# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1863_S82
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

82 The Old Lutheran Teachers on Slavery.

it is against the neighbor; against God one cannot sin here, but against the neighbor. And it is to be known that this little word "calling" does not here mean the estate in which someone is called, as one says: the married estate is a calling, the priestly estate is a calling, and so forth; everyone has his calling from God. St. Paul is not speaking here of such a calling, but of the evangelical calling, so that it is as much as to say: Remain in your calling, in which you have been called — that is, as the Gospel finds you and as its call reaches you, so remain. If it calls you in the married state, remain in that same calling in which it finds you; if it calls you in servitude, remain in servitude, in which you are called. — What? If it should then find me in a sinful estate, should I then remain in it? Answer: If you are in faith and in love, that is, if you are in the calling of the Gospel, then do as you will, go on sinning; but how can you sin, if you believe and love? since through faith enough is done toward God, and through love enough toward your neighbor. Therefore it is impossible that you should be called into a sinful estate and remain there. But if you remain in it, then you are not yet called, or have not yet grasped the calling. For this calling brings it about that you come out of the sinful estate into a godly estate, and makes you unable to sin as long as you remain in it, and you are altogether free before God through faith, but before other people you are everyone's servant through love. From this you see once more that monkery and fanaticism are wrong in our time, for they bind themselves before God to outward things from which God has freely released them, and so strive against the freedom of faith and God's order; and again, where they ought to be bound — namely before other people, serving everyone through love — they make themselves free, so that they serve and are of use to no one but themselves, and thereby strive against love. So it is a perverse people, one that perverts all of God's ordinances, wishing to be free where it is bound, and to be bound where it is free, and yet hopes for far higher seats in heaven than the common Christian. Indeed, they will sit in the abyss of hell, who out of heavenly freedom make such a hellish prison, and out of loving servitude a hostile freedom. (Walch, Tom. IIX, 1123—1130.)

Melanchthon likewise writes: "Rightly does Aristotle rebuke those who, out of an intemperate and unjust desire for freedom, accuse the form of servitude adopted under the law of nations. Yet we might, with far more justice, accuse the fanatical people of our own time, who under the pretext of the Gospel called the people to license — that is, to freedom — and asserted that servitude was against the Gospel. But since we have otherwise often spoken of this matter, it is enough for now to remind the reader that, just as the Gospel does not abolish this commandment: Honor father and mother, so it likewise does not disapprove of governments, nor of servitude, but rather confirms