# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1846 12 22_S102
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

in their church, and will not tolerate the serpent in their paradise, nor the devil among the children of God. Job 1. Let them go their way, and walk after the imagination of their own heart, as Psalm 81 says.

(Submitted.)
Priestly Deception from the Sixteenth Century.

The following story provides us with a sad proof of how the Roman Church often resorts to the most pitiable means in order to confirm souls that are wavering in her doctrine.

The Polish prince and brave general Radziwiłł, Nicholas IV, called Rufus, was awakened in 1564 by the discovered fraud of the papal bone-relics, and was converted to the Lutheran Church in a remarkable way. This lord was zealously papist; therefore he visited Rome and kissed the pope's feet. The devotion and great princely humility he displayed on this occasion pleased the pope quite particularly, and he presented this prince with a little casket full of relics and bones of supposed saints. Thus the pope, as the privileged chief banker of all such bones, generally sends the princes away from himself again, and in this manner, in their opinion, fully reimburses them for the travel costs they had incurred. This, at least, is what this prince thought at the time too, and the little casket was dearer to him than if the pope — which, however, is not his custom — had given him an entire cask of indulgence money. This prince then went happily on his way. Thus did one dead man go about carrying the bones of other dead men.

Now this poor prince had, for the kingdom of heaven, quite enough. A little casket of such rarities, lips that had touched the pope's slipper, and a heart full of papal favor to carry about with him — what a treasure is that? But, dearest Lutheran Christians, keep your precious pearl; carry with you on your pilgrimage, in faith, the hidden treasure, and kiss it in believing love. Jesus has given you this as a gift. Jesus himself is that treasure, together with all the great blessedness laid up for you in eternal life. Eternal Love had also provided this exalted prince for the raising up of this unspeakable treasure. The time came when this prince gladly and willingly exchanged his bone-treasure for the evangelical treasure of life, and could call out after his Roman treasure: Away with the filth! Isaiah 30:22.

The following occasion gave rise to this. He came from a battle in the field and had won a glorious victory over the Muscovites. Out of gratitude he made a pilgrimage to Częstochowa. The monks received him with a thousand joys. But they had already heard that this prince was becoming somewhat wavering in religion. They therefore wanted to strengthen him in the Catholic doctrine. But instead of reaching for the Bible, as we Lutherans are accustomed to do, they sent for a peasant, who had to pass himself off as one possessed by the devil. The monks wanted to drive out the devil in the prince's presence through their exorcisms. The work did not succeed. Finally they asked the good prince to have his Roman reliquary casket fetched. This was done. As soon as it arrived, the monks took it, carried it in procession to the church, and set it upon the altar. The devil-ridden peasant had to be present. They now pressed upon him afresh with this holy bone-casket. What happened? The devil, it seems, smelled these relics in the little casket; this was so intolerable to him that he rushed out of the peasant with a great commotion. The people present cried out at once, in holy consternation: A miracle, a miracle! The prince fell into a wonderful joy over this, and resolved to remain a faithful son so splendidly favored by the pope. In this frame of mind and joy he returned to his residence. He told his courtiers of the great miracle. The treasurer, a cavalier who had been with him in Rome, heard of this too, and could not help laughing at it. The prince took this very ill, but assured him he would forgive the treasurer if he would confess the reason for his mockery. This the treasurer then did, and said to his illustrious lord: the reliquary casket given him as a gift by the pope had been lost on the return journey from Rome. Out of fear of the punishment which the most illustrious prince would inflict on him, he had, while still on the way, gathered together again such bones of men and animals as could be found, and filled a little casket with them. He added that he could hardly help laughing that such disreputable bones should have performed so great a miracle. After this account the prince was ashamed, and fell silent.

Nevertheless, he immediately had the monks asked whether they did not have yet another possessed person, on whom his reliquary casket might do service. There was no lack of one. They soon found a possessed man. The monks themselves had made him possessed in place of the devil. And so he was sent to the prince. The monks were fetched; they too had to exorcise him in the prince's presence, but the devil remained in the possessed man, just as with the first, at the first exorcism. Thereupon the monks had to take their leave, but the prince kept the possessed man with him. The general now wanted to try his own art on this possessed man, but he did not use his reliquary casket for it. Instead of the monks, he had his Tartar heyduks act; these exorcised him for so long with cudgels and hard blows, until the devil could bear it no longer, and the poor man confessed everything and said that the monks had talked him into passing himself off as such.

When the monks came again the following day, the man who had supposedly been possessed fell at the prince's feet in their presence, begged for mercy, and repeated his previous confession. The monks present wanted to persuade the prince that the devil was speaking lies out of this possessed man. But the prince pointed out to them that, should they continue to deny it, his Tartars would bring them to confession just as easily as they had this possessed man. Yet, for the sake of the papal relic-casket, they did not wish to expose their backs to the Tartars. They confessed the truth, but called their impiety a pia fraus, a holy deception, because by it they had wanted to confirm the prince in the Catholic doctrine and keep him in that religion. Prince Radziwiłł took this to heart and concluded that things must stand badly with a religion that has to be confirmed by lies. He thereupon diligently read Holy Scripture, found in it the ground of his eternal salvation, and some time afterward turned, together with his entire princely house, to the evangelical Lutheran religion. Can anyone, then, hold it against us Lutherans if we think as Heinrich von Hassia once did, who, about 20 years before the Reformation, wrote as follows:

"The mass-priests say these are the relics of a saint, when it is perhaps the mouth (or other members) of a donkey or an evildoer, and so on. Under the pretext of the Gospel they are intent on greed, and seek to deceive the people entrusted to them."

The Freedom from the Sabbath of the Old Covenant, Which Christians Have Received through the Gospel.*)

An important article of Christian doctrine is also the article of Christian liberty. God's Word says: "Stand fast therefore in the liberty with which Christ has made us free, and do not let yourselves be entangled again in the yoke of bondage." If we read the history of the Church, especially that of the Reformation, we find that our fathers fought and contended for this with great earnestness out of God's Word. If we read in the confessional writings of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, we hear that every Christian should insist that his Christian liberty be diminished and injured in no way by hypocrites and enemies of the truth. It must therefore certainly be a not unimportant question: Wherein, then, does the liberty of Christians actually consist?

It does not, in the first place, consist in civil liberty. In our new fatherland, liberty is the watchword of every speaker; Liberty! it resounds on every lip; Liberty! it rings out in every daily newspaper. To everyone this word is sweet and lovely. Of this liberty...

*) The following sermon, delivered by the editor in the year 1812, on the seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, in the local Christ Church here, treats a subject about which considerable unclarity prevails, and may, in the editor's absence, also serve as an answer to the attacks on the correct doctrine of the Sabbath recently made by the Methodists in their Apologist. B.