# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1862_S264
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

264 Theological Axioms.

is willing gladly to confess his error and let it be told him. Therefore
he cannot be a heretic, even if he should err. So do all the other saints
as well, and gladly give their hay, straw, and wood into the fire, so
that they may remain on the foundation of salvation. As we too have done
and still do." (Luther, On Councils and Churches.)

43. Saepius puriores sunt aures audientium, quam labia docentium.
(Jerome.)

The ears of the hearers are often purer than the lips of their teachers.

44. "Therefore the Church is holy everywhere, even in those places
where the enthusiasts and sectarian spirits rule, so long as they do not
altogether deny and reject the Word and the Sacrament. For those who deny
these things entirely are no longer a church at all. But where Word and
Sacrament remain in substance, there a holy Church remains as well, and
it matters nothing that the Antichrist himself should rule there too — he
who dwells not in a devil's stable, nor in a pigsty, nor among an
unbelieving crowd, but in the noblest and holiest place, namely, as it is
said, 'he sits in the temple of God,' 2 Thess. 2:4. From this it is
certain and manifest that God's temple must be and remain even under the
spiritual tyrants who rule and rage within it. For one finds indeed, even
among these same tyrants, those who believe rightly, etc. Therefore a
short and easy answer can be given to this question: that the Church is
everywhere in the whole world, wherever the Gospel and the Sacraments
are. But Jews, Turks, enthusiasts, and sectarian spirits or heretics are
not the Church; for they deny and destroy these very things." (Luther, on
Gal. 1:1.)

45. "We must nevertheless confess that the enthusiasts have Scripture
and God's Word in other articles; and whoever hears and believes it from
them will be saved, although they themselves are unholy heretics and
blasphemers of Christ." (Luther, On Rebaptism.)

46. "It is true, I confess, that the church in which you (papists) sit
descends from the ancient Church, as much as ours does, and has the very
same baptism, as well as the sacraments, the keys, and the text of the
Bible and the Gospels; I will praise you even further, and confess that
we have received everything from the church that exists among you (not
from you); what more do you want? Are we not pious enough? We do not
regard you as Turks or Jews (as said above), who are outside the Church;
rather we say that you do not remain within it, and that you become the
runaway, apostate, whorish church (as the prophets are accustomed to call
it), which does not remain in the Church out of which it was born and
raised." (Luther, Against Hans Worst.)

47. Pii in ecclesia falsa et haeretica haerentes etiam ejus partes dici
possunt, dum in ejus consortio externo degunt. (Quenstedt.)

The pious who are caught up in a false and heretical church,