# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 05 02_S139
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

-work of our ecclesiastical synodical body, but shall at the same time be its heart, blood, marrow, and nerve, and vitally and formatively permeate our entire ecclesiastical work in doctrine, defense, divine worship, pastoral care, discipline, and governance. Thus we may, for example, cooperate for mission purposes, for the spread of the church, or the individual among us may, in private pastoral care, admonish some particular person, according to that person's need, in accordance with and by means of Law and Gospel — in either case our procedure, here and there, is to be in keeping with the confession. In this way we hope, then, before the faithful and merciful God, our dear Father in Christ, who knows the sincerity of our hearts, that we too, for our part, will gradually attain, out of the midst of this sickly, confession-lazy, pietistic-methodistic, unionistic, man-pleasing, all-too-human, and watery disfigurement of present-day Christianity, to a healthy ecclesiastical form, so that the believing, praying, confessing, teaching, defending, admonishing, educating, and self-governing church becomes ever more visible among us, the longer the more.

Yet by this it is not meant to say that we are striving to set up everywhere the outward forms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and to seek the essence of the church in such a restoration. Far be it from us. For example, in the manner of teaching and defending, in the adoption and conduct of mission work, and quite especially in the constitution and government of the church, the form of the church might at present, even among us, develop differently from that of those centuries, without the church thereby becoming essentially different.

Indeed! If we wished to take up and adopt again all the outward forms of the church from that time — forms which back then, ordered out of Christian freedom, were suited to their place and time — and sought therein the true Lutheran churchliness, and for that reason separated ourselves from other Lutheran synods, then we would indeed be childish, truly narrow-minded, and short-sighted separatists, and would rightly deserve that name. Rather, we are confident that the spirit of the reawakened confession will, in many respects, form new shapes, and will sail through unharmed between both reefs — namely, between reckless love of innovation and stubborn, purposeless clinging to the old; for this spirit of the confession is not only form-giving and shape-forming, but also sober and level-headed, far from all self-willed arrogance, and humble of heart. May God the Holy Spirit awaken and preserve this spirit ever more powerfully among us — with its courage to bear witness and its patience, with its serpent's wisdom and dove's simplicity, with its sharpness and gentleness, with its power to shape and its faithfulness in prayer — for fresh and living activity, for the sake of Jesus Christ, our beloved Lord and Savior. Amen.

(Submitted by Hermann Fick.)
The Wittenberg Concord, an Example of True Union.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Matthew 5:9.

In our time various attempts have been made to bring about a union between the Evangelical Lutheran and the Reformed Church. While the difference in confession was disregarded, a common church government, agenda, hymnbook, common works of love, mission endeavors, and so forth, were supposed to serve as the means by which hearts would gradually be united in the fellowship of faith. These attempts have failed; the Prussian Union is already near its dissolution, and the conviction is becoming ever more widely established that a lasting peace of the church can be founded only if a true agreement takes place in confession and doctrine.

This is an important lesson which the most recent church history gives us. The peace of the church cannot be made by means of human arbitrariness. The Lord alone holds the key of peace; but he grants us his peace only through the means ordained by himself — through Word and Sacrament. For his Word is the truth from which peace continually blossoms; therefore a true union can be concluded only on the foundation of a pure confession.

Let such a union be holy to us. Whoever has caught a glimpse of the glory of the kingdom of peace, whoever has tasted the blessedness of a brotherly fellowship which submits unconditionally to the Word of God, to him no sacrifice is too great or too heavy that he would not gladly bring for such a union. Such a one does not shrink even from the struggle commanded by the Lord for the sake of peace. For earnest battle must be waged against the schemes and every high thing that raises itself against the knowledge of God; all reason must be taken captive to the obedience of Christ, if a true peace is to unite believers at all — since it is indeed the errors and lies of a carnal reason that hinder unity.

This holy struggle for the sake of peace we find in the Reformation. Not only in sermons and writings, but also in personal meetings and religious colloquies, the disputed doctrines were diligently and thoroughly discussed — and behold, the Lord granted grace that this struggle bore a blessed fruit of peace, as the history of the Wittenberg Concord shows us.

After the Marburg Colloquy had ended, the Reformed party besieged the Landgrave Philip of Hesse without letup with letters, in order to draw him to their side, since, according to Melanchthon's expression, they were by no means without worldly practices. Thus he was almost persuaded to regard the difference between Luther's and Zwingli's doctrine as a mere dispute over words.

*) Sources: Luther's Works; the detailed Historia Motuum by Valentin Ernst Löscher; Reformation, Lutherthum und Union [Reformation, Lutheranism, and Union] by Dr. A. G. Rudelbach. — Concordia means in German: covenant, concord.

Luther sought to strengthen him in the faith of the fathers, admonishing him cordially "not to let himself be moved by the fine words of the opposing party." "It is dangerous," he says, "to accept such a new doctrine against so clear and manifest a text and such plain words of Christ, and to let go of such an ancient faith, held from the beginning throughout all Christendom, for the sake of such trifling sayings and notions as they have brought forward, which in truth can satisfy no conscience against such plain words of Christ. And I know for certain that the adversaries themselves cannot quiet their own conscience with it. But because they have committed themselves to the No, they will not and cannot turn back. And, dear God, how many a passage of Scripture have they cited in which they are openly caught having erred and failed, and which they must now likewise abandon. This sufficiently shows that there is no good ground there, but mere self-conceit."

Since in the meantime the Diet of Augsburg was approaching, the magnanimous Landgrave wished to bring about a union with the Reformed by that time, so as to be able to strengthen the league against the Emperor with their help, and therefore turned to Melanchthon and Brentius: "Let them be granted brotherhood, or at least be tolerated as weak in faith." To this Melanchthon and Brentius replied: "Indeed the weak in faith should be borne as brothers in love; but those who stubbornly defended false doctrine could not be regarded as brothers, for one ought not to consent to wrong doctrine. In general, it would be best if the worldly authority — both Lutheran and Zwinglian — let the teachers themselves answer for their own doctrine, and did not undertake to protect them against the Emperor, as Duke Frederick had done for Luther. They were ready to suffer gladly. The matter was God's; one must wait upon God's help and learn to exercise faith in danger, rather than hasten to protect oneself by unseemly force or counsel." The Landgrave accepted this counsel and unhesitatingly signed the Augsburg Confession.

It has already been mentioned that Zwingli submitted his own confession of faith at the Diet of Augsburg. The four Upper German cities as well — Strasbourg, Constance, Memmingen, and Lindau — publicly separated themselves from the Lutherans at that time by presenting to the Emperor a special confession of faith drawn up by Bucer and Capito, the so-called Confessio Tetrapolitana. The doctrine of the Supper was set forth in it in very ambiguous terms, which could be understood in either the Zwinglian or the Lutheran sense. Therefore, at the closing of the Diet, the Emperor also had it pointed out to them, on behalf of the Em-