# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 03 01_S116
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

...partly for the sake of the communicants, partly for the sake of the ministers' conscience. For the sake of the communicants: for self-examination should, according to Paul's admonition in 1 Corinthians 11:28, precede the partaking of the holy Lord's Supper. But every honest self-examination must necessarily lead us to a deeper knowledge of sin, and this easily produces the fear of unworthiness in partaking — a fear which, whether such unworthiness actually exists or not, can be taken from the heart most effectively through penitent confession and the receiving of absolution. For the sake of the ministers' conscience: for these may not knowingly give the holy Lord's Supper to anyone unworthy. Just as an adult may not be baptized without the preceding confession that he believes with his whole heart in Jesus Christ, so no one may be admitted to the Sacrament of the Altar in whom clearly recognizable signs of impenitence are present. Confession before Communion thus appears as a wise ordinance of the Church, one that accords with the Word of God and must not be lumped together with such human ordinances as stand in contradiction to the Word of God. But if we are obligated, by God's command, to be subject to all human ordinances, 1 Peter 2:13, insofar as nothing forbidden by God's Word is required of us thereby, then this surely holds most of all for church order, which aims at our spiritual best and binds us to voluntary obedience — an obedience that only the spiritually proud, who hate peace and selfishly wish to go their own ways, will refuse it.

Yet one more word to you who read this. How does it strike you, when you look back at what has thus far been demonstrated from clear passages of Scripture, and compare it with the present state of the Church? Perhaps private confession is something wholly unknown to you, because far and wide around you private confession is no longer held in the churches; you have also never heard private absolution, because nowadays in most places, over the whole assembled body of communicants together, only the formula is customarily spoken: "I proclaim to you the forgiveness of sins" — which, as it is commonly interpreted, is only a lifeless shadow of true absolution. From your own experience you have not yet come to know the high worth, the heart-penetrating power, of private absolution, and in your surroundings there is scarcely any thought given to the exercise of the power of the keys. There is no one who is not absolved out of hand; the communicants, for the most part entirely unknown to the minister, go without any particular admonition to the Table of the Lord — even the most openly notorious sinners — without so much as a single word being said to startle them out of their fleshly security. This is the wretched state of the Church, this is the punishment for the falling-away of her members, that all the ornament of the daughter of Zion has departed, that the enemy has laid his hand upon all her treasures, that of the exercise of the power of the keys by the ministerial office, and of church discipline by the congregation or its representatives, scarcely a shadow remains. This is the harm of Joseph, over which all upright servants of Jesus Christ sigh; the bondage of the Church, which gnaws day and night at their heart, and which drives them ceaselessly to plead: "Lord, turn again our captivity, as the streams in the south" (Ps. 126:4). And you, my dear Christian, when you go to confession, and must — though you sincerely honor your pastor — nevertheless, giving God the glory, confess that in your congregation too the power of the keys is not administered according to God's unmutilated order — pray to God that he would gather together again and build up the ruins of the Church, and let us wrestle with him in prayer for his poor, comfortless Zion, over which all the storms pass, and not let him go until he blesses us.

Temptation.
This is the most dangerous temptation, when there is no temptation at all. — Luther.

(Submitted.)

The Martyr Henry of Zütphen.
According to Luther.

Martyrs are called, in the Christian Church, those Christians who have sealed the truth of the Gospel with their blood. There is something deeply moving in contemplating the figure of a martyr. He is so different from everything we see and hear in the world, like an utterly foreign phenomenon; for he is not of the world. He renounces everything the world loves; he loves what the world hates — not as though he were unfeeling toward God's gifts, toward life and its innocent joys: he loves his fatherland, his friends, his relatives; but for Jesus' sake he freely gives it all up. For the world is crucified to him, and he to the world. All his loving, his one and all, is Jesus; him he praises and glorifies and confesses before the world in word and deed; therefore he endures, with heroic courage, sword and flame, even in death full of praise of the Lord and full of forgiveness toward his enemies. So he stands there among his murderers like a lamb in the midst of ravening wolves, shining like a gentle heavenly radiance in the darkness of night.

How weak we are by comparison, seeking perhaps still here and there to taste from the sinful cup of forbidden, worldly pleasure! How wholly different the martyr! He has broken completely with the world; he goes so resolutely and knightly through the hostile powers on his way to God, and turns aside neither to the right hand nor to the left. To deny the world, to confess Christ before the world, the devil, and the Antichrist, is the joy and delight of his heart; thus he freely woos the bitter suffering of death. And the almighty power of God strengthens him in his sufferings, so that he perseveres to the end, and wins the crown of unfading glory. His death is the greatest act of faith of which a Christian is capable; his blood is the seed of many Christians; his name, because of his shining example, is celebrated forever by the Church. Oh, that this spirit of testimony might live again! That the noble mind of the holy martyrs might also penetrate us, to do and to suffer all things for the sake of the Lord Jesus! They overcame him (the devil) by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives even unto death (Rev. 12:11).

It was at the time of the Reformation, when the Christian Church, along with other treasures of grace, also rejoiced in many holy martyrs. After a long, dreadful darkness, the sweet light of the dear Gospel had shone forth again, and gave strong and far-reaching light into the lands, where it found many adherents. But at the same time the man of sin, the Pope and his antichristian kingdom, also armed himself to hold back the truth, which he sought to refute by putting its witnesses to death. Yet Roman Babylon fell only the sooner for it, for the death of the saints is the most glorious victory of their faith over the enemies of the Lord.

Among those who at that time shed their blood for the sake of the testimony of Jesus is Henry Müller of Zütphen. He was a Master of Philosophy and Theology, and at first prior of the Augustinians at Antwerp, but was driven from there on account of his evangelical confession, and, intending to go to Wittenberg, came in the year 1522 to Bremen. Being requested by some pious citizens to preach a sermon for them, he did not refuse to fulfill this wish. When the people then heard that he taught God's Word, he was urgently asked by the whole congregation to remain with them and to continue preaching to them. Henry followed this call and remained two years. Meanwhile the enemies of the Gospel did not rest either. The papist canons, priests, and monks, who at that time were called "the clergy," left no means untried to drive him out. But his congregation and the council of the city of Bremen protected him against their malicious attacks. Thus Henry was free to proclaim God's Word joyfully, which grew ever more powerful the longer it continued. Indeed, even of the chaplains whom the papists daily sent into his sermons, so that they might catch him in his words, some were converted, and the majority of them confessed: "Such preaching is the truth and is from God, whom no one can withstand; we have never in our whole lives heard such doctrine from any man. Therefore desist from evil, and do not persecute the Word of God, but believe, that you may be saved."

Now when God the Almighty saw that the time had come, that the devout Henry should seal with his blood the truth of the Gospel which he had preached, he sent him among the murderers. For it came to pass in the year 1524, that he — by Nicolaus Boye, pastor at Mel- [illegible, continued on next page]