# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1859_S101
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Language of the Church. 101

...rather, through the grace of the Holy Ghost, to persevere and abide unanimously therein, and to regulate accordingly all religious controversies and their explanations" — so they were minded to be. (See the Preface to the Book of Concord.) Those first subscribers also declare at the same time that the churchly confession, and in particular the Formula of Concord, among other things, was framed for this purpose: that thereby "the pure doctrine might be recognized and distinguished from the corrupted, and that restless, quarrelsome people, who will be bound to no fixed form of pure doctrine, might not have it entirely free and open to stir up vexatious disputation at their pleasure and to introduce and champion senseless errors." (The same place.) Further: "We have, in order that the truth might be held the more clearly and distinctly, and distinguished from all errors, and that nothing might be hidden and concealed under common words,*) explained ourselves concerning the foremost and weightiest articles that are in controversy at this time, each in particular, clearly and expressly, one against another, so that it might be a public and certain testimony, not only to those now living, but also to our posterity, as to what the unanimous opinion and judgment of our church on the disputed articles is and shall remain."

Not seldom, therefore, it is declared in the symbols that certain ways of speaking, though they may indeed be given an orthodox sense, are nevertheless to be avoided by one who is rightly-believing, for fear of misunderstanding. Urbanus Regius**) wrote an entire little treatise on the language of the church, which has also attained symbolic standing. It bears the title: "De formulis caute loquendi, how one should speak cautiously and without giving offense concerning the foremost articles of Christian doctrine." This writing was taken up by Chemnitz into the

*) According to the proverb: Dolosus versatur in generalibus, that is, whoever means to deceive with his speech resorts to general expressions. Moreover, the symbols stand, as regards the language of the church, far above all private writings, for, as Horace writes,

— — quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus
[even good Homer nods now and then]
(that is, even a Homer sometimes forgets himself.)

**) Was born at Langenargen on Lake Constance, at first a favorite of Dr. Eck's, but through reading the writings of Luther came to a knowledge of the evangelical truth; he afterward inclined toward Zwinglianism, until in the year 1530, through a spoken conversation with Luther, he was thoroughly and permanently cured of it, declaring at the same time: "Luther had always been great in his eyes, but now he held him to be the greatest, for he had seen him face to face and heard what could be conveyed to the absent by no pen." (See Weismann's Introd. in hist. sacr. I, 1445.) Duke Ernst of Lüneburg came to know Regius at the Diet of Augsburg, took him along, afterward made him general superintendent, and held him thereafter in such esteem that he prefaced all his ordinances in church matters with the words: "We, by the grace of God, Ernst, Duke of Brunswick and Lüneburg, and Urbanus Regius, Doctor of Holy Scripture." Luther, too, held him in the very highest regard. When at the diet at Schmalkalden in 1537 he had delivered before the princes an immoderately long sermon and came down from the pulpit, Luther said to him smiling: Hoc neque urbanum, neque regium est! [a play on his name: "This is neither urbane nor kingly!"] He died at Celle in 1541.