Yet someone might say, “You lack one thing, namely, fasting, because you heretics do not fast” (they say). Lord God, if there is one thing we have from the ancient church, it is unfortunately fasting. If there is one thing the papists have from the new church, it is that they do not fast but live riotously and on fast days even more than on feast days. Indeed, we do not just fast, but (with St. Paul [I Cor. 4:11]) we suffer hunger. We see it daily in our poor ministers, their wives and children, and in many other poor people, whose hunger stares at you out of their eyes. They scarcely have bread and water, they go about naked as a jaybird, and they have nothing of their own. The farmer and the burgher give them nothing, and the nobility take, so that there are only a few of us who have something, and we cannot help everyone. This should be the purpose of monasteries and convents. If others are stingy, then Lazarus must die of starvation [Luke 16:19–31]. The papists laugh at this, but they only prove thereby that we are the ancient church suffering scorn and injury at the hands of the children of the devil.

Thus we have proved that we are the true, ancient church, one body and one communion of saints with the holy, universal, Christian church.  (Luther’s Works, v.41, p.198-199)

Picture: The pulpit at History Trinity Lutheran Church, Souland Market, St. Louis MO

Since the papists know that in all these and other things we are like the ancient church and may truly be called the ancient church—for these things are not new or invented by us—it is amazing that they should deceive and damn us so shamelessly, calling us apostates and founders of a new church; for they cannot find anything in us which was not held in the ancient and true church at the time of the apostles. Thus I really think that this is the time of which Daniel 7 [:8–9] says, “One that was ancient of days took his seat” after the little horn had spoken blasphemously, and sat in judgment. For the original and ancient church shines forth once more (like the sun emerging from the clouds behind which it was shining, but where it could not be seen), and the horn which speaks blasphemies will perish and everything come to an end, as it is written and is evident in the result—but there is no time to speak of that now. (Luther’s Works, v.41, p.198)

Picture: A close-up of the Veronica window at History Trinity Lutheran Church, Souland Market, St. Louis MO

Tenth, nobody can deny that we have not shed blood, murdered, hanged, or avenged ourselves in return, as we could often have done and could still do. But as Christ, the apostles, and the ancient church did, we endure, admonish, and pray for others. And, indeed, we do this publicly in church, in the litany and in sermons, just as Christ our Lord did and taught and as the ancient church also did, so that in this we all act according to the ancient practice of the ancient church. (Luther’s Works, v.41, p.198)

Picture: The stained glass in the narthex where the baptismal font is located; History Trinity Lutheran Church, Souland Market, St. Louis MO