# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1859_S18
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

—of Melchizedek. — This same priest or bishop now has a bride, a
priestess or bishopess, as it is written, Jn. 3:29: He who has the
bride is the bridegroom. 23) — — This our inborn and hereditary
priesthood we want to have not taken away, not hindered, and not
obscured, but rather drawn forth, proclaimed, and praised, with all
honors, so that it shall shine and gleam like the dear sun, and thrust
into the eyes of the devil, together with his masks and abominations,
so that his back-room consecration and chrism shall, by comparison,
look and stink worse than the devil's own dung stinks. That is also
why the Holy Spirit, in the New Testament, took pains to prevent the
name Sacerdos — priest or cleric — from being given to any apostle or
to any other offices, but rather it is the name only of the baptized,
or of Christians, as an inborn, hereditary name from baptism. 24)

12. The believers are partakers of the office of Jesus, that is:
they have the power of the keys, of baptism, of the Lord's
Supper, of the word of God.

"The keys belong to the church, that is, to the people of Christ, the
people of God, or the holy Christian people, as far and wide as the
whole world is, or wherever Christians are. — — Just as baptism, the
sacrament, and the word of God are not the pope's but belong to, and
are called, the people of Christ's, so too are the claves ecclesiae
[the keys of the church]." 25)

"But all of us, as many of us as are Christians, hold this power of
the keys in common, which I have so often proven and shown in my
little book against the pope. For here stands the word Matt. 18:15,
which he spoke not only to the apostles but to all the brethren: 'But
if thy brother sin against thee,' etc., and afterward 17:18: 'if he
will not hear thee,' etc. Here let me not be troubled by the masked
men with their mask-babble, who invent, in connection with this
saying, such a distinction as this: that the right and power of the
keys is one thing, and the use of the keys another; for they do this
out of their own presumption, without any Scripture." 26)

"Oh, that this saying (Matt. 18) were not in the Gospel — that would
indeed suit the pope well. For here Christ gives the keys to the whole
congregation, and not to St. Peter. And to this same point also
belongs that saying, Matt. 16:18-19, where he gave St. Peter the keys
in place of the whole congregation. For in this eighteenth chapter the
Lord himself glosses to whom he had given the keys in the preceding
sixteenth chapter, in the person of St. Peter. They are given to all
Christians, not to the person of St. Peter. And to this same purpose
the above-mentioned saying, Jn. 20:22-23, must also fit: 'Receive the
Holy Spirit; whosesoever sins ye remit,' etc. Three sayings of one and
the same meaning, by which Christ [establishes] the Christian order

23) On the Private Mass and the Ordination of Priests, of 1533, vol.
19, 1534, 1535. 24) The same, 1535, 1536. 25) On the Councils and the
Church, of 1539, vol. 16, 2794. 26) To the Council and the Congregation
of the City of Prague, of 1523, vol. 10, 1844 f.