# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1864_S79
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Some Remarks on the Doctrine of the Supreme Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia, etc.   79

so too here, that whoever speaks God's Word is, through that very Word, heard as Christ himself (and his invisible church) before all, and officially through the preacher himself; whereas in outward matters there can be no act of service that represents God's place. It is said, indeed, on the opposing side, that the ruling office is of divine right only because certain functions have been entrusted to it that God the Lord has commanded it to perform, and that it may also have others besides, for which this is not the case; that with respect to those former ones it does not properly command at all, but only sees to it that the divine order, and the order arising from the church's organism on the basis of that divine order, is followed. But watching over souls, that they comply with what is already contained in the law of nature, belongs to brotherly fellowship in general and to the pastoral office in particular; only as assistants of this latter office do ruling-elders — and likewise episcopal overseers with respect to each individual parish over which they are humanly placed — hold their commissions and authorizations from the church, which, when these concern matters to be arranged for the sake of men, may not contain any commandment as such. Although one seemingly wishes to distinguish the two, in fact it comes to nothing different: one asserts an authority in the church entirely after the manner of the worldly authority (whose power consists essentially in legislation and judgment), together with a divine sanction of that authority with respect to its own proper functions, and then demands, for everything connected with it, obedience on the ground of the fourth commandment, and imposes fixed penalties for refusal. (Proceedings, p. 39 ff., 223 f.; Synodical Resolutions, p. 17, § 28, p. 58, § 3; Report, p. 95 f., 133.) To rebel against worldly majesty is always sin, unless it should demand this one thing; the "canonical" obedience, if this expression may be allowed at all, is, if it is not to contradict the gospel, to be strictly bounded by the commandment of love for God and neighbor, borne, indeed, by the maternal womb of the holy Christian church, which has begotten it of the imperishable seed. — For this reason, too, as our opponents rightly maintain here, the opposite is not mere breach of contract, as with an outward society in general, to which visible Christendom may never be equated; for through this body speaks and acts, apart from ungodliness, invisibly and wondrously, yet certainly and truly, the congregation of the saints, whose action as such must always be regarded as something existing within the Holy Spirit. Its government serves spiritual purposes; resistance to praiseworthy church ordinances — when the teaching contained in them is pure, and such resistance is nothing other than a denial of the commanded unity, peaceableness, love, and humility — sins not merely against the second table, and only thereby against the first, of the divine law; it is more than a violation of morally and legally binding agreements, it is directed at the same time against the Head, whose name such a mouth-Christian bears to no purpose, since he in fact hates discipline; that is, such a one commits an assault upon Christ's spiritual body (as the Jews did, by crucifixion, upon his natural body —),