# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 05 02_S140
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

-pire, that they had a religion different from everyone else's.

Among those who at that time made their way through from error to the knowledge of truth, this gratifying progress appears especially clearly in the case of Bucer, the ever-active mediator of peace, as Dr. Rudelbach fittingly calls him.

He came, commissioned by the city of Strasbourg, together with Capito to Augsburg, and first had a conversation with Brentius, the content of which the latter reported to Melanchthon. "You may certainly be assured," Melanchthon then wrote to Bucer, "that even if I do not consider your doctrine altogether correct, I am nevertheless of a different opinion without any bitterness or hatred. It seems to me neither beneficial to the common good, nor advisable for my conscience, that I should burden our princes with your hated doctrine, which I can demonstrate to be right and true neither to myself nor to others, since it goes against the testimony of the whole church. Zwingli has sent a confession in which he truly does not wish to be regarded as differing from us merely in words. Thus he stirs up trouble needlessly in other articles as well. It seems that it is more a Swiss than a Christian spirit that has driven him to write such a defiant confession. I would very much wish that the dispute concerning the Lord's Supper could be settled and quieted."

Bucer replied: "We here, as everyone knows, have nothing to do with Zwingli. Otherwise, we call our Savior to witness that between the presence of which Zwingli writes and your essential yet non-spatial presence we can see no difference at all, or at most so slight a one that it vanishes at once as soon as one inquires into it."

This view — that the dispute between Luther and Zwingli was merely a dispute over words — Bucer also expressed to the Saxon Electoral Chancellor, Gregorius Brück, to whom he sent nine articles as a basis for agreement. At the same time, however, he admitted that the words "this is my body" need not be understood literally, but figuratively — that the body and blood of Christ are present in the Supper, but only through the contemplation of faith, and that the ungodly do not partake of the Lord's body.

From this it is evident in what grievous self-deception Bucer was at that time caught up, in that he confused the real presence — which occurs independently of human perception and human thought — with the elevation of the mind toward that which is not present, as though the latter were capable of producing the former.

Melanchthon therefore judged very soundly when he said: "Bucer deceives himself and others with this imagination. They merely throw dust in people's eyes by saying that Christ is truly present. And yet they add: through the contemplation of faith, that is, in thought — whereby they again deny the essential presence. We teach that the body of Christ is truly and essentially present with the bread or in the bread; but it seems to us that Bucer acts deceitfully here when he says that we are in agreement with one another on this article, merely because we all alike reject transubstantiation or the change of the bread."

Bucer indeed tried to justify himself against these charges, but he only proved ever more clearly that he was still entirely in error, in that he plainly confessed to Melanchthon that Christ could be bodily present only in one place and not in several at once; in the Holy Supper he was present only to the soul and to the pure heart, which is lifted up into heaven through faith.

It is clearly shown here that Bucer at that time, like Calvin later, was striving to establish a middle position between Luther and Zwingli. Zwingli himself, however, had warned Bucer against the futile labor of trying to reconcile him with Luther. How far removed Melanchthon was, moreover, from favoring this undertaking is proven by the following decided statement, which he made at that very time. "As for the Zwinglian faction," he wrote to a friend, "you may be of good courage: I have myself learned, since their principal ringleaders were together at Marburg, that they have no Christian doctrine at all, but only philosophize and juggle childishly and ridiculously. Even if they were to dispute for six hundred years, they would bring forth nothing more than this alone: the flesh profits nothing. And these words they forcibly apply to the flesh of Christ. I would rather die than agree with them and say that the body of Christ must and can be in only one place."

Since Bucer nevertheless insisted that he was in agreement with Luther, he was advised to declare himself clearly to Luther in person. Accordingly, he traveled, still during the Diet, to Coburg, where Luther was staying at the time. In their conversation all the points of dispute were then most diligently weighed. Luther earnestly impressed upon Bucer that a union could be concluded only on the basis of truth, lest a greater evil should arise from it; and Bucer made several statements which pleased Luther. "You may believe me," he said to Bucer, "that I wish to calm and quiet this discord, even should I have to risk my life for it three times over. For I have seen how necessary your fellowship is to us, and what distress it has brought and still brings to the Gospel, so that I am certain that all the gates of hell, the whole papacy, the whole Turk, the whole world, all the flesh, and whatever evil there is anywhere, could not have harmed the Gospel as much as it has, if we were united." Luther once again ventured to entertain a great and joyful hope.

In the year 1531 Bucer sent Luther a little book of confession, in which he declared that he and his followers believed with him that the body and blood of our Lord are present in the sacrament, and are given, together with the words, to the soul as food or strengthening of faith. Our people accept this favorably and hear it gladly from the heart. Luther replied to Bucer: "We thank God that we are after all so far agreed. For if we confess that the body of Christ is truly given to the soul as food, and there is no reason why we should not also say that it is likewise given to an ungodly soul even though it does not receive it — just as the light of the sun is offered both to the seeing and to the blind — then it puzzles me why you still hesitate to confess that it is also, with the bread, offered outwardly to the mouth both of the godly and of the ungodly. But if this view has not yet come to maturity among you, then I hold that the matter must be postponed and we must further wait upon divine grace."

...must lead to the greatest danger to the soul. "I formed for myself," he concludes, "after our Coburg conversation, a good hope, but such hope is not yet firm; may the Lord Jesus enlighten us and make us perfectly one! This I beg, this I lament, for this I sigh."

Luther expressed himself likewise on this matter also to the Elector John: "I truly cannot yield or give way any further. Dear God, is it really so hard a thing to believe that an ungodly man might receive the body of Christ in the bread, when they must nevertheless believe that the devil bodily carried Christ to the temple and to the high mountain, and that afterward the Jews bodily seized and crucified him? So they must also confess that an ungodly man hears the true Word of God. And if it were not the true Word of God, then he would not be condemned for not believing it, but would do right in not believing a false or deceptive word of God. The same must be said also of God's name, Baptism, and the Sacrament. Everything through which he deals with us must truly and rightly be God's name, Word, and work."

Thereupon Bucer approached the exceedingly gentle Duke Ernst of Lüneburg to ask for his mediation. But the matter was not thereby advanced any further. Luther replied to this prince that he had already answered Bucer in the most friendly manner, but that he had refused, as gently as possible, to consent to his opinion. But if Bucer maintained that the quarrel consisted merely in words, that was an empty pretense; "I would gladly die for it," he says, "if it were so — such a dispute would not have lasted long, indeed would never even have begun." At the same time he calls attention to the danger to souls if two faiths were to exist within one church, and concludes, asserting his great longing for peace: "Your Princely Grace should believe that, to me, next to Christ,

He could not yet consent to complete concord, because two kinds of faith and confession within one church