# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1861_S184
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

184 From the Proceedings of the Rhenish Conference of Lutheran, etc.

great importance and significance this view of the church has for the
whole of Christian life and consciousness, in that it raises us to
regard, in the most proper sense, every act of an officeholder as an
immediate act of the church, and thus to look up steadily, past the
weakness and unreliability of the instrument, to the true agent, the
church — of whom we know and believe that she is surely the house
of the Lord, in which he is present, the body and the fullness of him
who fills all in all. May the full view into this glory of the church
never be clouded for us. —
Forgive me, dear brothers, that I speak of Roman errors against
you. I know very well that you are not Roman at heart, and I trust
you, too, that you never will be. Our whole brotherly struggle aims
only at this: to come to understand clearly, and in accordance with
our Lutheran confession, what we all have long believed and are
certain of in our hearts. In faith, however, we are all united and
certain in the damnable character of the Roman false doctrine. That
is what makes our hearts, despite all momentary discord, nonetheless
glad and comforted toward one another, in brotherly confidence and
love. — But I cannot do otherwise; the longer this goes on, the more,
and the more urgently, I must testify and admonish: it is not enough
for the preservation of right Lutheran doctrine, if, over against the
Romanists, as the antithesis to the doctrine of the spiritual office, one
thinks merely of "the pope's consecration," or of becoming blessed
"through faith alone," taken quite absolutely. By that alone we are
not yet protected against a falsely Levitical, Roman priestly estate. I
must, with Luther, hold firmly to this conclusion: preaching, exercising
the keys, etc., are nothing but sacrifices, nothing but priestly works;
whoever, then, says that the performance of these priestly works does
not lie, in principle, equally with all others, in the universal
priesthood of all Christians, but that they are absolutely a calling
belonging only to officeholders — that man sets up a second, a
Levitical priesthood, which has to do only with these particular
priestly works. I therefore do not understand in what sense our
opponents wish to be understood as guarding against a Levitical,
Roman priesthood, unless it be simply by holding that (taken quite
absolutely) blessedness depends only on faith, not on the order of
salvation, the office of the keys, etc.; or, as others would have it, that
the keys do not depend on the pope, inasmuch as it is not he, but the
church, that has the power to bring forth the office and its
officeholders out of herself at any moment. Yet little is gained by
making such distinctions speculatively, so long as, in practice and in
fact, in actual life, faith, the comfort of forgiveness, and the certainty
of blessedness are, after all, to be found and obtained solely in the
domain of the order of salvation, in the office of the keys. Even the
pope gladly leaves everyone his speculations, so long as he and his
clergy are, in fact, left holding only the trade in indulgences in their
hands.