# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1861_S24
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Literature. 24

as rightful property to take away from them as illegitimate
possessors and to use for ourselves. For just as the people of
Israel, among the Egyptians, found not only idols and heavy burdens,
which it abhorred and fled, but also vessels of gold and silver, and
ornaments and clothing, which that people, at its departure out of
Egypt, took into its possession secretly — not by its own authority,
but by divine command, and indeed rather for itself, for better use
than the Egyptians made of it — since the Egyptians themselves,
without knowing it, handed these things over to them, of which they
themselves made no right use: so also all the systems of doctrine of
the heathen contain not merely empty show and superstitious
fabrication and the burdens of useless labor, which every one of us,
who under the leadership of Christ departs from the fellowship of the
heathen, ought to abhor and avoid; but also noble sciences more
suited for use in the service of truth, and some highly useful moral
rules; indeed, even some truth concerning the service of the one God
is found among them. This, then, is their gold and silver, which they
did not create themselves, but which they have, as it were, dug out
of certain veins of divine providence, which is effectually present
in all things, and which they misuse, against truth and right, in
the service of demons — gold which the Christian, when in spirit he
separates himself from their rejected fellowship, ought to take away
from them for the lawful use of the service of the preaching of the
Gospel. Their clothing too — that is, indeed the work of men, yet
fitting and suitable for human society, which we cannot do without
in this life — one may take and keep, as things that are to be
employed in the service of Christ. For what else have many excellent
and believing men among us done? Do we not see before our eyes with
what a mass of gold and silver and clothing, loaded down, there went
out of Egypt Cyprian, that lovely and gracious teacher and blessed
martyr, Lactantius, Victorinus, Optatus, Hilary — not to mention
those still living? Likewise countless Greeks? What also Moses
himself had already done before them, the faithful servant of God, of
whom it is written: he was instructed in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians. To none of these men would the idolatrous spirit of the
age ever — least of all in the times when, rejecting the yoke of
Christ, it persecuted the Christians — have offered for use the
valuable sciences which he possessed, had it suspected that they
would be used in the service of the true God, by whom the vain
service of idols was rooted out. But they gave their gold, their
silver, their garments, to the people of God departing out of Egypt,
without knowing that what they gave would pass over into the
obedience of Christ."

Finally, we remark that for anyone who wishes to fully appropriate
the treasure of knowledge which the teachers of the church have laid
down in their works, an understanding of philosophical concepts is
indispensable, of which these men, well versed in the wisdom of the
world, have frequently availed themselves for the sake of clarity and
brevity. For this purpose Fleming's dictionary offers a very useful
aid, since it does not, from the stand-