# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1855_S241
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Union. 241

words—“we are far from denying it—has preserved in its confessions and in its public teaching practice, from Christian antiquity onward, a rich treasure of profound Christian knowledge and doctrine, which gives it the power continually to bear children for the invisible Church, whose existence it denies.” Well then, we say, it follows that whoever does not wish to unite with the Roman Catholics is disobedient to God. Not so, replies Professor Müller, for “in this,” that is, in the requirement that a church with which it is one’s duty to unite must be able to help one attain eternal life, “it must be self-evident that the Lord’s grace-filled institutions, which the Church calls Sacraments, must be preserved in their original form and protected against the clever notions and designs of human arbitrariness.” But precisely because the Roman Church incurs so much guilt here and still “clings to the mutilation of the Holy Supper,” the “evangelical” Christian is not to consider a union of his church with it. Yet we do not see why the author, who is so lenient regarding the “the Gospel is rightly taught” of Article 7 of the Augustana, is so strict regarding “the Sacraments are rightly administered,” which stands in exact parallel with the former. If doctrine is pure enough to make union possible so long as it is still capable of leading people to the possession of eternal life, why should the administration of the Sacraments according to their institution be treated more precisely? If they are not necessary for salvation, one would think that, according to the author’s principles, union would have to be regarded as possible even with those among whom no Sacraments at all are celebrated, as among the Quakers; but if they are necessary for eternal salvation, then it seems entirely consistent with his premises to say: So long as the Sacraments accord sufficiently with the Lord’s institution that the mediation of salvation—the imparting of the heavenly treasure intended for us through them and conducive to salvation—is not abolished, there can be no objection to union. Yet it has by no means been proved that in the Roman Church the Holy Supper has been so altered that the believing communicant does not also receive the Lord’s body for salvation. Nevertheless, in the course of his argument the author also names other things that seem to him to exclude union with the Roman Catholics even more than their mutilated celebration of the Holy Supper, namely the Pelagian tendency and the hierarchical principle. All of that belongs to doctrine, and here it becomes quite clear that the “divine touchstone” by which it is to be decided that union is a duty with those among whom people can still attain eternal life through doctrine is neither divine nor able to stand the test. Surely no one will misunderstand us. It does not occur to us to declare the Sacraments unimportant, nor do we wish to surrender the slightest part of the right administration of the Sacraments, but just as little of the right doctrine of the Gospel.

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