# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1859_S36
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

36 Preface to the 1859 Volume.

ing hidden on account of the persecutions, she truly shone forth in respect of the purity of the faith. 2. She was somewhat stained at the time of the heretics and church fathers, when she gradually turned away from the old simplicity and human opinions and traditions were more and more mixed in; hence Hegesippus, in Eusebius (Church History, Book 4, chap. 22), says: "'The Church, after the times of the apostles, was called a virgin, because she had not yet been defiled by the intrusion of a spurious word; but that she did not remain so constituted for long.'" Jerome writes in the Life of Malchus: "'After the Church obtained Christian princes, she indeed grew greater in power and riches, but smaller in virtues.'" In another place he calls the times in which he lived "'the dregs of the first times.'" Chrysostom, in the 36th Homily on 1 Corinthians, compares the Church of his time to a "'woman who has lost the first bloom of her virginity.'" 3. She was utterly disfigured at the time of the dominion of the Roman pope, under whose tyranny the whole body of the heavenly doctrine was miserably torn apart and rent asunder. 4. In these last times she has been newly reformed and restored to the original splendor of the apostolic faith." (Loc. de ecclesia § 104.)

Although Gerhard, accordingly, grants that the Church has not always been pure from all errors, but has rather often been deeply corrupted, he nevertheless maintains that the Church of the Reformation was a church of apostolic purity. And we believe it along with him. Or how else? Does the saving doctrine, even after the Reformation, still flow in all visible churches from a clouded source? Is each one only a single color of the rainbow, so that only through their being joined together does the heavenly rainbow of purer, fuller truth present itself visibly on earth? Does none possess the perfectly pure doctrine? Is there only one comparatively orthodox church, a better one than all the others, or the best among all, but none to which the predicate of a true visible church, in the proper sense of the word, would belong? Does even this "best" purity of doctrine only approximate the image of a true church? Are there still doctrines belonging to the coherence of the revelation of salvation, like links in a chain — articles of faith (for it is only of such truths that we speak here) — which are not set forth by any one church, or which are set forth purely and correctly by none? Is there no truly reformed church which, therefore, as far as doctrine is concerned, needs no reformation? — That God, after the revelation of the Antichrist, truly gave grace for the manifestation of such a visible church, our fathers, three and two hundred years ago, believed with their whole heart, as we have seen above from Gerhard, and they praised God for it with joyful mouth. To be sure, they were far from believing that the Lutheran Church needed no reformation with respect to life. They knew well how every individual Christian must pray until death: Forgive us our trespasses, and hence [knew] of the daily putting off of the old and