# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1859_S302
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

302 Correspondence to Germany.

other words, partly how you could have been led, by your own unclear view alone, to the harsh accusation that P. Beyer had denied the pure doctrine of the holy preaching office. But you yourself wished that we communicate your misgivings to the Rev. P. Beyer. This we have done, and so let him conduct his own defense. On the other hand, it is indeed incumbent on us to go into what you remark, secondly, about the question of church polity, with all diligence and all care. Here too you confess that you have already come to see much of it differently, have learned to judge much of it at least more mildly, and you protest against being placed, along with the opponents as we depict them, in one and the same category. The latter has in fact never once entered our minds; we have regarded you not as our opponent but as a friend who, however, still now and then misunderstands us and our application of the doctrine, and who, without wishing it, remains caught in some measure in the mistaken views of our opponents. Accordingly, on the one hand we wanted to set forth the doctrinal antitheses in sharp outline, so as to lay our struggle and its conduct clearly before your eyes; on the other hand we certainly also wanted to show, from the extreme that has already in fact arisen, where the false doctrine leads, in order to convince you, God willing, all the more forcibly of the danger of just those opposing views by which you yourself are still in part misled. Do please, then, judge our earlier letter and these following lines in no other sense than that. —

Now you do confess that you share with us the aversion to everything that does not regard the church and congregation as a free communion of faith, and you believe that you too stand firmly with us on the principle that wherever even only two or three are gathered in the name of Jesus, all the rights and goods that the whole church has are there in principle; and you wish what you have said against our polity to be understood not from the standpoint of dogmatics but solely from that of church order. But we ask you: can what is dogmatically correct really be false from the standpoint of church order, and vice versa? Would these really be two realms so utterly independent of one another? That is impossible so long as the Word is the sole infallible rule and standard, not only of faith but also of life — and hence also of congregational life. Or we ask you, what else would one still want to say against the papacy? Can not quite plausible-seeming grounds of wisdom, wholesomeness, and good order be brought forward for it as well? But, you say, humility must move a congregation to refrain from the unrestricted exercise of its rights, even where it has such rights, and to submit willingly to a church government, for humility gladly trusts the judgment of others more than its own. Dear friend, the inference is false; on that reasoning no humble Christian could ever govern his own household independently. No, the only correct inference is this: because humility gladly trusts the judgment of others more than its own, it also gladly seeks