# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 11 04_S40
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

to give it away, but gather it in cells, and whoever wants it comes for it — not the other way around.

*

A Word to the Friends of the False Union and Enemies of the True Union.

That, said Luther to Bucer, would be the best thing in the matter, if your people would teach rightly and confess freely and plainly: Dear friends, God has let us fall, we have erred and taught false doctrine; let us now become wiser, be on our guard, and teach rightly. For with cloaking and glossing over it truly cannot be done, just as by it one can quiet neither one's own conscience nor that of others. For such evasiveness does not please God, who will require a strict account from us especially concerning doctrine. Therefore we may concede nothing to God and his Word in our office and life, however dazzling, fine, glorious, powerful, artful, or clever it may be thought to be. — Take pains, he said further, for your populous congregation, for which you must give account to our God, not with weighty, lofty, and obscure words, nor with strange questions, but to teach as simply, faithfully, and clearly as possible. K. R.

Is It Permitted to Ridicule the Opponents of the Truth and to Mock Their Errors?

Pascal* writes: "There is a great difference between making religion itself ridiculous, and ridiculing those who profane it through their absurd opinions. It would be impiety not to show due reverence toward the truths which the Spirit of God has revealed; but it would likewise be impiety not to show contempt toward the falsehoods which the human spirit sets against them. — The truths of our religion have two properties, a divine beauty which makes them lovable, and a holy majesty which makes them venerable; and errors likewise have two properties, impiety, which makes them abominable, and impertinence, which makes them ridiculous. Just as the saints, therefore, always feel love and fear toward the truth, so they also feel hatred and contempt toward error, and their zeal labors equally to repel with force the wickedness of the ungodly, and to beat down their errors and their folly with mockery. Do not hope, then, my fathers (Jesuits), to make the world believe that it is unworthy of a Christian to treat errors with mockery, since it is easy to show those who might not know it that this practice is just, that it was common among the church fathers, and is approved by Holy Scripture through the example of the greatest saints and of God himself. For do we not see that God at once hates and despises sinners, to such a degree that in the hour of death, when their condition is most wretched and most sorrowful, divine wisdom will join mockery and derision to the vengeance and wrath that will condemn them to eternal punishment: 'You have ignored all my counsel and would not have my reproof; I also will laugh at your calamity, and mock when your fear comes.' Prov. 1:25-26. And the saints, moved by the same Spirit, will do the same, because they, according to David, when they one day see the punishments of the wicked, will at once tremble and laugh over them. 'The righteous shall see it and fear, and shall laugh at him.' Ps. 52:8. And Job likewise says: 'The righteous shall see it and be glad, and the innocent shall mock him.' Job 22:19. The prophets too, filled with the Spirit of God, have made use of such mockery, as we see in the examples of Daniel and Elijah. Love sometimes moves one to laugh at the errors of men, in order to move them to laugh at these errors themselves and to flee from them."

*) Compare the account of him: Lutheraner III, 13.

40

Tertullian: "There are many things which must be mocked and laughed at, so as not to give them weight by combating them seriously. Nothing deserves more to be laughed at than vanity; and laughter rightly belongs to truth, because she is joyful, and mockery of her enemies belongs to her, because she is certain of victory. It is true that one must take care that the mockery not be low and unworthy of the truth. But that aside, it is a duty to make use of it when one understands how to do so with skill."

Augustine: "Who would dare maintain that the truth should remain unarmed against falsehood, and that the enemies of the faith should be permitted to frighten believers with strong words and to make merry over them with amusing sallies, while the orthodox might write only in so cold a style as would lull their readers to sleep?"

*

(Submitted.)
A Reply.

For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, whose mouths must be stopped. Titus 1:10-11.

In the Apologist, Vol. IX, No. 39 (whole number 455), Mr. Heinrich Köneke, on the occasion of a report about various mission stations, mentions my humble name. It still shakes him like a recurring fever chill merely to think of the remnant of South St. Louis; but once arrived at the Versailles station he recovers again and delivers a mighty blow against the Lutheran preacher there — that is, against me, the undersigned — whom he would only too gladly make, if not into a serpent-worshiper (compare Lutheraner, Vol. IV, No. 2, p. 14, mission report), then, since the Methodists cannot get done with "the Lutheraner," into an ultra-Lutheran who goes in strictness of belief far beyond Luther himself.

Without further ado, as an established fact, without naming any authority, without stating any occasion that entitled him to it, he writes into the world: the preacher Wege maintains such and such. It will surely not be too much if I demand that time, place, persons, witnesses, occasion, and context be laid before me, and that what is imposed on me — at the very mildest, through inference-mongering, that is, through drawing conclusions and inferences (in which, as the Lutheraner has often shown, the Methodists are masters) — not simply be made into an assertion.

What if, now, Mr. Köneke & Co. — for he must surely have some authority, who might thank Mr. K. should he find himself brought into a tight corner through him — remained the only ones to say this of me? What if it should become evident, on some occasion, that the aforesaid elder, Mr. K., is a slanderer, and that his report about me is a repeated lie, concocted out of misunderstanding and hostility?

O you clever Methodists, why must you, at all costs, build a gallows of Haman? Why must you, at all costs, have published the curiosities of the Methodist spirit that have accumulated here over the past four years?

What honor would you gain, if it should come to light how grossly the Methodists dissembled — even appealing to the Augsburg Confession — when they sought entrance here, in a Lutheran congregation? Was such a confession of the very Confession they have of late mocked the door into the sheepfold, or the hole by which one climbs in elsewhere?

How praiseworthy it would indeed be, if it were made public what demand a Methodist preacher made upon me, the undersigned, merely so that the people whom he said he knew to be good Lutherans might not so soon discover that Methodist doctrine differs from the doctrine of Luther?

And in what splendor would appear the fine censure which Mr. K. so complacently bestows upon his own people, were it told how ingeniously the Methodists made use of the spiritual suffering of Christ* — since he hung on the cross with hands and feet — to prove that in the holy Lord's Supper there is only a spiritual partaking; not to mention other occasional notions, so childish and ridiculous at once, that they — which deserves the greatest praise — were immediately retaken back on the spot!

How consistent it was, finally, when the undersigned's confession — that he holds the flesh and blood of Christ to be essentially present in the holy Lord's Supper — was answered: "So you believe you tear the body of Christ apart with your teeth!" —

What is said here are only indicated samples touching on the holy Lord's Supper. It would be very easy to be more detailed, and several other matters could also be brought up that would be remarkable enough to be set down as characteristic traits of the Methodist spirit in the church history of our day.

Let this suffice for now regarding Mr. Köneke; but for all to whom it is not a matter of indifference what faith, doctrine, and confession the local Lutheran preacher holds, let it serve for reassurance that I am as far removed from so gross and irreverent a notion regarding the holy Lord's Supper as Mr. K. imputes to me — namely, that I believe I receive the body of Christ (I shudder even to repeat the words) with my teeth — as far as the body of Christ in the holy Lord's Supper is different from all other food.

Benton County, October 1847.
C. F. M. Wege, Lutheran Pastor.

*) The speaker seemed altogether unable to grasp that Christ also suffered bodily.

Correction.
Page 8, column 3, it reads: from the St. James congregation, 52.75. It should read: from the St. James congregation, 93.00; Trinity congregation, 2.75.

Paid.

Second half of the 3rd volume: Mr. Pfeiffer.

4th volume: Messrs. Baum, Mich. Benz, P. Best, C. Fricke, Gander, Göglein, Hamm, Joachim, W. Kauz, G. Kauz, Pfeiffer, Rasp, H. Scharf, P. Trautmann, Wörling.

Second half of the 4th volume: Mr. P. Detzer (2 copies).

Received.

For the Seminary at Altenburg, from Mr. Pfeiffer in Philadelphia: 83.50

For the mission on the Cass River, from Mr. P. L.: 1.50

[illegible], for the mission on the Cass River, from Mr. Schoolteacher [illegible]

Printed by Arthur Olshausen, Publisher of the Anzeiger des Westens.