# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1860_S383
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary History. 383

of the Lord be put an end to, 2 Thess. 2:8. The pope at present lies so little at his
last gasp that he is rather reviving now more than he has in a long time. The power which he
again exercises over millions of consciences is one to be reckoned far higher than the
political power which he formerly exercised in the stolen Patrimony of Peter.

Better and better. P. Grabau sharply rebukes it in his Informatorium of November 1st,
that in the calendar of P. Brobst it is stated that the delegates at the synod
represent the congregations. He writes: "That is nothing but the wretched doctrine of representation,
which always imagines itself able to act and speak in the name of all minds! A synod
is no assembly of representatives who represent other people; of that Scripture
says nothing at all: rather" (note the logic of this contrast!) "it is
an assembly which is only to bring God's Word and truth to light, and
accordingly to put the confession of the true church into practice." That is rather like this: one man
says the estates of the realm represent the population of the land. The other flares up and
says: What? The estates of the realm are supposed to represent the population? God forbid, they are
rather an assembly that is to look after the best interests of the land! — It is remarkable
how P. Grabau tries to clear out of his way the following passage of Luther's, which, though it does not lie
on his conscience like a heavy stone, does lie in his path — the passage, namely: "Therefore the
church is holy everywhere, even in the places where fanatics and sectarian
spirits rule, so far as they do not altogether deny and
reject the Word and Sacrament. For those who deny these things wholly and entirely are no church any
longer. But where Word and Sacrament remain in substance, there also a holy
church remains." (On Gal. 1:2.) On this the aforesaid gentleman makes, in the issue cited, the
explanatory remark: "Luther accordingly distinguishes between the church's being governed
under fanatical spirits while pure Word and Sacrament remain, and
its being governed under the same with denial and casting away of the
pure Word — as, for example, by the setting up of a false cult of the Lord's Supper at the
altars. In the first case the church remains; in the other it falls. The first case, however, occurred
in the Galatian lands." Earlier he had already explained the word "in substance" by
the word "pure," writing: "Since God's Word was then still had essentialiter,
that is, in substance, i.e. pure" — P. Grabau means, namely, pure in the preaching
of the pastors. To the same end, which leads him to define "in substance" in this way, he
also adds the word "forbid," writing: "But if they deny and forbid
the pure Word and Sacrament, then the church can no longer
exist there." One sees that P. Gr. knows how, at times, to tread very softly, like certain people
do when they wish to appropriate something foreign to themselves unnoticed. He wants to make his readers
believe that, according to Luther's teaching, the church remains only where orthodox pastors and
elders of the ministry administer the holy office of preaching, around which the true church then
gathers; that Luther grants only that the church itself remains where "fanatical spirits sit in
church government" — that is, according to Grabau's exegesis here: in the highest government,
while the pastors under it administered everything according to a pure church order.
This is what P. G. wants to foist upon his innocent readers; he does not say it so bluntly,
but rather goes about it as though on velvet soles, for he fears that if he here named the gentlemen
pastors, people would say: But in all the world, where does Luther say anything of
these? To evade this question, P. G. therefore makes here no mention
of the "Pastorum," and thinks: once my dear readers have swallowed this once, that Luther speaks only
of the existence of a visible, orthodox church under a fanatical
ecclesiastical supreme authority, I need say nothing more for now about the fact that, where such a
visible orthodox church exists, the gentlemen pastors must of course also be present, without whom
it cannot even be conceived. In due time, once the readers no longer remember how I,
with one fox's leap, arrived at my presentation of Luther's doctrine of the church,
I can still fill in the matter. Then, when my pastors come on stage as if by a Deus ex
machina, my readers will nonetheless, so far as necessary, already be prepared for it, and will soon
see, once they have said A, that they must now also say B.