# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 08 03_S138
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

...the opposite, with passages from the earliest post-apostolic church writers. If Mr. Nast wished to justify himself, then naturally his task was to show that our evidence did not prove what it was supposed to prove.

But what does Mr. Nast do? To divert attention from our evidence, which is plain to see, away from his own teaching, he seeks, by a clever but dishonest turn, to move to an entirely different chapter. He suddenly delivers to us, with apparent seriousness, a lecture to the effect that one should ground one's faith not on the church fathers but on the Bible, and thus, like certain people do, slips into our pocket the very thing that might have betrayed himself, hoping that no one will notice the trick. Whoever thinks the Methodists incapable of such trickery should read No. 446 of the Apologist for himself, and he will find it there.

But, someone will say, how was it possible for Mr. Nast to accuse us of grounding our faith on the church fathers rather than on Scripture, when in that very article we had ourselves so decisively rejected such a thing? Mr. N. achieved this masterstroke of polemic by once again employing the often-proven device of falsifying a report. He tells his readers, quite correctly, our sincere and humble confession that in the time of our first awakening we, too, like the Methodists, unfortunately did not wish to rely on the plain words of Christ alone, and at that time also looked about for the fragile supports of the testimony of the apostolic fathers. But Mr. Nast, being a practiced forger, leaves out the main point, namely, that we ourselves wrote in this connection: "We must, alas, here confess to our own shame," etc.; "It later became clear to us how wickedly we had acted." Omitting this, he now marches out against us before his unsuspecting readers as against a man who had wished to contend with him that one must ground one's faith not on the Bible but on the church fathers — whereas we had mentioned the church fathers only because the Methodists had falsely appealed to and sought to ground themselves on them! If Mr. Nast wishes henceforth to lay claim to an honest name, let him confess his forgery, and we will never again bring up against him the sin into which he perhaps allowed himself to be led only in the greatest embarrassment.

We now turn to that part of Mr. Nast's answer in which he seeks to prove that Luther really was unable, at Marburg, to name a single church father who stood on his side in the doctrine of the holy Lord's Supper. Having arrived at this subject, Mr. Nast seems to have caught his breath again, after the foregoing matter had likely wrung from him more than a few drops of sweat.

We had, namely, granted the Methodists that they indeed lack a thorough insight into the history of the Reformation, and that it is therefore no wonder if they go astray whenever they venture into that field. With visibly triumphant heart, Mr. Nast then writes: "Fortunately, in our days a pious and learned theologian, d'Aubigné, has written a history of the Reformation," and that he had already read it a year before. Mr. Nast then proceeds to relate the history of the Marburg Colloquy; and indeed — there it is! — there, in so many words, one finds exactly what the Methodists had written. For we shall not even take into account that the latter claim Luther was unable to name a church father, while the source of their historical learning says he was unwilling to name one; such a small falsification is of course, to the conscientious Methodists, a gnat which they will not let any "unconverted" Lutheran turn into a camel.

Apart from the fact that the Methodists have themselves falsified the report of their own witness, surely no one will hold it against us if we first seek an answer to the question: What credence, then, does the Frenchman d'Aubigné deserve regarding his so highly praised and so widely circulated History of the Reformation? We answer: not the slightest. And indeed, to substantiate this admittedly harsh charge — at which all Unionists will secretly cross themselves — we hope soon to present our readers a complete critique of his entire work; but so that readers do not suspect that we, having surely learned something in our dealings with the Methodists, seek in the promise of a later critique of that work merely an evasion, we will show, by means of the example Mr. Nast has laid before us in extract, what credence Mr. d'Aubigné deserves, despite his supposedly documentary citations from the sources.

Among other things, Mr. Nast had the following passage from the aforementioned work printed:

"There was, in fact, no longer any reason to prolong the conference. "Luther, unbending and imperious in this matter," as his own great eulogist, the Lutheran historian Seckendorf, himself says (Lutherus vero, ut erat fero et imperioso ingenio. Seck. p. 136), "insisted that the Swiss should simply submit to his opinion.""

Here Mr. d'Aubigné seeks to strike us Lutherans with our own weapons, saying that even a Seckendorf — that great defender of Luther and his works — had to admit that Luther was a man of "unbending" (fero, that is, wild, untamed) "and imperious (imperioso, that is, domineering) mind," who wanted only to enforce his own "opinion" out of stubbornness. What are we poor Lutherans to say, then, when a Seckendorf, to whom all the most important original documents concerning the history of the Reformation lay open for examination, had to make such admissions? With this single citation Mr. d'Aubigné has apparently silenced all Lutherans who still wished to maintain that Luther, even in his struggle against Zwingli, had a good conscience and championed not his own cause but God's. Who can wonder, then, that Mr. d'Aubigné is now extolled to the skies by all Protestant sects, since he places such weapons in their hands against the poor Lutherans? Oh, how gently must Mr. Nast's tears of joy have flowed as he copied out this passage! How he must already have gloated in spirit over the blushing and paling that the reading of this passage would produce in us.

We must, however, disturb Mr. Nast's joy by informing him herewith that the above citation is a falsification infamous beyond all conception. Seckendorf's Historia Lutheranismi is, namely, a refutation of a French Jesuit named L. Maimbourg, whose book, "Histoire du Luthéranisme," Seckendorf incorporated into his own book in Latin translation in such a way that a chapter of the Jesuit's account always comes first, whereupon Seckendorf demonstrates the Jesuitical falsifications of history occurring in it, further refutes the calumnies found there, and finally sets forth from the sources the true state of affairs. This great, rare, and incomparable work we too "fortunately" possess in our library. When, therefore, the citation from Seckendorf in that excerpt from d'Aubigné's History of the Reformation struck us at once as highly strange, we hastened to look up the passage indicated by page number, and what did we find? Hear and be astonished! "D'Aubigné has fraudulently quoted, as Seckendorf's words, what are in fact the words of the Jesuit Maimbourg." Would to God one could hope that Mr. d'Aubigné had done this out of ignorance! But this is unthinkable, because the words of the Jesuit and of Seckendorf are distinguished clearly enough by the fact that the former are set in spaced type running across the whole page, while Seckendorf's are set in small type in two columns.

The words of the Jesuit run as follows:

"Cum Lutherus vero, ut erat fero et imperioso ingenio, semper urgeret, ut ille sententiae suae se submitteret," etc., that is, in translation: "But since Luther, being a man of unbending and imperious disposition, always insisted that the other submit to his opinion," etc.

Seckendorf's words on this point, however, read (page 139) as follows:

"Ferum denique et imperiosum ingenium absque calumnia Luthero objici nequit, nisi probetur, illum non conscientiae et veritatis; sed suae tantum opinionis et autoritatis in-