# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1858_S55
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On Lay Elders, or Congregational Overseers. 55

...clergy, but a genuine representation of the church;*) whereby the congregation would have not merely the ambiguous right to assent to proceedings, but a truly decisive vote — a right which was later transferred to the lay members of the consistories." (p. 896-8.)

The more important, then, an institution such as the so-called lay eldership necessarily must be, precisely here in America, where church and state are separated and the church congregations stand independent and self-sufficient alongside the civil ones — and the further one departs, now to the right, now to the left, from the correct view of it — the more welcome it may be to many here to hear, concerning this institution, its biblical grounding, position, sphere of activity, and authority, the voice of our orthodox teaching fathers. We therefore share here, in what follows, a series of pertinent testimonies.

Martin Chemnitz writes in his "Examen Concilii Tridentini": "Because many functions belong to the church office which, when the multitude of believers is very numerous, cannot well all and each be discharged by one person or by a few, one began already in apostolic times — so that everything might be done in order, fittingly, and for edification — once the assembly of the church had multiplied, to divide those functions of the preaching office among certain ranks**) of church servants, which were afterward called τάξεις or τάγματα, so that each might have his own particular fixed post, at which he served the congregation through certain functions of the preaching office. Thus, in the beginning, the apostles took care of the ministry of the Word and the sacraments, and at the same time also the distribution and administration of the alms. Afterward, however, as the number of disciples grew, they transferred this part of the preaching office, the part concerning the alms, to others, whom they called deacons, that is, servants. And

*) "See Melanchthon's Works III, 472: '"But in disputes over doctrine, not only the bishops should adjudicate, but capable men must be chosen from the whole body of the church."' In general, the Reformers maintained that every tyranny is repugnant to the essence of the Church, and that one must avoid even the appearance of it. '"Tyranny,"' says Melanchthon, '"is the enemy of the Church."' See his letter to the Nuremberg preachers of February 17, 1540, Opp. ed. Bretschneider, vol. III, 965 and following: '"The ban, too, must be restored — not, as formerly, in matters of worldly affairs, but over open crimes, in that the elders in each congregation are taken to this court as well."' This, incidentally, is the point at which the pure idea of the presbyteries and the practical task that was already envisioned at that time in the establishment of the consistories were, in their outlines, as it were, fused together." Rudelbach.

**) It is evident from what follows that Chemnitz is not speaking of ranks of office in an episcopalian sense, but rather that he recognizes only a single office, whose various functions, however, are entrusted to different persons as assistants of the one who holds the office κατ᾽ ἐξοχήν [in the eminent sense], and that in this sense they can, by virtue of the church's right to order its own affairs, be used to establish a kind of ranks of office.