# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S28
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 28 —

one may not, however, also regard other later books against this, since such has been corrected or, as one might say, renewed?" (Luther's Letters, edited by de Wette, V, 606 f. Compare Luther's Works, Halle ed., XXI, 1570.)

Second, it may be useful to learn how it came about that, after God let us recognize this truth, the erroneous views now so widely held gained entrance and spread. And there one finds that the intentions of high personages to contract such marriages first caused jurists and theologians, who were consulted by such lords and who wanted thereby to gain or keep their lords' favor, to declare such marriages permissible. V. E. Löscher writes about this at greater length:

"The question about the sister of a deceased wife seems to have given the first and greatest occasion for some to restrict the prohibition to the persons alone. But when one looks at the history of this controversy, the fence was first broken through to please great lords, and so the prejudice of the flesh, here of the wanton, there flattering for the sake of its own advantage, made the beginning. Bucholtzer, Bruckner, and finally the Oettingenses have beyond all doubt spoken to please great lords. It goes with this just as with falling away from the Gospel: when a lord has first fallen away in his heart through lusts or political aims, he seeks both to lull his own conscience to sleep and to give the apostasy some appearance before the world; he therefore sets up Colloquia, or has questions and Dubia addressed to those whose hypocrisy he is already generally assured of; and so that it may not be noticed so easily, now and then one honest man is also slipped in; then the conviction is to be secure. So it goes in forbidden marriages. First the flesh prevails in inclination, desire, and purpose; it seeks to justify this, and wishes that the divine prohibition might have another sense; finally it grows stronger and determines the captive soul actually to adopt such a sense; thereupon it seeks to fortify itself against the general sense and to gloss it over by the assent of others. Now there is nothing in the world so fleshly and sinful that it would not be approved by flattery. The flesh is crafty and looks about beforehand to see where it may be assured of the Consensus; there it falls in, and when it has obtained only one, it stops its ears against all objection, however sound, so that it may not be disturbed in its security. This is probably the first source by which the divine prohibition was perverted in our Church. When Duke Augustus Philippus in Holstein took this way (1650), he would hardly have found a Lutheran theologian who (would have) complied with his intention. But he had presumably heard from one jurisconsult and another that they would be the first to open the barriers to conscience. So it had to be Bucholtzer at Rinteln who, for a great lord, according to his