# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1857_S52
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

opponents, expressed here: then you yourself, beloved friend, will not be able to acquit yourself of partiality. That no wrong is done to Mr. Grabau and his people by those complaints and grievances raised by those whom they excommunicated with shudder-inducing injustice — the proofs for this lie before us in their own published writings, in their own hand. That the power of the Word is dependent on the office — see Grabau's Pastoral Letter, p. 15 and following; compare p. 45 f.; the same author's second synodical letter of 1848, p. 11 f. (In the same place, p. 115 f., one of the most dangerous consequences of their false doctrine, by which the Lutheran confessional writings are struck directly in the face.) Further, the second synodical letter, p. 24 f. *), where we read the words: "It is certain indeed that the Lutheran church is visible! — and that outside the Lutheran church no one can be saved is only too certain." Compare Inform. I. 2. Should you take the trouble to read through the tabular overview and comparison of Grabau's, papist, and Lutheran doctrine in "Der Lutheraner," ninth year, 1853, no. 10 and following, you would be astonished, indeed alarmed, at the road to Rome which Grabau and those who cling to him have taken. His most recent project involving the church court is accordingly also applauded by a Catholic paper. **)

You concede, honored friend, that the definition given in the Augsburg Confession is biblical: "the Church is the assembly of all believers." The general numeral attached shows irrefutably that no believer, wherever he may be, may be excepted from this, and that thereby a spiritual congregatio of those called out of the world and sanctified through (true) faith is indicated. When you now state as an essential characteristic of it that it is a visible gathering of confessors, you undoubtedly meant thereby to express what the Augustana adds: "among whom the Gospel is preached purely and the holy Sacraments are administered according to the Gospel"; I hold to this alone, because the meaning of other words would occasion a distorted sense leading to all too grievous misunderstandings. It is accordingly an important truth that, just as the means of grace, insofar as they are not falsified, are the constitutive mark of the concept of the Church, whereby it is defined as a holy assembly on earth, so this latter — properly invisible — appears in the administration and use of the former (as its effects), which it must nevertheless at the same time acknowledge as the sole conditions of its existence. For here we are dealing with correlative determinations, since each is mutually the presupposition of the other; as faith comes from preaching, so preaching in turn comes from faith; the Word of Christ, the heavenly Teacher gave the first

*) Note. Wholly contrary to the Dresden Catechism, which is in use in the Buffalo Synod, question 283 and following.

**) Note. Persistently, all refutations from our side, whether concerning doctrine or practical cases, are met with nothing more than the most impudent and most bile-filled pronouncements of authority.