# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1857_S266
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

he says, the same multitude of men, but that this multitude is the true church of Christ we do not see, but believe." But faith must rest upon the Word of God, as bodily sight rests upon a visible object. Now neither is that which makes the church the true church visible, nor is it found anywhere in Scripture that this or that church — namely, one flourishing today — is the true church. Of the ancient church among the Romans, Corinthians, etc., a conclusion may be drawn, and that from the letters written to them, in so far as these are commendatory; but with bodily eyes this could as little be beheld even in Paul's day as one can recognize with the eyes of the understanding that this or that or a third person in the church is a true believer, 2 Timothy 2:19, Revelation 2:23. "One must consistently hold," say the brothers Walenburch, lib. I. de unit. eccl. cap. 6, § 5, "that the church has been called visible, absolutely and simply visible, although in one part, namely as to the soul, it is not visible, as the church is not visible as regards faith, love, and the other inner spiritual gifts." But since these are the chief thing in the church, and without them the church cannot exist, it is evident that the church in itself and absolutely must be called invisible. For every thing is to be judged according to its essence. The church, however, is essentially nothing else than the communion of saints. That godless persons are nevertheless mingled with her does not belong to the essence of the church, but is something accidental to her. Therefore Bellarmine himself, lib. III. de eccl. cap. 9, concedes "that the godless and hypocrites are dead and withered members of the church or of the body of Christ, and hang together with the rest only by an outward connection; that they are not principal members, but only such as the hair, or the nails, or the evil humors on the human body." More on this we have said in the Exeg. A. C. art. VII and VIII, where it may be read. —

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Thus far Calov — whom even the shameless effrontery of our opponents would hardly be bold enough to charge with a pietistic evaporation of the concept of the church or with a unionistic craving. But — let them by all means do what they cannot leave undone, and go on in blind rage casting suspicion on the doctrine of the invisibility of the church in her essence — a doctrine unshakably grounded in God's Word and unanimously attested and confessed by all the faithful teachers of our dear Lutheran Church down to the latest times of orthodoxy — as a new, Missourian, indeed perhaps Waltherian private doctrine, in order somehow to confuse the simple: what will it avail them? In the long run they will not succeed; the truth will and must and can only conquer, and God will be on the field with her, and He is not mocked. What if too late they should perceive with terror that all their extravagant assertions and deceitful undertaking, in the strong hand of our gracious God and Savior, in the end