# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1862_S170
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

170    Essay on the Right Mean of the Lutheran Liturgy.

character. Accordingly, in the following paragraphs those particular principles shall be set forth which, from the beginning, guided the orthodox church in its liturgical arrangements.

Apology, Art. 8: "The holy fathers, although they too had ceremonies and ordinances, nevertheless did not hold that such ceremonies were useful and necessary to salvation; nor did they thereby suppress Christ, but taught that God is gracious to us for Christ's sake, not for the sake of such acts of worship. But these same ordinances they kept for the sake of bodily discipline, such as the festivals, so that the people might know, when they were to assemble, that everything in the churches should proceed in an orderly and decorous manner for the sake of good example, so that even the common, coarse folk might be kept under a proper discipline, as of children. For such distinctions of time and such various forms of worship serve to keep the people in discipline and to remind them of the histories. These are the reasons the nations have had for maintaining human order. And in this way we do not object to the keeping of a good custom either."

Luther, Table Talk: "We preachers and pastors ought to watch and see to it that ceremonies are so made and kept that the people become neither altogether wild nor altogether too holy thereby." (L. WW. 60, 393.)

§ 7.
The Pattern of Pure Doctrine and of Christian Antiquity.

Since, according to the Gospel, the whole form of worship and its individual parts require no explicit warrant through some specific biblical commandment or a particular apostolic ordinance, and yet the liturgy is nonetheless the characteristic form for the expression of the congregation's life of faith, it holds first of all as a particular principle that all liturgy should correspond to the pattern of pure doctrine. Herein consists the true scripturalness of the liturgy. But precisely in accordance with this principle the orthodox church, on the one hand, disassociates itself from everything unscriptural that has crept into the liturgy in times past or seeks to creep in at present or in the future, just as, on the other hand, it does not radically break with history, but rather seeks to display its connection with Christian antiquity through the liturgy as well, in that it takes note of and adopts what has been produced out of the spirit of faith within that antiquity and has proven itself as an expression of the inner life of the church.

1 Thess. 5:21: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good."

Augsburg Confession, Art. 24: "Also, in the public ceremonies of the Mass, no notable change has taken place, except that in certain places German hymns are sung alongside the Latin chant (to teach and to train the people thereby), since all ceremonies are chiefly meant to serve this end: that the people learn thereby what they need to know concerning Christ." (Compare the conclusion of this article.)