# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1861_S301
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Remarks on the Office. 301

Pope, could confer upon him — so that, in this sense, all baptized and
believing members of the church are of a spiritual estate. From this,
indeed, it follows that every believer, by virtue of this capacity, at the
same time has, without further ado, the calling, when occasion is given,
according to the measure of the grace and gift bestowed upon him, also to
preach, that is, to testify of salvation in Christ, likewise to baptize an
adult desiring baptism under the confession of Christ, or a Christian
child, where baptism could not otherwise fall to that one or this one, and
likewise to absolve a brother in case of necessity. But that every Christian
is also, without further ado, called "publicly" in that sense, or, as the
Apology to Art. XIV puts it, "in the church," that is, within an ordered
ecclesiastical community, to perform such acts as communal acts — that
follows from it so little that, on the contrary, it can well be maintained,
without any contradiction, that it would be against God's will if he were
to do it without a regular call, without "the congregation's will and
command." The divine institution of the preaching office, as I find it
taught in Art. XIV of the Augsburg Confession, contains in itself neither
a denial of the general spiritual capacity of all the baptized (and
believing), nor even merely a denial of their authorization to preach,
absolve, and baptize, in cases where these acts are simply not to be
exercised publicly, that is, in the name of the church as a whole. The
authorization to act in the name of and as a representative of the whole
can be received by the individual only through a call issued to him in the
name of the whole and, insofar, by it. The individual who, by virtue of the
universal priesthood, independently performs an act that is regularly to
be performed in the name of the church — whether because he is
prompted to it outside the ecclesiastical community, or within it, but
under circumstances that make it impossible to satisfy the need he wishes
to meet by acting in the name of the church — has no need of that
authorization, because the command for such acting (preaching,
absolving, baptizing) indeed goes forth from the Lord in the first instance
to the church as a whole, but by no means in such a way that the church
alone is thereby exclusively authorized; his will, that the need of salvation
be satisfied through these acts, is not restricted to its happening through
the church and its officers; where it cannot happen through these, it shall
happen through anyone who recognizes his will and is able to carry it out.
Even the Catholic system, however strictly it otherwise holds to the
exclusive capacity and authorization of its special priesthood, has not
wholly failed to recognize this.

Yet one remains still strictly distinguished from that system itself
even if one assumes not merely the divine institution of the preaching
office in the sense of preaching, but also a divine institution of the
preaching office as an institution for public preaching and the
administration of the sacraments, provided only that this happens under
strict adherence to the proposition that