# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Dezember 1856_S361
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Distinction of Estates in the Church. 361

man is not so utterly nothing and no creature at all, nor does he have
altogether no being, nature, or will — although it is a corrupted nature
and will that has turned itself away from God" —; but, with particular
reference to how the Most High now finds it, he says on p. 85: "There you
see that when God works in and through evil, evil indeed happens, but God
on that account does not do evil, although He works evil through evil
instruments; for since He is good, He cannot do evil, yet He makes use of
evil instruments, which are under His almighty power and might, and which
must proceed according to His general, powerful working, like other
creatures. — For the almighty divine power drives the ungodly continually,
as it does other creatures, so that he cannot rest; he must will, let
himself lust after and desire, just as he is in himself; now he is ungodly
and evil, so he also does evil. — God cannot cease His almighty power and
working, even though man has already turned away; so neither can the
ungodly change his evil, inborn nature." From these and similar passages
it will be easy to grasp how it is no less true "that it is the eternal
will of God alone that hardens some and has mercy on others," etc., etc.,
p. 82, as that "it is really the devil's work that he blinds and holds
fast the (now unfree) men," etc., etc., p. 60; and by virtue of such
strictly anti-Swiss [i.e. anti-Zwinglian] derivations, which must least of
all be overlooked, Luther never had need to retract the expressions he
used — seemingly the harshest, but employed with deliberate intent.

(To be continued.)

The Distinction of Estates in the Church.

(Continuation and Conclusion.)

Pastor Grabau writes (we repeat it here): "The Reformers did not
establish a general Christian government, in which the heads of the
crowd ruled according to their own will and agreement*); but with clear
insight they perceived how God Himself had shaped the visible Church in
its members. They set it forth as a palpable truth that God had
established three chief members or estates in His true visible Church:
the holy office of the ministry, the household estate, and the estate
of the magistracy. And this public truth they made the foundation of
the constitution of the Church. They called it the teaching estate, the
nourishing estate, and the defending estate. This doctrine of the
Lutheran Church has in recent times fallen into neglect and contempt,
for people preferred in practice to manage matters so that everything
was constructed and built up out of the doctrine of the merely
invisible universal Church ... Under the constitution of the

*) Note well that these latter words are not meant to modify the
rejection of the general Christian government, but to give its
grounds.                    L. and W.