# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1863_S330
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

330 Some Remarks on a New Apology for the Reformed Church.

belong and are given; as indeed this can be shown sufficiently with clear
and certain reasons. For just as the promise of the Gospel certainly and
without means (immediate) belongs to the whole Church, so also the
keys belong without means (and principaliter, originally) to the whole
Church; since the keys are nothing else than the office through which
such promise is imparted to everyone who desires it; as indeed it is
evident in fact that the Church has power to ordain church servants. And
Christ speaks by these words: Whatsoever ye shall bind, etc., and shows
to whom he has given the keys, namely to the Church: Where two or
three are gathered together in my name, etc. Now the preaching office
is indeed bound to no particular place or person, as the office of the
Levites was bound under the Law, but it is scattered throughout the
whole world, and is present wherever God gives his gifts — apostles,
prophets, shepherds, teachers," (that is, men with apostolic, prophetic,
pastoral, and teaching gifts) etc. "And the person contributes nothing
at all to this Word and office, which are commanded by Christ; let
whoever will preach and teach it; wherever hearts are found that
believe it and hold fast to it, it comes to pass for them as they hear and
believe *) ... Therefore it follows, where there is a true Church, that
there is also the power to choose and ordain church servants; as indeed
in a case of necessity even a lowly layman can absolve another and (in
this way) become his pastor; as St. Augustine relates a story, that two
Christians were together on a ship, one of whom baptized the other
and was afterward absolved by him. Hither belong the sayings of
Christ, which testify that the keys are given to the whole Church, and
not to certain particular persons, as the text says: Where two or three
are gathered together, etc. Finally this is also confirmed by the saying
of Peter, where he says: Ye are the royal priesthood. These words
properly concern the true Church, which, because it alone possesses the
priesthood, must also have the power to choose and to ordain church
servants." (Appendix 1 and 2.) Here also belongs what the Apology of
the Augsburg Confession writes: "So in Greek 'liturgia' properly means
an office in which one serves the congregation; this fits well with our
doctrine, that the priest there, as a common servant, serves those who
wish to commune and administers the holy Sacrament." (Art. 3, On the
Abuses.) With these declarations of our

*) Hence Luther says, not only in his Church Postil, in the sermon on the Gospel for
Quasimodogeniti: "Therefore one must rightly understand it when Christ says: Whosesoever
sins ye remit, etc. — that thereby is vested not the authority of him who speaks,
but of those who believe." (Walch's Edition XI, 1002.) In the Apology of the
Augsburg Confession it likewise says: "The power of the keys proclaims to us,
through absolution, the Gospel. For the word of absolution proclaims to me
peace and is the Gospel itself." (Art. 12.) Whoever therefore regards absolution
as a "peculiar" preaching-power existing outside the Gospel errs far
astray and is no Lutheran.