# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Dezember 1856_S363
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Distinction of Estates in the Church. 363

the privilege of obeying, and to be able to subject them to a threefold
scepter. Whereas our fathers regarded the household estate and the
magisterial estate as something that was sanctified and made use of by
the Church once its members had entered into it, Mr. P. G., by
contrast, regards these as, so to speak, a privileged estate of
nobility, in which the governing power residing in the Church rests.

Mr. Pastor Grabau was not the first to make himself guilty of this
misuse of the doctrine of the estates. It is already an old one. Even
Luther had to rebuke it. He writes in the year 1544 (that we may cite
only this one testimony): "We cry out and contend with the utmost zeal
that a certain, recognizable, and undoubted distinction, and a proper
limitation of each and every estate, should be maintained: that the
household estate pertains to the governance of children and family,
that the parents administer the household; that the princes handle the
commonwealth in matters of police, while the subjects are to obey;
likewise, that in the Church the knowledge of the Son of God should be
taught ... This distinction among the civil authority, the household
estate, and the Church must be diligently observed, and each and every
estate kept within its proper bounds. And although we have labored
toward this with all our powers, Satan will nevertheless not cease to
mix and confound these together and to disturb them, and there will
never be a lack of people who will not keep within the bounds of their
office.*) The haughty, fanatical, and seditious teachers are not
content with their own office; they also arrogate to themselves the
secular government. On the other hand, the secular authority and the
princes also make an encroachment upon a foreign office, and lay their
hands on the rudder of church government, and likewise arrogate to
themselves dominion here as well. Thus the devil always has his tools,
who trouble us in this matter and trans-

*) Perhaps Mr. P. G. will object here that, according to his theory, the
boundaries within which each estate has its work and authority are
precisely determined. But by this he only reveals the insincerity of
his whole church policy; for either these boundaries are mere
appearance, or the concession is mere appearance that people from the
secular estates also belong to church government. For if the secular
estates belong to the church court as such, then the boundary is
already displaced and the confusion has already occurred. To us,
however, it seems most probable that Mr. P. G. does not, at bottom,
regard the people from the secular estates as belonging to church
government at all. His whole theory amounts to nothing more than
making the laity believe that they, too, sit in church government, and
that the pastors are not the sovereigns in the Church — while the
laity themselves are fobbed off with nothing but the appearance of a
share in church government. It is indeed clear that the people in the
secular estates either have, as Christians, a share in church
government, or that none whatsoever belongs to them. Mr. P. G. now
indeed grants them power in their own estate and calling, and calls
that a share in church government; but what is he doing by this? He
falsifies the doctrine of church government, in order to satisfy the
laity with mere phrases.                    L. and W.