# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 01 20_S84
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

84

facts of the case. Rev. Winkler cannot deny that he said already on Saturday that he could no longer deal with the undersigned otherwise than before the Vorstand, and he said this, as he himself knows well, in immediate connection with the fact that the undersigned, on account of the charge of false doctrine, rightly demanded proof from him; but it was not at all a question of setting forth to him the doings of the Rottierer, which indeed would have been wholly contrary to the purpose, seeing that it was not these so-called Rottierer, but only Winkler who wished to evade the investigation, which investigation would have had to bring the whole state of affairs to light much better than a one-sided presentation could ever do. This also is incorrect and calculated only to mislead, when Winkler asserts that he expressly invited the undersigned alone, and has the words "him alone" printed in large type. For from this one must believe that the stated condition under which he could still come before the Vorstand at all was that he should come alone. But the undersigned has Winkler's invitation still in his hands in writing, and it reads:

"Mr. P. Crämer is invited for this evening at 8 o'clock to my house.
Friedrich Winkler."

Here, then, is plainly not a word of any indispensable condition of coming alone. Rather it is understood of itself, as already mentioned, that the witnesses had to be present before whom the charge of false doctrine had been uttered.

When, then, Winkler further reports that he made representations at the very door concerning the companions, and declared that in this way no negotiation could be held, but Crämer would not be told, and with his people forced his way through 2 rooms and the kitchen out upon the porch, where some officers and members of the congregation were assembled; that he harangued them with a loud voice and sought to draw them to his interest: here again lie is heaped upon lie. It is so far from the case that the appearance of Crämer and his companions resembled the assault of a band of robbers, as Winkler is bold enough to assert, that they rather betook themselves quietly and calmly to Winkler's house, modestly knocked at the door and waited until Winkler opened to them, who then indeed received them with a thundering voice thus: "What do these men want, they have nothing to do here," and then hurried away and left them standing at the open door. When they had now waited a considerable time, and Winkler, whom they believed to have been hurried by a momentary ill humor, did not come back, they stepped into the first open room, which, however, they found empty. They went into the second; here also there was no one, but they heard there that people were assembled on the porch. Quite bewildered they stepped out there, to learn what all this was to mean; but here they were at once received by Winkler and his people with great raging, the former absolutely refusing to allow that the 3 men, until now members of his congregation, should be present. What Winkler now calls harangueing was nothing more than a simple statement of the purpose of our being here, namely to hear the proof wherein the undersigned was to be accused of false doctrine; and what he represents as if one had wished to draw his people into one's interest was an attempt to convince each one singly that Winkler, if he wished to lay claim even only to outward respectability, was bound to substantiate before the same witnesses the charge made before witnesses. That cost, however, no small time and trouble, since even one of the officers was so little able to comprehend why it was really a question here, that he rather believed one was there to settle the matter, and expressed himself on it in the coarse words: "Do you think, then, that one can clean out this (: s. v. :) pigsty in a quarter of an hour?" True it is, indeed, that an offensive remark of another officer, which Winkler, though not without distortion, adduces in his report, made an impression on the undersigned, namely that of abhorrence and painful regret that one could be so godless as to lay to one's charge the uproar which one had oneself alone raised. But Winkler was not to be brought to name even the article in which our Synod is supposed to teach falsely, but appealed now for the first time, and not, as he falsely states in his report, already on Saturday, to the second Synodal letter of Rev. Grabau, pretending that it was not now the time to go through it; one should first humble oneself and study the same. It was represented to him that the question was not about that Synodal letter, but about his charge, which as a theologian he must surely be able to prove; he was assured that one would gladly humble oneself also before him, if he could demonstrate the error from God's Word; it was shown him how it was his sacred duty to retract the grave accusation, if he could not prove it; he was entreated and adjured not to harden himself in stubbornness: but all was in vain; rather he fell indeed into such a rage that he thrust the undersigned three times with his arm upon the breast. True, Winkler seeks to invalidate this, indeed to represent it as a palpable lie, by alleging first: Crämer has told the matter at different times differently and contradictorily: but that he would first have to prove; then, by appealing to the statures of the two persons, his own namely and that of Crämer, just as if it were an impossible thing that small persons, especially when overcome with anger, as Winkler at that time so evidently was that even his countenance glowed like purple, should venture upon people of larger stature; finally by this, that he wishes to know most positively that Crämer was an arch-fencer at the University, while he himself never set foot in a fencing-hall. Now we do not indeed wish to take Crämer under protection as to his university career, but rather condemn him ourselves, for he studied at a time when unbelief ruled in the universities, and was himself, alas, at that time a child of unbelief. But we beg every simple Christian to take notice of the heart-pieces which Winkler here reveals, in that without any purpose and occasion he hunts up everything that he knows or even does not know, to cast reproach upon his neighbor, only to adorn his bad cause. But what heathen judge would have admitted the following ground of proof, if e. g. the Jews of Lystra, having been convicted by eye-witnesses that they had stoned Paul, had pretended that that could not be, for Paul, when he was yet a Saul, had persecuted the Christians, while they had never done the like before. Let Winkler consider that the eyes still live which saw his outrage, and repent, that they may not one day testify against him at the Last Day. He knows only too well that Crämer's report to the Synod is true in all its parts, and sins doubtless against his conscience in designating it as lying, and in his bold wantonness besides accusing the Synod of having made itself partaker of the sins of the reporter, whereas it examined the whole history with the greatest care. When now Winkler further represents the matter thus, as if Crämer by the letter of the following day had wished, as it were, to give way and to make good again the harm which he had done the evening before, this too is naturally not in the remotest degree in accordance with the truth. Crämer had indeed, on the evening of the 17th, after he had tried everything possible, to convince each individual and above all Winkler, that one must either prove the charge of false doctrine or retract it, finally, since no one would listen, been obliged, to his great grief, to go away with the matter unaccomplished. But since he could hardly have seen his brother sin, the duty of Christian love bade him, for his part, to try everything to win his soul, to which end he then, on the next day, sent the following letter to Winkler:

Detroit, June 18, 1850.

Rev. Winkler!

"Alas, I had to be yesterday evening an eye-witness of great transgressions of which you have made yourself guilty. As I now conclude according to love that it did not happen from premeditated malice, but in momentary haste and through the blinding and great craft of Satan, so the love of Christ constrains me, the care for the salvation of your soul, so dear to me, and the thank-