# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1864_S121
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

New Literature. 121

...bishop, or pastor, or even the church, could make an ordinance and demand obedience for it. — Even bolder, if possible, is the following conclusion of Prof. Harnack's, p. 47f.: Luther declares himself, even as late as the year 1537 (in the exposition of Ps. 45), still willing to "hold the pope in great honor, so far as he will leave me the first table pure and free; for I was baptized in the pope's house, or church, and learned the catechism and Scripture therein. This honor I will gladly show, and will not thus forget my father's house; only let him allow me alone to believe in my Lord Christ" — therefore Luther acknowledged that the church has the power to claim obedience to the fourth commandment for its ordinances!*) — Not less striking is it when Prof. H. writes on p. 46: "What the order means and weighs for them (the symbolical books) appears, among other things, from the Apology (p. 163 above), where the legitimae politiae (the lawful secular ordinances) are designated as an ordinatio Dei (an ordinance of God). Accordingly they also see in the politia canonica (the ecclesiastically-legal order), whose legitimacy (?) they, the freedom of the Gospel being presupposed, are ready to acknowledge, an ordinatio Dei (an ordinance of God)." Here, in a plainly irresponsible manner, what is said in the Symbols about the obligation of civil order for the Christian as citizen is carried over to ecclesiastical order, and the same binding force is claimed for it upon the Christian as Christian — which is all the more reprehensible since this gross error is imputed to the confession of our church, which has after all distinguished so precisely between the temporal and the spiritual government. Immediately before the words last cited, Harnack writes: "Finally, however, our symbolical books do nonetheless acknowledge to this power of the bishops a legitimate authority, designate it as a 'dominatio' (lordship) which they do not wish to take from them (69, 77; 205, 24), declare themselves ready for a 'legitima obedientia' (a lawful obedience) (68, 69), and ground the same on the appeal to order (67, 53)." One can hardly trust one's own eyes on reading this. Here the privileges of power which the bishops had obtained in the course of time through the princes are plainly confounded with the power to make ordinances in the church,

*) Incidentally, Harnack leaves out something from those words of Luther's which shows beyond contradiction that Luther never thought here of ascribing to the Roman church a power to make ordinances which one would have to keep for the sake of the obedience owed under the fourth commandment. For Luther writes as follows: "I would not only bear the pope himself (if only he would allow me to follow the pure doctrine), but also any pupil whatsoever, upon my hands, and hold him in great honor," etc. If Luther, according to this, is willing to grant to "any pupil whatsoever" what he is willing to render the pope under certain conditions, then it is clear that this, in Luther's sense, cannot be a matter of an obedience owed under the fourth commandment, but can only be a matter of love and of peace. — It may also be remarked here in passing that Luther did not, as Harnack asserts, make that declaration as late as the year 1537 — in which year only the translation of the Lutheran exposition of the 45th Psalm appeared — but rather made it in the year 1532. Cf. Lutheri exegetica opp. Erlangae 1846. Vol. XVIII, p. 128. h.