# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 01 03_S77
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77

of Buffalo in No. 16 of the "Kirchliches Informatorium." From this there appears to us to be no doubt about the fact; you yourselves in your first and second letters to the Synod of Buffalo have acknowledged it at least tacitly. You merely think that you can justify your procedure. But, dear brethren, permit us to set before you this, as our firm conviction, founded, as we do not doubt, in God's Word: your reasons are not tenable! Therefore the Leipzig Conference also had no hesitation in giving the two delegates of the Synod of Buffalo, at their request, in answer to three quite general questions, an opinion according to which your procedure certainly will not appear to be one that can be justified. You say: "The Synod of Buffalo is a dangerously erring one, which does not tolerate the witnesses for the truth with their testimony, and burdens the consciences by forcing upon them its errors and the practice founded upon them." Dear brethren, have you also proved the accusation? Who has pronounced the judgment that those of Buffalo are involved in dangerous error? What if that which you call error were recognized by others as the pure truth? It cannot be the dangerous error that they have freely adopted the Saxon and Pomeranian church order and exercise church discipline according to it. You yourselves also admit this, that their error is not yet subversive of the foundation. How can you defend it now, when you nevertheless receive those who were banned there, without referring them to their lawful church authority, and set up altar against altar in those congregations? What would become of the Church if that became the general practice? What would you say if you heard the same of the Synod at Buffalo? American freedom may let such a procedure pass as entirely permitted in civil terms; but it is not on that account right before God; it is indeed the undeniable ruin of the Church. And if the Synod of Buffalo were fully as dangerous, nay, much more dangerous than you charge it with being, you would nevertheless still have against you the word that no one shall meddle in another's office. So our Father Luther regarded the matter, and so every unprejudiced Lutheran Christian and theologian will have to judge. Take it kindly of us that we remind you of a word of Luther well known to you. "And this," so writes Dr. Luther in the exposition of the 82nd Psalm of 1530, on verse 4 (Erlangen edition of the Works, vol. 39, p. 254,) "we ought to hold fast, that no preacher, however pious or upright he may be, shall venture to preach to the flock of a papist or heretical parish priest, or secretly to teach it, without that same parish priest's knowledge and will. For it is not commanded him. And what is not commanded, that one should let alone. We have enough to do if we would perform what is commanded. It also avails them nothing that they pretend: all Christians are priests; but not all are pastors. For beyond this, that he is a Christian and priest, he must also have an office and a parish committed to him. The call and commission make pastors and preachers; just as a citizen or layman may well be learned, but is not for that reason a doctor, that he might lecture publicly in the schools, or take such an office upon himself, unless he be called to it." In quite the same manner Luther also declares himself in the larger Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians of 1535, on chap. 1, v. 1 (Erlangen edition of the Latin Works, vol. 1, p. 31): "Quare non est irruendum in alienam messem, ut diabolus incitare solet suos ministros, ut non vocati currant et praetexant zelum hunc ardentissimum, dolere sibi, quod homines tam misere seducantur, se veritatem velle docere, se seductos e diaboli laqueis eripere. Imo si aliquis etiam pio zelo et bona intentione velit sana doctrina liberare seductos ex errore, tamen exemplum malum oritur, per quod datur occasio impiis doctoribus intrudendi sese, per quos Satan postea occupat cathedram et maxime nocet." — But should it be objected: With the preachers sent by us into those congregations it is yet another matter, since they are called, then Luther (loc. cit. p. 32) also gives the right answer: Quod igitur doceo verbum, baptizo, administro sacramenta, jussus ac vocatus facio, quia vox Dei facta est super me, non in angulo, ut fanatici jactant, sed per os hominis, qui est in functione legitima. Si vero unus atque alter civis me rogarent, ut praedicarem, non debeo sequi privatam vocationem, quia per hoc aperitur fenestra ministris Satanae, qui hoc exemplo postea nocent, quemadmodum supra diximus. Quum vero me rogant, qui gerunt publica officia, ibi parere debeo. For you will hardly be able to prove that, where your preachers went into the congregations of the Synod of Buffalo, there were calling congregations present which would have been in the case that is supposed in the Tract. de Pot. et Jurisdict. Episc. §. 66, where it says: Itaque cum episcopi ordinarii sunt hostes ecelesiae et nolunt impertire ordinationem, ecclesiae retinent jus suum.

So we cannot do otherwise, dear brethren of the Synod of Missouri, than to judge that you have done that Synod wrong — we are willing gladly to assume in error and honest conviction, but wrong nevertheless. O, renounce this wrong; though it is not easy to go back here, do it nevertheless. The Lord will then certainly give His blessing. — You think that the right way to peace is a religious colloquy with the other Synod, without your first having to fulfill their demand that you release their excommunicated, and recall the preachers sent into their congregations? We do not believe that the Scripture passages cited, 2 Thess. 3, 14. 15, Rom. 16, 17. 18, make it a sin for those of Buffalo to hold a colloquy with you at once. But yet we, too, must hold that it would be the right thing if you first made good the wrong that was done, and first came to some sort of Christian agreement with them. From the fulfillment of this duty you will be released neither by this, that you declare you have not yet perceived how you had done them too close a wrong, nor by this, that you remark that you do not insist, either, that the others should first take back their own unjustly excommunicated; — for the first you ought fairly to see, and the last is a matter which you have no right at all to demand. If the religious colloquy were held without a preceding making good of the wrong, it might be said: There is a ban among thee, O Israel! (Josh. 7, 13) and the Lord might give as little blessing to your colloquy as He gave victory to the Israelites when they marched against Ai with the ban among them. But if you first make good what you have done in deed to the members of the Synod of Buffalo, and they ask your forgiveness for what they have done not rightly toward you in words, then there is every hope that the Lord will give grace and blessing and help toward the peace so sincerely sought.

O, that a right peace, well-pleasing to the Lord, might be concluded among you! May the gracious, merciful Savior cause this poor word also to work toward it. Dear brethren in the two Synods, be besought once more by us, with all the fervor of love, for the sake of the blood and wounds of the Lord Jesus, to do all that lies in you, that Satan may no longer have his joy in this ruinous spectacle, in which the Church of God rages in its own bowels! Consider what you will be able to answer, on the day of His coming, before Him who in His high-priestly prayer besought that His own might all be one, as the Father is in Him and He in the Father! John 17, 21. Let us not grow weary of calling upon Him that He will make true peacemakers (Matt. 5, 9) of us, and Himself here and everywhere be the true Author of peace, that His blessed kingdom of peace may come unto us.

Faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do it. To Him alone be the glory! Amen.

The 18th of October, 1853.

A. F. O. Münchmeyer, Superintendent in Catlenburg in the Hanoverian territory.

K. F. A. Kahnis, Doctor of Theology and regular Professor at the University of Leipzig.

W. F. Besser, Pastor of the Lutheran parish of Seefeld in Pomerania.

(For the Lutheraner.)

The Protestant Sou Collections (Cent Collections) in France.

They are a work which has been begun in the evangelical Christian community of this country only within a few years [illegible]nes, but in spite of all outward insignificance