# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 07 29_S188
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

188

opponents taken so and interpreted. As to the named Klügel, he had gone to Milwaukee in Wisconsin on his own initiative, had previously indeed attached himself to the Saxons, yet before his departure for Milwaukee had renounced the church body here, whose faction he therefore was, and with which the Saxons had absolutely nothing to do, all the less since Klügel had been earnestly warned by the Saxons not to accept the office among the discontented Lutherans of Milwaukee. Moreover, Mr. Pastor Grabau, in his assurance to confer with us, had set neither the one nor the other condition on account of whose non-fulfilment he now would not be able to come. Notwithstanding now that Mr. P. Grabau even then would neither answer our letters addressed to him, nor comply with an invitation to confer with us (the former P. G. had already declared in 1845, see Hirtenbrief, p. 90) and he with those of his party made it impossible for us to hear them concerning those separating from them, we have nevertheless from that time on received no soul that had formerly belonged to a congregation of the Synod of Buffalo into our union, or recommended persons for a call to such entire communities at their request and respectively introduced them among them, until after we had become clearly convinced through certain irrefutable written and oral testimonies (of which the former were in part the own handwritings of our opponents) that those separating were fully in the right, in that they had either separated themselves for conscience' sake because they could no longer confess the false doctrine of their former pastors and could no longer take part in their unjust, hierarchical practice, and because they had already complained in vain against it in their own church court and been dismissed, or in that they themselves had been put under the ban contrary to Christ's order and unjustly by their former pastors and thrust from the enjoyment of the means of grace. Far from the Synod of Missouri having eagerly seized the opportunity to injure its opponents by the reception of those separating from them, it was only the consciousness of the heavy responsibility which it would lay upon itself if it refused to spiritually tyrannized souls the help they asked, from fear of men and of temporal discord, that moved it to concern itself with the same. It has proceeded in this most conscientiously. It has repeatedly had to spend almost the greatest part of the time of its sessions upon examining the lawfulness or unlawfulness of the separation of those who turned to it. Days, yes weeks long it has at times held investigation, and more than once, for the sake of such members of our Synod as were not present at this and had either been worked upon privately by the opponents or been made doubtful and uneasy about its procedure by Pastor Grabau's truly furious attacks upon the Synod, the investigation of the matter, with repeated exact comparison of all the acts before us and with a renewed hearing of all witnesses accessible to us, has been taken up again in the sessions of the following year. But always the brethren who had been made uneasy had to confess at the close that the Synod could not have acted otherwise. How gladly would the Synod have withdrawn from all this business and shut itself off from those who had been scared away by the harshness of Grabau and his adherents! But how should it take upon itself the sighs and tears of the many manifestly honest souls who in their distress of conscience turned to it? How gladly would it also have discussed the matter in a Christian and brotherly way with Pastor Grabau and his party; but these were absolutely not to be moved to it, unless our Synod first did penance and condemned beforehand all steps taken until now by it in favor of those separated from P. Grabau as intentional ungodly factiousness! Nevertheless our Synod has again and again made attempts to conciliate P. Grabau and to move him to a brotherly conversation. This took place again in July 1852, when our Synod was assembled at Fort Wayne. There, namely, it made, on the ground of a unanimous resolution, through its Secretary to Mr. P. Grabau the proposal: "to confer with him through delegates orally, whether publicly or privately, as he might wish in this respect, in which also the determination of the time and place should be left to him." The answer was the old one; Mr. Pastor Grabau again refused the conversation: we should first do penance, recall all "factious preachers," and surrender the banned to him and deliver them over. Yes, a month later (Aug. 11, 1852) Mr. Pastor Grabau wrote, "by commission of the Church Ministerium of the Lutheran Church emigrated from Prussia," to our Secretary the following besides: "If the Synod of Missouri wishes to offer peace conversations, it may let them reach our Church-Ministerium in an orderly way and at the same time in suitable authenticated form: then the same will give the Christian answer to it. The previous private correspondence between Pastor Grabau and Mr. Pastor Habel" (our Secretary at that time) "the Church-Ministerium declares, on the part of the Missourian Synod, to be only a shameful private offer." — So our Synod repeated its proposal to the whole Synod of Buffalo in the following year. But the result was the same; now the whole Buffalo Synod refused the colloquy; in spite of its having been explained to it that between us it was manifestly not so much a matter of these practical cases as of a difference in doctrine, on account of which we naturally judge these cases differently from the Buffalo Synod, so that we could therefore be convinced of having done wrong to it, the Buffalo Synod, only in a discussion about the doctrine, among other things of the ban, the Church, church order, power of the preachers, etc., by the latter. When again last autumn a congregation which had separated from Pastor Winkler, now a preacher of the Buffalo Synod (already before his joining this Synod), on account of his conscience-burdening practice, called a preacher of our Union, the latter challenged Pastor Winkler: "to examine the matter together with him in common in the presence of both parties." Pastor Winkler, however, refused. — Our opponents showed continually that they shunned the light, that in the whole matter they were intent only on saving their own honor, and that they would rather let the whole church here bleed to death than take even one step toward peace that would not at the same time be a triumph on their side.

Thirdly, it is also by no means a mere "doctrinal controversy" between us, namely a simple difference in the doctrine of the Church and the Office, etc., such as has come to light, among other places, also among the Lutherans of our dear Fatherland! Far from our having, as has been represented, regarded a mere doctrinal difference as church-dividing, or taken it as a pretext to receive without further ado those separating from our opponents, who perhaps were with right banned manifest obstinate sinners; rather it is precisely the Buffalo Synod that has laid this weight upon the existing doctrinal difference and on account of it has caused and forced a church division. — Already ten years ago, as already mentioned above, before there was yet any thought of a sending of so-called "factious preachers," Mr. P. Grabau, after the Saxon preachers had laid their conviction before him concerning the doctrine of the Church and the Office, declared in his Antikritik not merely that he could not agree with them and held their doctrine to be erroneous, but among other things the following: that they still had "an unlutheran tendency" (Hirtenbrief, p. 51); that they "made out of Christian liberty an ecclesiastical unboundedness" (p. 55); that they "placed the congregation almost above God and His Word, under the pretext that Christians must make a distinction between right and false doctrine, and that they sinfully wished to misuse Luther's writings for this." (p. 56.) All on the ground of wilful distortions of purely evangelical principles set up by them. Yes, finally Mr. Pastor Grabau wrote in that Antikritik: "My heartiest wish would be that you might come to reflection upon your doings. Finally I assure you that I cannot recognize you as such Lutheran pastors