# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1852_S202
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 202 —

to submit. We might perhaps erect a beautiful, eye-catching building, but
one in which no Christians made free in God would dwell with delight
and love, moving freely and joyfully within the wide bounds the divine
will sets for a heart united with God, managing and governing their own
affairs within it; rather, poor slaves would dwell there, who, with
captive, enslaved, and tormented consciences and sighing hearts, dragged
out their stunted existence wretchedly under the pressure of a miserable
yoke of men — feeling its weight well enough, but not daring to shake it
off, because, according to their misguided conscience, their souls'
salvation was bound to this servile submissiveness. And how long would
such a structure stand? No longer than until the resentment hidden
beneath that forced obedience found its vent and tore both building and
builder to the ground. And indeed, what would be gained even if it stood
until the world's end? The Lord would still, in the end of days, have to
consume it with the fire of His wrath, as He does everything His Spirit
has not built.
    But why do people bring these grave charges against us — that we
throw the holy preaching office under the feet of the laity, provoke them
to despise it, indulge the congregations' fleshly notion of freedom, and
similar charges besides? My answer — and, I confidently hope, yours as
well — is this: it happens because, according to the understanding the
Lord has given us, we will not suffer the souls bought and set free by
Christ's blood to be brought back under the yoke of little Lutheran
popelings, after they have, by God's grace, escaped the shameful
bondage of the Roman pope and Antichrist; instead we protest and warn
against it as well and as loudly as we are able, and thereby get
thoroughly in the way of the newly arisen hierarchy, wherever it will not
let go of its error. It happens because we cannot accept everything as
"Lutheran" that is nowadays brought to market under the name
"Lutheran," but instead hold to our old catechism faith, and thereby to
God's dear and holy Word, according to which we must, above all things,
reject a priestly rule as thoroughly unlutheran.
    According to our catechism we believe, indeed, that the one holy
Christian Church is nothing other than the assembly of the truly faithful
and the saints scattered throughout the whole world, the spiritual body
of our one Lord and Head, the kingdom of heaven of our heavenly King —
recognizable, to be sure, by the pure Word and Sacrament, but invisible
in its essence — which He alone governs through His Word and His
Spirit, and not a visible, earthly kingdom governed, after the fashion of
worldly kingdoms, by some privileged estate through external
regulations, statutes, and ordinances that estate sets up in its own
name.
    We believe that in this kingdom of heaven there is only one estate,
the estate common to all Christians [der allgemeine Chriſtenſtand], and
likewise no other office than the one that belongs to all Christians in
common.
    We believe further that this one Church, undivided in its essence —
the assembly of believers, without distinction between so-called clergy
and laity — is the heavenly bride to whom Christ has betrothed Himself
through faith, and whom He has thereby raised up as the one rightful
possessor and bearer of all heavenly goods, rights, offices, and powers;
that she, as the housewife of Christ, and not the so-called clergy,
distributes the plunder which Christ, as the stronger, took from the
strong