# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 11 27_S52
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

52

not lose Christ, even if thou shouldest be deprived of all else that thou hast, thou art surely foreordained, and wilt understand the hidden God; yea, thou understandest Him even now already; if thou knowest the Son and His will, that He would reveal Himself to thee and be thy Lord and Savior, then thou art sure that God also is thy Lord and thy Father. Dr. Staupitz was wont to comfort me with these words and said to me thus: Dear friend, why dost thou plague thyself so with these speculations and lofty thoughts? Behold the wounds of Christ and His blood, which He has shed for thee; from these the foreordination will shine forth. Just as a hermit or recluse, in vitis Patrum, admonishes his hearers that they should renounce and abstain from such speculation and lofty thoughts, and says thus: "When thou seest that anyone has set his foot in heaven, pull him back again." For thus the saints or Christians who are still novices are wont to think of God apart from Christ, and these are they who presume to climb into heaven and there to set both feet, but they are soon cast down into hell and sunk. Therefore the godly should guard against this, and apply themselves to this alone, that they learn to cleave to the little Child and the Son of God, Jesus, who is thy God and for thy sake has become man; Him shalt thou know and hear, take thy delight in Him, and also thank Him for it. When thou hast Him, thou hast also the hidden God together with the revealed. (From the great Commentary on the 1st Book of Moses, Chap. 26, v. 9.)

(Communicated by Dr. Sihler.)

Remarkable Testimony of the Hireling Preacher Mr. W. Suhr in Cincinnati.

The said Mr. Suhr has recently, in the "protestantische Zeitblätter"*), spoken at first very frivolous words concerning the Lutheran congregation at Brownstown, Jackson County, Ind., and its service by Pastor Sauer; for without having heard either him or his congregation, he has without further ado believed the accusations and suspicions of the adversaries and has had this his opinion promptly printed as historical truth.

*) These papers are written "for the instruction and edification of thinking-believing (rationalistic) Christians." "Thinking-believing people," however, are such as do not, like the Bible-believers, place reason under, but above the Bible; and these "thinking-believers" are people who think that they believe, and who believe that they think.

With this, however, we do not intend to concern ourselves at all, and we leave it to Pastor Sauer to clear himself, by an open exposition of the course of the matter, of the disparagement of the sincerity of his convictions.

In connection with this matter, however, Pastor Suhr has set forth propositions which clearly prove that he holds views thoroughly contrary to Scripture concerning the holy ministry, and regards himself (and naturally all other so-called Protestant preachers also) not as servants of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, as fellow-laborers and fellow-helpers of the Holy Ghost, as shepherds and pastors of the congregation of God purchased dear with the blood of Jesus Christ, but as hired and temporarily engaged speakers and servants of democratic mobs. These propositions we intend to examine a little and to test by God's Word, not for the sake of Mr. Suhr and similar slaves of men, who gladly fawn before their hirers and puff up their fleshly liberty still more, in order to be hired anew again and again, but in order to give somewhat closer information to our own people and to sincere souls susceptible of divine truth.

The principal proposition, or rather, since nothing is proposed, the principal delusion of Mr. Suhr is this: "As the people of the American free states recognize no other majesty than themselves, and regard their President only as their servant, so the religious bodies should not only know, but also demonstrate, that as a church congregation they are the sovereign power and that they let themselves not be hindered in this their divine authority by him who is the executor of their ordinances, the preacher, parson, or pastor."

The principal error of Mr. Suhr in this, which concerns us first of all, is this, that he draws from the form and shape of civil society here a false conclusion as to that of ecclesiastical society. He calls, then, first of all a number of baptized Christians assembled without a pastor — unless, according to democratic breadth of heart, he would count in with such an assembly also Jews, Turks, and heathen who might desire admission — a "church congregation." But this is directly contrary to God's Word and to history.*) Let us look back to the origin and existence of the first apostolic congregation at Jerusalem in Acts 2 and following.

*) It goes without saying that by this the character of the Church is not to be denied to any larger or smaller fellowship of believers, if the same by chance has no preacher; rather the question is whether the hearers, as opposed to the shepherds and teachers, are the Church, and thus, to the exclusion of the ministry, the possessors of the power of the Church. The Ed.

Was it then possible that before the preaching of the apostles this and that Jew could come to believe on Christ and form a congregation? Not so. But after this happened, for example, through Peter's preaching, and 3000 had first become believers, we find it written there that the Christians were a congregation without the apostles and the elders chosen later, that they came together in order, as the "sovereign power," in their "divine authority" attributed to them by Mr. Suhr, to make ordinances and resolutions for the government of the congregation, which they would then first have delivered to the absent apostles and elders, their "servants," as "executors" of their counsel and will? Of such a Cincinnati church order, or rather disorder, it is to be hoped no one will find a trace in the history of the apostles. Rather, wherever anything is reported of congregational assemblies, there we see the apostles and elders also present, and indeed not as idle spectators, but rather as the soul of the whole, as those who in pending disputes or difficult circumstances, through the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit of God, recognized the truth and will, laid it before the believers, and together with them resolved upon its execution.

But not only at Jerusalem, but elsewhere also a similar relation obtained; nowhere, where through the preaching, for example, of the apostle Paul people became believers, and these then, according to God's order in 1 Tim. 3, called a believing and apt-to-teach man, who thereafter was confirmed by the apostle as regularly called and installed in his office — nowhere do we find here that the hearers, without the calling in and cooperation of the teaching office, especially in matters of church government, passed a resolution; for just then only did a Christian congregation arise, when the individual people, who through the apostolic preaching became believers on the Lord Christ and thereby spiritually and inwardly one, set up the ministry among themselves and thereby became an assembly also visibly and outwardly manifest, in which the Word of God was proclaimed pure and clear and the holy Sacraments administered according to the institution of the Lord Christ.

The regular coming together, in accordance with this, of the teaching office and the hearers thus constitutes the congregation or church; and neither is, for example, the Pope with his clergy without the hearers the church or congregation, nor is anywhere an assembly of preacherless Christians, or of hearers, to the exclusion of the preacher, a congregation; and as foolish as it is of the Pope and his clergy, or of the assembled bishops of the Church of England, to arrogate to themselves and their resolutions, without the cooperation and calling in of the hearers, an original right and "divine authority," just so foolish is it of the hearers of American non-Catholic congregations, if they do the same without the cooperation and joint resolving of the teaching office. But the Word of God, in its congregation-forming power and order, in which it passes between these two aberrations, concerns itself neither with the papistic and episcopal priestly rule and the princely papacy of Germany, nor with the democratic popular rule of America. "Let all things be done decently and in order" — this is the general safeguard of Holy Scripture against every encroachment; for it would be just as much a Ver-