# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1859_S99
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Language of the Church. 99

...gladly speak with her too. The first is this, that he may thereby also show his heartfelt unity with his spiritual mother, and thereby confess himself to her, and, on the other hand, actually renounce and separate himself from all heretics, schismatics, and self-conceited sectarians. And truly, even if there were no further reasons, this one alone ought fairly to be enough to move every rightly-believing Christian to conform himself to the church in this respect as well. The holy apostle Paul writes to his Timothy: "Be not thou ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner," 2 Timothy 1:8. If Timothy was not to be ashamed of the single person of Paul, how much less ought we to be ashamed of the whole rightly-believing and rightly-confessing church! "It becomes obedient children," as Gerhard remarks — meaning by the mother the church — "not to be ashamed even of their mother's voice." To refuse to confess oneself to the church is nothing other than refusing to confess oneself to the truth. Whoever, moreover, knows what it means to stand alone in a hot contest, and whoever has felt something of the strength that gives in the contest when one knows that in it one has the whole rightly-believing church behind and beside oneself, and fights only as one of many thousand members, to him the actual confessing of the rightly-believing church will be more a precious privilege than a duty incumbent upon him.

The second reason why a rightly-believing Christian should not only believe with the rightly-believing church, but also speak with her, is that he has the duty not to hinder, but rather to help further for his part, the important purposes which the church strives to attain by her manner of speaking of the revealed truths. The chief purpose of the language of the church is, as has been said, that none of her members be deceived by the "sweet words and fair speeches" (Romans 16:18) of heretics, and that the whole church be kept without divisions in the true unity of the right faith. Therefore the apostle, too, addressing all Christians, writes: "Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing (τὸ αὐτὸ λέγητε πάντες), and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment." 1 Corinthians 1:10. On this Balduin gives the explanation: "He (the apostle) commands the adoption of one manner of speech and one mind. For these are, as it were, the sources of divisions, when in speech and mind one will conform to no one (singularis esse — that is, insist on standing apart). He therefore admonishes, first, that they hold to one manner of speech among themselves, that is, that in matters of faith they use the same expressions and termini (the terms of art peculiar to the rightly-believing), so that by the novelty of their manner of speaking they give no offense to others with whom they perhaps agree in the matter itself." Balduin's aphorism on the words cited is: "By two things is true concord planted: by speaking one thing