# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1855_S262
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

262 How Are Truly Lutheran Congregations Founded, etc.

and his own special something—for it would indeed be a disgrace if each of these spokesmen did not produce something new, even if it did not agree with the church’s confession and indeed ran counter to the plain sense of Scripture—at most, pietistic-legalistic workmongers have taken their place. What can we, as helpers, expect from these men, to whom Evangelical Lutheran pastoral care is something entirely new and foreign, both in practice and experience?—Therefore we do best, even for the proper formation and strengthening of the pastoral disposition, to adhere to our dear fathers and teachers, who lived under the bright sunshine and in the noonday radiance of the Gospel, and whose hearts were rooted in the church’s confession; through them and by their mouths, the witnessing and confessing, teaching and defending Church proved itself to be a pillar and foundation of the saving truth. Along with the Gospel, they also had to suffer many great things; they were continually well trained in the school of the cross through outward afflictions and inward temptations; and in them the Holy Spirit had also kindled a special evangelical light of grace, knowledge, and wisdom for the God-pleasing conduct of genuine and proper pastoral care toward the individual members of their churches. But whoever follows in their footsteps will also, in this sphere of the church’s ministerial work, be equally protected from the anti-evangelical and therefore anti-Lutheran error of papistic ministers and from the unevangelical and therefore un-Lutheran error of spiritualistic and fanatical preachers. For as concerns the former error, it is clear and evident that no evangelical pastoral care of individual parishioners can possibly be expected from a papistic priest as such. For how can someone teach, defend, rebuke, comfort, admonish, and so forth from and according to God’s Word when he himself has no sound understanding of the divine Word in Holy Scripture, and least of all of the Gospel, since it has long been robbed from him and concealed by the decretals of his most (un)holy father at Rome, by the decisions of the Council of Trent, and by the false interpretations of scholastic-papistic teachers and writers in favor of the priesthood and its head, through the intrusion of their ordinances and commandments? How can he use the First and Tenth Commandments to bring to light the corruption of original sin in his parishioners when he denies that this corruption is sinful, culpable, and damnable, and, according to the teaching of his church, regards it merely as weakness and defect, and at most as tinder, but not as sinful fire?—How can he direct a crushed and terrified sinner straight to Christ when he himself regards Christ as a judge whose grace can be obtained only through the intercession of His holy mother and other saints, as though these, being equal to God, could hear needy petitioners from every corner and place, discern the depths of their hearts, and, according to the condition of those hearts, grant or deny the request for their intercession? How can he, in the confessional, treat a poor sinner as a