# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 03 23_S83
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

flying out and breaking arm and leg, on account of which they now want revenge. Or have they perhaps broken their own confirmation vow? But who can help us track this down any further? Peter Schmucker says that the confirmation machine was invented in heathen and papist Rome, and that the Reformers fetched it from there. But he does not say at all what the thing looks like, whether it is a kind of conversion machine, or a steam engine, and so forth, nor how the Reformers transported it — whether by land or by water, on wagons or on ships, and so on. Nor does he indicate how many dozen Reformers were involved, although we know of only one. In any case, Peter Schmucker stands far above the Reformers, for he lectures them that they should have left the confirmation machine behind in Rome. Afterward, however, John Bier says again that the confirmation machine is still in Rome, for the Roman Catholic bishops still confirm and, in doing so, give the poor children slaps on the cheek! — One really must be a converted Methodist to understand such nonsense. Probably others, writing under the names of John Bier and Peter Schmucker, only wanted to play a poor carnival joke during Lent. But should Peter Schmucker really have invented a confirmation machine, then let him not withhold his secret from the world, but soon give out the recipe for it.

After Peter Schmucker has so valiantly disputed with the gigantic monster of the confirmation machine — which exists nowhere but in his imagination — he ventures upon a second, equally dangerous battle with another, if possible even more dreadful monster. Eager for a fight, he peers about in the halls of the Lutheran Church, and — oh, horror! — what does old Peter behold there? Hear, O Christendom, this unheard-of thing: Lutherans, you have already heard many a specimen of sectarian folly in this land, yet all of it was pure gold and precious stone compared to the profound wisdom of this old Methodist father. For he beholds in the halls of the Lutheran Church, besides the "unbiblical and sin-stained confirmation machine," a second "unbiblical" giant in the form of the "heathen sacrament," which carries on its ghastly game there in broad daylight. So many have gone in and out of the Christian Church for 1800 years now, yet no one had seen this dreadful ghost until now — until Peter Schmucker appeared, before whose enlightened eyes it naturally tries in vain to hide. For Peter does not merely see ghosts — other fools do that too — but he also fights them with the invincible weapons of the Methodist armory. You can easily imagine, then, that he cannot calmly look upon the heathen sacrament, but falls into holy Methodist zeal and undertakes against it one of those terrible, ever-victorious attacks which his teacher, Don Quixote de la Mancha, of glorious memory, once carried out against windmills. Clad in the impenetrable armor of ignorance, and full of the most burning hatred against all higher Christian learning and scholarship, he spurs on his spirited hobby-horse of fanaticism and charges at his well-matched opponent along the bottomless paths of delusion, dealing him, with the sword of his senseless speech, the most sensitive blows upon thin air. He says: "Since the word 'sacrament' is a heathen word, which is not found in the Bible, the Reformers should have left it where they found it, namely in heathen and papal Rome." Here you see old Peter at his daily work, reforming the "Reformers" by conscientiously showing them the means by which they, already in their own time, should have corrupted the Church so as to spare him this labor. Of course, this "Reformer of the Reformers" does not know that the word "sacrament" has been used since ancient times in the Christian Church by the best teachers — an Augustine, an Ambrose, etc. — to designate such means of grace as Baptism and the Lord's Supper, in distinction from other sacred acts, so that the word "sacrament" has thereby acquired a thoroughly Christian meaning. And yet Mr. Jacobi had, in the Apologist, expressed the quite correct proposition that the Christian Church can be recognized precisely by the sacrament — by which he falls into the most manifest contradiction with Schmucker. What? Has the kingdom of fanaticism then fallen out with itself? Is the son against the father, Jacob against Peter, and Peter against Jacob? So it is; one man rants this way, another that way, one so, another so; each has the right to proclaim his own notions and the inspirations of the fanatical spirit as if they were a gospel. Hence it comes about that the Apologist teems with contradictions, that it calls something heathen today which it calls Christian tomorrow, etc., and that it thereby serves its readers those spicy, wonderfully mixed dishes of sense and nonsense, admirably calculated to rob the poor Germans of the last bit of sound Christian understanding, and to instill in the "unconverted" Lutherans the deepest disgust at the stale, shallow, and childish talk of Methodist wisdom. — Yet it is true, one must also acknowledge and respect the merits of one's opponents: the fanatics are not so divided among themselves as it seems; they are united in their common struggle against all higher learning and Christian scholarship. Just as once, at the time of the Reformation, those obscurantists, those blind papist monks, raged against every light of Christian knowledge, so do their worthy successors, the Methodists of our own day, who exert every effort to keep the people in Methodist ignorance. Hence that lovely pair of twins, folly and pride, finds an ever quicker entrance among that sect and already forms one of its chief ornaments. It especially adorns the "old father" Schmucker, who for this reason rejects the word "sacrament," because it is a heathen word and does not stand in the Bible. By the same right, old Peter would also have to reject the words Trinity, Testament, glory, apologist, etc., since these words, according to their literal derivation, belong to a heathen language. If he really wishes to use no word that is not found in the Bible, then he may use neither the German nor the English language, since both are originally heathen. It is therefore to be presumed that old Father Schmucker preaches in Greek and Hebrew — if indeed he knows that such languages exist at all. Such are the conclusions to which Schmucker's absurd assertions compel us. All the more repugnant, in his case, is his constant appeal to the Bible, since he himself tramples it underfoot and openly mocks it. Where are the shameful abominations of the mourner's-bench machine commanded? They are plainly forbidden in the words of 1 Corinthians 14:40: Let all things be done decently and in order. Where is it commanded that old Peter Schmucker should let himself be called "Father," like the Pope in Rome? It is plainly forbidden in Matthew 23:9: Call no man your father upon the earth, for one is your Father, who is in heaven. And yet old Schmucker pretends to rage against the Pope, while doing exactly the same thing as the "most holy Father." But it disgusts us to waste any more words on the follies of that sect. The kindly reader knows that it does no good to hold the truth up to the Methodists in intelligible language in order to improve them; they simply refuse to listen, but rave on instead; so let them rave — in the end it will surely turn out as it must. What they do against God's Word, against their own conscience, and against the decided protest of the Lutheran Church, they do at their own soul's peril. Let therefore every sincere person among them be faithfully and heartily warned. But against Schmucker the rule of Holy Scripture applies: Proverbs 26:5: Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.
H. Fick.

Subscription for Dr. Martin Luther's Kirchenpostille [Church Postil], an unaltered reprint after the Walch edition of 1737.

The work will appear in one large volume of about 1300 to 1400 pages, well bound, for $5.00, and is to be completed, if possible, by November 1, 1847. Printing will begin as soon as 1000 genuine subscribers are secured.

When announcing the Hauspostille [House Postil], we promised that, should the undertaking meet with a favorable reception, we would also proceed with a reprint of Dr. Luther's Kirchenpostille.