# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1864_S87
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Some Remarks on the Doctrine of the Supreme Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia, etc.   87

members of an outward organism are, by the power of the hidden believers as a divine workshop, so far governed that they must serve that purpose, and no lie mingles itself with the truth — then the worldly spirit that has forced its way into the congregations of God will only render the Christian fellowship back in distorted caricatures. Pure union proceeds only from the invisible church, that firm pillar and foundation of the truth.

But there are many among the believers throughout the world who are still weak in various human thoughts and opinions, only that they do not overthrow or reject the cornerstone, the rock of salvation, and for that very reason remain Christians, to whom sins and faults are forgiven, and who, when God grants time, are themselves perhaps still to be better enlightened and instructed. Now, their general confession of Christ is worked out in a particular form and shape through the Lutheran particular church, although they themselves do not count themselves as belonging to it; as though its representative, this church may indeed teach no other doctrine than that God, for the sake of salvation, has called into existence a congregation of his Son, which must be the standard for everything else. Rightly, therefore, we Lutherans declare it a far lesser evil if a want of well-ordered church polity should show itself, even with respect to discipline, should that prove unavoidable, whereas it is in the highest degree perilous to souls if the reproach of legalism should cling to that polity — so that even the most splendid church constitution, if it does not rest upon the foundation of the gospel laid by God, is to be compared to a fine-looking, glossy fruit that within is only worm-eaten and rotten. Let us rightly separate the gold of pure doctrine, and take it up ever more clearly into the understanding and more livingly into the heart; let us not obscure the blameless statements of our confessions by our own interpretation and by artificially inventing a sense foreign to them; let us never give up their whole precious content, won in fierce struggles, as that which has been appropriated and affirmed by the fathers of the divine revelations. What they hand down to us as articles of our Christian faith, organically joined together in the arrangement given them there, in keeping with the prophetic and apostolic foundation — this sum, this epitome, this rule of truth unto godliness, is that through which the very meaning that the Holy Spirit has bound up with his divine Word makes itself known, and through which the connection of the church of all ages shines forth. Wherever contradiction is made to the analogy of that rule, an impure ferment must have leavened the whole. Such public testimony of the confessions concerning the doctrinal content entrusted to the church pronounces the condemning verdict upon it.

Out of the inner life of the congregations, borne and permeated by the faith of the church universal, order must freely take shape, if all growth, exercise of spiritual vitality, and earnest participation in the organism of the church is not to grow rigid. Where this