# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1855_S305
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Kingdom of Saxony. 305

-tion and completeness in such a way that, to my mind, there can and may be no talk either of adding to it or of subtracting from it. The Church itself forces its saving truths and proclamations of salvation on no one; but the individual neither is nor can be entitled to commend as gospel, and to press upon others, that which he for his part acknowledges as correct, nor to demand that the Church accommodate itself accordingly and alter its symbol of faith. Whatever mirrors and manifests itself, in all these respects, in the soul and spirit of the individual, is a matter for itself and may indeed be a perfectibility, but in any case it is only a perfectibility of the individual's manner of viewing things. In this no one is hindered by the Church; every member of the Church, however, has for his part both the right and the duty to demand of the state government that it see to it that the Church does not lose itself in such so-called liberal views, but continues along the path once marked out for it. So much for the complaints. But wishes, too, have been expressed in the other Chamber, and these reduce, in the main, to the wish that the high state government should tread the so-called golden middle path. I leave it undecided in what sense that wish was meant to be intimated and expressed; but I can neither grant the high state government any right to tread such a middle way, nor recognize it as salutary for the Church and its members. Precisely in our fatherland, where the Christian Church has divided itself into three parties or confessions, the Church must unconditionally demand a Catholic, a Lutheran, or a Reformed Christian in the most exclusive sense of the word. It condemns no one on account of his differing views, but it hates, and forbids, and must forbid, every so-called mingling of religions, whereby anyone might take a piece at will out of this confession or that, or according to his own private conviction, and cut himself a garment for his soul as suits his needs, or as is able to cover his soul's nakedness. Even here, however, no one can be expected to thrust himself, together with the dissenter, under such a garment pieced together from various scraps, and to wrap himself in it so as, as has been said, to set himself in this way above the parties. I repeat once more: the Evangelical Lutheran Church in particular condemns no one, compels no one to accept the symbol it has adopted; through its exclusive principles it declares war on no one; it denies to no one the comfort of being able to be saved according to his own persuasion of faith; rather, it sets up the symbol it has adopted and defends it, together with every sincere confessor of the Church, for this reason: that in the course of more than three centuries it has arrived at the conviction that it, precisely, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, is in the true sense of the word a genuinely Christian church, and that in it all the marks of a truly apostolic church are recognizable. Therefore I can