# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1863_S41
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Preface. 41

but show all good fidelity, that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things." Titus 2:9-10. The apostle gives the same pastoral rule to Timothy as well, when he writes to him: "Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed." 1 Timothy 6:1. In harmony with Paul — because enlightened and moved by one and the same Holy Spirit — Peter too writes, after laying down as a foundational principle: "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king as supreme," etc., finally: "Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh. For this is grace, if for conscience' sake toward God a man endures affliction and suffers wrong," 1 Peter 2:18-19. Peter thus equates the servant's obedience and disobedience toward his master with obedience and disobedience toward government in general, and thereby makes the servant who sets himself against his master, and the one who incites him to do so, a rebel. — Who can now read all this and, if he still truly holds Holy Scripture from the heart to be God's Word, still believe that the relation of the master to his servant, and conversely, is something sinful, something violating God's will and order, running contrary to the spirit of the Gospel and therefore to be dissolved? If every master of a slave, simply as such, were a thief, a robber, a denier of love, and therefore guilty — if, wishing to be found in a state pleasing to God and to be saved, he did not — set his slave free, could the apostle then give masters rules for conducting themselves rightly in this their estate, and could the apostle then require of servants that they obey and serve their masters "as unto Christ," hold them "worthy of all honor," and be subject even to those masters who treated them unjustly, "for conscience' sake"? Can one also give a thief and a robber rules for how to deal rightly with what he has stolen and robbed, and must one likewise be obedient to a thief and a robber who unlawfully arrogate to themselves a right over us — "as unto Christ" and "for conscience' sake" — indeed, hold them worthy of all honor? Or would one perhaps believe that the holy apostles devised so shameful a doctrine merely out of policy, that merely out of policy they took up the mutual duties of masters and servants into their exposition of the fourth commandment, and that merely out of policy they did not come out and say that the Gospel, rightly understood, actually condemns slavery and demands universal emancipation? Did they perhaps fail to attack this matter because they feared the wrath and power of the great, or too great unrest and upheaval? — Who could be a Christian and speak so slanderously of God's elect saints, so blasphemously of his Word? No! They who could say of themselves: "We walk not in craftiness, neither do we falsify