# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1856_S298
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Distinction of Estates in the Church.                    298

not wished to trifle with conscience, and, holding ourselves to the office
of love (which is common to and enjoined upon all Christians), have
humbly approached with a request the illustrious, high-born prince and
lord, Lord Johannes, Duke of Saxony, etc., as the prince of the land and
our rightful civil magistracy, ordained by God, that His Electoral Grace,
out of Christian love (for they are not obligated to this by virtue of civil
authority) and for God's sake, for the good of the Gospel and for the
benefit and welfare of the wretched Christians in His Electoral Grace's
lands, would graciously be pleased to call for and appoint some capable
persons to such an office." *) (L. W. X, 1905, 6.)

Luther further wrote, together with Melanchthon, Bugenhagen, Jonas,
and Myconius, in an opinion of the year 1536: "The calling and election
of orthodox ministers of the church is, properly and originally, not a
matter for the magistracy, but for the church. If the magistracy is
believing and a member of the church, then it does the calling not
because it is magistracy, but because it is a member of the church.
For: my kingdom is not of this world." (Cited in Löscher's Unschuldige
Nachrichten, vol. 1715, p. 383.)

Finally, Luther wrote once more in the year 1543, after he had had so
much sad experience of the ruinous influence which the civil magistracy
— to which, out of necessity, much had at first been left — was at length
exerting upon the government of the church, the following to a preacher
in Dresden: "I can hope for nothing good, dear Daniel, from the kind of
inquiry that has been undertaken at your court. For if the courts want
to govern the church according to their own pleasure, God will grant but
a poor blessing, and the last state will be worse than the first, because
whatever does not proceed from faith is sin; and whatever happens
without a call happens, beyond dispute, without faith, and comes to
nothing. Accordingly, let them either themselves become parish pastors,
preach, baptize, visit the sick, distribute the Lord's Supper, and
take on all priestly duties; or else let them cease to confound the calling;
rather, let them see to their own court and leave the church to those who
are called to it, and who will also give account to God for it. For it is
not at all to be tolerated that others should concern themselves with
that for which we must give account. The offices in the church and at
court must be something distinct, or else we shall lose both. Satan
remains ever the adversary. Under the pope he mixed the church into
the civil government; in our time he wishes to mix the civil government
into the church. But we resist him with God's help, and strive with all
our strength, the

*) From this is explained the expression, otherwise used by Luther of the orthodox
princes of that time: emergency bishops [Nothbischöfe].