they too have well seen my grounds..." "I know a few," Luther says in his opinion concerning this religious colloquy, "who, I hope, might be moved to abandon their error, namely, Hedio and Ambrosius Blaarer, but with the others it would grow worse, and afterward more unrest might well come of it. To deal with Zwingli is entirely fruitless." The outcome, unfortunately, shows all too plainly how well Luther knew his opponents.

Nevertheless Luther declared himself willing to enter into a religious colloquy with the Reformed. "For I [wish to keep] the honor, with truth...