# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1864_S286
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

286 Church and Contemporary History.

And why? Only so that all, all of them, even the openly godless, may stay with you, only for the sake of the union-of-all-the-world. And why should they stay with you? Hand on heart: you only lie to yourselves when you say you hope they will yet be converted within your fellowship. You have another reason, a wretched, miserable reason. What you are concerned about is the fair outward standing of your so-called church, about earthly goods, money, and power. You are afraid of losing these paltry earthly things; that is why you do not dare to do what Jesus commands you; that is why you hold the 9,700 back, held back by force in your bonds. Oh, what misery! Do you think you are thereby doing the Lord a service? Indeed, you are doing the devil good service by it, but not Christ! You are ruining the 9,700, and the others besides. Learn, then, from Gideon. If not, then know that outside — not in the kingdom of heaven — will be the fainthearted, and the dogs, and the sorcerers, and the whoremongers, and the murderers, and the idolaters, and all who love and practice lies. When the Midianites saw that Gideon's army was growing so much smaller, they may well have exulted. They felt all the more certain of victory — but they were encamped in the valley, and to the valley they were doomed to go down. So let the godless today, likewise, go on exulting, when the band of the saints becomes small and few — the enemy lies encamped in the valley, in the human-and-devilish valley of pride and wickedness. In its time the abyss will open and swallow them up forever."

Monkery. In the "Evangelist" we read: "In England a Protestant monastic order under the direction of a certain Brother Ignatius is causing quite a stir. These monks go on pilgrimages, lead a monastic life, and stage pompous processions."

Renunciation of the Devil. On the relative abolition of this practice in Hanover, Th. Harms, pastor at Müden on the Örtze, brother of the well-known [Ludwig] Harms, likewise speaks very well, among other things, as follows, as we read in Räthjen's Kirchenzeitung: "It is said, finally, that a formal renunciation of the devil is not necessary at Baptism, and that Scripture says nothing of it. In confessing the Christian faith, the devil is thereby renounced at the same time. Baptism thus remains a valid Baptism even without renunciation of the devil. — But the question of renunciation does not concern the sacrament of Baptism as such, but rather the confession of doctrine. Why do we Lutherans resist so strongly the Reformed formula of distribution at the Holy Supper: 'Our Lord Christ says, this is my body,' and say instead: Take and eat, this is the true body of the Lord Jesus Christ? Precisely because the Reformed formula of distribution does not confess, whereas the Lutheran formula is the clearest, most definite confession. For the very same reason, a clear confession at Baptism is necessary. This confession is precisely what falls away in the new renunciation formula, for the sense of the law and the loud demand of the so-called weak in faith requires that the candidate for baptism, through the sponsors, need not renounce, and thus need not confess, that there is a personal devil and that sin is devilry. According to this, a person can be a good, orthodox Christian and a well-qualified baptismal sponsor even while rejecting the doctrine of a personal devil—though Holy Scripture and the confession of the church testify to it most clearly and unambiguously—and can, as a sponsor, merely see to it that the child is later instructed with all faithfulness in the Lutheran confession. The doctrine of the devil is thereby reckoned among the matters of indifference, when in fact it belongs among the most important doctrines, without which the existence of sin would be inexplicable and the Lord's whole work of redemption downright impossible. Because the storm now raging in our lands is directed against the doctrine of the devil—which receives its most important and sharpest expression precisely in the act of Baptism—the renunciation of the devil must be required precisely at Baptism. If it is objected that the preacher, after all, renounces the devil at Baptism, the answer is: it is not the preacher who is to renounce at Baptism, but the candidate, through the sponsors. The new renunciation formula cannot be used by believing preachers and laypeople faithful to the confession without burdening their conscience. If one has given in to the pressure of the weak in faith on this point, what grounds will one be able to give for refusing, when they demand, for instance, the abolition of the