# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1859_S20
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

"Paul says to his disciple Titus 1:5-7: For this cause I left thee in
Crete, that thou shouldest finish carrying out what I had left undone,
and shouldest ordain elders in every city, as I had instructed thee,
if any one is blameless, the husband of one wife, having believing
children who cannot be accused of profligacy. For a bishop must be
blameless, as an officer of God, etc. — Whoever believes that here
the Spirit of Christ speaks and ordains in Paul recognizes well that
this is a divine institution and order, that in every city there
should be many bishops, or at the very least one." 30)

16. The task of Christendom is to place individuals into the
public service of the testimony of Christ; in this the
testimony is not made powerful by the person or the call, but
carries its power in itself.

"But since the office, the word, the sacrament, the order is
Christ's, and not Judas's or the devil's, we let Judas and the devil
be Judas and the devil, and nevertheless receive through them the
goods of Christ. For when Judas went off to the devil, he did not
take his apostolic office with him, but left it behind, and Matthias
got it in his place. The offices and sacraments remain forever in the
church; the persons change daily. Let one only call and appoint those
who can carry them out, and they will surely proceed and take effect.
The horse is bridled and saddled; set even a naked boy on it who can
ride, and the horse goes just as well as if the emperor or the pope
rode it." 31)

17. The Lord raises up people for such public service in the
office of Jesus.

"In the church it is not the succession of bishops that makes a
bishop, but the Lord alone is our bishop. He raises up bishops where,
whom, and when he wills, as we see — — in ourselves, in whom that
succession is not maintained of which the papists boast." 32)

18. When such people now come forward in the office of Jesus,
they do not publicly administer some specially ordained
priesthood, but their own priesthood, inherited through
baptism, as it exists in all Christians.

"For Christ alone, and none other, is the mediator and teacher of all
Christians. 1 Tim. 2:5, 7. And they themselves come forward, taught
by God, and can thus themselves mediate and teach those who are not
yet priests, that is, not yet Christians. It follows, then, that the
priesthood in the New Testament exists at once in all Christians, in
the Spirit alone, without any respect of person or masks." 33)

"And if papal consecration wished to do right, it should do nothing
else than call such born priests to the pastoral office, and not

30) On the Abuse of the Mass, to the Augustinians at Wittenberg, vol.
19, 1334. 31) On the Private Mass and the Ordination of Priests, vol.
19, 1551-1552. 32) Luther's Chronicle of the year 1541, vol. XIV,
1178. 33) On the Abuse of the Mass, vol. 19, 1312.