# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1864_S110
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

give: to draft laws, to publish ordinances, to establish discipline, and to
excommunicate the incorrigible and the thoroughly vicious; yet we say
that this is a power proper to the church itself, not to the ministry, nor
to any other order in the church. Matt. 18:17: Tell it to the church.
1 Cor. 5:4. 2) Next we teach that those laws have a certain force and
that their observance is necessary, but in such a way that they do not bind
the conscience except with regard to offense. 3) Finally we believe that
the whole power which remains to the ministry is exercised not through a
judicial proceeding against transgressors, nor on the ground of an
authority to lay down prescriptions for the faithful, but only through
reminder, exhortation, warning, and rebuke."*) Further, Luther: "Although
we cannot let this [the Instruction of the Visitors] go forth as a strict
command, so that we do not set up new papal decretals, but rather as a
history or narrative, and besides as a testimony and confession of our
faith, yet we hope that all godly, peaceable pastors, to whom the gospel
is earnestly pleasing, and who have a desire to hold with us unanimously
and alike, as St. Paul teaches, Phil. 2:2, that we should do, will not
ungratefully or proudly despise such diligence of our territorial prince
and gracious lord, together with our love and good will, but will
willingly, without compulsion, submit themselves after the manner of
love to such visitation and live peaceably together with us under it, until
God the Holy Spirit begins something better through them or through us.
But where some would willfully set themselves against it and, without
good reason, wish to make something singular of themselves — as one
indeed finds wild heads who out of sheer malice cannot bear anything
common or equal, but whose heart and life is to be unequal and
self-willed — such we must let go from us, like the chaff from the
threshing floor, [rather than,] for their sake, give up those who are like
us." Instruction of the Visitors. Walch X, 1909ff. —

XIV.

No Christian should keep a humanly-instituted church
ordinance when the keeping of it would be pressed upon
him as a work of the obedience owed

*) Sic apud Evangelicos et Orthodoxos sentitur: 1) Esse quidem in ecclesia
potestatem aliquam condendi leges, statuta promulgandi, disciplinam constituendi
et incorrigibiles et enormiter flagitiosos excommunicandi; sed hanc ecclesiae
ipsius, non ministerii, aut cujusquam alius in ecclesia ordinis propriam esse
potestatem dicimus. Matth. 18, 17.: Dic ecclesiae. 1 Cor. 5, 4. 2) Deinde
legum istarum valorem aliquem et necessariam esse observationem docemus,
verum ita, ne obligent conscientias, nisi ratione scandali. 3) Denique quae
ministerio superest potestas, eam totam exerceri credimus, non in forma judicii
procedendo adversus transgressores, aut ex autoritate praecipiendi fidelibus, sed
monendo duntaxat, exhortando, comminando, reprehendendo. August. Conf.
Explicatio. II, 183.