# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1864_S109
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Foundational Theses on the Question of Church Order and Church Governance. 109

as St. Paul says, 1 Cor. 14:40: Let all things be done among you honestly
and in order; 1 Cor. 8:1: Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. And as
he speaks there of those who have the knowledge of faith and of freedom,
and yet do not know how they ought to have that knowledge, because they
use it not for the improvement of the people but for the glory of their own
understanding. Now where your people take offense that you carry on so
many discordant practices, and are led into error over it, it does not help
you to want to claim: well, the outward thing is free, I will do it my own
way as I please; rather you are obligated to consider what matters to
others, and to hold such freedom of faith before God in conscience, and
yet at the same time to give yourselves captive to service for your
neighbor's good and improvement. As Paul also says, Rom. 15:2: let
every one of us so conduct himself that he may please his neighbor for his
good, to edification. For we ought not to seek our own pleasure; since
Christ also did not please himself, but us all. Yet besides this a preacher
must nevertheless be watchful, and press upon the people and diligently
instruct them, that they not take up such concordant practice as necessary
commands, as though it must be so and God would not have it otherwise;
but that they be told how it happens only for this reason, that they be
improved and preserved by it, so that the unity of the Christian people
may also be confirmed through such outward things (which in themselves
are otherwise of no necessity). For since there is no necessity of
conscience or of salvation in the ceremonies or practices, and yet they are
useful and necessary for governing the people outwardly, one should not
press them further nor allow them to be taken up except that they serve to
preserve unity and peace among the people. For between God and man it
is faith that makes peace and unity." Admonition to All Christians in
Livonia. Walch X, 290ff. —

XIII.

The non-observance of a human church ordinance is
never in itself sin to the believing Christian; it becomes
sin only when the law of love is thereby transgressed.

On this Luther writes: "Love is empress over the ceremonies, and
ceremonies should yield to love, but love should not yield to the
ceremonies. As Christ also subjects the Sabbath to the law of love: on
which, he says, hang the whole law and the prophets. Therefore, in mere
ceremonies love should be judge and mistress, but not in matters of faith,
or the promises of God. Rather, faith should be lord over love, and love
should yield to it, and faith should not yield to love." Various Sayings
against the Council of Constance. Erlangen ed., 31, 400. Further, Georg
Mylius: "Among the Evangelicals and the orthodox it is held thus: 1) that
there is indeed in the church a certain power