# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 05 24_S130
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

130

Doctrines of Pastor Grabau.

namely Bellarmine himself in his book on Ordination, Chap. 2, in the last §.) Our Lutheran theologians, however, point out precisely this, that the Apostles at ordination purposely did not use the ceremony employed by Christ at their calling, the breathing upon them, but had borrowed the laying on of hands from the Fathers, so that no one should think this ceremony had been instituted by God Himself and grace bound to it. The Editor.

29. "Although the Church does not give the holy office of preaching to the person, yet 'God' gives it in no other way than through the election and ordination of the Church; for this is His order. Acts 1, 23-26. 2 Tim. 2, 2." (The same, p. 39.) "It has thus pleased the all-wisest Lord and Master, by a twofold churchly act, to assure His servants of the right divine call and to help His Church, namely through orderly election and through ordination. A cripple can indeed stand for a while on One foot; but the orderly, sound man has two feet, whereon he stands and walks firmly." (The same, p. 60.)

30. "Alas, you make of the confirmatio electi or talis comprobatio a mere comprobatio seu testificatio vocationis," that is, of the confirmation of the one elected a mere confirmation of the election. "What moves you to insert here the word 'mere,' which is the chief substitution?" - Pastor Brohm, namely, relying on the passage of the Smalcald Articles standing in the third column, had declared ordination to be a mere confirmation of the vocation. Pastor Grabau therefore wants to maintain that ordination is a confirmation not of the vocation, but of the one called. Hence he continues: "The electio (election) or vocatio of the local congregation is in itself juris divini (of divine right) and needs no testificatio (attestation), also no comprobatio (approval) nor confirmatio (confirmation), but the electus and vocatus needs, according to God's order, such comprobatio and confirmatio." (The same, p. 61.)

Doctrines of the Romish Church.

29. "Thus writes the Jesuit Canisius in his Catechism: "Is it not enough that they" (those to be installed) "be chosen and presented by the people and by the temporal authority or by the prince? - By permission of the church prelates the people or the prince may choose able persons; but if they are not ordained (by the bishop), they are no priests."" (Chap. 4, §. 9.)

30. Thus writes the Tridentinum: "If any man say . . that the consecrations conferred by them (the bishops) are void without the consent or the call of the people or of the temporal power, or that those who have been neither lawfully consecrated nor sent by the churchly and canonical authority, but come from elsewhere, are lawful administrators of the Word and of the Sacraments: let him be accursed." (Sess. 23, Chap. 4, Can. 7.)

Doctrines of the Lutheran Church.

thum a superstition may cling." (Calov in his writing against the Socinians, p. 921.) "We deny that ordination is necessary by virtue of a special divine command, such as cannot be shown." (Gerhard loc. de min. §. 139.)

29. "As for ordination, it is not necessary by virtue of a divine command, nor does the essence of the office of preaching depend upon it." (Gerhard, loc. de eccles. §. 202.) "Ordination is taken either in a wider or in a narrower sense. In the wider sense it is taken for the call itself, in the narrower sense for the solemn attestation of the call before the congregation. The call is necessary; ordination in the narrower sense is indeed an indifferent matter, but in such a way that, although it has no command, it nevertheless has examples, and so approaches more nearly the nature of necessary things . . What is an adiaphoron (an indifferent matter) for the Church, is not equally an indifferent matter for this and that person." (Kromayer Theol. posit. p. 1060.)

30. Thus it stands in the symbolical books of our Church: "These words properly concern the true Church (1 Pet. 2, 9), which, because it alone has the priesthood, must also have the power to choose and ordain ministers of the Church. This also the common custom of the Churches testifies; for in former times the people chose pastors and bishops; thereupon the bishop of the same place, or one residing in the neighborhood, confirmed the chosen bishop by the laying on of hands, and ordination was then nothing other than such confirmation," nil nisi talis comprobatio, that is, nothing more than, or a mere, such confirmation.) See: Smalcald Articles, Appendix. To escape this mighty testimony of our Confession against his false doctrine, Pst. Grabau says the accent is to be laid on the word 'chosen'; for the election or vocation needs no confirmation, but the one chosen or called does, for the election or vocation, he means to say, does not yet make the one chosen a pastor, unless the second factor, ordination, be added. But this is only a sophistry, of which our old Lutheran teachers knew nothing. Thus writes, for example, the blessed Chemnitz: "Although ordination does not make the vocation, yet, when someone has been lawfully called, that usage is a declaration and public confirmation that the vocation which has gone before is a lawful one." (Loc. de eccl. p. 125.) Whoever does not wilfully wish to err sees also, when the Symbols say that ordination is nothing more than nil nisi a confirmation, that they thereby do not make ordination a second factor, necessary according to God's order, of the office of preaching to be set up, not a conditio sine qua non, but rather wish by this very means to cut off such thoughts. Thus writes Luther accordingly: "The parsonages or office of preaching have at all times been bestowed apart from and above the Chrism" (apart from the consecration to the priestly office in the papacy) "by princes, lords, cities, also by bishops, even abbots, abbesses and other cities, and through such bestowing the call and the right consecration to the ministry or office has remained; besides, such called pastors, who have received such fief and office, have also been presented, that is, sent to the suffragan bishops, and they have them invested or consecrated, although this was neither the call nor the fief, but confirmation of such call, and not a matter of necessity." (Writing on the Corner-Mass and Priest-Consecration, of the year 1533. XIX, 1511.)

(Contributed by H. in Ph.)

Hans Egede,

the Bishop of Greenland.

(After Rudelbach's Christl. Biographie.)

Greenland is one of the northernmost lands of America. There the winter lasts almost the whole year long, and the few summer days are close, warm and unwholesome; the soil is stony and unfruitful, but in return God fills the sea for the people of that region with sea creatures of every kind. The Greenlanders, small, thick-set people, are good-natured and of cheerful disposition, but inclined to sloth and superstition; they live for the most part on the fishes and sea creatures which they know how to catch with great skill. Among these poor people, who now are in part Christians, go once and speak with them; they will tell you of a man whom they call the "unforgettable father"; the unforgettable father of the Greenlanders is Hans Egede.

Hans Egede, born on 31 January 1686 in the bailiwick of Senjen in Norway, after he had studied in Copenhagen, became in the year 1707 pastor at Vaagen in Norway, and at the same time married Gertrude Bask. By God's special providence it occurred to him already in the second year of his ministry, as he had once read some time before, that in Greenland in ancient times a Christian congregation had existed. Greenland, namely, had been discovered in the year 982 after Christ's birth by an Icelander, Eric the Red, and Olaf Toygveson, lord of Norway and Iceland, had sent preachers thither. About a hundred years later Archbishop Adalbert of Hamburg (-Bremen) sent a bishop, Albert by name, thither; 16 churches were built, and until 1448 Greenland was known as a Christian land. From then on for 157 years nothing was heard of Greenland; only in the year 1605 was it discovered again by Admiral Lindenow, but of the Christian Church there was found only the ruins of the churches; the Greenlanders served the idols under the direction of sorcerers whom they called Angekoks. This Egede often heard from his brother-in-law Niels Bask in Bergen, who himself had traveled to Greenland. Full of heartfelt compassion for those poor heathen, whom he moreover held to be neglected descendants of the old Norwegians, he often thought, "he would regard it as his greatest joy and felicity, if he might