# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 09 20_S9
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Lutheran.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall never pass away."

Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States.

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 4.

St. Louis, Mo., September 20, 1847.

No. 2.

Terms: The Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at the annual subscription price of one dollar for subscribers residing away from the city, who are to pay this in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis, each single number is sold for 5 cents. Only letters containing orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent to the editor; all others, however, containing business matters or contributions for the paper, are to be sent here under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

Jan Hus, the Holy Martyr.
(After Guericke.)
(Conclusion.)

So then Hus, as we heard in the last number, had arrived at Constance on November 3, 1414; yet it was almost four weeks before a hearing was granted him — not, however, as he repeatedly demanded, before the representatives of Christendom, but only before the Pope and the cardinals; still he obeyed the summons, and from that day on did not regain his freedom. On the evening of November 28, late, he was taken prisoner. The Emperor, whose word was thus broken, was not yet present; but he sent to Constance the order to release Hus, threatening otherwise to have the prison broken open. Yet the order was not obeyed; and when the Emperor came to Constance, a deputation of the Council represented to him that as a layman he ought not to meddle in this matter, and that a promise given to a heretic need not be kept — and thereupon Sigismund (the Emperor) yielded.

In the harsh confinement Hus fell ill, and while sick he received the accusations brought against him, which were founded partly on passages from his own writings, partly on twisted statements he had made in confidential conversations. Hus asked for an advocate; the judges refused him this, because he was a heretic. "Then," he calmly replied, "let the Lord Jesus Christ be my advocate, who will soon judge you as well." During this time he wrote to his friends: "Only now am I learning to understand the Psalms rightly, to pray rightly, and to reflect on the sufferings of Christ and the martyrs." At the same time he was strengthened again and again by the joyful conviction that, even though he himself might succumb, the cause of the gospel would one day triumph. "I hope," he wrote, "that what I have said under the roof will one day be proclaimed from the housetops." Such thoughts had been awakened in him, among other things, by a delightful dream: namely, that the Pope had destroyed all the images of Christ and the apostles in the Bethlehem Chapel, but that on the following day a great number of painters had painted still many more and more beautiful pictures; this was without doubt a prophecy of the many faithful preachers of Christ whom God raised up not long afterward, namely at the time of the Lutheran Reformation of the church. — At last, after many painful private interrogations in prison, through the intervention of the Bohemian knights, on June 5, 7, and 8, 1415, he received the public hearing before the Council for which he had so long yearned; the Pope, however, was no longer present, having himself, on account of his crimes, been imprisoned in the castle of Gottlieben near Constance, where shortly before he had had Hus himself confined. On June 5, amid the general uproar, Hus could not make himself heard; on the 7th and 8th, thirty-nine articles of accusation were read to him. The calm composure amid all his fervor, the humility amid all the warmth with which he confessed his faith, won him friends even among some of his opponents, although they did not share his belief. Yet he lost his case. Nothing was demanded of him but unconditional recantation of everything laid to his charge, and unconditional submission to the Council; and this Hus could not, would not, dared not render — partly because in doing so he would have denied the truth, partly because he would have offended his large congregation; for he was to admit having maintained errors that had never entered his mind. Even now he still felt compelled, among other things, to testify once more before the whole Council, with joyful boldness, that the church could be governed immediately by Christ even without a pope; the false conclusions people wished to draw from this he rejected. The Emperor himself urged him to recant his errors; Hus called God to witness that he was never minded to defend anything obstinately, and that he would gladly change his opinion as soon as he were instructed better.

— At these proceedings things went on in a most tumultuous fashion. Exhausted by the exertions of these days, he returned to his prison. "Oh, how it strengthened me," he wrote to the knight Chlum, who had hurried after him to shake his hand, "that you were not ashamed to extend your hand to me, a heretic in chains abhorred by the whole world!"

Already, expecting his death sentence, he took leave of his congregation by letter, and begged and implored them not to follow him in whatever evil they might have heard or seen in him, but rather to ask God's forgiveness for him. He also once more turned, in fatherly exhortation, to a beloved pupil, Master Martin. "Do not fear death," he wrote, "if you wish to live with Christ." In this letter he also remembered others: "Greet my teachers, the dear brothers in Christ, also the tailors, shoemakers, and the copyists, and tell them to be concerned for the law of Christ, that they follow not their own interpretations, but the explanations of the old holy teachers" — from which last words one can clearly see that Hus was no fanatic who wished stubbornly and arrogantly to insist on his own notions; to him too the testimony of the true church was of great importance. He exhorted the professors and students of the University of Prague not only to seek God's honor alone and to love one another sincerely, but also entrusted to them especially the care of his beloved Bethlehem; he declared solemnly that he claimed no infallibility for himself. "The Council," he writes, "demanded that I declare false all the articles drawn from my writings. I was unwilling to agree to this unless they proved the falsehood to me from Scripture. Whatever false meaning lies in any of these articles, that I abhor, and I submit each such article to the correction of the Lord Jesus Christ, who knows my sincere intentions." The Bohemian knights, whom he called his "gracious