# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 01 18_S74
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

74
Doctrines of Pastor Grabau.
8. requires and reckons among the fruits of faith." (Second Synodal Letter, page 50.)

8. "All these" (who, outside the visible Lutheran Church, are found as true believers), "wherever one finds them, belong to the One visible Church and congregation of God upon earth: though they sat in the midst of papists, Calvinists, Turks, heathen, etc. They are Lutherans." (Informatorium I. 2) "In this One, true, visible Church is the so-called invisible, and nowhere else." (Ib.) "As faith in the pure doctrine and Sacrament is, so is God's kingdom bound to the true visible Church. And all true living faith that is in the hearts of men on earth through the Word belongs in the visible Lutheran Church; just as all pure doctrine that resounds anywhere on earth also belongs therein. But if Word and faith belong therein, then the soul that is being saved belongs therein also, and is bound to it, and is prepared in it for eternal glory. Everything that is called and believes the Word of God and lives godly, God counts into the visible Lutheran Church, and everything that therein feigns and deceives, he counts out. There is only One Church, which is at all times called and known upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, that is, upon pure doctrine and Sacrament." (2. Synodal Letter p. 25.)

Doctrines of the Roman Church.
futation or Refutation, which the papists in the year 1530 set against the 7th Article of the Augsburg Confession, where it says: "That there must at all times be and remain one holy Christian Church.")

8. The Church is visible and includes in her bosom good and evil. But this Church is known and comparable to a city situated upon a high mountain, which is seen from all sides. . . . From this it follows that only three kinds of men are excluded from her: first, the unbelievers; then the heretics and apostates; finally the excommunicated. . . . As the first property, it is given in the Creed of the Fathers that she is One. . . . A second property of the Church is that she is holy. . . . The third property of the Church is this, that she is called catholic, that is, universal. . . . . All believers who have been from Adam down to this day, or who shall be until the end of the world, and who confess the true faith, belong to this very Church. . . . . She is called universal also for this reason, that all who desire to attain the eternal goal must hold fast to her and embrace her, just as those who entered into the ark, that they might not perish in the flood." (The Roman-Tridentine Catechism I, 10, 7. ff.) Yet the Jesuit Ebermann concedes: "He who is in error without his own fault and is ready to join the catholic Church, if he should perceive the error, is in truth and before God reckoned among the members of the visible catholic Church." (Parallela ecclesiae verae et falsae p. 97.)

Doctrines of the Lutheran Church.
members; but those (the papistical party) maintained that the Church is called holy from the inner causes (of the Church), namely from God, from the Word, from the sanctifying Sacraments, but not from the holiness which the members have received. . . . The essence of the Church (however) is the inner union with the Head, Christ, through the influence of faith and holiness, and the union with the believers in the whole world according to the same properties." (Hülsemann's Lectures on the Formula of Concord. p. 819. ff.)

8. "He desires" (the Jesuit) "Kedd to prove of the Evangelicals that the true Church of Christ is with them, of which we say in our Creed: I believe One holy catholic (universal) Church. . . . Here it is to be remembered, first, that according to the common manner of speaking, by the true Church of Christ the whole Christian Church, still militant upon earth, is understood, which, because there is but one single one in the whole world, is called simply the true Church of Christ, just as one says of the sun, which is only one in heaven, not a sun, but the sun, and everyone thereby understands the sun which is in heaven, in particular and especially. But because the universal Church of Christ is divided into many parts, each of which is rightly called a true Church of Christ, one is also accustomed to speak and to ask of Christ's Church, when the whole Universal Church is not properly being dealt with, as of many, or of one such as there are still more to be found, e. g.: Whether among the Lutherans there is a true Church of Christ? Since, then, the Lutherans do not give out of their Church that it is the whole universal Church of Christ, one has in the present dispute good reason to refrain from Kedd's manner of speaking. As it is indeed a true article of faith that Christ at all times preserves upon earth true believers, who are spiritually united with him and make one catholic Church, although we cannot know with certainty, by outward senses or by our reason, who and which they are, nor distinguish them from others. . . . Whence it is evident that of no visible Church, circumscribed to certain places and ends, can it rightly be said that it is the true Church, of which we say in our Creed: I believe One holy catholic Church. . . . Just as little can it be said of any certain visible assembly that outside of it there is no salvation. For since the universal Church of Christ extends farther than any visible assembly whatever, and has her members among manifold assemblies of called Christians in the world, there must be found, outside each one of them, in a certain measure, salvation and blessedness still. . . . Now this has never been the opinion or doctrine either of blessed Luther or of the Evangelical Lutheran Churches, but Luther admits that the universal or general Christian Church extends farther than the Lutheran Church, as it is taken in the common manner of speaking and regarded as a visible assembly. For he says freely that the universal Christian Church spreads into all the world and has her members also in part under the Roman Church, yea among Turks, Persians, Tartars, and everywhere. But this neither he nor other evangelical teachers say of the Lutheran Church, insofar as it is distinguished as a visible Church from the Roman and other contending parties; but our constant opinion is that the Evangelical Lutheran Church is a particular church, and thus a part of the one universal Christian Church. . . . Let the Christian reader consider," (therefore) "how with justice and right it may be demanded of the Evangelicals" (by the Jesuit Kedd) "to prove that which they do not affirm, yea, which they deny and themselves reject as false and erroneous. . . . Here, however, the Lutherans do not affirm that with them alone is the one Christian catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation, but reject this as an erroneous and false delusion, which they have never conceived or defended of their Church." (Defense of the Immovable Ground, which teachers adhering to the Augsburg Confession employ in proof of their churches, set against, first of all, the sophistries of Jodocus Kedd, Jesuit, by Dr. Johann Musäus. Jena, 1654. Page 7. ff.)

(Communicated.)
Reverend Professor!

It is a great joy to me to be able to inform you and the dear readers of the "Lutheraner" that my congregation can now assemble for divine services in a place specially fitted up for the purpose, whereas formerly the services had to be held in a hall in which, not seldom, through the manifold meetings of societies held therein, unpleasant disturbances occurred. At the same time I cannot refrain from reporting something of the joyful dedication of this place. — On the morning of the 11th Sunday after Trinity, there assembled for that purpose, in the old preaching-place, the members of my congregation and many of the dear fellow-believers — men and women, sons and daughters — of the congregation at Baltimore, who, to the great joy of my congregation, had for the most part arrived here very early on the festival morning. After I had spoken a few words on Gen. 23, 10. at the farewell from the old place, and the 3rd verse of No. 9 in our hymnbook had been sung, those present arranged themselves into a procession. At its head went the school children. After them came the two Pastors Keyl and Sommer — the former with the Bible, the latter with the hymnbook — and I in their midst with the Agenda — all three in surplice and with biretta. We were followed by the elders, with the chalice, the paten, the wafer-box, the communion flagon and the baptismal basin in hand. Then followed the men and women of my congregation, and behind them the women and men of the Baltimore congregation. It was a lovely sight, this procession upon a long