# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1864_S19
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Theological Axioms. 19

To conduct lawsuits before a court and to invoke the authority's judgment against a neighbor's wrongdoing does not, in and of itself, conflict with love of neighbor, since judgments belong to God just as much as God has commanded love of the enemy.

53. Sic certent causae, ut non certent pectora. (Id.)

Lawsuits should contend in such a way that hearts do not contend.

54. Except in the case where one must confess one's faith even at the cost of renouncing earthly things, every true Christian is a citizen of this world and must both act, and settle accounts with others, as the duties of the Second Table require. (Luther.)

55. If a murderer wished to do you violence, or a thief wished to take what is yours, because you were a Christian, you must resist such an evil, if you wish to be an upright citizen in the world; for just as the civil authority, whose member and subject you are, itself offers resistance in such a case, so it also commands you, by virtue of the Second Table, to offer resistance when violence is done to you, and you are bound to obey. (The Same.)

56. If a murderer attacked you on the street and wanted to kill you because you were a Christian, you must resist him, even should it cost him his life; for you know that the authority has commanded that resistance be offered to a murderer, and that its citizens are to be protected. In such a case you satisfy the demands of both the First and the Second Table. (The Same.)

57. To change an authority and to improve an authority are two things as far apart from one another as heaven and earth. (The Same.)

58. Pacta servari, est juris divini ac naturalis. (Gerhard.)

To keep covenants is a matter of divine and natural law.

59. Regimen ipsum est juris divini ac naturalis, sed determinatio ejus ad certam formam immediate pertinet ad jus gentium, quod est juris naturae quasi quoddam consectarium. (Gerh.)

Government itself is a matter of divine and natural law, but the determination of a particular form of it belongs to the law of nations, which is, in a certain sense, a derivation from natural law.

60. Note that he (David, Ps. 82:1) calls all communities, or orderly assemblies, God's community, inasmuch as they are God's own and He takes them to Himself as His own work — just as he (Jonah, ch. 1) also calls Nineveh a city of God. For He has created all communities, and creates them still, and gathers them together, nourishes, increases, blesses, and preserves them. Reason, however mad-clever, together with all the world's wise men, knows absolutely nothing of the fact that a community is God's creature and ordinance, but thinks nothing else than that it comes about by chance and haphazardly, that a people holds together and dwells with one another — just as murderers, robbers, and other evil gangs (which are the devil's communities) band together to disturb peace and God's order. (Luther.)

(To be continued.)