# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1855_S165
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

How Are Truly Lutheran Congregations Founded, etc. 165

sword according to Hebrews 4:12, they mingle into the Gospel here partly the divine Law, partly their own ordinances and human commandments, and prevent it from proving itself to be a power of God for the salvation of all who believe in it. For, first, without any scriptural basis and contrary to the light and teaching of the Gospel concerning the fully valid and all-sufficient merit of Christ, they maintain that a person must partly perform meritorious works himself—especially prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, as directed by the priest—in penance and satisfaction for his actual sins, in order thereby to obtain absolution; and partly that, through indulgences, the superabundant merit of Christ and the saints is imparted to him, since they supposedly performed more good works than the Law required of them and endured more crosses and tribulation than they had deserved.

Second, no less contrary to the light, comfort, and power of the Gospel, they maintain that obedience to the pope—who, by divine right, governs the Church on earth as Christ’s representative and has the authority to establish laws and bind the consciences of Christians to them on pain of losing their souls’ salvation—is meritorious; and that absolution and the holy sacraments first become powerful and effective through the office of the priesthood, as a kind of mediating order between Christ and the congregation. But because this obedience in works toward the pope and clergy is always imperfect, no Christian can or may become or be certain of the forgiveness of sins and of his salvation.

No less do the enthusiasts, such as Methodists and others, maintain that faith together with works makes a person righteous and saves him, and thus they likewise mingle Law into the Gospel, even though this corruption of the Gospel is not as varied and elaborate as it is among the papists.

What wonder, then, if among papists and enthusiasts the evangelical preaching thus falsified produces only a twofold ruinous effect and is incapable of producing and nurturing sound Christians, especially in conjunction with the above-mentioned weakening and corruption of the interpretation of the Law through an improper anticipation and admixture of the true Gospel, or through its harmful and shameful mixture with an invented and false gospel? Such preaching must produce either self-righteous, works-righteous hypocrites, following the example of the Pharisees in the Jewish Church, who lack all thorough and repentant knowledge of the Law and all true repentance toward God, so that, as self-made saints, they walk about in dreadful presumption; or else timid and terrified consciences, who, because works are required at the same time, lack true, living faith in Christ and the comforting appropriation of His all-sufficient merit, so that they walk about in no less dreadful despondency and can never attain the divine certainty that they are in a state of grace.

But it is quite different and better with the Lutheran, that is, churchly,