# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 09 14_S9
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.
"God's Word and Luther's doctrine shall pass away now and nevermore." (Rev. of John, ch. 14, v. 6, 7.)
Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.
Edited by C. F. W. Walther.
Volume 9.  St. Louis, Mo., the 14th of September 1852.  No. 2.
Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who are to pay the same in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 cents.
Only those letters which contain communications for the paper are to be sent to the Editor; all others, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent hither under the address Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

☞ The continuation of the Preface to the 9th volume of the "Lutheraner" follows in the next number.

Vain Shouts of Victory
of the
Grabauan Informatorium.

It almost seems as if Pastor Grabau were planning to spare us the proof, so tempestuously demanded by him and his followers, that he and his reverend colleagues have banned wrongly*). For any reader of the "Informatorium" who observes how Pastor Grabau judges us and, on the ground of these his thoughts about us, condemns us, indeed curses us and puts us under the ban, has truly more than enough proofs in his hands that the former plays with ban, curse, judgment and damnation as children do with snowballs. One sees plainly that such dexterity can be attained only by long years of practice. It may be that Past. Grabau nevertheless wins many to his side thereby and alienates them from us, for it is only too much a matter of experience that many readers, when they watch the contest between two parties, do not so much carefully compare and weigh the reasons which are brought forward on the one side and on the other, but look to see on which side one conducts oneself most unmannerly and pronounces judgment most boldly. On the latter side, so one thinks, right must surely be; for how could a man so boldly decide, disparage and condemn if he were not in the right? and how could he defend his good right who remains so calm and, without abusive words, brings forward only a few reasons for his cause? But not God alone judges otherwise, but also precisely those whose judgment is worth something. And that is, according to the conviction of our good right, our comfort. —

*) It is also remarkable that Pst. Grabau and his followers first so tempestuously demanded this proof again and again and now, when it is promised them, mock at it. For Pst. Grabau writes of the promised sidecar: "Whoever as an ass draws such a sidecar, he alone has the offence of it to bear." He would now frighten us away from relating the offensive stories, to the relating of which he himself first urged and forced us and boastfully challenged us.

The readers know that Mr. Pst. Grabau had asserted that even an unjust ban gives no right to separation according to Luther's doctrine. Thereupon we proved that Luther, to be sure, in earlier writings, at a time when he was still held captive in a false Roman conception of the Church, did assert something similar, but that in later writings he taught quite differently. What now do our gentlemen opponents answer to this? First they fetch the new proof that Luther, like them, taught concerning the unjust ban, again with remarkable perseverance out of Luther's earlier writings! The writer — this time it is Pastor von Rohr — seems to hope that his readers have again forgotten that these very earlier writings confirm what is to be proved just as little as the Jesuits have the right to prove from Luther's earlier writings that Luther himself submitted to the Pope and the Roman Church. Our opponent, it is true, afterwards gives himself the appearance as if he would prove his cause also from Luther's later writings, of the years 1536 and 1538, indeed even from the Augsburg Confession; but he commits herein only the small (?) error that he himself most kindly inserts the words on which it here depends. For when Luther, according to our opponent's citation, quite correctly writes in his exposition of the 16th chapter of John, of the year 1538: "If those ban me who bear nothing but the bare name, what do I ask about it? But if those did it who were truly the Church of Christ, then I would indeed fall at their feet, and beg for grace, and offer myself to all obedience" — our opponent adds the following words in brackets: "Understand, even if I were unjustly banned by her, my dearest mother."(!) — And when Luther further, according to our opponent's citation, in his exposition of the prophet Joel of the year 1536, again quite correctly writes: "Therefore beware that you by no means despise such a ban as has been pronounced and has gone forth from the Church in an orderly and lawful manner" — so is our opponent