# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1858_S311
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Glory of the Lutheran Church. 311

...so I trust the Lord that through the Holy Spirit he will let the love of truth grow so strong within me that it will kill self-love in me; and secondly — who knows how soon I shall stand before God's judgment to give account of what I have spoken.

Now, in coming to the matter itself, I note first of all that what I have said is nothing new or unheard-of in the Lutheran church. For the old teachers of the faith in our church, who fought for their doctrine with the utmost zeal, said exactly the same thing that I expressed in No. 6. Thus, for example, Johannes Andreas Quenstedt (born 1617), who belongs to the very strictest of the Lutheran teachers of the faith, and whom certainly no one who has read his writings will hold to be too lenient toward other confessions, sets the Christian church in general (in genere) over against the heathen, the Jews, and the Turks, and says that it is recognized by the confession of Christian doctrine (ex professione doctrinae christianae) and by this, that it has Holy Scripture (acknowledges it as divine revelation). The Lutheran church he then sets, within the general church, as the orthodox church over against the heretical communions — which he nevertheless, notwithstanding that they err in this or that doctrine, still reckons to the church in genere, and to which he leaves the confession of Christian doctrine. So our teachers of the church have taught, when they fought with the utmost zeal for the Lutheran church; and down to our own day it has not occurred to the most faithful Lutherans to wish to confine the existence of the Christian church on earth to the Lutheran church-fellowship.

From what I have just cited here out of Quenstedt's dogmatics, I can meet at once an objection made against me, namely, that I declare the errors of the Reformed church to be trifling, in that I say that its confession of faith contains the fundamental truths of Christianity. I had earlier appealed to the fact that the Reformed confess the Apostles' Creed; and if they confess it (and we will surely not venture to deny them this, when they do it formally and solemnly — and mere logic-chopping does not count, by which we would want to prove to them from this or that that they cannot accept it as simply as they assure us they do) — then: if they confess it, and it contains the fundamental truths of Christianity, I ask whether I said too much when I said that they confess, together with us, the fundamental truths of Christianity. For my part I grant them this from my heart, that they do so, and Quenstedt too did not deny it to them; for when he says that the church of Christ in general, or the general church, is recognized by the confession of Christian doctrine, he can mean nothing other than this: what a Christian church is, is recognized by the confession of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity; for it is easy to see that only the confession of these doctrines can entitle one to bear the name of Christian, not the confession of any truths whatsoever which the Christian holds in common with the Jews and Mohammedans, and perhaps