# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Dezember 1856_S364
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

364 The Distinction of Estates in the Church.

transgress... We teach that each and every one of the three chief estates
is divine, or instituted by God; we despise none. But we labor toward
this, that they not be mixed one into another. Confusion has no place
here. When the police is mixed with the household estate, whoredom and
other abominable, disgraceful deeds arise from it. When the household
estate is mixed with the police, tyrannies arise from it. When it is
mixed with the spiritual estate, heresies arise from it. In short, when
these are mixed with one another, then the devil has done his work. But
from the works of the devil nothing good comes. Therefore the prophets
foretold that the Church would be such a kingdom as would be
distinguished from the kingdom of the world; it would be no political,
no domestic, but a spiritual kingdom." (Opp. Tom. VI, 2, 58—60. On
Isa. 9:5.)

The most recent among the determined opponents of a false understanding
and of the misuse of the doctrine of the three estates is Dr. A. G.
Rudelbach. It is a chief merit of this distinguished theologian to have
testified and contended, in this latest sorrowful time — especially
over against the Union Church, which so readily ascribes church
government to the princes — against the mingling of the state with the
Church and for church and religious freedom. This merit is all the
greater the less thoroughly, apart from all existing circumstances,
this field has hitherto been worked, and the denser the thicket of
errors, misunderstanding, and prejudices is which has therefore grown
up rank upon this field.

Sixteen years ago Dr. Rudelbach wrote, in the "Zeitschrift für die
gesammte lutherische Theologie und Kirche" [Journal for the Whole of
Lutheran Theology and Church], an article bearing the following title:
"The Doctrine of the Lutheran Confessional Writings Concerning the
Boundaries of Ecclesiastical and Civil Power, and the Relation of This
Doctrine to the Theories of Church Law Concerning It. At the Same Time
a Rejoinder against Dr. E. Sartorius." In it, among other things, it
says as follows*):

"Sartorius renews the assertion that the doctrine of the three estates
must be our guiding star and canon in setting forth the matters marked
by peculiar

*) We do not give here a complete excerpt, but only individual
sentences which contain precisely the points at issue here, and these
too not strung together into a whole, so that we may not expose
ourselves to the suspicion of misordering the author's thoughts in
favor of our own views. We hope, however, that even this communication
of mere aphorisms will correspond to its purpose and will reach that
purpose with the attentive reader. — Let it not be thought,
incidentally, that it is unnecessary here to seek and furnish an
extensive proof that the magistracy does not belong as an estate to
church governance, since whatever share Mr. Pastor Grabau would allow
the magistracy to have in it reduces to as good as nothing. Let it be
considered that the point here is to follow the principle: Principiis
obsta! [Resist beginnings!] Mr. P. G. draws the magistracy into his
theory of church governance only in order thereby to prove that it is
not the Christian as Christian who has a share in it, but Christians
as bearers of estates. If it is demonstrated that the magistracy as an
estate does not belong to church government, then the Christian's
precious right, which he has as a Christian, is thereby also preserved
to him.                    L. and W.