# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 07 05_S195
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

in Treptow. A witness to his aptitude as a schoolman is the extraordinary reputation the Treptow school gained at that time, so that children were sent to it from Livonia, Westphalia, and other lands, and its enrollment kept rising. In 1512 he was ordained a priest, and soon afterward Boldewan chose him as lecturer at the college of canons he had established. A fruit of his historical studies was his Pomerania, completed in 1518, a history book that with honor opens the line of Pomeranian chroniclers and will always hold its place as a source. The year 1520 drew near. Already Luther's books were flying from one end of Germany to the other, and his living voice had drawn thousands of God's children to himself. Now, however, his book on the "Babylonian Captivity" appeared. Otto Slütow, the church inspector of Treptow, had just been in Wittenberg and brought the book home with him. When he showed it to his fellow boarders, among whom was Bugenhagen, as the greatest piece of news, the latter, after leafing through it a little, replied: "Ever since the Savior of the world suffered, many heretics have indeed troubled the church and attacked it harshly, but none has done it as badly as this Luther." No one thought that the hook would first catch hold in Bugenhagen — and yet his hour had come. After a few days he brought the book, which he had now examined more carefully, to his colleagues and burst out with the words: "What more shall I say? The whole world is blind and lies in great darkness; this one man alone sees what is true." The Lord had taken the scales from his eyes; he felt himself blessed in the better righteousness he had now come to know; with horror he looked back over the path he had walked, thanked God upon his knees, and did not forget the confession of one who had been saved. For thus he himself testifies of his former path and of his present wondrous illumination, in his exposition of the Psalter:

"In my early youth I was withdrawn from worldly life and works that are condemned by the world. But when I sought to improve my former conduct, and for that reason devoted myself to papal law and human statutes, I became far worse than the world itself. Meanwhile the Lord often showed me my sin through the fruit of the evil works into which I fell, so that he might make me know myself and might bear witness to the truth. But it was all in vain, for through confession and satisfaction I thought to pay for everything, and clung far more to my own works than to the works of God. This path of sin and counsel of the ungodly which I followed, I would not even have let anyone reproach me for, and whoever had dared to do so, I would not have taken it kindly from him. Finally, so that nothing might be lacking to my ungodly condition, I even began to sit in the seat of scoffers, relying on my own wisdom. And although I fully intended and wished to learn what was Christian, I nevertheless confirmed everything that was merely human. Which is the highest ungodliness of the Pharisees, that they wish to compare human things with divine ones, indeed often prefer them, because everywhere they seek their own advantage. But neither in these nor in my former errors did the hand of the gracious Father forsake me, but, like a foolish little child, though I did not notice it, he led me until he had bound me to himself. For from the beginning of my life he gave me the disposition to take pains to arm and equip my hearers with divine Scripture against gross vices, such as greed, usury, and outward idolatry, from which even our own people are not free, so that, thus armed and equipped with the Word of God, they might refrain from sins and keep pure souls for their Creator. But what was this other than a Pharisaic doctrine of hypocrisy, since I myself did not even know the manner and nature of faith, through which alone the aforementioned things can be accomplished? In this blindness I remained, until God from on high had mercy on human errors and brought back the apostolic era of the preaching of the holy Gospel according to the Spirit of Christ. Through this, I, who had formerly been an offense to God, have now become an offense to men — yet only to those to whom the Gospel of Christ is a greater offense than I am. Now for this change in my condition I give thanks, honor, and praise to God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ forever, earnestly praying that he grant me his Spirit, so that I may have the will and desire for his Law and speak of it day and night, so that, being established in the Spirit, I may not tolerate the offense of antichristian doctrine, yet through love may bear with all the stumbling of the weaker brethren, since I myself am also encompassed with much and exceedingly great weakness."

Bugenhagen's first labor after his completed conversion was this, that he shared the joyful light with others closest to him and proved it mightily from God's Word. His deliberate zeal enlightened and kindled others; many were won for the Gospel. But now Bugenhagen felt the urge to see the whole newly awakened life in wider circles, and himself to quench his thirst at the very spring which the Lord had first struck open in the wilderness. So in 1521 he went to Wittenberg and studied there quietly on his own. No one suspected in him the man he would soon become. He expounded the Psalms in his lodgings to a few young Pomeranians who had traveled with him, his former companions. He had scarcely reached the sixteenth Psalm when the crowd of listeners who had joined him had grown so large that his lodgings could no longer hold them all, and even when, at Melanchthon's urging, he lectured publicly, the crowding lessened so little that Melanchthon in fact came to regard Bugenhagen as the man of the university. Melanchthon himself attended the lectures, and Luther, who always rejoiced so heartily at the growth of others in the Spirit, encouraged him to publish his lectures, and when he had seen the work, he not only rejoiced over it as a sign of the winter now past and the spring now arrived, but gave it the most honorable testimony that among all, older and newer alike, not one had grasped the spirit of the book as Pomeranus had. How deeply Bugenhagen had already penetrated into the true spirit of Luther's Reformation is shown by his conduct during Karlstadt's iconoclasm of 1522; he declared himself, together with Melanchthon, loudly against it, even before Luther, having returned from his Patmos, delivered his well-known glorious sermons against this mischief. So general already was the recognition, among the congregation he served, of the genuine reforming spirit resting upon him, that this congregation, through its representatives and even the university, unanimously — and also at Luther's recommendation — called him to the vacant pastoral office. What good he did as pastor of the Wittenberg congregation (he stood at its head for thirty-six years, until his death) is hard to state briefly, since every word of grace, every petition in Christ's name from a heart driven by his love, is surely of inestimable worth. Let it suffice to note that he administered his office with as much zeal as wisdom and perseverance, that he preached the Gospel daily, and in German; that he was the first to introduce Luther's German Mass into the parish church, and handled it skillfully; that he stood by this man, his dear father and lord, as he liked to call him, with all faithfulness, love, and spiritual experience through the great spiritual and bodily trials that were often laid upon this servant of the Lord, notably in 1527; that he never left the congregation, not even in the hardest times, unless some other, higher calling summoned him elsewhere. A beautiful proof of the latter he gave when, during the plague at Wittenberg in 1527, when the university was for that reason moved to Jena, he alone remained behind with Luther and two deacons, and, having moved into the former's house — which, full of the sick, looked much like a hospital — visited from there all the sick and dying, comforting them from the Word of God; indeed, he composed a special tract of comfort on this very matter, and expounded the first four chapters of the first epistle to the Corinthians to the few students who had remained behind. For it was his principle, as it was Luther's, that for the sake of God's Word one should forsake body, life, and everything. No less was Bugenhagen drawn, in this period, into the church's general struggle against the raging false doctrine. In his open letter to Joh. Heß in 1525 he declared, in short, blunt words, why Zwingli's twisting of the words of the Supper seemed to him equally dangerous to the church and to faith in God's Word, and Zwingli's counter-writing could not budge him a foot's breadth. He prepared the first translation of the Swabian Syngramma. After Luther had published, in 1527, his unsurpassable work: "That These Words of Christ, 'This is My Body,' Still Stand Firm," Bugenhagen the following year put out his own "Public Testimony Concerning the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ," in which he settled accounts with the Swiss, calling out to them at the end: "Those who deny the word of Christ shall henceforth expect nothing more from me, but may well fear Christ, against whom, in his Word, they err and contend." Into this period fall also most of his exegetical works, published partly by himself and partly by others from his lectures, but above all the excellent book, full of spirit and power: "Concerning the Christian Faith and Right Good Works, to the Honorable City of Hamburg," 1526. Already in the publication of the Low Saxon New Testament in 1525 he rendered the most valuable service. He accompanied the printing of the great Low Saxon Bible with summaries and marginal notes, all with Luther's knowledge and counsel. Finally, in the revision of the entire Lutheran Bible, Luther took Bugenhagen, along with other learned colleagues, into counsel. Bugenhagen, for his part, celebrated the appearance of the revised Lutheran Bible translation with an annual feast on St. Matthias's Day at his house, "at which he thanked God, together with his children and friends, for this precious and blessed treasure of the German Bible." With the year 1528 his actual evangelist labors begin. Here his practical activity unfolds most brilliantly; alongside his ordering wisdom, no less significant for its happy success was his unaffected humility and love, which knew how to clothe itself in the very lowliest garb and yet embrace the very highest. First there went out to him the call