# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1864_S264
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

264 Lic. Ströbel's Presentation of the Lutheran Doctrine of the Civil Magistrate as against the Calvinist.

So then would the "most genuine Lutherans," the rescuers of the
Reformation from "corrosive Philippism," be in this respect allies of the
Calvinists and, surprising enough indeed, at the same time also of the
Melanchthonian school? Would the Flacians have held one and the same
opinion as the disciples of Calvin, as with the favorite spiritual sons
of the Praeceptor Germaniae? That is certainly not how the matter stands;
Mr. von P. has surely been mistaken. So far as can be stated briefly
here, the actual relationship is as follows. I. It is presumably beyond
dispute among Lutherans, Calvinists, and Papists "that civil or state
power, considered in general and without regard to monarchy, aristocracy,
or democracy, proceeds immediately from God alone." (Cf. p. 350.) II.
"In general we believe we must declare, with the same sense of justice
as Ranke, that the religious principle as such has no preference
whatever for the one or the other form of government." (P. 343.) — III.
Where monarchy exists, the subjects must also have impressed upon them
the principle "above all to consider that all princes are human beings,
and that the passions can be separated from reason as little as the body
from the soul. Perfect princes may not therefore be demanded; rather one
must already count oneself very well advised under middling ones." (P.
325.) — IV. Likewise the truth is to be impressed (and indeed under
every form of government) "that private persons may not take up arms,
since they lack the full authority for it, since they hold no
magisterial office, no dominion, no right of the sword, since it has
been said to them: Put the sword back into its sheath; but to the
persons in authority: You do not bear the sword in vain; since it is
reckoned to the former as guilt if they draw it, while to the latter it
is their negligence that is reckoned as guilt if they do not draw it
when it is necessary. Only the spiritual sword (Eph. 6:17) is given to
private persons, so that the people may not, like Theudas and Münzer,
while eager to fight under the banners of Christ, fight to their own
great harm." (P. 305.) — V. But we must also bear in mind "that
apostolic command: It is better to obey God than men — so that we do
not join the crowd of those upon whom, because they obeyed godless
kings, God pronounces a curse through Micah (6:16), nor imitate the
reprehensible examples of those who worshiped the cruelest tyrants as
gods by ascribing to them God's name and power, as that filthy poet
Martial in particular attests of Domitian, in the words: Edict of our
Lord and God. Would that in our own times too no men were to be found
who are not far removed from such flattery!" (P. 91.) Further, it is
necessary to know and to say: "The people follow godless commands who
do not shrink from assigning to Caesar what belongs to God alone"; nor
may it be passed over in silence how it has, alas, been at all times:
"If anyone does not obey a prince commanding godless things, he will at
once