# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1863_S170
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

170 Dr. Hengstenberg's Position on the Questions of Office and Church Government.

...to put out of the Father's house, that these brothers have no right at all, or at best a very questionable one, to be restricted in every possible way, when it comes to choosing one from the number of the brothers as overseer and steward. For what, after all, are the ruling brothers better than the subordinate ones? Are they not all sinners deserving damnation, who are saved by grace alone and raised by sheer grace to kings, priests, and prophets — one as all and all as one? It is this wholly and perfectly equal brotherhood, this honor and glory of every single Christian, these equal rights, won by Christ and bestowed equally on all his Christians, for which we have raised our voices against papistic hierarchical cravings, which have surfaced from various quarters, even from within the Lutheran Church itself, and still continually seek to assert themselves. What is it but the saddest papistic leaven, when Stahl maintains: "Only he who teaches publicly has the right to establish public doctrine; only he who administers the sacraments has the right to refuse the sacraments; only he who exercises the cure of souls can give churchly ordinances for those entrusted to that cure of souls"? (?) And Dr. H. approves and praises this Romish mischief! But lest anyone think that this characterization of Stahl's teaching is merely a dismissive, crude judgment out of wretched America and the democratic Missouri Synod, not worth the notice of German scholars, I ask that he be willing to take to heart, just a little, Dr. Luther's earnest words; he writes thus in his tract against King Henry of England: "To discern and to judge concerning doctrine belongs before all and every Christian, and indeed in such a way that he is accursed who infringes this right by so much as a hair's breadth. For Christ himself has established such a right in unconquerable and many sayings, for example Matth. 7: Beware of the false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing. This word he certainly speaks against the teachers, to the people, and he commands them that they should avoid their false teaching. But how can they avoid it without recognizing it? And how recognize it, where they have no power to judge? Now he gives them not only the power to judge, but commands it of them as well — so that this one passage alone can suffice against all the sayings of all the popes, all the fathers, all the councils, all the schools, who have ascribed the right to judge and to decide solely to the bishops and clergy, and have robbed it from the people — that is, from the Church, the queen — in so godless and church-robbing a manner. For there it stands: Christ says: Beware of the false prophets; with this nearly all the syllables of the prophets agree. For what else do the prophets do but warn the people not to believe the false prophets? But what else is this warning but a showing that the people have power to judge and to discern? What else is it but a making known and an assurance that they must take heed to their own conduct and stand at all times on guard against all the teachings of all their priests and teachers? Therefore we conclude here: Thus