# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1890_S20
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

20 Proceedings of the thirteenth convention

worldly sword and laws, to keep them, Rom. 13:1; Titus 3:1; 1 Pet. 2:13. But worldly government does not presume to rule consciences, but deals only in temporal goods. A stonemason must have a law that he not take an ell for half an ell; a shoemaker has a law that he not make a child men's shoes; yes, murderers have a law that the booty be shared equally. What do such laws have to do with spirit and conscience? So worldly government has a law that one not harm another in goods, honor and body; but it does not say that thereby the conscience is well ruled before God. But the Pope and spiritual lawmakers fly with Lucifer over the heavens, pretend that their thing is divine and makes one righteous before God, rules and guides consciences aright. God cannot tolerate that; there he is a jealous God. For in consciences he wants to be alone and to have his Word alone rule; there freedom is to be from all human laws. If now the Pope, like the emperor, left consciences alone and punished no further than the emperor does, there would be no trouble. But he wants to hold the consciences captive, and God's Word is to be equal to his word, and he invents an eternal punishment and eternal reward for his commandments, which no emperor does. Therefore he is the Antichrist, who sets himself above God, as St. Paul says in 2 Thess. 2:4, and breaks into the bridal chamber of Christ and makes all Christian souls into whores." (On Confession, whether the Pope has power to command it. E. A. 27, p. 336 f.)

Hesshusius also writes: "Now the question arises whether the praiseworthy princes, lords, counts and magistrates in cities did wrong in that, at the dawning light of the Gospel, they took pains to set faithful and upright teachers before their subjects, so that they might be rescued from the darkness and blindness of the Antichrist and brought to eternal salvation through knowledge of the one Savior. To this I answer thus: I have no doubt at all that the princes, lords and magistrates who here and there in their lands and territories, when the truth of the Gospel appeared to them and they were enlightened by God, abolished idolatry, false doctrine and the abomination of the antichristian papacy, thrust the papistic wolves from the flock of Christ, and called shepherds and upright teachers, did Christianly, laudably and well: for the congregation at that time did not know or recognize its right, was also led so far from Christ by the papal lies and errors that it was almost unfit to judge doctrine and to distinguish false teachers from faithful preachers. Since then God the Almighty showed some worldly rulers the great grace that they were able to recognize God's Word and will, it was fitting for them to take their subjects in hand and have the saving Word set before them, so that they too might be brought to knowledge of Jesus the Savior. For also