# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1863_S359
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Some Remarks on a New Apology for the Reformed Church. 359

preachers we will say nothing at all, who, as a result of the machinations of Reformed politicizing theologians and theologizing politicians, and through the decrees of the Reformed princes fanaticized by the latter, were shamefully deposed from their lawful preaching offices, thrown into prison, or driven with wife and child into misery. Yet, thank God, it is neither the sins nor the virtues of the theologians on either side that matter when the question is the truth of a church whose servants they were! The criterion is a wholly different one, and is pronounced by the Lord in John 8:31-32; 10:3-5; 14:23. — Especially strange, finally, is the third reason why Mr. K. wishes not only to remain with the Reformed church, but also never to enter into a union with the Lutheran church; it consists in the charisms which the Reformed church is said to possess, and in the important mission which is supposed to have come to her through them. This reason is so strange precisely because Mr. K. concedes like charisms to the Lutheran church as well, and so, by his own logic, the Lutherans too must remain Lutheran and may enter into no union with the Reformed church! Allegiance and the required loyalty to the one church or the other is, accordingly, evidently conditioned simply by being born into the one or the other. This line of argument is so summary that Mr. K. might have spared himself all his other reasons. He is evidently — a wholly new phenomenon! — out of indifferentism, against an indifferentist union!

But we hasten to bring our remarks to a close. Mr. K. says, in conclusion:

"Finally, I would still like, in this birth-year of the Heidelberg Catechism, which came to light three hundred years ago, to emphasize the great advantage our Reformed church has over the Lutheran in possessing this incomparable textbook and symbolical book."

"Finally, let the prayerful wish be expressed that upon our dear Reformed church the promise of Isaiah 58:11-12 may be fulfilled."

Marginal Notes: To this we need only recall that we by no means envy Mr. K. this supposed advantage. The Heidelberg Catechism, the handiwork of a fallen-away Lutheran, is, as we already remarked in the April number, p. 127, no fresh confession. It was meant to displace, unnoticed, Luther's Catechism, and with it Luther's teaching altogether, from the Palatinate, so that, if possible, even the Lutherans would not notice it. Accordingly it is set, precisely on the chief points of difference — concerning the Person of Christ, concerning Baptism, concerning the Holy Supper, concerning predestination — upon tenterhooks, and, at least for the utterly simple-minded, wrapped in a mysterious obscurity. For those, however, who are grounded in doctrine, the whole of Reformed rationalism plainly lies exposed in it; hence men such as Johannes Brenz, Jakob Andreä, Tilemann Heshusius, Lucas Osiander, and others, soon after