# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1852_S205
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 205 —

    How, finally, can there be any talk here of overturning divine order,
when we carefully distinguish between what the Church, in her essence,
is and has, and what, according to Christ's order, it is her duty to do?
    In essence she is, as Christ's bride, mistress over everything; in
order she is subject to Christ and His Word. In essence she consists of
nothing but kings, priests, and prophets; in order it is her place to be
obedient to the public preaching office. In essence she has all the
treasures of the kingdom of heaven and the keys to them, handed to her
directly by the Lord; in order she must entrust the public administration
of them, within her midst, to the stewards and managers appointed by
the Lord. In essence there is no difference between man and woman,
young and old, preachers and laity; in order the women must keep
silent in the congregation, the young must obey the old, the servants
must teach publicly, and the hearers must hear the sermon and learn.
    Whatever grounds the reproaches made against us may actually have,
they are not justified by our doctrine of Church and Ministry, for it is
the correct one, and the only one in accord with Scripture. It is also, as
it cannot be otherwise, and as you, beloved and deeply honored brothers,
will surely agree, the doctrine that presents the office in its true, high,
and divine dignity.
    For that dignity truly does not consist in exercising over the
congregation an external authority lodged in the person of the office
holder, in his rank as ruler, in an external privilege which, deny it as our
opponents may, I can call nothing other than a privilege of estate, and
which thereby forces out the external obedience of a captive and
enslaved conscience. Rather, its overflowing high dignity lies in this: that
it moves, living and powerful, fresh and joyful, in the power of the Word
within the congregation, hovers over the congregation, and pours out the
heavenly blessings the Lord has placed in His Word; that it leads the
souls entrusted to it ever further into the knowledge and blessed
enjoyment of the freedom of the children of God from law, sin, death,
and the devil; that it uncovers for them ever more the overflowing
treasure and riches of this spiritual, heavenly freedom, in which faith
becomes lord over everything, a faith that lets no yoke of any kind be
laid upon it and will bear none except the gentle yoke of Christ — while
the love of the child of God, moving joyfully in that glorious freedom,
accommodates itself to everything, tolerates and bears everything that
does not go against the faith.
    It truly does not consist in concealing the so-called layman's high
standing, in perpetually keeping him under guardianship, in drawing
ever narrower the bounds within which he may move, in curtailing his
rights, lacing up his heart, closing his lips, anxiously watching to make
sure he remains nicely submissive and takes nothing upon himself by
which he might somehow encroach upon the pastor's imagined and
presumed eminence; in short, it does not consist in suppressing the
estate of the laity in order to elevate that of the clergy at its expense,
claiming for the latter the glory of ruling in order magnanimously to
leave to the former the glory of obeying. Rather, therein lies the dignity,
the delight and joy, of the true fellow-worker of God: to educate his
congregation ever further toward freedom and its worthy use, to spur
them on and guide them, so that they move ever more surely in the
exercise of both their rights and their duties