# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1864_S76
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

76   Some Remarks on the Doctrine of the Supreme Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia, etc.

fixed bounds that guard against abuse by the uncalled — into which, however, all public exercise of the Word in banning, in judging doctrine, in outward ordering, etc., is necessarily included; secondly, in that it, under the guidance of the divine Word and of its standing office, to which alone it owes that obedience, carries out church discipline and church judgment over the doctrine and life of individuals or of many, together with the outward ordering of the same, etc., partly through its adult male members generally, and partly through those it has authorized — who may in turn be either its own pastors or various appointed assistants of one rank or another — all conducted in mutual subordination.

The Lutheran doctrine is distinguished from the corrupted teaching precisely in this, that it keeps the article concerning the divine Word so pure, with respect to justification, absolution, the sacraments, faith, the church, the preaching office, etc. On this Word everything depends for it, since it is on this alone that it turns: according to Holy Scripture, it is to be held the greatest plague and the wrath of God wherever his Word is taken away from men, and no greater benefit than wherever it is sent forth. Christ did not come to exercise the majesty of worldly sovereigns on earth, nor to sit in judgment in their stead, but rather to preach the Word of God, in which every creature also has its being. All service in his church is therefore comprised in that of the Word, which alone, for its sake, is carried out by divine command; and although, on account of 1 Timothy 5:17, we do not in the least doubt that there was in the apostolic church an arrangement of two kinds of elders (namely teaching- and ruling-elders) — only not according to the theory as it was set up either earlier by Calvin, or in more recent times by Neander, or as the venerable Dr. Scheibel introduced it into the Lutheran church of Prussia — nevertheless no one has any divine right to rule outwardly in the congregation of the New Testament, except the word given to it: "Let all things," etc. Every particular church governing office is resolved into this wholly general rule, so that in itself it has only human right. No one has the power to lay down a single syllable over a Christian as such (unless it happen with his own will, or God has spoken) so as to command the church anything, however right and fair it might seem; for one may not do evil that good may come of it; it is the dark spirit of tyranny that drives and compels here by force, whether by sword or by ban, and one must neither obey nor consent to it, but rather die first, as Luther's teaching states. No other word shall count in this kingdom than: Thus says your Lord Christ, therefore you shall do it. And it is well to note, when the Augsburg Confession, Article 28, leaves it to the bishops to make ordinances, that this happened according to the character of that time, in which they had a human right to do so — (as indeed the old Carpzov calls attention here to the word "otherwise," that is, apart from what belonged to them by divine right, fol. 18a, at the beginning, in his Isagoge, p. 750) — though, to be sure, only with the consent of the church, given, as under the papacy, in a tacit manner,