# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1890_S17
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1890. 17

For if we do that, we take from Christ his power and honor and would thereby sin most gravely.

Thus the truth of the thesis follows also from Rom. 13:1, namely from the words: "Let every person be subject to the government that has power over him." So in whatever respect government has power over us, in that respect we can be subject to it. In spiritual things, however, government has no power. Government cannot prescribe to us what we are to believe; it also has no means of compelling faith. At most it has a sword with which it can, as in the time of the Thirty Years' War, force and drive people into the Mass; but the sword reaches only over bodies, not over hearts. Faith, however, is an inward thing. When Scripture says: "Fear not those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul," it thereby denies of those who can kill the body, namely government, that it can kill the soul. Government may command the soul something ever so earnestly; if the soul does not will it, it does not accept the command.

It is therefore clear that government has neither right nor power to meddle in spiritual things. Hence the Augsburg Confession, Article 28 (Müller, p. 63), also says: "For the worldly government deals with other things than the Gospel." What kind of other things are these? Answer: external, bodily, earthly things. For the Gospel deals with spiritual, inward, heavenly things. And Luther says: "It is not for the government to forbid what anyone is to teach or believe, be it Gospel or lies."

But how is it, if this is now biblical, if this is Dr. Luther's doctrine, that the office of government extends only to temporal goods, not over spiritual things or the conscience, that Luther nevertheless called on the worldly government to reform, for example to hold a church visitation? Did Luther not there, as the Iowans would probably say, contradict himself? Did he not act otherwise there than he had taught? Not at all. He acted entirely as we heard a moment ago from our Symbols; he demanded no more of the Elector of Saxony than that he, as an especially distinguished member of the Christian church, take up its need also in an especially powerful way. For so run Luther's words (X, 1905): "Accordingly, now that the Gospel has come back to us through God's overflowing, unspeakable grace, mercifully ... we would also gladly have seen the proper office of bishop and of visitation restored, as most highly necessary, but because none of us was called to it or had a sure command, ... we wished to play the conscience's part and have approached with humble, submissive, earnest petition ... our most gracious Lord ..., that his Electoral Grace out of Christian love (for according to worldly government they are not obliged), and for God's sake, to the Gospel