# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1860_S13
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Preface to the 1860 Volume.    13

Or are we, perhaps, to understand by the best times of our Church — in which she still knew how to bear the different directions of her members — the times after Luther's death up to the drafting and adoption of the Formula of Concord? Surely not. For this is held to be precisely the time when the "rabies theologorum" [rage of the theologians], of which Melanchthon complained shortly before his death, was at its fiercest. Or are only the Antiphilippists to be blamed for this alleged rabies? He who knows history will not venture to say so. Or did that best time of our Church, then, finally dawn with the Formula of Concord? Scarcely will men like Löhe wish to maintain that. For it is precisely the Formula of Concord that owes its very origin to a firm holding to Luther's principle: "We wish, in short, to have all the articles of Christian doctrine, be they great or small (though none is small or trivial to us), wholly pure and certain, and to yield not one jot of them. And so it must be. For doctrine is our one and only light, which shines for us and guides us and shows us the way to heaven: if we let it be weakened and enfeebled in a single point, it is certain that it becomes wholly powerless; if we go wrong here, love will avail us nothing . . Therefore one must, as I am accustomed often and earnestly to admonish, diligently separate doctrine from life. Doctrine is heaven, life is earth. In life there is sin, error, discord, sheer toil and labor; there love should overlook and pass over, should bear and suffer, there the forgiveness of sins should rule and reign (provided, however, that one does not wish to defend such sin and error). But with doctrine it is quite another matter; for it is holy, pure, clean, heavenly, divine: whoever wishes to alter and falsify it, toward him neither love nor mercy is to be shown; hence it also needs no forgiveness of sins. Therefore it is of no use at all to want to compare doctrine and life with one another; for more and greater weight rests upon a single letter, yes, upon a single title of Scripture, than upon heaven and earth. Therefore we cannot suffer that anyone should want to shift it even in the very least. But as for the failings and faults of life, there we can well be indulgent and overlook them. For we too are poor men, who stumble and sin daily; indeed, all the dear saints confess with great earnestness in the Lord's Prayer that they are sinners, and believe in the forgiveness of sin. But our doctrine is, by God's grace, pure; there is no article of our faith for which we do not have good, sure ground in Holy Scripture; and it is these the devil would gladly defile for us. Therefore he attacks us so craftily with this argument, charging us, by means of the sects, with not keeping peace, but being quarrelsome and tearing apart the unity and love in the Church or in Christendom." (See the Greater Commentary on Galatians, on Gal. 5:13.)

(To be continued.)