# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1864_S106
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

106 Foundational Theses on the Question of Church Order and Church Governance.

admonish the church that it grant certain fasts, prayers, festivals, and so
forth, keep them for a time on account of pressing need, and afterward let
them freely fall away again." Article on the Power of the Christian Church.
Walch XIX, 1192. —

IX.

Every Christian and every Christian church has the
power to lay ordinances upon itself and to change,
improve, or abolish the same again freely.

On this Luther writes: "The Christian church has the power to establish
customs and manners to be kept in fasting, festivals, eating, drinking,
clothing, watching, and the like — yet not over others, without their will,
but only over itself; it has also never done otherwise, and will never do
otherwise." Article on the Power of the Christian Church. Walch XIX,
1191. The same: "All order is to be used in such a way that, where an
abuse arises from it, one promptly does away with it and makes another;
just as King Hezekiah broke and did away with the bronze serpent — which
God himself had commanded to be made — because the children of Israel
were abusing it. For ordinances are meant to serve the furtherance of faith
and love, and not to the detriment of faith. When they no longer do that,
they are already dead and gone and count for nothing more; just as when a
good coin is counterfeited and, because of the abuse, is withdrawn and
changed, or as when new shoes grow old and pinch, they are no longer
worn but thrown away and others bought. An ordinance is an outward
thing; however good it may be, it can still fall into abuse. When that
happens it is no longer an ordinance but a disorder. Therefore no
ordinance stands or is worth anything of itself, as the papal ordinances
have hitherto been regarded; rather, the life, dignity, power, and virtue of
all ordinances is their right use; otherwise they are worth and avail
nothing at all." German Mass and Order of Divine Service. Walch X,
286ff. Compare, on the first point, Article 10 of the Formula of Concord. —

X.

The Christian is and remains, according to his faith
and conscience, free in all things indifferent under all
circumstances.

On this Brochmand writes: "Properly speaking, this is what comes into
dispute: whether ecclesiastical ceremonies or institutions are to be
observed as necessary — not indeed by virtue of a necessity of order and
propriety, but by virtue of an absolute necessity — so that ceremonies or
actions indifferent in themselves, where they are prescribed by the church,
become absolutely necessary and good in themselves? Bellarmine defends
the affirmative opinion, against which we set two arguments. We draw the
first argument from the very nature of indifferent things themselves, which
are so constituted that they