# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1855_S13
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Newest Papist Council, etc.                    13

...can be, no longer organs of the Spirit but dead members, robbed of vital power, hanging on the outward body to its greatest harm, or (with relatively pure doctrine on the lips) at least to far weaker benefit. And finally, the spiritual office is no divinely legal institution, insofar as some other law should still be in force besides the holy Ten Commandments, but rather a gift of the gospel of God, whose highest exercise and fulfillment occurs precisely in the special calling to public service within the fellowship of those who believe. It is in true freedom, with which Christ has set them free, free from all constraint of a law — not because they must, but because God's will has become their will — that both those who call and those who are called are to act.
(To be continued.)

The Newest Papist Council and the Doctrine of the
Immaculate Conception of the Holy Virgin Mary.

Already in February 1849 the present Pope, Pius IX, issued a so-called encyclical letter, in which he called upon all his creatures, united with all their so-called believers, to approach the Lord (?) with prayer and supplication, that he (the Pope) "might be enlightened, so that he might come more quickly to a resolution concerning the question whether the holy Virgin Mary, like other
human beings, was conceived and born in sin, or not."
Whether, then, Holy Scripture and the Holy Spirit have lied or not, when it says: "And so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Rom. 5:12); or when it says: "There is no difference; they are all
sinners alike, and fall short of the glory they should have with God" (Rom. 3:23); or when it says: "There is no man that does not sin" (1 Kings 8:46). — This is, to be sure, mocking God: to call upon Him for enlightenment in order to find out whether He, the dear God, has lied! But whoever has recognized from God's Word that the Pope is the Antichrist, and that the Roman papacy is the great whore sitting upon the beast that is "full of names of blasphemy" (Rev. 17:3), will not be greatly astonished at this.

Our most unholy Father the Pope, however, has not let the matter rest with asking his dear faithful for their intercession, that he might successfully hatch that basilisk's egg on which he is even now sitting; he has now also called a council, to be held at Rome, in the "eternal city," that is, in the notorious Babylon, in which that question, together with