# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1855_S255
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Latest Roman Dogma. 255

that have been solemnized are not valid, even if they have been confirmed by oath. 4. From the nature of the thing promised. To make a promise of marriage does not lie within the power of a son or daughter if they are still under parental authority. If, therefore, in youthful ardor and raging passion they promise something under the bond of an oath, they are being generous with another’s property; and this is to be regarded as though they had sworn to steal someone else’s property and give it to another, in which case no one will say that they are bound to keep the oath. Nor can such an oath sworn by the children deprive the parents themselves, as a third party, of what belongs to them by divine and human law, against their will and through no fault of their own. 5. From the resulting absurdity. If such an oath were valid, children could in this way withdraw from parental authority and utterly mock the laws concerning parental consent. Luther, as well as other theologians and jurists adhering to the Augsburg Confession, also accepts this view, which holds that sworn betrothals entered into without parental consent may be dissolved.”

(Loc. theologic. de conjugio. §. 143. 144. 146. 149.)

The Latest Roman Dogma.

Does what our church teaches about the papacy belong to its confession? Some wish to answer this question in the negative. They cannot bring themselves to see the Antichrist in the pope, or a part of the Antichrist’s kingdom in the papacy. And indeed, when one tests the spirits that have long protested most loudly against “papal Antichristianity,” one is overcome with dread and disgust at being associated with such Protestants. But flighty spirits also crowded around Luther, claiming to abhor the pope’s yoke while not loving Christ’s yoke, wanting to cast out the bondwoman Hagar while not being children of the free woman Sarah. Luther vigorously rejected these pseudo-Protestants, yet he did not allow the appearance of spiritual kinship with all the frivolous rabble swarming around the Reformation to confuse or paralyze him in his struggle to bear witness against the pope and his kingdom. It is time for Lutherans to reflect seriously that the Smalcald Articles are more than “a venerable testimony to the faith of the fathers”; as surely as the enemy is still present against whom our