# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1863_S259
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Some Remarks on a New Apology for the Reformed Church. 259

us, curses us, bans us, hounds us, burns us, strangles us, and deals with us poor Christians as a true Antichrist ought to deal with Christendom. Now such Christians must indeed be rightly baptized and honest members of Christ, for otherwise they could not obtain such a victory over the Antichrist through death. We do not rave as the fanatics do, as though we rejected everything the pope has under him; for then we would also be rejecting Christendom, the 'temple of God', together with everything it has from Christ. Rather, what we contend against is that the pope will not let the goods of Christendom which he has inherited from the apostles remain as they are, but adds his devilish addition to them and beyond them, and does not use such goods for the improvement of the temple of God, but for its destruction, so that his commandment and ordinance are held higher than Christ's ordinance. Although in such destruction Christ nevertheless preserves his Christendom, just as he preserved Lot at Sodom, as St. Peter also proclaims, 2 Pet. 2:6-7, so that both remain true: the Antichrist sits in the temple of God through the devil's working, 2 Thess. 2:4, 9, and yet at the same time: the temple of God is and remains God's temple through Christ's preservation. If the pope can bear and accept this hypocrisy of mine, then I am indeed a submissive son and a pious papist and will truly be so with all my heart, and gladly recant everything I have otherwise done against him. Therefore such talk of the Anabaptists and fanatics is worthless, when they say: what the pope has is wrong, or: because this or that happens in the papacy, we want to have it otherwise. It is just as though they wished thereby to prove themselves great enemies of the Antichrist; but they do not see that in doing so they strengthen him the most, weaken Christendom the most, and deceive themselves. They ought to help us reject the abuse and the addition; but they would have no great honor from that, since they see that they cannot be the first to do so. So instead they attack what no one has attacked, so that they might be the first at something and gain honor. But the honor must come to shame, for they attack the temple of God, and miss the Antichrist who sits within it; like the blind, who grope after the water and grasp into the fire instead. Indeed, they do just as one brother did to another in the Thuringian forest: they were walking together through the forest, and a bear came upon them and threw one of them down; the other wanted to help his brother, and struck at the bear, but missed, and wretchedly stabbed his brother, who lay under the bear, instead. These fanatics do just the same. They ought to help poor Christendom, which the Antichrist holds under himself and torments, and instead they set themselves up fiercely against the pope; but they miss, and murder Christendom under the pope far more wretchedly. For if they left baptism and the sacrament intact, the souls of Christians might still escape from under the pope and be saved, as has happened until now; but now that the sacraments are taken from them, they must indeed be lost, because Christ himself is thereby taken away as well. Dear friend, one ought not simply burst in upon the pope in this way, because Christ's saints lie