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American Lutheranism. Friedrich Bente
Читать онлайн.Название American Lutheranism
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isbn 4064066392673
Автор произведения Friedrich Bente
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21. Distinctive Doctrines Stressed.—Tender love for his flock did not silence Falckner's confessional Lutheranism, nor did it induce him to keep doctrinal differences in the background. He was no unionist. On the contrary, in order to protect the souls committed to his care from the Reformed errors with which they came into contact everywhere, and to enable them to confess and defend the Lutheran truth efficiently, he emphasized and preached also the distinctive doctrines of the Lutheran Church. Naturally, his congregation was imbued with the same spirit of sound and determined Lutheranism. "The straitened circumstances of our Dutch Lutherans," says Graebner, "might have suggested to their flesh to seek a better understanding with the Dutch and English Reformed of the city, and to sacrifice some of their Lutheranism, in order to win the friendship as well as the support of these people. Indeed, we hear that these Lutherans manfully confessed their Lutheran faith whenever they came in contact with their Reformed compatriots. And Pastor Falckner was repeatedly urged by members of his congregation to compile a booklet for his parishioners in which the chief doctrines, especially the distinctive doctrines concerning which they were often called upon to make confession, would be briefly set forth, together with the necessary proof-passages. Falckner acceded to these requests. In 1708 he published a book entitled 'Thorough Instruction (Grondlycke Onderricht) concerning Certain Chief Articles of the True, Pure, Saving, Christian Doctrine, Based upon the Foundation of the Prophets and Apostles, Jesus Christ Himself Being the Chief Corner-stone.'" It was the first book to appear from the pen of a Lutheran pastor in America, and till the awakening of Confessional Lutheranism the only uncompromising presentation of Lutheran doctrine. V. E. Loescher praised it as being an "Anti-Calvinistic Compend of Doctrine, Compendium Doctrinae Anti-Calvinianum." The chapter on the "Freedom of the Will," which is embodied in Graebner's History of the Lutheran Church in America, bespeaks theological acumen and clarity on the part of the author. In simple catechetical form, together with most appropriate Bible-passages, Falckner presents the following truths: Having lost the divine image, man, by his own natural free will, can neither understand, will, nor do that which is spiritually right, good, and pleasing to God. Man is converted to God and to all that is "thoroughly good" only by the grace and power of God. It is God's pleasure to work in every man in order that he may will and do that which is good. The reason why this is not accomplished in all men is, because many wilfully resist the work of God's grace, despise the means of conversion, and thus, by their own stubborn and evil wills, frustrate the good and gracious will of God. Man has a free will; for he does the evil and rejects the good freely and without constraint, without any compulsion on the part of God. Furthermore, in external matters, which reason comprehends, man also has a free will, in a measure. The will of a regenerate Christian is set free, inasmuch as he is able to will that which is pleasing to God, by faith in Jesus Christ, although, in this world, he is not able perfectly to do that which is good. Falckner says: "I conceive this doctrine of free will as follows: All the good which I will and do I ascribe to the grace of God in Christ and to the working of His good Spirit within me, render thanks to Him for it, and watch that I may traffic with the pound of grace, Luke 19, which I have received, in order that more may be given unto me, and that I may receive grace for grace out of the fulness of grace in Jesus Christ. John 1, 16. On the contrary, all the evil which I will and do I ascribe to my own evil will alone, which maliciously deviates from God and His gracious will, and becomes one with the will of the devil, the world, and sinful flesh. And I am persuaded that if only my own will does not dishonestly, wilfully, and stubbornly resist the converting gracious will of God, He, by His Spirit, will bend and turn it toward that which is good, and, for the sake of Christ's perfect obedience, will not regard, nor impute unto me, the obstinacy cleaving to me by nature." In the introduction of the book, which was written in the Dutch language, Falckner unequivocally professes adherence to the Symbols of the Lutheran Church, the confession of his fathers, "which confession and faith," he says, "by the grace of God and the convincing testimony of His Word and Spirit, also dwell in me, and shall continue to dwell in me until my last, blessed end." (91 ff.)
JOSHUA KOCHERTHAL.
22. Palatinates in Quassaic, East and West Camp.—Wearying of the afflictions which the Thirty Years' War, the persecutions of Louis XIV, and Elector John Wilhelm, who was a tool of the Jesuits, had brought upon them, hosts of Palatinates came to America in quest of liberty and happiness. The cruelties and barbarities which the French king, the French officers, and the French soldiers perpetrated against innocent men, women, and children are described by Macaulay as follows: "The French commander announced to near half a million of human beings that he granted them three days of grace. Soon the roads and fields, which then lay deep in snow, were blackened by innumerable multitudes of men, women, and children flying from their homes. Many died of cold and hunger; but enough survived to fill the streets of all the cities of Europe with lean and squalid beggars, who had once been thriving farmers and shopkeepers. Meanwhile the work of destruction began. The flames went up from every marketplace, every hamlet, every parish church, every country seat, within the devoted provinces. The fields where the corn had been sown were plowed up. The orchards were hewn down. No promise of a harvest was left on the fertile plains where had once been Frankenthal. Not a vine, not an almond tree, was to be seen on the slopes of the sunny hills round what had once been Heidelberg." (Wolf, Lutherans in America, 175.) Great numbers of emigrants from Hesse, Baden, and Wuerttemberg whose fate had been similar to that of the Palatinates, joined them. Permission to settle in the New World was sought from the authorities in London, where in 1709, according to various authorities, from ten to twenty thousand Palatines, as they were all designated, were assembled, waiting for an opportunity to emigrate. Joshua Kocherthal, Lutheran pastor at Landau in Bavaria, was the leader of the emigrants from the Palatinate. In 1704 he went to London to make the necessary arrangements. Two years later he published a booklet on the proposed emigration. In 1708 he sailed for the New World with the first fifty-three souls, landing in New York at the close of December, 1708, or the beginning of January, 1709, after a long and stormy voyage lasting about four months.