Among the people who in a given locality rally around the Word and the Sacraments and profess allegiance to them, there is the Church, because there is the power of God unto salvation, the faith-producing and faith-sustaining Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Those who embrace what the Gospel offers with a lively faith, and in the power of their faith proceed to lead holy lives in accordance with the teaching of God’s Word, are the members of the true Church of God, the kingdom of Christ.  Those who adhere only externally to these institutions are merely nominal members.  They may at heart be hypocrites and secret blasphemers.

Catholic writers charge Luther with having set up this teaching, partly to spite the Pope whom he hated, partly to gratify his vainglorious aspirations to become famous.  He had at one time held the Catholic dogma that the Church is the visible society of men who profess allegiance to the Bishop of Rome and accept his overlordship in matters of their religion.  But through neglect of his religious duties and the failure to bridle his imperious temper he had by degrees begun to revolt from the teaching of the Catholic Church, until he publicly renounced the Church that had existed in all the ages before him, and set up his own Church.  By forsaking the communion of the Roman church organization he severed his soul from Christ and became an apostate.  For, according to Catholic belief, Christ founded the Church to be a visible organization with a visible head, the Pope, and plainly and palpably “governing” men.

Everybody who has read the records of Luther’s work knows that no thought was more foreign to his mind than that of founding a new church.  He believed himself in hearty accord with the Catholic Church and the Pope when he published his Theses.  He did not wantonly leave the Church, but was driven from it by most ruthless measures.  It was while he was defending the principles which he had first uttered against Tetzel that his eyes were opened to the appalling defection which had occurred in the Catholic Church from every true conception of what the Church really is.  His appeals to the Word of God were answered by appeals to the Church, the councils of the Church, the Pope.  In his unsophisticated mind Luther held that Church, councils, and Pope are all subject to Christ, the Head of the Church.  They cannot teach and decree anything but what Christ has taught and ordained.  It is only by abiding in the words of Christ that men become and remain the true disciples of Christ, hence, His Church (John 8, 31).  Now, he was told that Christ had erected the visible organization of the Catholic Church with the Pope at its head into the Church, and had handed over all authority to this society, with the understanding that there can be no appeal from this body to Christ Himself.  Salvation is only by submitting to the rule of this society, adopting its ways, following its precepts.  From this teaching Luther recoiled with horror, and rightly so.