# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1863_S211
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Riddle of the Breslauers. 211

-ment — many or few offices will result from it, and they will turn out greater or smaller, yet all of them, exactly like the whole undivided office of which they are parts, must likewise be of divine right."

The solution of the riddle consists simply in this: that the church office is of divine right only insofar as it administers the preaching of the Word of God and the administration of the sacraments, for that alone is of divine command, and therefore of divine right. 2. Whatever else is carried out through the church office is human order, human statute, because ordained by human beings, and therefore of human, not divine, right. To speak of an "undivided church government of divine right" is therefore already mere logic-chopping. Chemnitz does not use the word "undivided"; that has evidently only been added by Latzel, in order to give his argument some semblance of force. Chemnitz rather expressly adds, where he teaches concerning the various orders and grades of the holy preaching office: "Addenda vero est haec commonefactio: 1. non esse verbo Dei mandatum, qui vel quot tales gradus seu ordines esse debeant" [It should further be noted: 1. that it is not commanded by the Word of God how many, or which, such grades or orders there should be]. If such orders are not commanded by God, then they are commanded by someone else, namely by men; and if they are commanded by men, then they are of human, and not of divine, right.

Latzel argues thus: because God has commanded preaching, everything that belongs to it, so that preaching may get under way and be kept going, is therefore also of divine right. He says in so many words: "not only the functions of the immediate work in the Word and in doctrine, but also the other functions that necessarily belong with it, so that the former may get under way or remain under way, are of divine right. Ordaining, visiting, judging are of divine right just as much as preaching and administering the sacraments." Latzel here evidently overlooks the fact that a command and the manner of its execution are different things, when this manner of execution is not commanded along with it; the one is then commanded and the other is not. The distinction is great enough. When a master commands a servant to chop a billet of beechwood small, the chopping small is commanded, but whether the servant is to do this wearing his hat or his cap, his coat or in bare arms, with or without a pipe of tobacco, is not commanded him — that is free. Should someone now wish to demonstrate to the servant that, because the chopping small was commanded him, he was thereby also commanded to take off his coat and lay aside his pipe while doing it, because that serves to make the chopping get properly under way and remain under way, then the servant, if uneducated, would call it foolishness, and if educated, would call it fatuous logic-chopping.

Still other and far more important functions also belong to this, that preaching may get under way and remain under way, besides "ordaining, visiting, judging"; above all it requires that young people be trained up to be preachers, for what would all the ordaining, visiting, and judging avail if there were no people to be ordained, visited, and judged;