# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1855_S37
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Doctrine of the Holy Preaching Office. 37.

It remains, however much it is increasingly dragged down. Nowhere here is there any mention of hereditary transmission, still less with regard to Ephesian or Cretan bishops. It is a preconceived opinion imported into Scripture. The authority of the office, we repeat, had come to them through a divine call, whether by a direct indication of the Holy Spirit, who was in the apostle or in others, or through congregations already established, which, under the care of apostolic men, attentively followed the various indications given by the Spirit, without themselves being inspired by Him to the same degree. By virtue of the promise and the institution made in the Gospel from the mouth of God, every call issued by Christians down to the present day is from heaven, even if those who call and those who are called lie for the most part in sin and shame; for the gates of hell cannot overcome the spiritual body of Jesus Christ hidden beneath them, and He will be with it here until the end of the world and there from eternity to eternity. However the appointment to the office may take place—unless it is made by those who have no authority to do so and is therefore not accepted—a divine call underlies it, however much it may be desecrated by unworthy servants, for whom it is merely external, and dishonored and disgraced by ungodly despisers; for the Lord is in the ship of the Church with His own, to whom He has given the office, and He causes all things to serve their eventual glorification. At every time and in every place this preaching office remains continuously valid, and only in accordance with the revealed will of God Himself is the call of individual appointees to be transferred from one place to another, so that they may thereby bear more fruit in His kingdom, or even, in cases of persistent harm, be revoked and annulled.

Against Dr. Höfling, Wucherer rightly preserves for the office of presbyter or episcopate its original divine institution (p. 7 ff.); yet the proper course for faithful Lutherans is not to do so by adhering to a successio episcopalis seu presbyterorum, or by claiming that the apostles’ official commission, received from the mouth of the Lord, is handed down exclusively through ordination to their successors in the preaching office. This is not founded in Scripture; it is an essentially unevangelical view. The general authority in Matthew 28:19 ff. necessarily includes the particular authority of all preachers of the New Testament. The apostles are commanded to make disciples by baptizing and teaching, and the same command is in turn given to those who have become disciples (see above, p. 7), to the Church as a whole, which carries it out through the office given to it with the Gospel, an office that it is to appoint from within itself. (Jesus had said to His disciples: “Pray to the Lord of the harvest that He send laborers into His harvest,” Matthew 9:38; and afterward He had called the body of His disciples to Himself and chosen from among them the Twelve who had been awakened to this desire, Matthew 10:1; Luke 6:13, 17; Mark 3:13, 14 [according to the original text]. What He commanded—that laborers be obtained through prayer—the Church obeys, and the fulfillment of its prayer [“pious [illegible]