# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 08 16_S177
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.
"God's Word and Luther's doctrine pass away now and nevermore."
(Rev. John, Chap. 14, vv. 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., August 16, 1853.  No. 26.
Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for subscribers out of town, 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, however, 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, laid before the reader in his own words and compared with the false Roman as well as with the pure Lutheran doctrine.

Doctrines of Pastor Grabau.

VI.

Of Things Indifferent.

34. "It is erroneous and perverse to expect of the Lutheran preacher merely that he will not refuse private absolution to a penitent sinner because he is pledged to the symbolical books. Rather one must expect and demand of one so pledged that he retain the privatam absolutionem in the whole congregation for which he is pledged, and not let it fall, as the 2nd Article" (of the Augsburg Confession) "says; and so also that he receive no one to a general absolution. Further, it is contradictory and perverse to leave it wholly to the resolution of the congregation how it will have confession, and yet to say that one does not wish to give up the 2nd Article of the Confession . . Whereas our Symbols set an essential difference between evangelical preaching in general and absolution to the individual penitents in particular, this Synod" (of Missouri, etc.) "will deny the essential difference." (2nd Synodal Letter, pp. 80, 81.)

Remark: Although we hereby defend ourselves against this attack of Pastor Grabau's with regard to general and private confession, we do so solely for the preserva-

Doctrines of the Roman Church.

VI.

Of Things Indifferent.

34. With regard to the accusation of the Papists that the Lutherans themselves have fallen away from the Augsburg Confession, old Dannhauer of Strassburg, where private confession was not introduced in all Lutheran churches, writes among other things as follows: "The eighth case of conscience is whether we adhere to the Augsb. Conf., since 1. we teach such things as are not contained in it, and since 2. we do not everywhere agree and do what the Augsburg Confession teaches? Thus it wills that we retain private absolution and the ceremonies set forth therein, whereas we do not accept the former and do not acknowledge the usages accepted elsewhere . . . But so also in the articles of the Augsb. Conf. private absolution is established, and yet Christian liberty is also allowed. So also in the church of St. Nicholas in Strassburg, out of favor for Marbach, who had himself heard Luther, private absolution was retained and it is

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

VI.

Of Things Indifferent.

31. In the edition of the "Instruction of the Visitors" of 1538, Luther added the following to the article "Of Right Christian Confession," in his exhortation to confess privately: "Yet provided that it all remain free, and be not forbidden to those who wish to use the same absolution and perhaps would rather have it from their pastor than from a public church person, since from another they perhaps could not do without it. Again, those who are unconstrained, who, being well informed beforehand in the faith and in the doctrine of Christ, wish to confess to God alone and take the sacrament thereupon; these one shall not compel further; for each one takes it upon his conscience, as St. Paul says, 1 Cor. 11:28, 'Let a man examine himself.'" (Opp. T. X. p. 1941.) — Conrad Dieterich writes: "There are many Evangelical churches in which church-confession and absolution are not at all in use, as likewise at Giessen and in the principality of Hesse it is generally the custom. Likewise here at Ulm it is the custom that the preachers themselves do not confess to one another, but use the Lord's Supper without church-confession." (Bedenken, pp. 295, 96.) — B. Meisner: "None of our teachers has censured or condemned as an ungodly usage the kind of general absolution, such as is in use not only in the Reformed but also in some Lutheran churches. Since by God's grace we know that the word of absolution which a minister of the church there proclaims, in the name and at the command of Christ, to all penitents in general, is the very same word which the minister of the church in our churches applies not to all in general but to each one for his own person; and therefore we say that that absolution is true and effective, not this alone, but this only still above the-