# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1858_S19
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Roman Church.                                    19

...which still seem to be springing up out of Beck's school within that church, and against which the pietism of that people's believers does not suffice. For the Kirchentag, however, Stahl's word was a serious warning to abandon the path it had entered upon, of hostility toward decided Lutheranism. Should it fail to do this, then its blessing — which in any case is for the most part reduced to the practical conferences of Inner Mission, however great or small that blessing may still be — will be utterly gone, and its days, too, will no doubt be numbered. — (From the Sächsisches Kirchen- und Schulblatt.)

(From the Sächsisches Kirchen- und Schulblatt.)

THE ROMAN CHURCH

The Roman church has — one cannot deny it — put the time since 1848 to excellent use in consolidating its positions of power over against governments, and in extending its influence over the people. The successes it won in the former it has sought to fix in concordats; the increase of its authority and veneration among the latter, in the increase of the veneration of Mary and in the new Marian dogma — for Mary is the symbol of the church. These triumphs, however, were to find their outward expression in the triumphs that the Pope celebrated on his journey through Italy in recent months and weeks. We would rejoice over all this with all our heart — for the opposition that, rightly, stands foremost for us is indeed not that between Wittenberg and Rome, but that between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the devil, which does its work in the children of unbelief (Eph. 2:2) — were those triumphs only also triumphs of the kingdom of Christ, and not rather just so many defeats of the same. For let us not forget that what is at stake in the kingdom of God and of Christ is not some particular religious mood and devotion, outward piety and churchly obedience, outward discipline and authority and the like, but rather that Christ alone, and always, be given the honor, and that all human trust rest exclusively on the grace of God, which has been made manifest in the Savior of sinners, is offered in Word and Sacrament, and is received in faith, through which the sinner is justified before God and becomes a child and heir of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever opposes this is of the evil one, however much it may adorn itself with holiness and a fair appearance, and however much it may pass itself off — and be believed, and perhaps in part even be — as the sole refuge of rulers and peoples amid the storms of this age. It is nonetheless of the evil one. For we know indeed who he is who can disguise himself even as an angel of light. For, to be sure, he is cunning enough not to appear as what he really is. That we must never forget, and we must not let our eyes be blinded