# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1855_S263
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

How are truly Lutheran congregations founded, etc. 263

servant of the Word, in Christ's stead and by the commission of the church, as the congregation of the believers, absolve — one who is only a servant and blind worshiper of the pope, as of his earthly god, in whose place he judicially absolves the penitent when he — faith in Christ is not necessary here — only promises to perform this or that prayer, fasting, and almsgiving as vicarious satisfactions and penances for his sin? But how can such an absolution satisfy the timid and terrified conscience, awakened by the Law, of the one thus absolved, when this conscience, however exactly and punctually he tries to fulfill the satisfactions imposed on him, always reproaches him that this supposedly meritorious work-righteousness in fact springs not from true love of God but only from fear of the temporal punishments of his spiritual judge and of the eternal punishments of the righteous God, and is therefore no meritorious work at all, but rather a damnable one?

In sum, to expect evangelical care of souls from a Roman Catholic priest, insofar as he is indeed a papist, *) is simply impossible; in his confessional the presumptuous must inevitably become still more presumptuous, the despairing still more despairing, and through such official murder of souls hell is populated ever more. Such hierarchical destroyers of souls can serve as a wholesome warning mirror for those Lutheran pastors who hold a Romanizing view of the ecclesiastical teaching office and already stand in the illusion that their care of souls for the individual becomes truly powerful and effective only through the office they hold, and not essentially and properly through God's Word being all in all.

Just as impossible is the evangelical care of souls of individuals by spiritualistic and enthusiast preachers, who in this or that doctrine of salvation set God's Word, as it stands, aside and put their own rational conceit and enthusiast delusion in its place, or who, in favor of their humanly preconceived opinion, substitute for a proof-text of Holy Scripture an interpretation contrary to the plain sense of the words and the rule of faith, and thereby falsify it. How, for instance, could a Methodist preacher, who cherishes and nurses the delusion of a personal perfection of believers attainable here below and fully corresponding to the demands of the divine Law, which is spiritual, and who, flatly against Romans 7:14–25 and 1 John 1:8–10, and through the deception of the subtlest devil of pride in the guise of an angel of light, even publicly confesses and teaches the same — how could such a man be an evangelical pastor of souls? For how, consistently, would he have to, for instance, one who —

*) Martin Boos, for example — as is evident from his biography by Joh. Gossner — was, indeed, out of a false piety and unclarity of understanding, still outwardly a member of the Roman church; but in his personal disposition, and in its demonstration in preaching and in the care of souls, he was nothing less than papist, but rather thoroughly evangelical, that is, Lutheran.