# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Dezember 1856_S369
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Distinction of Estates in the Church. 369

precisely there, first and foremost, its purity and glory are
preserved, while it is precisely under the shadow of the state
churches that discipline grows slack, etc. The household estate, it is
said further, is the nursery for the Church. But should not the estate
of the magistracy also be this? Is not, according to God's will, the
whole mass of the unregenerate the seminarium ecclesiae [the seedbed
of the church], and is it not there, first of all, that a Christian
household is formed, where the good seed has already been sown and
has sprung up in hearts?"

"From the mighty protection and shield of the princes (Isa. 49:23)
there does not follow a right of theirs in sacra [in sacred matters]."

"Not in order to exalt ourselves above the fathers, who, even where
they erred, kept a faithful heart toward the Church, but in order to
give the honor to truth, we point out, by way of example, a few
contradictions and weaknesses. Thus, for instance, the magistracy (as
such) is regarded as a part of the Church, and yet it is supposed to
be Episcopus not intra but extra ecclesiam [not within but outside the
church]. On the one hand the people are expressly ascribed the right
of calling and election, and soon this same right, or a part of it
(ecclesiae ministros vocare [to call the ministers of the church]), is
vindicated for the magistracy (as such). The latter is held up as duty
and right, not merely in general "ecclesiam regere" [to govern the
church], but also lites et controversias fidei dirimere [to settle
disputes and controversies of faith], that is, to settle disputes of
faith (though this latter is surely an internum [an internal matter]);
then again it is stated purely negatively, excluding all interna: the
magistracy cannot be excluded from that part of ecclesiastical power
which concerns the external government of the church.*) How uncertain
and constrained the going was is shown especially by the cautions and
safeguards attached everywhere, e.g., "that a Christian magistracy may
by no means arrogate to itself an autocratic power, although it is by
no means to be excluded altogether from all care for what is
ecclesiastical and religious; that the magistracy shall not judge suo
arbitrio [by its own discretion], but shall take counsel with the
ministerium ecclesiasticum [the ecclesiastical ministry]," etc. Where
such limitations are necessary, so that one gives with one hand and
takes away with the other, we are entitled to conclude that there is a
fundamental error in the design or in the presuppositions."

"The two upper estates (according to this theory) appear in Carpzov as
the Optimates who sit at the helm; all that is left to the poor
Christian people is the honor of obeying.**) He distributes the roles
thus: the magistracy has the potestas externa, the ministerium the
interna, and the people, finally, a so-called potestas communis; this
is supposed to be the "judicium discretivum" of the older theologians,
of which it is said that it belongs principaliter [primarily] to the
clergy, and in a derivative manner to the magis-

*) "All these examples are borrowed from Quenstedt, though not merely
as though they stood out as characteristic in him." (Rudelbach.)

**) "J. Ben. Carpzovii, disputationes academicae (Leipzig, 1699),
p. 1271: 'The magistracy and the ministry sit at the helm as it were
the Optimates, the glory of obedience being left to the people.'"

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