# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1863_S194
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

194 Theological Axioms.

-ing office); 2. concretively, or with respect to the persons who are found in this holy office (and so the fourteenth article of the Augsburg Confession treats of this subject).

7. Verbum illud, quo vocamur, ministerium Spiritus est, quod Spiritum sanctum adfert, seu per quod Spiritus S. hominibus confertur.

"The Word, whereby we are called, is an office of the Spirit, which gives the Spirit, or whereby the Spirit is given." (Formula of Concord.)*)

8. The keys are nothing other than the office whereby the promise of the Gospel is imparted to everyone who desires it. (Smalcald Articles.)

9. Necesse est fateri, quod claves non ad personam unius certi hominis, sed ad ecclesiam pertineant. (Art. Schmalc.)

"One must indeed confess that the keys belong and are given not to one man alone, but to the whole Church." (Smalcald Articles.)

10. Christus de clavibus dicens, addit: "Ubicumque duo vel tres consenserint super terram" etc.; tribuit igitur principaliter claves ecclesiae et immediate. (Art. Schmalc.)

Christ, speaking of the keys, adds: "Where two of you agree on earth," etc.; he therefore ascribes the keys to the Church originally and immediately.

11. Just as the promise of the Gospel belongs surely and without means to the whole Church, so the keys belong without means to the whole Church. (Smalcald Articles.)

12. Ecclesia sanctus coetus est jurium et officiorum ecclesiasticorum possessione immediata et habituali. (Dannhauer.)

The Church is a holy congregation through the immediate and inseparably attached possession of churchly rights and offices.

13. In ecclesia potestas clavium radicatur et pastoribus morientibus aut lupescentibus ac inquinatis filiis Levi perpetuari potest. (Dannhauer.)

In the Church the power of the keys is rooted, and it can, when the pastors die or turn into wolves and the sons of Levi have defiled themselves, be propagated without interruption.

14. Ministerium novi testamenti non est alligatum locis et personis, sicut ministerium leviticum, sed est dispersum per totum orbem terrarum, et ibi est, ubi Deus dat dona sua. (Art. Schmalc.)

"Now the preaching office is indeed bound to no certain place nor person, as the Levites' office was bound in the Law, but it is scattered through the whole world, and is present in the place where God gives his gifts." (Smalcald Articles.)

*) Hence the Ministerium ecclesiasticum is also defined in the Formula of Concord simply as "verbum praedicatum et auditum," as "the preached and heard Word." See: Solid Declaration, Art. 12, Erroneous Articles of the Schwenkfelders.