# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1860_S309
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Löhe's Indirect Statement on His Position within the Lutheran Church. 309

...administered justice and liberty toward all in every respect. Let us, dear brothers, pray for this."

XI.

"It is a well-known fact that many among us who cling to the true faith live in conformity with the world, and have gained no noble fruit for their personal conduct from the pietistic controversy of the previous century. One may well say that in our time we have as much cause to complain of dead orthodoxism as men had the right to a hundred years ago. We excuse the frivolous, fleshly conduct of ourselves and our children very often with the noble doctrine of Christian liberty. We do not take heed that, in doing this, we may not be called the strong nor our opponents the weak, and that our conduct ought to be explained quite simply, not dogmatically, but from the moral grounds that are actually present. We would condemn it and turn from it, if we did that. But instead we deceive ourselves, and let ourselves be strengthened in this self-deception by the multitude of those who do the same and gloss it over. The holy ministry bears no fruit, because the pastors and their families indulge the world and its pleasures; the disciplining of the congregations is derided, because the preachers do not discipline themselves and their own, and make an evil distinction between their own kind and the common people. The curse and misfortune that pursues us on this account is immeasurable. It would be high time that we drew the boundaries between the world and the church cleanly, and did not forever anew thrust ourselves and our descendants into the temptation of worldly life, which all too often approaches us even unsought and uninvited. We have without doubt been occasioned and seduced into this mingling of good and evil in life by that very mingling of world and church which necessarily attaches itself to every state church and every mass church. There lies in our public and ecclesiastical circumstances, therefore, a ground of excuse for our indecision and worldly conformity; but what does that help, what use is it to the rising generation? Under the guise of paternal principles it grows ever more wild and worldly. We excuse ourselves, and our children go to ruin."

"Let us therefore pray that the knowing may become wise and the learned prudent, that discernment may be granted them to recognize the boundary between the world and the church, and to live not according to tradition but according to the divine Word. It is not a matter of pietism and pharisaism, but of wholeness of life, and that our conduct correspond to what we believe and confess, so that our faith may not become vain."

XII.

"Finally, dear brothers, let us not forget in our prayers those petitions that have already been commended to us before:

Pray for a fresh, vigorous closing of ranks among believers, here
and there.