# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1857_S181
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Uproar over the Newest Consistorial-General Decrees in Bavaria. 181

...for that very reason the uproar was also entirely futile, and would have been so even had it found a far more favorable reception in the very highest place, as the royal reply recently issued to the Nuremberg "Protestants" shows. For whoever believes God's Word from the heart, whoever has clearly recognized God's will from it, and whoever is in earnest about the salvation of his soul, that man also directs himself according to God's will in his life and in his office — and especially so when his office is that office given by God, the office of reconciliation, the office "of the keys." In this office he is therefore bound, above all (I do not say solely), to God's order and prescription for it, and neither a glance upward nor downward nor to the sides can or may divert him from the path marked out for him. If human regulations exist that agree with God's Word and command, and come to the aid of his human weakness, then he rejoices in them and thanks God and men for them; if none such exist, he does not first wait for them, for God's prescription is enough for him and takes precedence over everything; and should he have to suffer on that account, whether from above or from below or from above and below and every side, he nevertheless does his office in God's name and in obedience to God, even if with sighing — and that is, in any case, good for him. It is therefore one of the most precious passages in the address of our church superiors, where they freely confess: "We wish nothing but, above all, to go ahead with our own person in obedience to the common churchly confession of faith — because it is in such obedience alone that our right and our authority lie." How beautifully, how truly this is said! Even churchly authorities have, in churchly or spiritual matters, no other power than the power of example in obedience to God's Word. Whoever cherishes and cultivates in his own heart the same obedience as they do will strive faithfully to comply with their confession-conformable regulations, will feel encouraged and uplifted by their example; but whoever wishes to please men and knows a thousand excuses by which to withdraw himself from obedience to the divine Word will likewise find excuses and evasions enough for circumventing human ordinances and general decrees. Who, indeed, is to keep watch over him? Who is to know whether he has blasphemers and despisers in his congregation? or otherwise manifestly impenitent sinners? Who is to call him to account for it, if he lets all these non-Christians go to God's Table? if he neither admonishes them nor turns them away, until they do penance? Will some congregation of our own day, perhaps, rise up against its pastor and accuse him of being remiss in the exercise of the discipline commanded by the Lord in Matthew 18? Will even a few well-disposed members of the congregation do so? And even should such rare birds and prodigies be found, would they accomplish much? Could not the accused bring forward a thousand plausible grounds for his conduct, drawn from ignorance on his part, or from mildness, or from caution, or from the condemnation-mania of the pietistic hypocrites, etc.? Who, for instance, would straightway...