# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Dezember 1856_S365
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Distinction of Estates in the Church. 365

moments burdened with difficulties peculiar to constitutional church law,
and he throws at me the charge: "it is erroneous and altogether
un-Lutheran that I arbitrarily curtail this Lutheran doctrine and,
setting aside the magistracy, wish to recognize only the two orders of
teachers and hearers, of clergy and laity."

"Against papal violence, the præcipua membra ecclesiæ [the chief
members of the church] are called upon (in the Smalcald Articles) — an
expression which at that time was by no means emphasized as it was
later — to consider their duty, to take care that the promotion of the
true religion, namely that it may express itself unhindered, be
provided for; but by no means is thereby granted to these præcipua
membra a portion of church power, or the whole of it, which would
overturn all the earlier and later propositions of this section."

"In this respect the magistracy is the guardian of the first and
second tables [of the Law], namely (as Melanchthon writes in the
Repetitio Augustanæ Confessionis): "quod ad disciplinam attinet"
[insofar as it pertains to discipline]. — Could Melanchthon indeed have
grasped the boundary more sharply than is done here, and through the
distinction between "justitia politica" [civil righteousness] and
"justitia lucis" [the righteousness of light] — a contrast (he says)
which God Himself wishes to be understood from the heart — and is this
not the most adequate interpretation of how he wishes the Cura
principum et præcipuorum ecclesiæ membrorum [the care of the princes
and of the chief members of the church], of which the appendix to the
Smalcald Articles speaks, to be understood? — One may, indeed, still
call these principles meager, and look down upon them from the reeling
standpoint of the modern, overblown concept of the state, as upon a
one-sidedness that has been overcome — they are and remain the
principles of our confession; they are the palladium of our
evangelical freedom!"

"Thus we have now recognized, without any doubt whatsoever, and clearly
demonstrated, that in the confessional writings of our Church not a
single word occurs concerning the application of the doctrine of the
three estates to the organic representation of the relationship
between Church and State. On the contrary, these writings with all
diligence guard against the confusion arising from it, and wish the
doctrine of the separation between spiritual and secular power,
between politica gubernatio [civil government] and judicium
ecclesiasticum (jus ecclesiarum) [ecclesiastical judgment, the law of
the churches], to be regarded as a common evangelical possession, as
an anchor of the Reformation."

"How far Luther was — for all his acknowledgment of what is wholesome
and comforting to the conscience in the doctrine that all estates are
sanctified by God and possess the promise of His grace — from grafting
the doctrine of the three estates onto the theory of church power, and
how perverse, therefore, is the conduct of those who, like
Dr. Sartorius, wish to hold fast to this mistake as the preservative
and distinctively Lutheran element — of this the following utterances
may bear full and valid testimony: "Secular government does not belong
to Christ's office at all, but is an external thing, like all other
offices and estates. And just as these are outside Christ's office, so
that they