# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1844 11 30_S26
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

and its works may follow the preaching of faith. If he keeps this order, he will be able to walk securely and without danger in the light that is Christ, and will rightly and clearly discern which works are truly good — those of which he is certain that they please God and are commanded by him; he will also be able to despise all the sham works that everyone is inclined to choose according to his own foolish and blind opinion.

"Our adversaries think that faith is an easy and trifling matter. But how difficult and lofty a thing it truly is, I know well from experience, as do others who earnestly put it to the test. It is easily said that one receives the Holy Spirit solely through the preaching of faith, but it does not happen as quickly and easily that one hears, grasps, believes, and retains the preaching of faith as it is quickly and easily spoken and said. Therefore, even when you hear from me that Christ, the Lamb of God, was sacrificed for your sin, take care nonetheless that you hear it rightly. St. Paul calls it clearly and plainly auditum fidei, that is, the preaching that is heard concerning faith; he does not call it a mere word about faith, although there is only a slight difference; he means thereby that you should not merely hear such a word, but also believe it — so that such a word is not merely my voice which I speak, but that such a voice or word of mine is heard by you and penetrates into your heart and is believed by you. When this happens, that is properly called auditus fidei, that is, a preaching that is heard in faith, through which you receive the Holy Spirit. Where he is present, he will not be idle, but will do his work in you, so that you do good, suffer evil, and put to death the old Adam."

"The devout, godly Christians experience well how heartily they would like to grasp and retain, with strong, unwavering faith, the comforting, grace-filled word of the Gospel that they hear, and, on the other hand, to tear out of their hearts the false, deceptive thoughts that the law, with its threatening and terror, produces in them; but they feel well how, in their flesh, nature resists the Spirit quite violently and with all its might. For reason, together with the flesh, wants in short to have a part in the game with its own works too, to have a hand in the pot, etc. (Acts 15:1). It is therefore not possible entirely to sweep out of nature the Oportet circumcidi et servare legem — that is, one must be circumcised and keep the law if one wishes to be saved — as some in Jerusalem claimed; rather, such an opinion always remains lodged in the heart, even among the godly. Therefore they too must labor and struggle without ceasing with the preaching of faith as against the works of the law. For the conscience always has this affliction, grumbling against it and thinking that the way is indeed too easy and too poor a thing, that people should be comforted with becoming righteous,

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and with receiving the Holy Spirit and eternal salvation, solely through the preaching of faith.

"But do as he says, put it to the test, and take hold of it in earnest for once, and you will indeed find out how easy it is to hear the preaching of faith. He who gives the treasure is certainly great; so also the treasure and the good thing that he gives freely, for nothing, and out of sheer grace, without reproaching anyone for it, is likewise great: but that you should grasp and accept it — for that your faith is far too weak and feeble, and it only stirs up struggle and strife in you, so that you cannot accept such an offered gift. But even if the conscience barks back at once and it comes to your mind: Ah, one must nevertheless keep the law! — as often and as thickly as it possibly can — see to it only that you stand firm and do not let yourself be led astray, until you overcome that "Oportet" (that is, "you must," namely fulfill the law). And when faith thus increases, the thoughts of the law and of works must, in the course of time, gradually and one by one disappear, although this does not happen without a great, hard, and mighty struggle."

THE STORY OF TWO LUTHERAN MARTYRS.

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The Lutheran Church too (as the old, orthodox, apostolic Church is called from the time it rose again, through Luther's ministry, out of the rubble of the man-made ordinances that had crept in) — this Church too has a great number of members to show who sealed its pure evangelical doctrine with the shedding of their blood and the sacrifice of their lives; it too has holy martyrs. Although we Lutherans are indeed far from invoking them, as is done in the papist church, and thereby paying them idolatrous veneration, we nevertheless know from God's Word: "Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints" (Ps. 116); how much more reason, then, do we as human beings have to hold the death of our evangelical witnesses in blood as precious and dear! The Christian congregations of the first centuries have gone before us in this; on the anniversary of the martyrs' death they would gather at their graves and there celebrate their "birthdays" — for so they called the days on which those confessors of the Gospel, dying in the body, were born into the new life in heaven. There the account of their suffering was read publicly, they were remembered specially in the church prayer, and the Holy Communion was celebrated, in the living conviction that the Church militant on earth and the Church triumphant in heaven are nevertheless but one. These first congregations, standing in apostolic purity, by no means associated anything idolatrous with those yearly commemorations; thus, among others, the congregation at Smyrna (under Marcus Aurelius, about the year 170) writes concerning the memorial days of the martyrs that they should serve both as a remembrance of those who had become champions of the faith, and also to awaken and strengthen those who came after them to emulation. It further says: In that we honor Christ as the Son of God, we thereby show the martyrs, only as disciples and imitators of the Lord, our love in a fitting way, in order to become their companions and fellow disciples. (Eusebius, Church History, IV, 15.)

Following the example of these first, still orthodox congregations, we too preserve the blessed memory of those who gave up their souls for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 15:26). In this our new fatherland, the Christian indeed has no cause to expect that he must someday die a violent death for the sake of his faith; to prepare himself for that, therefore, he seems to have no need of the history of the holy martyrs. But a worse enemy than the one who seeks to kill the body now wars against Christians: sloth, lukewarmness, striving after riches and comfortable days, conformity to the world, vanity, softness, and delicacy — this is what now increasingly creeps up on Christians, so that when they receive only a sour look from unbelieving children of the world on account of their confession, they already regard themselves as great martyrs — indeed, they even go so far, for that very reason, as to try to conceal the conviction of their hearts, and so shamefully deny Christ. O dear fellow Christians, what has become of us! How the spirit of the ancient witnesses has indeed gone out among us! How poorly we would hold up if, with our soft and delicate Christianity, we had to withstand trials of faithfulness like those the holy martyrs once endured! May the following account help to awaken and strengthen the spirit of confession in the hearts of our readers!

When Luther, in the year 1521 at Worms, confessed the truth before Emperor and Empire, protested against all the errors of the Roman Church he then recognized, and declared that he could not recant unless he were overcome by testimonies of Holy Scripture and his conscience taken captive by God's Word, an imperial decree was thereupon proclaimed — the so-called Edict of Worms — which placed Luther and his followers under the ban, by which every Lutheran was henceforth declared an outlaw, deprived of all governmental protection and personal security, and liable to be handed over to the criminal court. This edict was then actually carried out in several places, and even the martyr's blood of evangelical witnesses to the truth was shed. Duke George of Saxony began this bloody persecution that very same year with a bookseller, whom he had beheaded in the public market at Leipzig for having sold Luther's writings. In the following year, however, especially in the Netherlands, action was frequently taken against the goods and lives of the adherents of the pure doctrine. Thus