# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1863_S46
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

46 Theological Axioms.

be. They would bring in their train not rebellion, war, and bloodshed, but rest, peace, and welfare, and would transfigure both the masters' and the servants' relation alike into a blessed school of faith and love, of humility, of patience, and of all other Christian virtues. —

This demonstration — that bondage is set forth in Holy Scripture as something not contrary to Christian morality — may then suffice here. In the coming issues we intend to let our old orthodox divines speak further on this same subject, from whose pronouncements it will become clear that in our protest against the admission of humanistic, revolutionary leaven into our theology here we are guided not by political ulterior motives and sympathies — such as a preference for the institution of slavery and the wish to see it preserved — but solely by concern for keeping our Lutheran biblical theology pure; just as, long before the present political troubles, we had already, from the same motives, repeatedly borne witness, both privately and publicly, against an Abolitionism that confuses conscience, endangers the state, is unevangelical, and confounds the kingdom of Christ with the kingdom of the world.

With that we bring this year's foreword to a close, declaring the most earnest struggle against the false deistic and atheistic humanism and philanthropism ever further encroaching and penetrating into the Church to be the pivotal point of our program for this year.

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Theological Axioms.
(Continued.)

XXI. Of the Church and the Doctrines Connected with It.

49. Nostram ecclesiam particularem esse, concedimus, solam autem esse eam veram ecclesiam, non dicimus. (Carpzov.)

We grant that our (Lutheran) Church is a particular church, but that it alone is the true Church, we do not say.

50. Utut ratione visibilis congregationis non alia pura ac a naevis in doctrina alienior detur, quam lutherana, non tamen aliam negamus particularem ratione genuinorum et soli Deo notorum membrorum sub alio visibili coetu eoque impuro latentium, in quibus ecclesia vera proprie consistit. (Id.)

Be it granted, then, that as far as the visible assembly is concerned there may be none purer and freer from blemish in doctrine than the Lutheran; we nevertheless do not deny that there is another particular church — as regards the upright members, known to God alone, who lie hidden under another visible body, and indeed even under an impure one — in whom the true Church actually consists.