# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1858_S109
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Answer to a Voice from the Lutheran Church of Germany, etc.    109

...to make much of a dispute about it. We must confess that these
statements affect us very deeply and grieve us in our innermost soul.
For even granting that it were really nothing more than that one
departed from the manner of speaking of the old fathers and gave
occasion for confusion: the manner of speaking of the fathers is indeed
in accordance with the pattern of sound words, and a contrary manner of
speaking is thus opposed to this pattern; but to give occasion for
confusion means, in fact, to give occasion for error, sin, and mortal
danger to souls. Should that not be worth a serious struggle against,
and do not we Lutherans wish, in rebus as well as in phrasibus, nevermore
to depart "from the divine truth once recognized and confessed by our
godly forefathers and by us, as it is grounded in prophetic and
apostolic Scripture, and further contained in the three Symbols, as well
as in the Augsburg Confession, delivered in the year 1530 to Emperor
Charles V of most gracious memory, in the Apology that followed
thereupon, in the Smalcald Articles, and in the Large and Small
Catechism of the most enlightened man Dr. Luther?" But here there is
indeed more; here it is not merely a divergent manner of speaking, but
error and false doctrine. And we Lutherans — sons of the church that God
had once called to expose the Antichrist and to bring the eternal gospel
back to light out of the rubble of human ordinances; a church that, in
its noblest members, was ever and again filled with holy hatred against
every lie and error, even the smallest; a church that evidently has the
calling, as a faithful confessor, to exercise the divine office of
witness in the confusion of this latest troubled time — should we be
able to keep silent here? Should we not think it worth the trouble to
make much of a dispute about it? Ah, surely you could not have spoken
so, if you had clearly recognized the false principles of our opponents
as such, had inwardly overcome them, and had cast them out as a poison
dangerous to the soul. O, therefore, do not cease, with the willingness
that the kind Lord and God has given you, to search further into the
matter, and do not rest until you have fled back, wholly and
completely, out of the unspeakable confusion of our time, to the
rock-solid ground of the wholesome Lutheran doctrine. Then you will
understand us all at once, then all your anxious misgivings will fall
away, then you too will feel yourself constrained in conscience to
fight, together with us, unto death the battle that the Lord has
appointed for us, and will judge our controversy with Grabau worthy of
greater attention than heretofore. May these lines, written in great
weakness but in sincere love and heartfelt goodwill, be blessed to that
end through his kindly grace, and be deemed worthy by him to help you,
and through you others also, to the conviction that we go our own way
neither in doctrine nor in practice, but that through his undeserved
grace we have simply returned to the pure doctrine of our fathers, and
that, out of great distress of our consciences, we fight for this
treasure against all the corruptions of our plague-ridden age.