# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1844 12 22_S34
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

he wrestled at times for several days on end, shutting himself into a cell; but in vain! — the temptations returned with ever renewed force. Yet at times God's consolations gladdened his soul. So once his confessor said to him: "It is not enough that you believe in general that God forgives sin, for the devils believe that too; but you must believe that they are forgiven to you, to you, to you." By this, as he himself often afterward gratefully recalled, Luther was richly comforted and brought nearer to understanding the words of St. Paul in Romans 3:23–26, that man is justified without merit through faith alone. To this insight Luther was also helped by the then Provincial, or Vicar-General, of the Augustinian Order in Germany, John von Staupitz. This man showed himself toward him as a father; he once answered Luther, who was complaining to him of his temptations: "Well now, would you then be only a painted sinner, and have only a painted Redeemer?"

In his twenty-fourth year (in the year 1507) Luther was ordained, or consecrated, to the priesthood by the suffragan bishop, at which the words were also spoken over him: "Receive the power to sacrifice (the body and blood of Christ) for the living and the dead." Of this Luther later wrote: "That the earth did not then swallow us both was wrong (humanly speaking) and altogether too great a patience of God." Yet despite all these antichristian additions, Luther even later acknowledged his ordination as valid. He then said Mass for the first time, as he continued to do for a good many years afterward; yet he declared such Mass-saying to be the greatest sin of his life, since by it he had so often denied and dishonored the one perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

In the following year, 1508, on the recommendation of his aforementioned superior, Dr. Staupitz, he was called as professor of philosophy to the newly founded (1502) University of Wittenberg. But already in the following year (1509) he was permitted to exchange his philosophical teaching post for a theological one (he became a Baccalaureate in Divinity, with the particular assignment "ad biblia," for the exposition of the Bible). He thereby caused such a stir, not only through his sermons but also through his lectures — in which he now always laid holy Scripture as the foundation — that the then Rector of the University, the famous Mellerstadt, said of him: "This monk will confound all the doctors and bring forward a new teaching and reform the whole Roman Church, for he builds upon the writings of the prophets and apostles and stands upon the word of Jesus Christ."

No less did he stand in great esteem among his fellow members of his order, the Augustinian monks,

...that Luther, for all his exceptional moderation and self-denial, was no sour-faced saint, or rather no hypocrite. When he fasted, he anointed his head (Matthew 6:16–18). — Ed.

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which is why, in the year 1510, they sent him to Rome to settle disputes that had arisen among them — a commission which he carried out to the satisfaction of both parties. How much he was at that time still given over to popish superstition he himself confessed; he says: "I too was at Rome such a mad saint; I ran through all the churches and crypts (burial places of the martyrs), and believed everything that was lied and forged there." Everything he saw and heard there was later, when he testified against the Roman abominations, of very great use to him, so that afterward he often said he would not take a thousand guilders not to have seen Rome. But in yet another respect the journey to Rome became important for him. Already on the way, the word of Scripture, "The just shall live by his faith," had lain heavily on his mind, without his being able at that time to interpret it rightly for himself. Everything the Church might recommend to him for the wiping away of his sins he was, upon arriving in Rome, willing to do. When he now, on bare knees, was climbing the so-called Pilate's Staircase — said to have come from the courthouse at Jerusalem to Rome — in order to receive the papal indulgence, there sounded now in his heart, as with a voice of thunder: "The just shall live by his faith" (Romans 1:17). This indeed took from him all the comfort he sought here in his works and exercises, yet the comforting sense of those words still remained hidden from his eyes.

After his return, Luther was made (1511), at Staupitz's urgent insistence and despite his own reluctance, Doctor of Holy Scripture (Doctor biblicus), and since such a promotion was bound up with costly ceremonies, the Elector himself provided the money for it. Staupitz pressed Luther to accept this honor with the words: "The Lord God now needs young, vigorous doctors, for he has great things in view in heaven and on earth." This was by no means a mere formality, for through his doctorate Luther received the calling to defend the doctrine of Holy Scripture against every assault. "Then I had to," he himself writes accordingly, "swear and vow to my most beloved Holy Scripture, to preach and teach it faithfully and purely." He remembered this public charge and solemn oath in many great struggles and drew comfort from it.

Since he also became a preacher in Wittenberg in the following year, 1512, he devoted himself from this time on to Holy Scripture with even greater earnestness than ever before, reading it through with the utmost diligence, and in order to become ever more certain in his understanding of it, he diligently pursued the Hebrew language, in which the Old Testament was originally written, as well as Greek, in which the New Testament was composed. His ever-increasing knowledge of Holy Scripture was attested by his public lectures, especially on the Epistles of St. Paul, and by his sermons — notably also on the Catechism — as well as by his learned disputations, in which he bravely and masterfully defended his then-new, but really old, apostolic doctrine against all manner of opponents. Alongside this he wrote many comforting letters to all sorts of people, both clergy and laity, who sought his counsel on account of their troubled consciences. In all this his chief purpose was always to show that man is justified and saved not through any of his own works, but through faith alone in Jesus Christ.

To these and other labors, under which he nearly succumbed, there was added also, in the year 1516, the visitation of the forty Augustinian monasteries in Meissen and Thuringia, which Staupitz entrusted to him during his own absence. Difficult as this was, Luther carried out his commission with such great faithfulness, establishing schools on this occasion and exhorting his fellow monks to diligent Bible-reading and to a holy, peaceable, and chaste life. Yet this business of overseeing the monasteries had for Luther the further particular benefit that in this way he was able to observe with his own eyes, and to come to know thoroughly, the great corruption that reigned there. Thus did God prepare this precious man ever more for the work that was soon to begin — namely, for the great work of a general Reformation of the Church.

(To be continued.)

—

A Heart-to-Heart Conversation of Jerome with the Christ Child.
(Communicated from Valerius Herberger's Evangelical Heart-Postil.)

The Empress Helena built the little manger of Christ at Bethlehem very splendidly. Not far from there Jerome dwelt in his old age. When he received a call there to take up a high bishop's office elsewhere, he gave the answer: "I will not be led away from the manger of Christ; nowhere is it better for me. At the very place where God gave me his Son from heaven, there will I send my soul up into heaven."

Shortly before his end he writes: "As often as I look upon this place, my heart holds a sweet conversation with the child Jesus. I say: Ah, Lord Jesus, how you tremble; how hard you lie for the sake of my salvation; how shall I ever repay you for it? — Then it seems to me as though the child answers: I desire nothing, dear Jerome, but that you sing: Glory to God in the highest! Only let it be dear to you — I shall become far more destitute yet, in the garden and on the holy cross. — I speak further: Dear little child Jesus, I must give you something: I will give you all my money. — The child answers: Heaven and earth are already mine beforehand; I do not need it,