# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1858_S80
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

80 On the Divisions in the Lutheran Congregations Here. —

guard and watch against them, as against the most harmful poison; as if he wanted to say: Why do you listen so long to these harmful and poisonous liars, who teach you nothing but only lead you astray, and accomplish nothing else with their teaching than to confuse consciences with it? Therefore they too shall have their judgment, however high and great they may otherwise be.

From these words, "whoever they may be," one may well gather that the false apostles must, in outward appearance, have been very pious and holy people; and it may well be that among them there was some particularly great and notable man who had been a disciple of the true apostles and had enjoyed a great and splendid reputation; for St. Paul surely does not use such great and forceful words without cause. In the same way he speaks above, in the first chapter, verse 8: "Though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel other than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed." There is also no doubt that many of them were struck hard by these vehement, sharp words of the apostle, and thought to themselves: How can St. Paul act so hastily against love? Why is he so stiff and stubborn in so small and trivial a matter? Why does he hand over so quickly to the devil, unto everlasting ruin, those who are just as much servants of Christ as he is? After all this he asks nothing; it troubles him not at all that they had the appearance of pious, holy, learned men, and were therefore held in high regard; but because they distort the doctrine of the faith, he curses and condemns them in the most certain terms, and does not doubt a hair's breadth that he does them right in this.

So too we, in our own time, hold as banned and condemned all those who say that the article concerning the sacrament of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ is uncertain, or who do violence to the words of Christ in the Supper. For, in short, we want all the articles of the Christian doctrine, whether great or small (though none is small or trivial to us), to be wholly pure and certain, and we will not give up so much as a single word of them. And that is how it must be. For doctrine is our only light, which enlightens and guides us and shows us the way to heaven: if we allow it to be weakened and enfeebled in even one point, it is certain that it becomes wholly powerless; if we are negligent in this, love will not help us at all. We can very well be saved without the love and unity of the sacramentarians; but that cannot happen without the pure doctrine and faith. Therefore we do gladly want to have love and unity with those who hold and believe with us, in a Christian and gracious way, in all the articles of Christian doctrine; indeed, so far as it lies in us, we want to keep peace even with our enemies, and want to pray for those who unknowingly slander and persecute our doctrine; but not for those who knowingly, against their own conscience, attack one or more articles of the Christian doctrine.