# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 11 23_S52
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

52

where, to be sure, the truth often appears in a somewhat rough garment, and also hypocrites who are often manifestly revealed give great and grievous offences. But in this one only deceives oneself. Why does God's Word warn in such countless passages and so earnestly against false doctrine? Why else than because it is so perilous to souls? – Why does Christ Himself say to the disciples: "Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees?" (Matth. 16, 6. cf. verse 12. and Luke 12, 1.) Why else than because even "a little" hypocritical false "doctrine," as Paul in Gal. 5, 9. explains it by the Holy Ghost, like a leaven permeates, leavens through and corrupts the sweet dough of the pure, unadulterated truth? – Why does the Apostle Paul in 2 Tim. 2, 17. call false doctrine itself a canker? Why else than because false doctrine, like an invisible, evil cancerous ulcer, eats around itself, penetrates into the innermost part and poisons it, infects the soul and inflicts upon it incurable, deadly wounds? – Why, finally, does Christ call the false teachers ravening wolves? Why else than because they, with their false doctrine, tear, murder and plunge into spiritual and eternal death the immortal soul of man? How? Must it not then, apart from the sin against God's prohibition itself, be most perilous to the soul to go into such churches and to become members of such communions, where false doctrine is mingled with the right, where poison is mixed with the food of the soul? Ah, how many have already run well for a while (Gal. 5, 7.) as members of the orthodox Church; but behold! at last they let themselves be stolen upon by a secret loathing of the heavenly manna of the pure Gospel, which was proclaimed to them again and ever again. Despising it as a light food, they went, lusting after something new, into a heterodox church and heard false doctrine proclaimed here with sweet words. They now thought they would hear new marvels, receive new undreamt-of disclosures, learned to look with suspicion upon the old experiences of grace, came either upon false heights or upon false humility, and so at last fell, amid sweet dreams of higher enlightenment and spirituality attained, — into spiritual death, and finally into eternal damnation. — Is it not then the holy duty of him who would belong to the invisible congregation of the elect, since he is indeed to work out his salvation with fear and trembling, to flee false doctrine and teachers like poison and pestilence?

There are, however, not a few who think that it is indeed contrary to love to reject all false doctrine and teachers so strictly, and to sunder and separate oneself so strictly from all the heterodox; that love demands union, that love requires Union. But, my dear friends, this also is nothing else than a lamentable deceit of the perverse human heart. Yes, to be sure, love demands unity according to God's Word, but what unity? — Well does the holy Apostle call to all Christians: "Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace," but what does he add immediately? — "One Lord, one faith, one baptism!" (Eph. 4. 3-5.) And what kind of love is that which acts against God's express prohibition? That is nothing but a sham love, an empty phantom of love, a sinful, godless, idolatrous love; for it sets the love for man above the love for God, and so the sinful creature above the Most High and Alone Holy in heaven. O godless unity, O damnable Union, which is built upon a love that has stolen only the semblance of love, but has sacrificed the eternal truth of God and trodden underfoot the eternal commandment of God! What good can, what good shall come out of such love and unity? Far from its being the case that the heterodox should be helped by the union of the orthodox with them, it is rather by this that they too and the whole Church are only harmed. So long as the orthodox still separate themselves from the heterodox, so long are their errors punished continually, in fact and impressively, so that they either recognize their errors and put them away, or at least do not spread them farther and farther. But if at last the orthodox also mingle with the heterodox, then these, through the guilt of the former, become ever more indifferent toward their errors and those ever more indifferent toward their truth, and instead of the truth's prevailing, error prevails, and the truth is lost. To him who walks in a wrong way no love is shown by accompanying him, but by not only warning him of his error, but also, attesting to him the earnestness of the warning by deed, forsaking him.

So I ask you then: Shall and can the belief that the true Church is properly invisible and scattered over the whole world mislead us, accordingly, into joining a visible heterodox church? Is it not, according to what has already been said, rather precisely the holy duty of all those who would belong to the true invisible Church to separate themselves from all the visible communions of those who falsify God's Word and obstinately persist in their errors? This is their holy duty as surely as they are bound to shun and flee all sin and peril to the soul. It is true, there are many upright souls who will certainly be saved, even among the heterodox communions or sects. But these are only those simple hearts who in their simplicity do not see through the error of their sects, who in their simplicity hold to Christ and His Word in all quietness, do not join in blaspheming the pure doctrine, and therefore remain in the false communion solely out of weakness of knowledge. For the sake of such hidden believers among the heterodox, known to God alone, we must indeed hold fast the comfort that Christ's true Church is properly invisible and scattered over all the lands of the earth. But in vain does he comfort himself who knowingly joins a heterodox visible communion, or contrary to better knowledge remains in it out of contempt for the truth, with this, that he nevertheless belongs to the true invisible Church. No! such a one does not belong to the true invisible Church, for because he knowingly joins a false church, he is a knowing and wilful sinner and therefore no member of the spiritual body of JESUS Christ. He sins knowingly against God's clear prohibition to avoid false doctrines and teachers; he knowingly makes himself a partaker of the errors and sins of his sect; he becomes knowingly a companion of the assailants of the pure doctrine and of those who rend the Church; he knowingly plunges himself into danger of his immortal soul; he knowingly denies with his ungodly love the true love, which rejoiceth only in the truth; and knowingly forsakes the way prescribed by God for building the Church, and following herein his false prudence, he works against better knowledge for the ruin of the Church. He belongs to those lukewarm ones who are neither cold nor hot, whom the LORD will spue out of His mouth. He belongs to those unscrupulous religion-mongers, dulled to the truth, to whom, however much they love pure gold from the mine and genuine gold in the chest, it is all one whether the gold of the divine doctrine be pure or adulterated. He belongs to those half-hearted ones who limp on both sides and would carry on both shoulders. He belongs to those blind leaders of the blind, where both fall at last into the ditch, or even to those worthless deserters and traitors to their country who forsake the banner of the truth out of care for the belly, in order to fight against it for base pay under the flag of error and of the lie. Of such the holy Apostle speaks precisely in our text: "They went out from us, but they were not of us. That they might be made manifest that they were not all of us." That is, such as fall away to a heterodox church are thereby made manifest that they did not belong to the wheat of the Church, but to the tares, and, if they ever stood in the faith, that they belonged to those "which for a while believe, and have no root, but in time of temptation fall away."

2.

But, my hearers, that the true Church is properly invisible and scattered over the whole world should and can not only for this reason not mislead us into forsaking the orthodox visible Church, because precisely those who would belong to the invisible Church have the duty to separate themselves from all those who falsify God's Word and in their er-