# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1856_S252
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

—believe. — Precisely so: when someone looks at the church as God looks at it, then, if he is to say which members of the mixed heap of the called are properly the congregation of grace of God, he will give a description of the church perfectly identical with that of the Reformers. — — As proof that the Reformers likewise did not mean to say what the church will be in eternity, I believe I may briefly appeal to what has already been said, namely, that they meant to give a description of the church as it presently is on earth.

But on account of the word "properly" (proprie) I must once more return to the Apology. That the 8th Article of the Augsburg Confession uses this word in its quite ordinary sense is evident from several passages of the Apology. On p. 150 it says: And we do not see how the church could have been otherwise described (namely, than as was done in the 7th Article), since it, properly speaking (that is, when one wishes to speak of it properly, to designate it exactly — proprie dicta), is the body of Christ. And on p. 149: This, however, is properly (proprie) the church, which has the Holy Spirit. According to these passages, the word "properly" in the description of the church in the 8th Article of the Augsburg Confession expresses the same thing that is also usually expressed by the phrase "in the narrower sense." And that the word in the 8th Article is used in this sense is clear from a passage of the Apology, where it appeals to the fact that the church, in the apostolic creed (according to the Roman form), is called general: "so that we may not think it to be an outward commonwealth of certain peoples, but rather the people scattered throughout the whole earth who agree concerning the gospel, have the same Christ, the same Holy Spirit, and the same sacraments, whether they have the same or differing human ordinances" — and then continues (p. 146): "And in the Decretals the Gloss says that the church in the wider sense embraces the good and the evil; likewise, that the evil are in the church only in name, but the good both in name and in reality." — Through these passages of the Apology, the meaning I have attached to the word "properly" seems to me fully secured, so that I consider it superfluous to add anything further in confirmation of it.

But I cannot refrain from communicating here a few sayings of Luther bearing on our question. I find them cited in the excellent journal "Lehre und Wehre" (noted in the Kirchenblatt of last year, p. 139), in the October number of 1855, p. 313ff. I give these passages according to the Leipzig edition of Luther's writings. In his exposition of Psalm 19, from the year 1524, Luther says on v. 5 (vol. 180a): "Augustine directs this passage against the Donatists, who confined the church to a corner of Africa. But it must much rather be directed against our new Donatists, who deny that there are believers in India, Persia, and Asia