# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1856_S223
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Miscellaneous Church News. 223

—these lofty gifts, unharmed, back to Himself. Cf. Gerh. loci XXII, c. 22, de manduc. indignorum: Quaerunt, si indigni corpus Christi percipiant, quorsum veniat? An in ipsis maneat et ita cum ipsis damnetur an egeratur? Sed in mysteriis fidei captivandus est intell. sub obsequium verbi. Quamvis indigni τὰ οὐσιώδη s. c. percipiant, tamen res coelestis salubriter et salutariter nec ab illis participatur, nec in illis manet, carent enim fide, per quam Christus habitat in cordibus nostris, Ephes. 3:17, et in nobis vivit. Gal. 2:20. In indignis tantae gratiae puritas non sibi facit mansionem, ait Cypr. in serm. de coena. [In indignant recipients the purity of so great a grace does not make its dwelling for itself, says Cyprian in his sermon on the Supper.] And Quenstedt, theol. did., p. II, 902, when he wishes to distinguish the communio sacramentalis from the unio mystica, says: ibi communio consistit in actu transitorio, hic in permanente. [there the communion consists in a transitory act, here in a permanent one.] In that essay, however, it says on p. 368, concerning the unworthy: "Though his unbelief may not, during his earthly days, come to light in such a way that the congregation would have to exclude him from partaking of the Holy Supper, he turns what, by God's will, should be to him the seal of his election into a brand upon his conscience; he turns what should have bound him most intimately to the Christian congregations into a means by which he becomes a very child of the devil in the kingdom of the devil, and when at last he comes before the Last Judgment, then the holy property will be taken back, unharmed and undefiled, into His possession by the Lord, who can take as well as give, and he himself will be cast out from fellowship with this property; but the fact that he was once a fellow-partaker in the fellowship of the body and blood of Christ will burn along with him as an inextinguishable brand in the eternal fire." At the very least, it is not clearly expressed here whether the unbeliever is thought of as being in possession of the body and blood of Christ as such, or only as a member of the congregation; and for the sake of the danger of that opinion, this ought to have been expressed somewhat more clearly, since the defenders of a false concept of the church count the unbelievers as belonging to the church for the very reason that they have the body and blood of the Lord within themselves. Forgive this digression; it was a need of mine to give voice to this concern, and now, together with it, the request that you would, if at all possible, have Der Lutheraner and Lehre und Wehre sent to me — perhaps through the bookshop of Schäfer in Leipzig, which has a firm, Schäfer and Coradi, in Philadelphia. Could you not also bring both periodicals into the book trade here? †††

Miscellaneous Church News.

The Platform. From the "Lutheran Observer" of May 30 we learn that the unfortunate Platform, like all vermin of the serpent's brood, is dying an exceedingly hard death. It has still not finished struggling; it is still writhing. The "Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Central Pennsylvania," which held its sessions for this year on May 15–20 at Mifflinburg, Union Co., Pa., took the occasion