# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1857_S296
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

296   By a Country Pastor.

congregation is bound to obey him even where it is not able to comply with the demand of its master (Hirtenbr. 55). It is then, in the recognition of its incapacity and under the pressure of conscience over unfulfilled duty, to conduct itself all the more humbly and contritely toward him. So that the offense which has already wounded many an arrogant lord may not befall him too, namely, that someone should declare to him out of distress of conscience: one must obey God rather than men — he lays it down that it is a divine ordinance that no individual member of the church shall decide what is and is not against God's Word (Hirtenbr. 14). This heathen deification of man, which he demands in the Christian church, even turns into devil-worship, in that with diabolical blasphemy he requires: even those cast out of the Christian church for the truth's sake shall, when a nobleman has carried out the ban, regard themselves as lawfully banned and persecuted; even the injustice and malice of the noble lord must be humbly honored and feared, and no one once subjected to him may ever allow himself, after he has been expelled by his spiritual baron for the truth's sake, to seek anywhere church fellowship, the holy Sacrament, and an honorable burial (Inform. 2, 11 ff.). By this he probably believes he must represent the person of Christ.

That this man cannot make use of the knowledge of the true essence of the church is clear. And what a happy time is granted him for working out his idea! Who may hinder him, now that men cry aloud into the world that the doctrine of church and ministry is an open question, from answering this question according to his own taste! Such a crowd of men, gathered merely around the Word of God and the Sacraments (Inform. 5, 188), which does not even need a godly life in order to belong to the true church of Christ (2nd Synodalbr. 50), and which can be held together only in obedience to the spiritual lord — surely such a crowd will not want to have rights in the holy church? These people belonging to the crowd are, after all, nothing more in the church than hearers, and so have nothing else to do in the church than to hear, so that the lord baron need not open his holy mouth against empty walls! Has not Christ himself promised to be with them only when a spiritual nobleman is among them (Inform. 1, 87), and so may come into contact with this rabble only by way of his nobility? They must be taught — since power rests not merely on the will of the ruler, but also and quite necessarily on the opinion of the servants, that in the case of disobedience all the rest are bound together against any one of them — : that everything depends solely on their being found in complete concord with their teacher. — Who can help admiring the intimate agreement of the doctrines of church and ministry! Only blind folly, then, can presume to want to refute them! — Do you wish for a more consistent working out of your own doctrine of the church?

That he labors in his endeavors with much care and toil is