“…Lutherans die well” (Part 3 of 3): amusing fables of Catholics and Jesuits

      This concludes from Part 2 (Part 1). —  Now Walther defends against not just one fable but three.  And in the process he teaches us "Protestant schoolchildren" just exactly what a "Protestant" is.

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Roman Catholics live well, but Lutherans die well.

[Part 3 of 3; By C.F.W. Walther – Der Lutheraner v. 24, no. 18 (May 1868), p. 139]

It is amusing that the Louisville Faith Messenger relates that Melanchthon said to his mother: “The Protestant doctrine is easier, but the Catholic doctrine is safer.”  

Every good Protestant schoolchild knows, however, that the Lutherans were called by the name Protestant only after that incident because on April 29, 1529 [sic? or April 19] they entered a solemn written Protestation against the imperial annulment of [the ban the Diet of] Speyer [1526].

Hey, hey, Mr. Papists, may that not happen to you! As is generally known, the Frenchman [Antoine] Varillas was the first to invent that fable, although Varillas lied even more grossly by saying that Melanchthon did not say the words given by the Faith Messenger [page 139, col. 2] to his mother on her deathbed, but on his own deathbed, 31 years after her death!! (For it is well known that Melanchthon did not die until 1560.)  But although the Louisville Faith Messenger omitted the fiction of Varillas where he had betrayed himself, the Faith Messenger did not find his fiction bad enough. While Varillas reports that Melanchthon said to his mother: “The religion of Luther is more plausible, the Roman safer," yet according to the Faith Messenger Melanchthon is quoted to have said: “The Protestant (!) teaching is easier, but the Catholic is safer.” The difference between Varillas and the Faith Messenger is that he tells us that Melanchthon said those words to his mother after she had died 31 years before, which Varillas hadn't thought about at the time, while the Faith Messenger tells us that Melanchthon called the Lutherans ‘Protestants’ even before their “Protestation”, which is about the same as if someone told him that Columbus had said on his journey across the Atlantic Ocean: “I want to see if I can not discover America!” Who would believe that? —

The Faith Messenger again looks for when it can twist a story or invent something that has not actually happened. (Such was the case, for example, of the purely fabricated story by the papists of the Donatio Constantini [Donation of Constantine]. It must study the history of the time to which it wants to transfer its made-up story, so that it does not indeed “shoot a goat” [i.e. make a big mistake], by which it betrays itself. This can easily happen, especially when it again commits such an anachronism [chronological error], as the scholars would call it.

Of course, the Faith Messenger would do best if from now on it would invent no more stories, but always tell everything as it really happened. Although this is not a principle of the Jesuits, rather a true Lutheran one, we should think that even a Jesuit would not be ashamed to act accordingly.   W[alther].

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      A recent popular book on Luther by James Reston Jr., Luther's Fortress p. 241, has reminded the world, even if the LC-MS does not, that “the Roman Catholic ban on Luther ‘and all his followers’ is still in effect”.  That ban was upheld at the Diet of Speyer 1529 against the Protestants, i.e. the Lutherans.  But as Walther's article shows, there is no ban on Catholic fables of Church History.

      The accounts of Herman Otten in Christian News of his final days on his deathbed would indicate the same faith as Melanchthon's mother on her deathbed – “justified and blessed before God alone by believing in Jesus ​​Christ” – a Lutheran faith that died well.