# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 12 07_S1015
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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is at home, let him rather orient himself by the guidance of the unsurpassed Chemnitz himself, especially p. 116. sqq., as also by his excellent examen concil. Trident. here and there. An uncertain wavering in Grabau's understanding of the Gospel is not to be mistaken, when one reads his words in the second Synodical Letter, page 25, at the bottom: "As faith is bound to the pure doctrine and Sacrament, so is God's kingdom bound to the true visible Church. And all true living faith, which is through the Word in the hearts of men on earth, belongs in the visible Lutheran Church," etc. etc. Whence, then, has the man obtained his theological learning? He has indeed preached much in his life, and certainly, at least in earlier periods, excellently and with great blessing; but the Lutheran dogmatics he seems not to have studied thoroughly; all pure teachers, with the symbolical books, determine more exactly. — The visible is only the appearance of the invisible as the real essence; in the use of the means of grace the Church appears; building her edifice upon the truth itself, upon the firm, deep ground of all reality, she yet lies under the covering of the appearance and carries herself out in the world, which for her has only the transitory existence of a material to be consumed. Hence the outward side of the Church corresponds so little to her inward (Apol. p. 148.); hence, although the visible Church with pure Word and Sacraments is a manifesting operation of the invisible, since through the confession of the former the faith of the latter speaks, she is yet only particular, in so far as the outward activity and shape come forward now more, now less, in the course of the centuries and are very variously stamped in history, comprehending indeed in content eternally the One, but in her form subject to the determinations of time and place and to the limits of earthly life, and advancing in the development of the unchangeable ground of knowledge, as the first glance at the Symbols teaches, because all this belongs to the appearance. The concept of the true visible Church does not fully coincide with that of the invisible, as Grabau is wont to assume, and wherein the source and seat of his errors seems to lie hidden; but in Word and Sacrament in general, in the whole visible domain of all the Christian parties, the otherwise hidden, invisible existence of the holy Church of Jesus is to be recognized; she makes herself known therein through the same; but preeminently in the outward communion of an orthodox confession, for through this alone and exclusively the congregation of the saints utters its faith. Jo. Gerhardi l. c. V. p. 321 sq. Ejusd. conf. cath. p. 728. sq. Quenstedtii syst. theol. IV. p. 504. Through the confession of false visible churches, so far as it is corrupted, nothing indeed speaks but what is human (or devilish), yea, some heresy and school of Satan; but because of the spiritual power of the invisible universal Church, which is scattered over the whole globe, therefore also among these, and is the salt in them, the Word can only be falsified, the doctrine by impure admixture, indeed often lamentably, be clouded and disfigured; among their visible multitudes members of the body of Christ are hidden, whose presence is made manifest precisely by the pure Word and Sacrament still remaining therein. Only when these, and with them all true acceptance of the divine Word, die out, will the visible multitude of such false churches be torn loose, little by little, from all connection and coherence with the universal Church in the original sense, which we do not see but believe. See Ernesti Gerhardi (the son of that great Jo. Gerh.) confess. Augustan. enucl. p. 126 sqq. So long as the public faith of such false churches confesses itself to the essence at least of the first, fundamental Sacrament, holy Baptism, they also still maintain something of the ecumenical character, and their sacramental acts are therefore valid.

God's kingdom, which is within, is bound to the visible totality of those called through the means of grace. Jo. Gerhardi conf. cath. p. 717. ed. Francofurt. All true living faith, which is through the Word in the hearts of men on earth, belongs in, that is, is found within the whole circuit of the universal visible Church, which divides itself into visible true and false particular churches, which Church, in so far as that which is rightly denied to the wicked who are in it though not of it, and especially to the Rotters who prevail in the false congregations, yet pertains to the elect who have not yet been brought by adhering error to the loss of faith and salvation, in so far as she herself has not on that account fallen away from Word and Sacrament, can be called synecdochically the catholic, while the visible true particular church bears that name metonymically. See Apolog. ed. Rechenberg. p. 144. J. Gerh. locc. th. p. 334 sqq. 245 sqq. Ejusd. annott. in Timoth. II, 2, 20. Baieri l. c. p. 757. 767 sq. 770. Cunr. Dieterici institutt. cat. p. 472 sqq. (Athanasii opp. ed. Paris. 1698. tom. I. p. 779.) and hold against it the work of the renowned Bishop of Meaux, Bossuet, coll. c. Jo. Claud. de eccl. All pure doctrine that resounds anywhere on earth belongs indeed only in the visible true Church, for this expression means nothing else; not are all the men to whom Word and Sacraments are given pure the visible true Church, else the Church would be not merely visible, but the individual members of the Church as members; rather are pure doctrine and Sacraments the infallible marks whereby the Church in the proper sense of the word becomes visible as the Church of the truth of Christ, that is, makes herself known and is recognizable. Jo. Gerh. l. c. conf. cath. p. 717. §. 10. The members of the invisible Church are the living true members of the latter; the dead members of it are no members of the invisible at all, and, precisely as dead, no longer belong to the visible body as such (although they cannot yet be separated from the outward communion of the Word and the Sacraments, unless the ban in right use cut off those who have become manifest), as the chaff is no part of the wheat-heap, the tares no part of the wheat-field, but only a part of the whole heap, where wheat lies mixed under the chaff, a part of the field, in so far as it is a whole consisting of wheat and tares. Quenstedtii syst. th. IV. p. 488. 492. But the souls that are being saved, that is, truly believing, although in the pregnant sense they belong to the visible true Church and are bound to the same, yet are not all found in it, nor always in false visible communions as being not in agreement with their confession, but in the midst of the assemblies of the latter, held back therein by some unknown hindrance, until the veil vanishes from their eyes, or they, already prepared for eternal glory, are delivered by a blessed death, when all that is imperfect ceaseth. Only a soul that, notwithstanding the brighter light of knowledge, persists against conscience in the same, can, like the spiritually dead in general, not belong to the true Church. But those believe from the heart in their Savior and love and follow Him; only, in respect of distinguishing the doctrine of their church from the pure, they are unclear and weak, as indeed the disciples of the Lord Jesus Himself in the Gospel, with all pious honesty, before His resurrection were often of so erring and defective an understanding, and among the Samaritans some were found of believing, thankful mind. (Here is, it cannot be denied, a real rotten spot in Grabau's doctrine of visibility, which as a false and impure one must draw such after it. Quite similarly, as he now and again, speak his papistical ones regarding their church communion, although they distinguish de anima and de corpore, and some embarrassed hyperorthodox theologians of our own side.) If those hidden upright souls are called "Lutherans" in the writings of our fathers, they do not thereby count them to the Lutheran visible Church, for that is not possible and would be nonsense, but, mark well, to the invisible great body of the Church, whose faith and confession is, according to its essential content, wholly and entirely the Lutheran. According to Grabau the concept of the invisible must really be wholly absorbed in that of the visible true Church; cf. Informatorium, vol. 1.