# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 01 21_S87
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

87

ly manifest and would set a dam against this their huckstering traffic in souls) take no small pains, in writing and by word of mouth, to cast suspicion upon the announcement for confession among the ignorant Lutherans, as popish compulsion to confession or even auricular confession, as unevangelical and un-American, and to make it hated.

A third ground is the like disposition in this and that Lutheran, within the congregations themselves, whether in consequence of the influences just mentioned, or in consequence of their own enthusiastic tendency, and perhaps at the same time of a misunderstood application of their civil liberty to the churchly domain.

A fourth ground, finally, of that resistance against the introduction of the announcement for confession — and indeed not the weakest of them — is the haughty conceit of wisdom and malicious obstinacy of such persons in the congregations as exercise a certain authority over the others and thereby more or less guide the majority.

From these four chief grounds, then, arises the extraordinary resistance which is found almost everywhere against this wholesome order.

But how now? Should it on that account be given up also by servants of the Church faithful to the Confession, as the hireling preachers let it go with pleasure, yea, from ignorance or malice, together with their hirers, cast suspicion upon it as a remnant from the dark times of Popery? Far be it.

For the establishment and maintenance of this order, as necessary and wholesome as it is agreeable to the Gospel, the following grounds speak:

In the first place, namely, it is, especially after the recent taking over of a congregation, a serious matter of conscience for its pastor not to administer the venerable Sacrament of the Body and Blood of the LORD Christ to any of his church-children whose state of Christian knowledge he has not previously examined. For not only manifest and impenitent sinners are unfit for the worthy partaking of the holy Supper, but also the coarse ignorant people who do not know what Law, repentance, Gospel, faith, works, Baptism, Absolution and the Lord's Supper are, and perhaps cannot even say by heart the holy Ten Commandments, the Creed, the holy Lord's Prayer; likewise equally unfit for it are the self-righteous people to whom going to the Table of the LORD is a dead outward work, since they have no true faith, although they are not so coarse as those. If now the servant of the Church, for example, should let such people go to the holy Supper unheard, he would by such negligence or fear of man make himself partaker of the sin, not small in God's eyes, that they, even through his fault also, receive the Sacrament unworthily, hence to judgment; and it comes therefore to this, that he, instead of being a fellow-worker of the Holy Ghost, a savior of souls, is rather, as a fellow-helper of the devil, a destroyer of souls.

So Luther also says: "One should let no one go to the holy Sacrament unless he has been examined particularly by his pastor whether he be fit to go to the holy Sacrament; for St. Paul says 1 Cor. 11 that they are guilty of the body and blood of the Lord Christ who take it unworthily. Now not only those take this Sacrament who take it unworthily, but also those who give it with negligence to the unworthy; for the common rabble runs to the Sacrament out of custom, and knows not why one should use the Sacrament."

Likewise Luther writes in another place: "It truly pleases us not that the Absolution should go out of the Church, and people be let run so carelessly to the Sacrament. For there must needs remain a form and discipline in the Church, which is not to be maintained without Confession. And it would be like to come to this, where people were not accustomed to heed sin and to wait for Absolution or forgiveness, that in time Absolution and forgiveness of sin would be wholly forsaken, and things turned upside down, and the people would run to the Sacrament again out of their own devotion, as before."

In the second place, and in connection with this first ground, the announcement for confession is therefore so wholesome and useful because it is the proper place for genuinely churchly cure of souls. For to a faithful shepherd and father in Christ it is indeed a matter of heart and conscience to keep every single little sheep of the flock of Christ committed to him as exactly as possible in view, and faithfully to look after it according to its spiritual need. To this it belongs, however, that he not merely seek the hundredth lost little sheep, and follow after the one that has strayed from Word and Sacrament, in order, if God will, to bring it back again to both, but that he also by particular exhortation, teaching, admonition, rebuke and comfort, out of and according to God's Word, heal that which is wounded (by the Law), strengthen the weak, comfort the faint-hearted, establish the wavering, instruct the ignorant, admonish the unruly, rebuke the stubborn, urge on the slothful, draw on the timid, hold back the thoughtless, raise up the fallen, warn the bold, terrify the secure; in short, come to help as a spiritual physician with the thoroughly and surely healing medicine of the divine Word, just as the particular hurt and want of the individual soul requires.

But where would there be, for such medical treatment and care, a more fitting place and a more suitable time than when his spiritual patients are preparing to receive the Body and Blood of their LORD and Savior? There also he should rightly be a fellow-helper of the Holy Ghost for each individual, to promote on his part also the wholesome self-examination demanded by the holy Apostle before the partaking of the holy Supper, and to put the Catechism to diligent use for this purpose. There he is to meet each of his church-children, enlightened and anointed by the Holy Ghost, with fatherly love and evangelical wisdom, and to take him in hand, as he either already knows the particular need of the individual or has but now learned it by friendly questioning and drawing out. And there it surely happens also to the individual who opens himself willingly and sincerely, that he gains often as great a benefit as he carries home from the preaching of the Gospel, because here counsel is given for his particular hurt and want.

But how would this performance of the service of the Gospel be possible, how would this noble and excellent benefit be attainable, if the individual church-children did not signify to their spiritual father their desire to draw near to the Table of the LORD, and on this occasion willingly offer themselves to be questioned by him, informed, admonished, rebuked and comforted, for guidance and furtherance in their self-examination and in matters of their soul's salvation? For this precious fruit could not possibly be obtained if the people came in crowds to the common Confession, without previous announcement, and only afterward, after hearing the confessional address and receiving Absolution, gave their names. On the other hand, there would arise with such disorder the unavoidable grievous evil that many a manifestly unworthy person would be absolved and in the end even communed, which would of course be charged before God to the account of the servant of the Church, who by consenting to such disorder would make himself partaker of another's sin, in that he helps to bring about that one or several of his church-children (or even of strangers who have come running in*) receive Absolution and the Lord's Supper to judgment. — For even if the pastor in his administration of the exhortation to confession were conscientious enough to frighten off the unfit and unworthy in a wholesome way, yet it is, alas, a common experience that thereby hardly one who stands in the crowd with the rest is really held back; for he naturally fears not God, but the tongues and looks of the people, who saw him indeed at Confession, but not at the holy Supper, and who for the most part, as he apprehends, would laugh at him and mock him if he let himself be wholesomely frightened off from coming to the holy Supper at this time.

*) Even in Lutheran synods which (in name) profess the Lutheran Symbols, the abominable abuse takes place here and there that pastors of Methodistic mind invite also strangers of other confessions to the partaking of the holy Supper with the congregation. And the Synod lets such shameful disorder go on as before. —

In the third place, the announcement for confession is also therefore so important and wholesome an order, because it draws on the sincere and willing as wholesomely as it frightens back the false and obstinate, until these, if God will, are converted by the preaching of the divine Word and made fit for the worthy partaking of the holy Supper.

As regards now that first point, the simple have indisputably, in the announcement for confession,