# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1857_S36
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

36 How Are Truly Lutheran Congregations Founded and Raised Up?

church-teaching office ought to flow, seems, as has been said, to have been all but lost among most newer
Lutheran teachers, and in its place
they view the church far more as a visible, organized institute of salvation,
with the superiority of the so-called spiritual estate and the sub-
ordination of the so-called lay estate and household estate, and both in turn
girded and shielded, guided and governed by the supreme-episcopal power,
by the civil authority and by the government of the territorial lord, and by the
constitutions, laws, and ordinances given to the church by the same, in which the glory
of this church culminates, and out of which, then, the "royal Bavarian, etc.,
pastors" are born.

The second answer to the question about the origin of the so-called
"historical princely-episcopal right" in the Lutheran church is this, that
a good portion of today's Lutheran theologians, and indeed also
those among them who have a reputation as authors, have fallen into the delusion
that through such supposed support and safeguarding of the church by
the civil arm, it will more powerfully resist the perilous revolutionary appetites
of the people; and, in turn, the territorial-lord supreme
bishop, or the supreme-episcopal territorial lord, stands under a similar delusion, that the
church he governs, or rather the so-called spiritual estate, out of a due
gratitude for his protection and shelter, will exert all diligence to
make him, as ruler of the church, still more venerable to the people, and
correspondingly to work upon their consciences, so that in the event of new uprisings this
power might combine with the external military power to keep the people
in check.

But what actually lies at the bottom of this mutual protective and offensive alliance between church
and state, particularly on the part of the so-called
spiritual estate?

First and last, unfortunately, a sorrowful and shameful weakness of faith
in the power of the divine Word and of the justifying faith in Christ
worked by it in the heart; for had they themselves trusted with
their whole heart in the Lord and in the power of his Word — which from the beginning
has borne and governed the church, and has preserved it victoriously, especially in the time of the Apostles and
the Reformers, against the devil and the world, against bloody persecutions from
without and against the soul-destroying heresies and false doctrines from within —
then these spiritual lords, out of fear of
the return of the year 1848 and of the possible downfall of the
present state of the church, would not so anxiously cling
to the civil government, as though it could, by its military strength, in the horrific times
of insurrection, in any case also preserve the church — whereas it itself, along
with all its armies, if it lets go of the Lord of Hosts
and trusts in flesh for its arm, is a bruised reed that wounds
whoever leans upon it and hastens its own downfall. For
should it even happen — since it is greatly to be feared that neither the princes nor