# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1857_S51
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

From a Letter of a Preacher of the Missouri Synod to a Fellow Minister, etc. 51

one side of this locus, are, however, adopted by us with just as sincere a heart as that of the other side, which forms the necessary complement. Let one take the words of the holy evangelists and apostles, and likewise of the confessions grounded upon them, receptively to heart just as they read, and proceed from these on to the remaining writings of the reformers, their assistants, and their successors: then everything becomes bright and clear, if only we do not wish to carry our own favorite notions into them. And that can hardly be your true intent when, rightly refusing to admit a vocatio divina among Jews, heathen, and Turks, you nevertheless deny the same among corrupted churches that have mixed heretical poison with Christian truth. This would plainly contradict the eighth article of the Augsburg Confession. As far as their own persons are concerned, false prophets are not sent by the Holy Spirit; but, as our theologians distinguish, their outward calling, by which they have come, through men, into the apostles' pulpit, is a divine one, and it has never occurred to a single one of the orthodox teachers to dispute this. If this is so, the inescapable consequence follows that, even where the fathers did not expressly establish the matter otherwise, they take as the reason for it the binding power left behind by Christ to the invisible church, held captive under heretical bishops and pastors. And if, as you mention, "he who persistently makes himself guilty of false doctrine is to be removed from the preaching office" (or, where this is prevented, the sheep should at least flee the voice of a stranger), then he, although in himself a thief and a murderer, must previously have stood in that office. But in the absence of orthodox shepherds and servants of the Word (or wherever their effectiveness does not reach, and in order to further and support it), every Christian is bound by love to tell me what is useful to me for the salvation of my soul — only the spirit of disorder must be excluded from this — indeed, as you yourself concede, in the former case a congregation is entitled "to ordain from its midst a man full of the Holy Spirit as preacher." It is not the congregation that confers the office, but the Lord through it; yet without the organism of the body, he would never let any member — least of all the noblest — exist at all. Lest you should think that I am overstepping, etc. (Reference is here made to the treatise on the preaching office in the first two numbers of the first volume of our journal "Lehre und Wehre.")

— — You further write of two points, which are found quite unambiguously in the doctrine of the Buffalo Synod, in terms as though they were merely being attributed to it; indeed you assert flatly of one of them: "I cannot believe it" —; and further below you add the warning: "Do not believe all the tales that are reported to you about the Buffalo brethren." Now compare your judgments above about us, both as regards the slander of the Milwaukee (Missourian) congregation and what you expressed concerning our doctrine, with what you say here about our oppo-