# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1852_S206
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 206 —

exercising both their rights and their duties, to become ever more vividly
aware of their high calling, and to prove themselves ever more worthy of
it.
    He is not afraid that the laity will overstep their bounds — for where
are the bounds of true, spiritual, heavenly freedom? He is as little afraid
to exercise them in it as the eagle is afraid to lead its young in flight
toward the sun, out of some petty worry that they might rise too high,
perhaps above himself; for where the flight nears the bounds of fleshly
freedom, it turns downward, not upward, and there stands the faithful
watchman with the divine Word, before whom the sinking child of God
bows in shame and turns back.
    He joyfully renounces a dominion over the faith that does not belong
to him, so as to be a helper of their joy, and cries out with the holy
apostle: "Would to God that ye did reign, that we also might reign with
you!" It is not enough here to see the office merely outwardly respected,
often only from a mistaken conscience; rather, he labors toward this:
that it be loved and honored out of the spirit and through the spirit,
that God be thanked for it, and that the obedience God requires of him
be rendered willingly and with the heart's own delight. And that is our
goal — toward that we labor — and thereby the conduct of the office
becomes a delight and a joy.
    For although we have all, without exception, labored and suffered
under the struggle with fleshly freedom — which, especially here in this
country, marks the German congregations, at least at first, in a sorry
way — with heavy sighing, with much anxiety and distress, and often
with tears, I nonetheless fear no contradiction from my beloved brothers
in office when I assert in the name of all: our bitter labor, our anxiety
and distress, our sighs and tears do not make us rue it. The goal is too
glorious, and the labor toward that goal, precisely for the goal's own
sake, too blessed, for us to wish to trade it for the easier course of an
assumed dominion over the children of God and the robbing of their
rights, so dearly won for them by the Lord.
    Well then, honored brothers, let us not let the abuse and mockery
that our opponents pour out upon us, nor the controversy itself, vex us
so greatly, nor let it disturb us in our blessed, if laborious, work. Friction
brings polish, and through conflict the truth is only set the more clearly
into the light; and the more the enemy seeks to darken this light, the
brighter, clearer, and more blessedly it will shine across the land and
press with its quickening power into the hearts of those who love the
light more than darkness.
    By God's grace we sit within the rich and dear inheritance of our
fathers; we will not let it be robbed from us or from the congregations
entrusted to us, but will, with God, maintain and defend it — and hold to
it all the more earnestly the more easily, in this time of open apostasy on
the one hand and the most ruinous division and wavering insecurity on
the other, an awakened conscience risks fleeing into the seemingly firmer
structure of a hierarchical constitution, whether it be built in the Roman
style or in the so-called Old Lutheran style. Since the Lord has, truly not
for any merit of our own but simply because it has so pleased Him
according to His free grace, deemed us worthy to commend and defend
anew the freedom and high standing of a Christian in the true doctrine
of Church and Ministry as it has come down to us from the fathers, we
will not let our mouths be stopped either, but will freshly lift up our
voice and joyfully wield the sword of the Spirit