# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1855_S266
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

266 On the History of the Roman Catholic Associations, etc.

also against papists and enthusiasts, all the more faithful diligence will he likewise
apply, 1. that it take root in the understanding of each individual one of his parishioners
and become a living knowledge; 2. that from the right
knowledge of the Law there arise in each individual remorse and sorrow over
his sinful corruption inherited from Adam; 3. that from the right knowledge
of the Gospel, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, there be worked in each
individual the justifying and saving faith in Christ; 4.
that this faith, through the impulse of the Holy Spirit, in love toward God
and men and in all manner of Christian virtues and genuine godliness,
break forth ever more vigorously from each individual and
overcome the resistance of the flesh all the more powerfully. Again, the more faithful
the diligence of the Lutheran pastor is in applying the pure doctrine, according to Law and Gospel,
to each individual one of his parishioners and appropriating it to him,
and the more he also makes the experience in this regard that God's
Word does not return empty, but either softens and converts through God's
grace, or hardens and stiffens through the evil will of man and the devil
and afterward through God's righteous judgment — the more livelier
will his zeal for the precious Word of God burn, which is entrusted to
him and which also, even from his weak mouth, proves its age-old and ever new
power to God's honor and men's salvation, and the more
practical and edifying, from a pastoral point of view, his public
sermons too will become; "for whoever has, to him shall be given." Conversely,
on the other hand, if a Lutheran pastor indeed presents the pure doctrine, and even
zealously insists on its correctness of form, but nevertheless shows no pure love in
the faithful effort and evangelical care for individual souls,
he will certainly show himself more and more as either a mere hireling and
belly-servant, or as a spiritual businessman, as sounding brass
and a clanging cymbal, or even as an ecclesiastical office-holder and master-builder,
as a hierarchical despot, who under the name of the
divine Word and under the form of the office seeks only his own belly,
purse, honor, and comfortable living.

(Submitted by Pastor Stephan.)
On the History of the Roman Catholic Associations of the
Present Day. *)

In the most recent times the Roman Catholic church has, partly through the founding
of new "ecclesiastical" associations, partly through the consolidating of already existing associations —

*) This brief account of the astonishing activity in the Roman camp, intended not only,
in the territory it still holds, to revive the deadened religious zeal in a Romanizing sense,
but also to win new territory, ought to be suited to give that so necessary picture
of the new rising and strengthening of the papacy, and to kindle the zeal
of the orthodox Christian; for "it is good to be zealous, when this is always done
for what is good." Gal. 4:18. The Editor.