# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1856_S253
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

A Reply Letter from the Editor to a dear Friend etc. 253

—there. For where the sound and the words of the Spirit of Christ are, there without doubt is the true church of Christ; for the Spirit of Christ speaks nowhere except in his church. Therefore, since the text plainly shows here that the sound of the apostles went out into all lands, and it is nowhere read that it was recalled, we have to fear that we might, perhaps without noticing, boast ourselves alone to be believers, along with these or those ungodly Donatists, whether old or new — we who perhaps are ourselves nothing less than believers, because we hear the word and the sound of the apostles nowhere." — Further, Luther says in the second exposition of the letter to the Galatians, from the year 1535 (vol. XI, 23a): "Therefore the church is everywhere holy, even in those places where the fanatics and factious spirits themselves rule, so long as they do not entirely deny and reject the Word and Sacrament. For those who deny these things wholly and entirely are no longer a church. But where Word and Sacrament essentially remain, there a holy church also remains, and it matters not that the Antichrist himself rules there too — who sits, not in a devil's stable, nor in a pigsty, nor among an unbelieving mob, but in the noblest and holiest place, namely in the temple of God, 2 Thess. 2:4. From this it is certainly and plainly evident that God's temple must be and remain, even among the spiritual tyrants who rage and rule within it. For indeed one finds, even among these same tyrants, those who believe rightly. Therefore a short and easy answer can be given to this question: that the church is everywhere in the whole world, wherever only the gospel and the sacraments are found. But Jews, Turks, fanatics and factious spirits or heretics are not the church, for these deny and destroy such things." —

This passage of Luther's compels me, dear friend, to contradict you when you say in your letter that it does not occur to our confessors (the Reformers) to maintain that the true church has members even among Waldensians, Wycliffites, and other sects. Luther says once (if I am not mistaken, in his book against the heavenly prophets): "I speak of the leaders, not of the poor deluded folk." Likewise, in the passage just quoted, he excludes the sect-founders and sect-heads from the church (that is, he denies them the standing of being members of the body of Christ), and that with full right; but he does not deny this of those whom they have led astray, but believes that within a sect, so long as Word and Sacrament are not utterly denied and rejected, there can be members of the body of Jesus, that is, of the true church. And — I would ask — do not we believe the same?

But especially significant for our question is the following saying of Luther, because it shows how Luther regards the scattered believers as spiritually gathered together, that is, as a congregation; so that no one need any longer wonder that the Augsburg Confession calls the