# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1855_S73
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

A Statement by Pastor Löhe, etc. 73

...fathers, we most emphatically abhor. Indeed, we do not see why this principle should not be extended to the Roman and other sects as well. For with every sect something can be found in which, at least verbally, a consensus could be demonstrated. The symbols decide what is Lutheran and what is not Lutheran, and Lutherans — because they are convinced from God's Word, in their hearts and Christian consciences, that the symbols are well grounded in God's Word — find in them their own declaration of their connection both with the ancient Church and with the Lutheran Church of every place and time.

5. It is not, then, by holding fast to the "quia" in its full strictness and extending it to the entire doctrinal content of the confessional writings that the Church is dissolved, but rather by allowing everyone the freedom to pick out for himself that to which he wishes to apply the "quia," while regarding everything else as something merely "incidental" which "just happened to arise in the course" of things. In doing so we would be contradicting the symbols, which state that "for thorough and abiding unity in the Church it is above all things necessary to have a summary, unanimous statement and form, in which the general summary doctrine to which the churches of the true Christian religion confess themselves is drawn together out of God's Word — just as the ancient Church always had its fixed symbols for such use — and that this should be set down not in private writings, but in such books as have been drawn up, approved, and accepted in the name of the churches that confess themselves to one doctrine and religion." (Concordia, pag. 889 ff.) The Church with its unanimous doctrine would, by that very means, be turned into a chaotic house of sects, and if everyone were granted the freedom to exercise such license under the name "Lutheran," the simple little sheep of Christ would be abandoned to foxes and wolves. In saying this, ecclesiastical fidelity is by no means being denied to the old witnesses of the truth who may not, in this or that point, have expressed themselves with strict ecclesiastical precision. For it is one thing to hold fast the "quia" against dangerous and reckless breachers of the walls, and another to turn it into an inquisitorial formula for sitting in judgment over ancient witnesses who have long since been enthroned in glory. That the "quia" must extend, without distinction, to all the doctrinal propositions occurring in the symbols and likewise to every ground given for a doctrine — that is, to the formal element — no Lutheran will assert, although in doing so, out of the respect he has for the learning and piety of the fathers, he will be very cautious about at once setting his own wisdom and insight above theirs.

6. The same statements of the symbolic books which were valid at the time of the Reformation for combating the Roman false doctrine concerning the Church and the ministry are just as valid today, whenever those same false doctrines arise within the Lutheran Church. For the pope, with his antichristian claims, sits not only in the Vatican at Rome, but at times also in the heart of the