# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1857_S263
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Whether the Multitude of the Church Is by Its Nature Visible, as Rome Is, etc. 263

no, its ground is the most bottomless subjectivism, a puffed-up, Bible-hostile science, a faithless human opining, a straying about in all kinds of empty delusion and absurd opinions. And the difference between the biblical-Lutheran doctrine and the thousand-headed monster of the Union doctrines is in fact no smaller than that between day and night, between light and darkness.

But what is one now to think of a work which numbers among its foremost masters such men as are wholly destitute of all evangelical light and all Christian knowledge, and which nevertheless designates them — as if in mockery — as theologians "who by faithful adherence to the saving facts and doctrines of the faith of Christianity are called to further the work of the Spirit among us." Poor deceived souls, who suppose they will find in it as its foundation "faith in the revelation of salvation in Christianity," and who cherish the vain hope of possessing or obtaining in it a treasure of the finest of the newer believing theology. Instead they find an utter evacuation, indeed an open denial, of the specifically Christian — a religion calling itself Christian which might just as well be called heathen, Turkish, and Mameluke. It would unhappily be easy to document this with a whole heap of further examples. But let those given above suffice. They are indeed entirely sufficient to warn every sincere Christian soul in earnest against such a work, to make one deeply deplore its wide circulation and its translation into the English language, and urgently to move everyone who truly has the weal and woe of the church at heart to work against such a "furtherance of the work of the Spirit" with all his powers.

A. Crämer.

(Contributed.)
Whether the multitude of the church is by its nature visible, as Rome or the falsely claimed patrimony of Peter is?
(Translated from Calovii systema loc. theol. tom. VIII. art. II. cap. 2.)

This the pope's servants affirm, and they explain it by the example of the republic of Venice, Bellarmine, lib. III. de eccl. cap. 2. Our carefully unfolded opinion concerning the invisibility of the church may be seen in the Exeg. A. C. art. VII. In short: the members of the church are indeed all visible, but not as members of the church; the church is visible in respect of all the believers who make it up, but it is not exhibitable by way of separating and distinguishing this individual and that, so that one could distinguish the truly believing from the hypocrites; the multitude in which the church is can indeed be seen, and be recognized distinctly and pointed out with the finger — namely, the multitude in which the Word of God is taught and the