# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1863_S260
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

under him. It takes a cautious, modest spirit to let remain under him what is God's temple, and to resist his addition, by which he destroys the temple of God."

So far Luther.

But should the Licentiate mean by Rome, with which the Lutheran Church has not broken completely, the Roman curia or the papacy with its antichristian doctrines, that would simply be ridiculous. Without a Luther — that is, without a man such as Luther was, and as only he was — there would be no Reformed Church at all rescued from the Roman Antichrist and its abominations. "When Luther was condemned by Rome, Zwingli was still drawing a pension from Rome," reports Leopold Ranke (whom certainly no one will accuse of Old Lutheran partisanship) in his History of Germany in the Age of the Reformation, III, 54. And not only did Zwingli himself, while he had not yet fallen away from Luther's teaching — namely in the year 1523, in his "Exposition of His Theses" — bear this testimony: "Luther is so excellent a warrior of God as has never been on earth in a thousand years, and with the manly, unmoved spirit with which he attacked the pope at Rome, no one has ever equaled him, for as long as the papacy has endured. God be praised! Through him a countless number more people are led to God than through me and others." (See Instruction Concerning Ecclesiastical Union by E. S. Cyprian, 2nd ed., 1726, p. 166.) Calvin, too, gives Luther the following testimony in a letter to Bullinger of November 25, 1544: "This, I ask, I want you to take to heart: first, what a great man Luther is, and by what great gifts he distinguishes himself; with what courage, with what steadfastness, with what skill, with what penetrating power to teach he has hitherto applied himself to overthrowing the kingdom of the Antichrist and, at the same time, to spreading the doctrine of salvation. I am accustomed often to say: even if he were to call me a devil, I would nevertheless grant him so much honor as to acknowledge him an outstanding servant of God." *)

Yet in what follows, Mr. Lic. Krummacher himself seems to want to specify the doctrines of the Lutheran Church which are supposed to prove that it "has not broken entirely with Rome in doctrine." He continues, namely, as follows:

"The Lutheran doctrine of baptism, which rests on a completely erroneous understanding of what the New Testament says about the baptism of believing adults, bears entirely the Roman Catholic character.

*) "This I desire may come to your mind: first, how great a man Luther is, and with what gifts he excels; with what courage of spirit, with what constancy, with what skill, with what efficacy of doctrine he has hitherto labored to overthrow the kingdom of Antichrist and at the same time to spread the doctrine of salvation. I am accustomed often to say: even if he were to call me a devil, I would nevertheless grant him this honor, that I acknowledge him an outstanding servant of God." [Latin original of Calvin's testimony translated in the text above.] Joh. Calvini epistolar. et responsor. ed. sec. Lausannae 1576. p. 113.