Here is a very common misunderstanding and misconception about the great hymn writer, Paul Gerhardt. Non-Lutherans, and liberal Lutherans, have for years been picturing Paul Gerhardt as a free spirit held captive to stodgy old Lutheran orthodoxy. They have attempted to suggest Gerhardt was merely "playing along" with traditional orthodox Lutheranism, while meanwhile Gerhardt the "inner pietist" was more concerned about poetry than doctrine. The Calvinist types who like some of his hymns, have tried to play down his staunch Lutheranism. Well, the real Paul Gerhardt was a rock-solid orthodox Lutheran and my colleague at CPH, Rev. Benjamin Mayes, kindly translated a letter from Gerhardt to his prince in which he, in the most painfully polite tones possible, tells the Elector what he can do with the job that he had been re-offered after being fired the first time for refusing to promise to drop the Formula of Concord, which is of course always the litmus test for genuine Lutheranism vis a vi Calvinism. Here is Gerhardt’s letter, which I think you will enjoy and be impressed with.

Letter of Paul Gerhardt to Elector Friedrich Wilhelm (1667)

Most majestic elector, most gracious lord!

In most obedient subjection I wish for your electoral majesty that the grace, kindness, and mercy of God may be upon your electoral, majestic, high person, your beloved spouse, all the most noble electoral princes and upon the entire electoral and royal house of the Margraves of Brandenburg, for good, constant health, successful governance, and all self-wished well-being of body and soul.

Most gracious lord! Just as I must recognize, with the most humble and
obedient thanks, that your electoral majesty on the past 9th of January
reinstalled me in my office, and also omitted having me subscribe the
declaration which until now has been usual in the Spiritual Consistory,
so I most plaintively cannot hold back from your electoral majesty the
fact that I have fallen into great affliction and grief of soul due to
the fact that your electoral majesty at the same time, with such high
electoral grace, wants to be prepared for me to show myself in all ways
to be in accordance with your electoral edicts and especially that I
should apply myself to the moderation and discretion which was made
sufficiently known in the previous religious negotiations.

Yet precisely for this reason, most gracious elector and lord, I have
had to prevent myself up till now from subscribing the aforementioned
declaration, because I—(who have no other joy in the world than to
subject myself to your electoral majesty, my divinely instituted high
overlord and highest benefactor next to God, and to carry out that
which you order and command)—because I, I say, cannot satisfy your
electoral edicts without injury to my poor conscience. I have also
protested this more than once to the electoral counselors whenever I
was required before the law, and I thereby emphasized how by this kind
of obedience I would have to depart from and lay aside my Lutheran
confession, the Formula of Concord. And since I could not be heard
thereby, I finally took upon myself even the remotionem ab officio
[removal from office] most obediently and bore this, through the power
of God, for almost a whole year in all possible quietness and patience.
Now if I were to allow myself to do once again that which I previously
in extreme danger avoided, I would become most dangerous to myself and
would, so to speak, use my own hands to strike my soul with the very
wound which I previously sought to turn away from myself with great
anguish of heart.

But since I know well, most gracious elector and lord, that your
electoral majesty does not at all intend to cause the conscience of any
man, even of the lowest, to be grieved and troubled, therefore I ask
all the more heartily and constantly in the very most humble obedience,
that your electoral majesty would not think ill of me for revealing to
your electoral grace the fearful concern and disturbance of my mind: I
fear God, in whose sight I walk here on earth and before whose judgment
I must one day appear, and cannot judge otherwise than how my
conscience has stood from my youth and still stands, so that I, if I
were to enter my office in the aforementioned way and manner, will
burden myself with its wrath and hard punishment. To avoid such great,
unspeakable disaster, may your electoral [majesty] most graciously
allow me to abstain from the service of the church once again
established, and to be set with full appointment to take a pause from
the preaching office, until I, according to God’s will and with your
electoral majesty’s most gracious permission, am able to take up this
high, holy, and divine office—for which we poor people one day must
give such a hard accounting—with a better conscience than can happen
now.

Meanwhile, may your electoral grace’s throne be always in the blessing
of the Almighty, and may your entire electoral house stand steadfast in
the protection and shielding of the Most High, which I will not cease
to wish and to pray as long as I live, as your electoral majesty’s
                most subject, most obedient servant
                and God’s most faithful, indebted suppliant
                    Paulus Gerhardt

[Translated by the Rev. Benjamin T. G. Mayes, 4/20/2007 A+D]