# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1857_S265
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Whether the Multitude of the Church Is by Its Nature Visible, as Rome Is, etc. 265

kingdom of God is within you. But who can see what is within other men? 9. The church is also compared to a city and called the city of God, into which no unclean or uncircumcised person enters — namely, no one who is not circumcised with the spiritual and inward circumcision, Romans 2:28, 29, Isaiah 52:1 — in which nothing unclean is tolerated, v. 11, Ezekiel 44:9, Joel 1:16, Revelation 22:15. For who is spiritually and inwardly circumcised no one can truly discern; it does not lie open to the day who is holy, but is inwardly hidden, Romans 2:29. 10. The church is the mother of all believers, Galatians 4:26. Her children, then, are the believers, who are born of God, John 1:12, the good seed and the children of the kingdom, Matthew 13:38, 8:12, whom the Spirit of God drives, Romans 8:14. But these, as such, can be known by no one; the day of the LORD will at last separate them out, Malachi 3:16ff., Matthew 3:12, 13:30, 40, 41, 48. 11. The church is explained in the Apostles' Creed as the communion of saints, and by Origen, Chrysostom, and Jerome as being the assembly of the saints, of which Augustine, lib. V. de bapt. cap. 24, says: among the titles and surnames of the church I venture to say this, that where the church is called a sealed garden and fountain, the fountain of living water, a paradise of pomegranates, it is to be understood solely of the holy and righteous, not of the godless deceivers and drunkards and envious. — How this agrees with the Tridentine Synod, which in sess. VI. cap. 15 still declares whoremongers, adulterers, and others who commit mortal sins to be believers, the papists may see for themselves! For Gregory de Valentia, lib. IV. Anal., p. 4, admits: "one says too much in maintaining that the essence and truth of the church itself can either be seen with the eyes or be recognized in a manifest way. We do not believe, he says, that one can see plainly or recognize clearly that a given assembly is in fact the multitude of the true worshipers of God and is governed by the Holy Spirit."*) — Jacob Schopper, however, in his first sermon for the Feast of the Holy Innocents, p. 184, posits a twofold church, a visible and an invisible: "in the former, he says, are good and evil; but the latter is the gathering of believers, which is called invisible not because those who are in it could not be seen, but because no mortal discerns that they are such. For although they can be seen in so far as they are men, they cannot be seen in so far as they are true believers, because true faith dwells inwardly in the heart": which is entirely our own view. In vain does Bellarmine here object, lib. III. de eccl. cap. 15: "in the church some things are seen and some believed."**) For we see,

*) Here a Jesuit teaches more in Lutheran fashion concerning the church than do the Grabauites, who would be Lutherans. Is that not disgrace and shame? (Note of the translator.)

**) Just so does Grabau speak today, and perhaps hopes by this half concession to be able to rescue himself from many an embarrassment. But "in vain," says Calov above. (Note of the translator.)