# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1859_S16
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

16        The History of the Doctrine of the Spiritual Office, etc.

And in such our inborn, hereditary, priestly honor and adornment we
stand present, having (as is pictured in Rev. 4:4) our golden crowns
upon our heads, harps in our hands, and golden censers, and we let our
pastor speak the order of Christ not for himself, as for his own
person, but he is the mouth of us all, and we all speak it with him
from the heart and with faith held upright, to the Lamb of God, who is
there for us and with us and, according to his order, feeds us with
his body and blood. That is our Mass, and the true Mass, which never
fails us. 13)

"Our office is called, and is meant to be, not to make or to change,
but only to distribute or to give. — — In sum, the offices and
sacraments are not ours but Christ's, for he has ordained all this and
left it behind in the church, to be exercised and used until the end
of the world, and it neither lies to us nor deceives us: therefore we
can make nothing else of it, but must act and hold to it according to
his command. — Where we alter and improve it, however, it is nothing,
and Christ is no longer present, nor his order." 14)

9. The office of Jesus exists before the church came into being,
and has called the church into existence.

"For the gospel is there beforehand and must be there beforehand: this
our Lord Christ made, brought forth, and left behind, and first
pressed it into the hearts of the apostles, and ever after, through
the apostles' successors, pressed it into the hearts of Christians,
and besides that also had it painted outwardly in letters and
images." 15)

"For the church springs from the word of promise through faith, and is
nourished and preserved by that very word of promise; that is, it is
founded by the promise of God, and not the promise founded by it. For
the word of God stands, in incomparable manner, above the church. Over
that word of God the church, being a creature, has no power to found,
ordain, or do anything; rather it must itself be founded, ordained,
and made. For who can give birth to his own father or mother? Who has
made his own originator beforehand?" 16)

10. Through the union of men with the visible office of Jesus
the church has arisen and become at once a visible and an
invisible church. Visible, in that it outwardly submitted
itself under the office of Jesus; invisible, in that it
inwardly experienced the power of the office of Jesus.

"Fellowship is of two kinds, just as in the sacrament there are two
things, namely the sign and the meaning. The first fellowship is
inward, spiritual, invisible, in the heart; that is, when anyone—

13) On the Private Mass and the Ordination of Priests, vol. 19, 1560 ff.,
129, 130. 14) The same, 1547 ff. 15) Vol. 19, p. 1548. 16) Vol. 19, p.
128. On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church.