# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 05 24_S178
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

entirely softened, since on the whole they do not commit themselves to precise definitions, so that Arminianism was able to gain wide acceptance quite early among the majority of the teachers. However much a serious strain of inward piety, together in part with a gift for particular acuity, also shows itself in the theological-ecclesiastical and ascetical writings of the English people, they have nevertheless never developed and set forth the doctrine of justification by grace with German depth, since it easily happens that Gospel and Law, the new man and the old man in regeneration and sanctification, faith and its outward expressions — concepts that, though closely bound together, may by no means be allowed to flow into one another — are not sufficiently delimited and kept apart. To this is added the fact that they maintain, by divine right, an essential distinction between bishops and so-called presbyters (priests, pastors), and ascribe to the former alone the power to ordain priests and to administer confirmation, so that no laying on of hands by other communions is valid wherever the episcopal succession has been lacking since the time of the apostles. From the concurring testimony of the church fathers, and thus also from the content of the public confessions, there is drawn not merely a historical proof of the church's continuity in matters of faith and discipline and of its appropriation of the Gospel through the confession of its content, but rather a rule of faith placed next to Scripture itself is thereby made, whereby at the same time the necessary existence of traditional interpretation and of ecclesiastical confessional prescription is posited,*) although otherwise they flatly deny that these are free from error, unlike Scripture. These latter two propositions, which concern the outward side of the church in its constitution, are held fast in the belief that by them alone the unity of the church of Jesus Christ is preserved and promoted — and yet, up to our own time, surely few church communions have been visited by more conflicts than the English Episcopal Church; nor have they yet been able to supply effective remedies against encroaching moral corruption. From of old, on the contrary, this has instead let either spiritless priestly faith and work-righteousness, or all the worse worldliness and indifference in matters of religion, break into the church — not to mention the further disadvantages of a distinguished and wealthy clergy and political discord.

"...Lutheran" need be! That is the heartfelt wish of the brethren united in the Lord, indeed of the holy congregation that prays in every place.

*) Is the holy doctrine of the Gospel contained clearly and sufficiently unto salvation in the written Word of God, or does it require an ongoing ecclesiastical interpretation? That is the point on which the matter here turns — not, however, this: Is there one body of faith (truly catholic doctrine) of the church, present in outward historical testimonies, running through all the centuries? Without an established norm by which to grasp the eternal confession of all believers, no constitution of the church raised to the level of law — from the standpoint of particular determinations, for the sake of appeals and decisions — can indeed be rightly conceived; yet the church itself can well be conceived within history. Scripture is an eternal letter (if I may put it so); the articles of faith gathered from it, in the arrangement given them (regula, summa fidei), are the pattern of sound doctrine, 2 Timothy 1:13f., 1 Timothy 6:3; but on that account they are not yet some fixed form arising from the progress of theological scholarship — a form that can be admissible only insofar as it agrees with Scripture, which is no party but judge alone.

It is, however, precisely the doctrine of the succession of bishops — that without it there is no true church, while the English church can nevertheless trace such a succession, without interruption, back to the seats of the apostles as its root, and that in general the dignity of these hierarchs is of divine origin and authority — which, as before, so especially in our own day, again frequently burdens consciences. Now, so far as Christendom extends, nowhere can an unbroken, continuously connected line of bishops, such that each successor was always legitimately consecrated by his predecessor, be demonstrated historically with certainty — least of all, to be sure, in the Roman church, somewhat more so in the Greek, and most probably still in the English (although doubts remain here too) — for which reason even the cautious Dr. Spener in Berlin gave the notable advice to that embattled Königsberg magister Joh. E. Grabe — a diligent, quiet scholar who, however much he otherwise distinguished himself in criticism, lacked an enlightened faculty of understanding — at the very moment when Grabe, entangled in scruples over the church fathers, was already on the point of professing the papacy: that if he was so bent on insisting upon the outward succession of bishops, he would find it best in the English church, which at the same time also protests against Roman doctrine. This same Dr. Spener had shortly before published, by order of his Elector, the following tract: Rescue of the Evangelical Church from the False Charge of Schism, set against the doubts submitted by M. Joh. Ernst Grabe to the Electoral Samland Consistory, 1695. (Writing against Grabe under the same commission were the then Pro-Rector of Halle, Dr. Joh. Wilh. Bayer, and the Lutheran Bishop of Königsberg, Dr. Bernhard von Sanden. And, strangely enough, before Grabe had even further disclosed his intention of turning Roman, he happened to obtain Spener's tract in a bookshop in Erfurt, which moved him to a personal conversation with its author; whereupon he then traveled to London and died there, as a teacher of theology, though with an unsatisfied heart.) How, then, could the truth of the church, outside of which there is no salvation, be built as upon a necessary mark on so uncertain a thing, resting merely on human testimonies?

From God's Word it is impossible to derive the belief that, where there is no episcopal succession, there is also no true church, or at least, as milder Episcopalians maintain, no church so holy and perfect; the whole doctrine of the institution of personal bearers of the hierarchy — insofar as this is regarded not as a common possession and ecclesiastical organism, but as the privilege of a particular class, and accordingly the doctrine of a visible institution said to have been founded by Christ — is contrary to Scripture. It matters a great deal to those of the Augsburg Confession to prove that he whose mighty testimony so shook the Antichrist's dominion, together with his helpers, needed no episcopal confirmation for such a work, and likewise that their preachers are true apostolic bishops or pastors. From whom, indeed, did the holy Paul receive the laying on of hands? Neither from the Lord nor from an apostle, but from a disciple, Ananias, whom tradition itself identifies as one of the Seventy. Ordination is no sacramental consecration commanded by Christ and His Spirit; but He has indeed appointed as bishops the lawfully called and ordained elders or overseers of a particular church, to shepherd the congregation which the Son of God acquired through His own blood (Acts 20:17, 28). The church at the beginning of the New Testament knew — apart from the infallibility of the apostles' testimony and their leadership together with the prophets and evangelists — in general only one distinction between bishops (elders, shepherds, teachers) and their helpers (that is, deacons, sometimes themselves also called elders); a distinction not so much of rank as of function — spiritual duties, and those in church affairs pertaining more to bodily needs, Acts 6; 1 Peter 5:1ff. (2 John 1); Titus 1:5, 7, compare Philippians 1:1; 1 Timothy 3:1ff., 8ff., 5:17. The holy office (2 Corinthians 3:4, 5, 6), which will not cease until no Christian remains on earth and the Lord has come, is indeed nothing less than the priesthood of all the elect (1 Peter 2:9), which, in order that the saints may be equipped for the building up of the body of Christ, is concentrated in the governance through the Word and in the stewardship of the heavenly family; to this office no one takes the honor to himself, but is called to such work and service of God — who wills that it be recognized as such — by the believers, through the guidance of a higher hand, so that its leadership, with its gifts and its several branches, grows up as the innermost circle out of the bosom of the whole congregation (Ephesians 4:11f.; Hebrews 13:17, 5:4; 1 Corinthians 4:1, 3:22, chapter 12).

The true church is far from surrendering the unrestrained arbitrariness and independence of individual congregations in church government, liturgy, discipline, and similar forms, to the freedom that the Gospel teaches; she recognizes the commandment of love and of unity in the spirit of faith, through the bond of order and of peace, as the royal law, James 2:8, in accordance with which her outward entrance into the world should also take place; it is this idea which underlay the constitutional form of the first centuries, as Jerome and others plainly attest, whereby the invisible essence of the church appeared in time, the inner—