# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1860_S305
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Indirect Declaration by Löhe concerning His Position within the Lutheran Church.                                                    305

...bound themselves to a state and transferred the exercise of their rights to the head of state. Even where Lutheran congregations existed here and there in countries under the rule of princes of a foreign faith, they were no less subject to worldly rule than were the state churches of the Protestant lands, especially as regards the forms of their outward existence. In more recent times there are no longer merely state or territorial churches, but also so-called separated congregations which, like the Prussian or the Baden one, gradually work their way up to the possession and enjoyment of certain rights. As for the constitution of the various classes of Lutheran churches, it nowhere corresponds to the biblical model, which for its part answers so fully to the needs of the congregations and of individual souls. In this respect the state churches and the separated churches cannot boast much over against one another; for want of the guidance they need, they have great cause to pray for one another and to seek their salvation together. We, dear brethren, who are members of a Lutheran state church, ought to make it our concern to pray for all churches which have received the same precious faith as we, that the Spirit of the Lord may preserve and further them under every disfavor of circumstances, and, so far as it is his holy will, bring about a time in which they too may build and shape themselves outwardly as is most conducive to the guidance of souls and congregations. Even if the constitution, compared with the Word and the sacrament which are given us unto salvation, is only a subordinate matter, it is nevertheless by no means unimportant for the life of the Church on earth and its preparation for eternity, and our prayer for the return to the constitution proper to the Church*) should therefore press from the depths of the heart toward heaven, and we should expect the hearing of it as a high blessing of the Lord from heaven. Oh, that we might so pray, that the Church might be allowed to build and shape herself as is useful to her!"

VIII.

"Even to this hour it has, especially in the territorial churches, been neglected to do away with that promiscuous mingling at the Lord's Supper which crept in during the times of unbelief — that mark of the Reformed Church. Where a step toward holy order has not been taken through the faithfulness of the pastors, everything, with few exceptions, has remained as it was ten years ago. Even then it was acknowledged that this mingling was an evil; but since one did not wish to confess it as sin, one deprived oneself of the powerful impulse toward remedy that lies in repentance. And yet this mingling has, from the beginning, been the offspring and mark of the Reformed tendency, according to which the various church communions that arose in the time of the Reformation, despite the differences existing between

*) Which one is that? L. u. W.