# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1862_S149
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

From the Grand Duchy of Baden. 149

has come about not exclusively according to the principles of the Word of God and of our confession, which are held to be the foundation of our Church.

The mingling of the spiritual and the temporal (Augsb. Conf. XXVIII) and, consequently, the government of the Church by the State lay as little in the intention of their founders as did the union and hereditary transmission of the episcopal office with the crown. Least of all was it their intention to make the government of the Church dependent on a numerical majority (plurality of votes) of Christians in name only, or, as the Apology of the Augsburg Confession puts it, on "the great multitude" — a dependence against which the event related in Genesis 16, and the word of the Lord in Matthew 7:13-14, already contain a solemn warning.

Nor can the majority of votes be raised into a principle of church government without coming into conflict with the very origin of Protestantism (at the well-known Diet of Speyer); and it will therefore always remain an attempt as profane as it is futile to set the material principle of the majority in the place of the wisdom and love that, as the Church's governing Spirit, ought to rule her, and to lay the spiritual government in the hands of a worldly prince, so long as such words still stand written in the Bible as: "My kingdom is not of this world," or: "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you!"

There can be no doubt on this point, that according to the Word of God and our confessions the Church is not to be a crowd of all sorts of people, as the world is, but a holy fellowship, a people of God, an assembly of believers and saints (Augsb. Conf. Art. VIII); and if, owing to the imperfection of this present time, false Christians and hypocrites, or even scoffers, are nevertheless found within it, then it must appear all the more the task of every church constitution to make such arrangements that the government be established, through election, only by and from those independent members of the Church who confess their faith and prove it by deed through diligent participation in the services of worship, in preaching and the sacraments, as in all the other affairs of the Church. Only such men, therefore, are fit to be elders and rulers of the Church as excel others in this faith and walk of life, and are held worthy of double honor. Just as, in the state, no one is granted the right to vote who has not first acquired citizenship, shown proof of a certain property, done homage, and sworn to the constitution, so too can those in the Church possess no right to vote who lack the qualities requisite for it.

It is true that in the new church constitution the expectation is expressed that men of good repute and proven churchly sense will be chosen