# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1864_S14
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

the invisible congregation of the saints — which, however, counts its members also among the heretical religious communities or sects — is the cause why a visible company, having a confession agreeing with God's Word, is found on earth, so that here an effect is designated metonymically after its cause; only the qualifying word "visible" must not be lacking, for her concept and that of the invisible Church never coincide, in no case whatsoever. Yet in like manner we may never, precisely because of the latter hidden among the various erring communities, deny these the name "churches"; for the concept which the Augsburg Confession sets forth embraces the saints and children of God among all church parties, because among them, notwithstanding that they live under false teachers in an oppressed condition, essential portions of the pure Gospel must still be found, without which they would not exist at all — although they are not always able to distinguish these clearly enough from the harmful ingredients that have been mixed in through corrupted pulpits. The invisible Church, wherever she may be, always retains at least the foundation and the substance of the right faith and of pure doctrine, as our dogmaticians say — even though, in the heterodox communities as such, it is not, as in the visible pure Church as such, the true Church, the bearer of the truth, that is embodied there, but a synagogue of error; for "where the right, one, certain Word of God is lacking, there is no longer the Church, but the devil's school" — inasmuch as so many of them falsify that Word knowingly and willingly, and hence, among such, there exists the highest peril to the soul's salvation, which, once recognized, is to be guarded against. Although the visible Church, with pure Word and Sacrament, is a manifesting effect of the invisible one, and the faith of the latter speaks through her confession, she nevertheless remains only particular; and when the honorable name "the catholic" is applied to her, in the sense of the Church Fathers before the Papacy, such an expression refers only to the pure catholic doctrine, which is indeed set forth by her in public confession. In sum, she is not THE Church, but A church — nothing other than a particular invisible Church, which is, however, at the same time visible as pure according to doctrine, save that the wicked who are in her, though not truly of her, may nevertheless be called members — dead ones — of her, insofar as she constitutes a visible whole, while her individual living members, joined exclusively to the spiritual body of Jesus Christ, as such may not be visible. In confirmation and further elucidation of what is said here, so important a matter, we cite two of the most eminent Lutheran theologians, who are to be compared on this point. Johann Gerhard, Confessio Catholica, p. 717, §10, writes: "The visible Church is not all men to whom the Word is preached and the Sacraments administered — otherwise not the Church alone, but the individual members of the Church as members, would be visible; rather, that is called the visible Church which is visible in the company to which the Word is rightly preached and the Sacraments rightly administered — which all and each of the believers