# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1856_S295
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Distinction of Estates in the Church.                    295

indeed, according to this too, heads of households and kings, princes
and magistrates can certainly also be in the Church, but they do not
belong to it as such, but rather as believers; otherwise unbelieving heads
of households and magistrates would also have to belong to the Church,
and the bodily chastisements of boys by a head of household found
within the Church, and the death penalty imposed by an orthodox
magistracy, would become mere acts of the Church, and the Church
would thereby, through the entry of heads of households and magistrates
into it, be transformed into a kingdom of this world. At the very
least the orthodox household estate and the governmental estate would,
as such, also have to possess the power of the keys. As good and fine
as it is, as has been said, that Mr. P. Grabau will not have any estate
excluded from the government of the Church, he nevertheless wishes to
place the persons of the household and of the governmental estate into
the Church in such a way that believing Christians are thereby robbed
of precisely those rights which our fathers, through their doctrine of the
necessary representation of all members of the Church in the government
of the Church, sought to secure for believing Christians! In addition,
Mr. P. Grabau evidently betrays the intention of establishing a
church constitution that no longer has the character of a human, but
of a divine, order. How dangerous and dreadful this is cannot be expressed.
To this must further be added that Mr. P. Grabau assigns to
the household estate and the magistracy such a position in the government
of the Church that their only task is to give force and emphasis to
the pronouncements and decisions of the preachers. Instead, therefore,
of laymen being admitted into the government of the Church — as our
forefathers wished — in order that they might be protected against the
possible lust for domination of proud pastors, Mr. P. Grabau's theory,
were it carried out, would only confirm and strengthen the domination
of self-willed pastors, and would surround the individual Christian with
sheer estate-power and bind him in fetters, so that under a threefold
power laid upon him he might neither stir nor mutter. Mr. P. Grabau's
theory rests on a serious misunderstanding of the Lutheran doctrine of
the three estates.

May we be permitted, for the clarification of the matter — which we
intend later, in discussing Grabau's project of a general American
Lutheran ecclesiastical court, to illuminate more fully ourselves — to
communicate here a few testimonies of theologians old and new.

When once the papal bishops could obtain no obedience from the
Lutherans for their ceremonies, they wished to employ this stratagem:
they declared that if men would not obey them as bishops, they should
at least render obedience to them as princes within the Church (a dignity
which many bishops held at the same time). Melanchthon, who was
engaged in negotiations on this account, could not reconcile himself to
this, and therefore turned, in writing, from Augsburg, concerning this
matter, to Luther, who was staying in Coburg. Luther then answered
him on July 21, 1530:

"1. Since it is certain that the two governments (offices) are distinct and