# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 02 01_S77
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.
"God's Word and Luther's doctrine shall pass away nevermore." (Rev. John, Chap. 14, v. 6, 7.)
Published by the German Ev. Luth. Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.
Edited by C. F. W. Walther.
Volume 9.  St. Louis, Mo., the 1st of February 1853.  No. 12.
Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for subscribers outside the city, who are to pay the same in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single No. 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.

Abridged Tabular Survey

of Some Manifest Errors of Pastor Grabau, set forth in his own words and compared with the false Roman as well as with the pure Lutheran doctrine.

Teachings of Pastor Grabau.

II.

Of the Church.

9. Furthermore, one should say with our LORD JESUS Christ that He does not gather His sheep in false churches, but leads them out to His fold, John 10, 16. Therefore it is dangerous, in the face of so many factions and sects, to speak as this thesis does" (the 9th in the book: Die Stimme unserer Kirche), "because thereby every faction and sect is confirmed in the erroneous comfort of the Unionists, as though it had the invisible Church as a part of its particular church within itself. . . . Secondly, Scripture does not call communions with a false confession, for the sake of the believers hidden among them, a church synecdochice. . . . That these" (communions of erring belief, such as the Roman, the Reformed, the Unionist, etc.) "are still called Christian churches in life, and arrogate this name to themselves in spite of the contradiction of our Symbols, Prof. Walther rightly allows, and says that this name belongs to them by right, that they are to be so called, that Scripture calls them so synecdochice." (Inform. II, 58. 59. 66.)

Teaching of the Roman Church.

II.

Of the Church.

9. "A communion whose public confession is stained with even a single heresy is not a heap of wheat not yet cleansed, but nothing but chaff, which has rashly flown away from the threshing-floor of the Church and is kept for the unquenchable fire. Its confession is not gold mixed with copper, but a mass corrupted through and through by hellish leaven, or at best a poisoned nectar, which brings the surest death to all who drink it. . . . Who can, unless he is insane, believe Musaeus and his associates when they cry out with Luther: even where Antichrist and the enthusiasts rule, there remains, so long as baptism with the Bible remains, a seed proper to the true Church and consequently secret saints, because, forsooth, the Word never returns void. Isa. 55, 11. Woe to the wretched Saxons, who are stuck in so dark a night that they do not see through these manifest depths of Satan." (So the Jesuit Ebermann in Parall. eccl. p. 57.) "It is impossible that a heretical church, or one corrupted in fundamental doctrines, should be a mother of the truly faithful and righteous; unless one were willing to grant that it is permitted to the true believers to hold communion with heretics." (So Augustinus Gibbon in his Luthero-Calvinismus. Disp. I. § 3.)

Teaching of the Lutheran Church, which Pastor Grabau calls the Missourian.

II.

Of the Church.

9. "One must diligently distinguish between that which belongs to the essence of the Church and that without which the Church can be a true church; for there is a difference between a church that is also true and a church that is pure in all things according to its outward form and accidental condition. A true church can also be and remain, although according to the outward office of the Word it is not one that is wholly uncorrupted and pure. It is therefore one thing to ask after the marks of the true Church, another to ask after the marks of the church that is unfalsified and uncorrupted in all points." (Graverus Disput. Anti-Jesuit.) "It must necessarily be granted that wherever baptism is administered unviolated in its essential parts, there is a church." (Hunnius disp. de malis et hypocrit. th. 16.) "If baptism and some chief parts of the doctrine are still retained unmutilated, then God gathers to Himself in the corrupted state of the visible Church, yea, in the midst of the heaps of heretics, through the said means an invisible Church of the elect." (Gerhard loc. de eccl. § 111.) We are not opposed to the name catholic being given to the Church of the Romanists themselves for the sake of the same "(for the sake of baptism, for the sake of the Sunday texts read aloud)." (Calov Tract. de nat. pacis rel. Aug. q. 30.) "I answer thereto, therefore: that St. Paul here speaks according to the figure which is called synecdoche, and which is almost common in Scripture . . even as we now in our times call the Roman churches and all bishoprics holy, though they also are misled and their servants ungodly . . Therefore the Church is holy everywhere, even in the places where the enthusiasts and factious spirits happen to rule, so far as they do not altogether deny and reject the Word and Sacrament . . . . Where Word and Sacrament remain essentially, there remains also a holy Church." (Luther on Gal. 1, 2.)