# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1845 01 25_S41
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall never pass away."

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Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 1.

St. Louis, Mo., January 25, 1845.

No. 11.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at the subscription price of one dollar and twenty-five cents for out-of-town subscribers, who must pay half of this in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis, each individual issue is sold for six and a quarter cents.

Life Story of Dr. Luther.

(Continued.)

Dr. Eck had been forced to withdraw in disgrace after the conclusion of the Leipzig Disputation, for Luther's bold stand against the papacy, far from drawing general hatred upon him, won Luther instead, among high and low, among the learned and the unlearned, an ever-growing number of the most zealous adherents and fellow combatants throughout the whole Christian world. Burning with a desire for revenge, Eck therefore hastened to Rome; there he brought it about that on June 15, 1520, the Pope issued a bull (decree) in which forty-one propositions from Luther's writings were condemned, the burning of his writings was ordered, and he himself, if he did not recant within sixty days, was sentenced to be punished as a heretic with the ban, namely to be excluded from the fellowship of the Church. What effect this judgment had on Luther he himself writes at this time to a friend in these words: "I am now much more courageous, since I know for certain that the Pope has plainly been found to be the Antichrist and the seat of Satan."

In triumph Eck carried the bull of excommunication about through Germany, and enforced the burning of Luther's writings especially in the imperial hereditary lands; in many regions, however, especially in Electoral Saxony, he was received with general mockery. Luther, meanwhile, now wrote the two famous works: "On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church" and "Against the Bull of the Antichrist," in which he uncovered ever more clearly and combated ever more decisively the errors of the papacy, such as the false doctrine of the seven sacraments, of transubstantiation (the change of bread in the Holy Supper), and other such things. Furthermore, since Luther saw that he was being violently expelled from the Roman Church through the suppression of the truth, he resolved to show before all the world, by a public act, what he thought of such a ban, and on November 10, 1520, early at 9 o'clock, before the Elster Gate at Wittenberg, accompanied by many doctors and students, he solemnly burned the bull that had been sent to him along with the entire body of papal canon law. Luther himself cast both into the flame with these words: "Because you have troubled the Holy One of the Lord, may the eternal fire trouble and consume you."

In a tract that Luther then published, he laid before the world the matter itself that had moved him to this step, and showed at the same time the godless propositions contained in the papal canon law. It states there, among other things: "If the Pope were so wicked as to lead countless people in great multitudes to the devil, still no one would be permitted to punish him for it."

Luther knew quite well what he was risking by this and what immense power he was thereby stirring up against himself; but though all his friends thought with trembling of the outcome of this affair, he himself grew daily more confident and joyful. He therefore wrote to Staupitz: "I have burned the Pope's books and bull, at first trembling and praying, but now I am more joyful over it than over any deed of my whole life, for these (books) are a greater plague than I ever supposed." This godly courage was soon to be put to the test. For when in the following year, 1521, a Diet was to be held at Worms, Luther received an imperial summons to appear there, with the assurance of safe conduct there and back. To the inquiry of his Elector as to whether he would present himself, Luther answered: "I am ready, in humble obedience, to come to the coming Diet at Worms, and with the help of the Almighty so to conduct and answer for myself that everyone shall learn in truth that I have hitherto done nothing out of wanton, rash, disorderly will, or for the sake of temporal worldly honor and advantage, but that everything I have written and taught, according to my conscience, oath, and duty, I have set forth and done as a poor teacher of Holy Scripture, to the praise of God, for the salvation and blessedness of common Christendom, for the good of the whole German nation, for the rooting out of dangerous abuses and superstition, and for the deliverance of all Holy Christendom from so much endless burden and blasphemy," and to Spalatin he wrote that he would come to Worms, even if he had to be carried there sick; for if the Emperor called him, God called him; the matter was committed to God; He still lives and reigns who preserved the three men in the fiery furnace, and if He did not choose to preserve him, then his death would matter little; one could not know whether more benefit to the common good or to the cause of the Gospel would come from his life or from his death.

"Here you have my counsel and opinion," he continues, "expect anything of me except that I should flee or recant. I will not flee, and recant even less, as surely as my Lord Jesus strengthens me. For I can do neither without danger to godliness and to the salvation of many."

Friends vividly represented to Luther the great danger he was going to meet, and reminded him of Hus's death by fire, but he answered them: "Even if his enemies were to kindle a fire reaching from Wittenberg to Worms clear up to heaven, he would still appear in the name of the Lord, and step into Behemoth's mouth between his great teeth, and confess Christ and let Him prevail." "I do not intend to flee," he wrote to Spalatin, "nor to let the Word stand in danger, but to confess it unto death, so far as Christ is gracious to me and stands by me." So confident and joyful, accompanied by Justus Jonas and others, he set out on his journey and preached along the way in several places to great crowds of people; and although Satan sought to hinder his onward journey through more than one illness, and although his chief enemies, who feared his personal appearance, spared no effort to keep him away from Worms by both frightening and flattering means, yet this dear champion of the faith remained firm in his resolve. "Christ lives," he wrote from Frankfurt, "therefore we will go into Worms, in defiance of all the gates of hell and of those who rule in the air." At Oppenheim he still received an anxious letter from Spalatin, who had him urgently admonished not to come to Worms, since the enemies had already spread the report that Luther, together with all his followers, had already been condemned by the Emperor. "And even if there were as many devils in Worms," was his answer, "as tiles on the roofs, I would still go in."

Thus Dr. Luther entered Worms on April 16, riding in an open wagon and clothed in his monk's cowl, preceded by the imperial herald, and more than 2,000 people escorted him to his lodging, where

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