# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1856_S251
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

A Reply Letter from the Editor to a dear Friend etc. 251

—gregation in which only (exclusively — non nisi) holy ones are found. And immediately afterward he says of the same words: The content of this addition (of the words "a congregation of saints," which are appended to the words "I believe a holy Christian church") is: I believe that there is on earth a little flock (a small assembly — congregatiuncula) and congregation which is gathered together solely (unmixed — mere) of holy people. Here Luther plainly gives a description of the church as it is on earth in the present, says which people he acknowledges as belonging to it, and by no means expresses a wish as to how the (visible) church ought to be constituted. — From the Apology I further adduce, as appearing to me strikingly conclusive, that it says (p. 147), in the interpretation of the parable of the tares among the wheat: the field is the world, not the church; for by this it is expressed that only the good seed belongs to and constitutes the church, not the ungodly. Further I appeal to the following words (p. 150): Therefore we hold, according to Scripture, that the church, properly speaking, is the assembly of the saints who truly believe the gospel of Christ and have the Holy Spirit. In these words the description of Article 7 of the Augsburg Confession is repeated and completed, and here, as little as in the whole article of the Apology on the church, is there any trace that anything else was meant to be given than a description of the church, when one wishes to say properly what it is.

If you, dearest friend, add to your assertion that the Reformers meant to say what the church ought to be: "what it is before God" — then I ask: of what (of what subject) did the Reformers mean to assert this? Since you claim that the Reformers meant to say what the church ought to be, but is not, then they must accordingly have had before their eyes, in their description, the church as it appears and stands outwardly (a mixed heap of the pious and the ungodly). Now if the Reformers had meant to say what this heap is before God, then in reason they could not have answered otherwise than: just a mixed heap, as the visible church is such a one, and one does not see how they could have answered that the members of this heap are before God nothing but believers and saints. But if you, dear friend, mean by the addition "before God" to express that the Reformers, in their description of the church, regarded it according to its heavenly calling, as God likewise so regards it — then Scripture, the Word of God, for that very reason distinguishes between the called and the elect, so that no one should reckon all the called as standing in grace before God and as being on the way to eternal glory. For although God has inclined himself in grace to all the called, in that he has let them hear the gospel and has invited them to the great supper, yet it is said: blessed are they who hear and keep God's Word, and before God only those are righteous who the Word preached to them