# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1861_S343
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Romanizing Tendency of the Volksblatt für Stadt und Land. 343

Matt. 7:12: whatever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so;
this is the Law and all the Prophets; indeed, all natural right says the
same. Now it is certainly true that I would gladly wish that people
should give to me, lend to me, help me in my need. It is likewise certain
that no one ought to give, lend, or help me where I have no need of it —
where I am lazy, a rogue, want to live in excess, will not work, will do
or suffer nothing though I well could, am healthy, am strong, and lack
nothing except that people are too pious and give me enough, when by
rights they ought rather to have me whipped at the post and driven out of
the country, or hanged on the gallows." (See Luther's Works, Walch's ed.
X, 1056–1067; Erlangen ed. XXIII, 310–320.)

(To be continued.)

(Submitted by Prof. Crämer.)

The Romanizing Tendency of the "Volksblatt für Stadt
und Land."
A Necessary Elucidation, by Dr. G. Reich.

Under this title we find, in the 3rd number of the 1st volume of
Kliefoth's "Theologische Zeitschrift," an essay from which we take, among
others, the following in truth hair-raising sentences, which the honored
author has had reprinted word for word from the volumes 1852–61 of the
"Volksblatt" as evidence for the truth of the charge he brings against
that paper in the above title.

Thus the editor, Ph. Natthusius, says in his New Year's greeting for
1852: "The Catholic Church is more than our friend; she is our own flesh
and blood, separated from us, the half of our very self, and therefore
her disgrace is our disgrace, and her rising fortune our rising fortune,
for if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it, and if one
member is held in honor, all the members rejoice with it." — Further, in
another essay of the same volume: "The author does not merely love the
individual members of all these churches as brothers; no, he loves also
these church communions themselves as so many limbs of the body of the
Lord; he loves, therefore, also the Roman Catholic Church as a confessor
of Jesus Christ" — though he himself soon after confesses: "Of her (the
Catholic Church's) doctrines he is not sufficiently well informed to be
able to argue against them with success." And in a later issue: "Could
Protestantism at a single stroke dissolve the Catholic Church, that would
mean — to put it strongly — nothing other than sawing off the branch on
which we sit; for we are, to this very day (and indeed with good
justification and right), 'Protestants' — it lies already in the name
itself that we cannot be conceived of without the closest connection