# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1864_S3
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Some Remarks on the Teaching of the Oberkirchencollegium of the Ev. Luth. Church in Prussia, etc. 3

temporal goods." (Luther, "Against Augustinus von Alveld," etc.)
If it is this, then those who compose it are, precisely with their hearts and consciences — by which they belong to it — exalted high above all the laws and ordinances of the earth, call them what one will, as the heaven is exalted above the earth; free as the wind, even from the divine commandment insofar as it makes demands, for faith knows no "shalt" — otherwise it is all over with it; the new man is, within the Law, its fulfillment, he does it unbidden, as the tree bears its fruit, his will is one with that will; therefore the Christian, in his outward life, by which he belongs to the visible creation, is here on earth gladly subject to everything, as his God would have him be, and under Moses there remains only the old man, for whose sake the believer's person continually needs admonition, just as through the commandment he practices obedience and is reminded of his Sovereign Lord. Among the exceedingly numerous passages in Luther on this subject we single out only the following: On Gal. 2:14: "Because it is so dangerous and precarious to deal with the Law, and it happens so easily and so quickly that one takes so grave and perilous a fall, as if one plunged from heaven down into the abyss of hell, it is indeed necessary that every Christian learn to distinguish these two matters from one another most diligently and most exactly. He may well let the Law reign and rule continually over his body and members; but not over his conscience. For that same Bride and Queen ought rightly to remain unstained and undefiled by the Law, but kept unmoved and pure for her rightful, sole, and own Bridegroom, Christ," etc. And shortly before: "As long as this constraint exists and continues, as though one had to keep the Law out of necessity, nothing else comes of it than that faith must thereby go down to the ground and be destroyed; and where it is destroyed, all God's promises are utterly void and come to nothing, and all the gifts of the Holy Spirit are already trodden underfoot, and all men must together be lost and damned in a single heap." Further, on Ps. 117: "— that such a kingdom of Christ is not a temporal, transitory, earthly kingdom, to be governed with laws and rights, but a spiritual, heavenly, and eternal kingdom, which must be governed beyond and above all laws and rights and outward manners." And further below: "Reason always wants to mix the two together, to make out of the Christian estate a worldly or spiritual government that could be grasped and ruled by laws and works, and thereby loses everything, not knowing what Christ or the Christian estate is, as we have, alas, all too well experienced under the Papacy up to now." Likewise, further on: "He (David), in this Psalm, makes of heathens and Jews one and the same people under one God, without any law and without Moses, solely through praising and glorifying." Finally, in the treatise on the Keys: "Christ himself says, Luke 17:20: the kingdom of God comes not with outward observation, but is within you; how should