# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1863_S355
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Some Remarks on a New Apology of the Reformed Church. 355

Marginal remarks: As for the confessorship and martyrdom especially claimed by the Reformed Church, we are far from wishing to dispute this honor to all the Reformed. We do this as little as did the old, faithful Lutheran and co-author of the Formula of Concord, Nik. Selnecker, who writes thus in his Brevis responsio ad crimin. Danaei: "In the persecutions that arose in France, the Netherlands, and elsewhere, many innocent people were indeed also miserably strangled for religion's sake, and many martyrs are also found from among the crowd who are Sacramentarians, for whom even a heart of stone must rightly feel compassion."**) Nevertheless, a Reformed believer, if he wishes to appeal to the fact that his Church has thereby been marked out by God Himself as His chosen one, ought not to forget the modesty and careful distinction needed here. First, namely, all those Reformed who were bloodily persecuted because they persisted in their specifically Reformed errors are to be subtracted from the number of martyrs, according to the well-known, indisputable axiom: Non poena, sed causa facit martyrem — that is, it is not the torment but its cause (namely, the known truth) that makes a martyr. Secondly, the Reformed gentlemen must also not let it slip from memory how, according to history, many of their fellow believers, through their carnal, revolutionary image-breaking, willfully provoked against themselves the fury of antichristian wickedness. And finally, they must also not overlook the fact that thousands of their so-called martyrs, particularly in France, had banded themselves together into a political faction and taken up the sword against the government that was persecuting them. Cf. Matt. 26:51-52. So there remain as martyrs only those who shed their blood solely for the sake of the truth — which the Lutheran Church also confesses; therefore these martyrs are rightly regarded by us Lutherans as witnesses in blood of the Lutheran and not of the Reformed Church as such. Selnecker himself, accordingly, continues in the passage cited above as follows: "But, dear God! All these were put to death as Lutherans, not on account of the doctrine of the Holy Supper, but because they would not worship the papal abomination. Therefore God also graciously stood by them in their trials and called them joyfully and comforted to Himself, and covered over their weakness and the false notions in which they were entangled and led astray concerning the Holy Supper, and thus bore with them patiently; just as the gracious God always turns

**) So judges a Lutheran who was himself first deposed and then also driven out of city and land by a Reformed man, the notorious Dr. Crell, and against whose family, left behind, this same Reformed man then cooled his burning hatred.