# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1855_S316
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

316 Miscellaneous Church News.

...but rather in all the world; as the prophets foretold, that Christ's Gospel should come into all the world (Ps. 2:19), so that under the Pope, the Turks, the Persians, the Tartars, and everywhere, Christendom is scattered bodily, but gathered spiritually in one Gospel and faith, under one Head, Jesus Christ." (See Luther's Confession of Faith, appended to his great Confession concerning the Lord's Supper.) This, however, is a remarkably proud evasion: that although there may indeed be believers outside their visible orthodox Church, these do not constitute a church, but rather are to be reckoned among them, the members of the orthodox Church. How now, dear sirs — what if it should please God, conversely, to reckon you among the hidden children of God found among the erring preachers? Would that perhaps be too contemptible for you? We, for our part, are quite content with that, and make no claim whatsoever that those children of God should be reckoned to us in particular, so long as the merciful God, for Christ's sake, reckons us among them. That the Lutheran Church is catholic in the sense of "orthodox" is, of course, a matter on which there can be no dispute among Lutherans; just as little is there dispute that all members of the catholic Church can have no faith other than the very one which our Church holds and confesses; nor is it in question for us that the Lutheran Church, in this sense, is alone catholic. But that the visible Lutheran Church is the Church kat' exochen — the body of Jesus Christ — this is something unheard of in the orthodox Lutheran Church down to recent times. So writes Carpzov in his introduction to the Symbolical Books, that best of works which our Church possesses for the explanation of its Book of Concord: "We have not separated ourselves from the Roman Church by the Reformation; rather, we have only put away the evil attached to it, namely the Papacy, and we grant that our Church is a particular church; but that it alone is the true Church, we do not say. For however true it may be that, as far as the visible assembly is concerned, none purer or freer from blemish in doctrine can be found than the Lutheran, yet we do not deny that there is another particular church, as far as concerns those upright members known to God alone, who lie hidden under another visible body — indeed, even under an impure one — in whom the true Church truly consists." (l. c., p. 876.) — Finally we must also observe: those who will nowhere grant the name of church except where the Word of God is preached wholly pure and unadulterated thereby pronounce judgment upon themselves; for if that were so, then they themselves, on account of their own many errors, would not be within the Church, and would have to be content, at best, to be reckoned elsewhere, in order still to be saved.

The Prussian Lutherans. In the "Freimund" it is said of them: "The congregations have grown considerably in number, and also carry much