# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1845 01 11_S37
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall never pass away, now or ever."

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 1.

St. Louis, Mo., January 11, 1845.

No. 10.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at a subscription price of one dollar and twenty-five cents for out-of-town subscribers, half of which they must pay in advance, postage to be borne by them. — In St. Louis single copies are sold for six and a quarter cents each.

Life Story of Dr. Luther.
(Continued.)

About this time (1516) the indulgence peddler Tetzel (a native of Leipzig) also came into the vicinity of Wittenberg. Pope Leo the Tenth of that day, needing a great deal of money for the continued building of the magnificent St. Peter's Church in Rome, had proclaimed a general indulgence and had entrusted the preaching of this indulgence in Germany in particular to the Elector Albrecht of Mainz, who was at the same time an archbishop; for this business the latter chose Tetzel. This was a shameless man, who had once already been sentenced by Emperor Maximilian at Innsbruck to be drowned in a sack for adultery. But the more shameless he was, the better he seemed to the said archbishop to be suited as a preacher of indulgences. He also carried out his commission with the greatest zeal, everywhere he went setting up an indulgence-cross bearing the pope's coat of arms, and declaring to the people that it had just as much power as the cross of Christ; that it blotted out even the greatest sin, even one still only intended to be committed; and that as soon as the money rang in the box, the soul flew up from the mouth into heaven. According to his tariff, sorcery cost 2, polygamy 6, murder 8, church robbery and perjury 9 ducats.

With horror Luther learned in the confessional of the terrible consequences of such preaching. The number of his penitents kept dwindling, and those who still came to him appealed to the indulgence they had obtained and would hear nothing of any other penance. Luther then began, as he himself says, to preach cautiously against it: that one could indeed do better things, things more certain, than buying indulgences. At that time, therefore, he did not yet attack the indulgence itself but only its excessive advertisement, and in doing so he had nothing else in mind than to save the pope's reputation, which he still held in high regard. He supposed that all this was happening against the pope's will, who sought only the salvation of souls by it. But Tetzel and his following at once cried Luther out as an arch-heretic. This drove Luther to draw up ninety-five theses against the abuses of indulgences, which he publicly posted on the Castle Church at Wittenberg on October 31, 1517, with the challenge to all, far and near, that whoever wished or was able should bring forward his objections against them, whether by word of mouth or in writing. The first of these theses was: "When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ says, 'Repent,' etc., he wills that the whole life of his believers on earth should be one of constant and unceasing repentance." (See "Der Lutheraner" No. 5, page 4.)

Luther himself had no notion what an important step he had taken in publishing these theses, nor that they would be the beginning of a reformation of the church. For in them he had not yet attacked the papal indulgence itself at all, but only the crudest abuses of indulgences, and in doing so he had submitted himself to the judgment of the church. Yet without Luther then knowing it, he had in them already struck at the very heart of the papacy, in that he had asserted in them that a man "becomes a partaker of all the blessings of Christ and of the church by God's gift, even without letters of indulgence" — that is, that faith alone justifies and saves before God. That was the doctrine for which many thousands of anguished hearts, tormented by doubt, had long since sighed. Hence it came about that Luther's theses ran through the whole of Germany within fourteen days, and after four to six weeks were being eagerly read throughout all Europe; indeed, after four years a traveler bought a copy of them in Jerusalem.

The pope at first despised the whole affair and supposed that the controversy thereby stirred up would soon settle itself again; but when he saw that ever more dangerous movements against his authority were arising from it, he had Luther cited in July 1518 to appear in person in Rome within sixty days. The Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony, however, arranged matters so that Luther should be examined in Germany instead, namely at Augsburg, where the imperial diet happened to be meeting, by Cardinal Cajetanus, who in the name of the church commanded him to be silent. Of this hearing Luther writes, among other things: "When I heard the name of the church, I was terrified and offered to yield; I also promised the cardinal that I would henceforth be silent, but I asked him at the same time to also command my adversaries to keep quiet and hold still with their outcry: but he not only refused me this, he even threatened that if I did not recant, he would condemn everything I had taught. Now I had already taught the catechism, so that many people had been reformed by it; I therefore well knew that it was not for me to suffer it to be condemned, unless I meant to deny Christ. Thus I was compelled to attempt and await the utmost extremity." Since Luther's friends now feared evil designs on the part of the cardinal, they advised him to leave Augsburg quietly, after the cardinal had declared: "I will dispute no more with this beast, for he has deep-set eyes and strange thoughts running through his head." Luther therefore took his friends' advice, left Augsburg by night, and arrived safely back in Wittenberg on October 31. Although the cardinal, full of anger at his failed attempt to move Luther to recant, wrote to the elector that he should at least drive Luther out of Saxony, others advised the elector to the contrary. In particular, the excellent bishop of Würzburg wrote to him: "May your Grace not let the pious Dr. Martin be driven away, for he is being done wrong." Indeed, even Emperor Maximilian sent word to the elector that he should keep careful watch over the monk, for it might come to pass that he would be needed. Yet firm and unshaken as Luther showed himself in confessing the truth he had recognized in these negotiations, one must not suppose that he was thereby animated by any fleshly courage; he still trembled at the very thought of setting himself against "the holy Roman Church"; only the one thing he could not let be taken from him was to persevere in what he had come, through great and heavy struggles, to recognize clearly and irrefutably from God's Word. He therefore writes: "What a wretched and despised brother was I then, more like a corpse than a man, who was to set himself against the majesty of the pope, before whom not only the kings of the earth and the whole earth, but even heaven and hell, if I may say so, trembled, and who alone had to be obeyed at his beck and call! What my heart endured and suffered in that first year and the next, and in what humility — not false but genuine —