# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1856_S292
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

292                    The Distinction of Estates in the Church.

—ernance shall serve the Church for the common good, especially, as
Paul says: to protect the pious and maintain them in their rights, but
to restrain and punish the wicked according to Christian laws (!!). Rom.
13. This is not called (??) confounding the spiritual and temporal government,
for such confounding first begins when the magistracy alone,
without the two other members, wished to rule and hold sway in the
Church. *) So long as it governs together with the other two, and [does]
what the Church" (here the Church is again conceived apart from the
magistracy, and probably meant for the pastors) "has said, protects, and
carries out from God's Word, it stands, as God wills, within the government
of the Church. Through this active membership of the territorial
magistracy in the Church of God, its pronouncements and decisions
then gain force and emphasis" (God have mercy, if the pronouncements
and decisions of the Church should only gain force and emphasis through
the worldly magistracy!), "whereby the reverence and obedience of all
members of the Church toward God's Word, Christian truth, and right
is not a little promoted. In this relation the magistracy does not compel
(?) the Church, but rather serves it, for the protection of the pious and
for the common good, which is obedience to God's Word. We see, then,
that the Lutheran church constitution regarded the three estates ordained
by God himself as those members of the Church out of which the
government of the Church must be built. By this our Church was distinguished
from the Roman, where only priests or bishops ruled, and commanded
what the others should do." (Just as, in the present case — as we
shall soon see still more clearly — Mr. P. Grabau proposes!!) "This is
called the Catholic priestly hierarchy. It wished to be wholly separated
from the co-government of the household estate and the magistracy."
(This is not true; it always saw quite gladly when the magistracy "co-governed"
in such a way that it "served" it, and, what the "Catholic"
Church allegedly "said, protected, and carried out from God's Word,"
and so "gave force and emphasis to its pronouncements and decisions,"
or when the household estate recognized its task of "securing recognition"
for the Word of God "preached" by the priests, particularly when it
remained "within its sphere of calling"; the whole difference between the
papist priests and Mr. P. Grabau consists here only in this, that he calls
this thing "participation in the government of the Church," while they
did not use this inadequate expression. But patience! The matter will
become still clearer in what follows.) "It has already been shown in part
what God has given to each estate. We will summarize it here: in the
preaching office the Word of God goes forth publicly, together with its
holy doctrine and whatever belongs to it." (What all belongs to it, according

*) Mr. P. G. here himself confounds one thing with another, in order to justify his
government of the Church against the charge of confounding the governments. He confuses
Vermengung [confounding] with Verwechselung [mistaking], since both lie confounded
together in his own concepts. A sample of his consistent logic.

L. u. W.