# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1863_S353
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lehre und Wehre.

Volume IX.    December 1863.    No. 12.

Some Remarks on a New Apology of the
Reformed Church.
(Conclusion, continued.)

Mr. Lic. K. continues:

"We are Reformed also because we banish all unnecessary church ornamentation. The Lutheran Church, too, has in this respect kept the Roman leaven, in that it tolerates in its churches images, statues, crucifixes, candlesticks, and the like, although the history of the Christian Church warns loudly against such things, and the apostolic congregations held their worship in the simplest manner. Our Reformed Church has kept this example in view, and in this too we recognize its apostolic character. In the simplicity of its ecclesiastical arrangements is mirrored the unbounded reverence which our Reformed fathers felt before the Word of the living God."

Marginal remarks: That Mr. K. here speaks so moderately only of unnecessary "church ornamentation," which the Lutheran Church "tolerates," is, coming from him as a Reformed man, worthy of all thanks. But how he can nonetheless count this among the Roman leaven and cite it among the reasons why he would rather be Reformed than Lutheran is all the more strange. Strangest of all, however, is that the unbounded reverence for God's Word which the Reformed hold should be mirrored precisely in their unadorned ecclesiastical arrangements. It almost seems, to judge by this, that Mr. K. too is not free of that Carlstadtian "leaven" — namely, that such church ornamentation is sin. But whoever believes that knows neither what Law nor what Gospel is, neither what Old nor what New Testament is, neither what sin nor what a free matter of indifference is. Precisely this — that the Lutheran Church clearly recognizes that nothing is against God's eternal Law except what is against love, which is the fulfilling of the Law, and that she therefore lets nothing be made sin for her which, according to this principle given by God's Word itself, is a free matter of indifference — precisely this is what makes the Lutheran Church so dear to us. On the other hand, the very fact that the Reformed Church fights against adiaphora and wants to make them sin frightens