# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 07 29_S189
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

189

can, who still hold in earnest to God's Word and to the Symbols of the Church. The damage which you do with your criticism" (of the "Pastoral Letter") "you will have to answer for, unless in sincere repentance you again confess your errors. God help us, that, if you do no penance, we may be able, by virtue of our holy office, to resist your false, unchurchly spirit openly and joyfully. We shall then, as it appears, have to repeat in public conflict against you much that we have already fought through against the united, unchurchly liberalism in Prussia." (p. 56.) Thus, we repeat it, Pastor Grabau regarded our difference in doctrine, and thus he wrote already ten years ago, with the express written confirmation, appended, of the pastors united with him, as early as the 12th of July, 1844, before any so-called sectarian preacher had yet been sent out by us, which only later, when Pastor Grabau's false doctrine had become manifest, was designated by him as the root cause of all the discord! However gladly we wished to treat the difference in doctrine as something that could not divide us, and which therefore also could not become a reason for refusing to receive those who were separating themselves from the other communion, Pastor Grabau and his followers were so little willing to regard it so, that they declared our doctrine a falling away from God's Word and from the confession of the Church, called upon us on that account to repent, and threatened us with public testimony against us! To a new letter of justification on this matter from the Saxon pastors, Pastor Grabau no longer deigned to give any answer, until finally the whole Buffalo Synod (consisting at that time of four pastors), after having in its printed first synodical report now also publicly declared the Saxons to be false teachers, sent them in June 1845 a short, dictatorial demand for recantation. But after the Saxons had twice invited Pastor Grabau and once Pastor Krause to an oral conference and, respectively, to a settlement of the controversy, namely in the years 1846 and 1847, there then appeared the second synodical report of the Buffalo Synod, of the year 1848, in which already on the title page "Löber, Walther etc." are named as "the Missourian protectors of sectarians." Yes, in it it is now said, among other things: "Accordingly the present Synod judges unanimously that the preachers Walther, Löber and their associates live in false doctrine, concerning the holy ministry and the call to it, concerning Church and the Office of the Keys, church government and spiritual priesthood, and that from these false doctrines and errors public sins and outrages have proceeded and still proceed, from which they, in spite of all the explanations and admonitions given, which have gone out to them from our side for 5 years, do not desist; wherefore we must further declare that they are wilful, proud sinners, who in spite of all Christian address have increased in sins and have grown strong in outrage. We must therefore hold them to be wilful false teachers and public, obstinate sinners, and, according to God's Word, are to avoid them until they turn, repent and honestly seek reconciliation with us." (pp. 17, 18.) Herewith, then, the Buffalo Synod put under the ban publicly and solemnly before all the world not only the Saxon preachers named by name, of whom the one was at that time President of the Missouri Synod, on account of their alleged false doctrine and the godless works that flowed from it, but, under the designation "and their associates," the whole Synod of Missouri; which is also called "Ahab's Synod," "the Chicago wicked slander-college," "Synod of abomination," especially on account of its judgment concerning the then Pastor Krause; who, however, not only himself later publicly confessed and recanted what was laid to his charge, especially his unjust bans, and begged our pardon, but of whom even the Buffalo Synod itself later declared that he had really been a hypocrite and tyrant. In the said second report of the Buffalo Synod it is further said of the Missouri Synod: "Thus, however, saith God the Lord concerning these rejuvenated Stephanists, Zeph. 3:3: Her judges are evening wolves; they gnaw not the bones till the morrow. Her prophets are light and treacherous persons." (p. 35.) Further: "We mean by this that it is very good if everything unrepentant remains in this One Ahab's Synod, so that its lying powers and its tyrannical unity may become ever more manifest." (! p. 146.) "Bürger, Ernst, Keyl etc. are, according to 1 Pet. 4:15 and John 10:1, no Christian preachers, but only ringleaders of sects in Satan's service." (p. 149.) "In this temple of Babel it resounds and roars: No obedience in outward church matters, for it does not belong to salvation! .. The Lord rebuke thee, Satan! We will have no such Beelzebub-like liberty." (p. 157.)— In July of the year 1851 there finally came out the organ of the Buffalo Synod, the "Informatorium," in which Pastor Grabau and his followers have now raged and raved quite properly against the Synod of Missouri. In it it is said not only: "According to this, Professor Walther and those who adhere to him are certainly heretics" (vol. 2, p. 23), but there are given therein to the person named and to the members of the Missouri Synod all conceivable abusive names. Yes, when it was put to Pastor Grabau whether he could not at least think that what he regarded as shameful, wilfully godless protection of sectarians might have come from an erring conscience, he answered already in the first volume of his "Informatorium": "Truly, one would have to suppose such an erring conscience only in the devil himself." (p. 38.)— We think that from such things one may see sufficiently what is to be thought of Pastor Grabau's having complained in Germany that the difference in doctrine, which might have been settled in brotherly unity, was wilfully regarded and treated by us as church-dividing; whereas it was precisely we who did everything to settle the matter in brotherly fashion, but Pastor Grabau and his followers always, during our controversy, regarded and treated us as heretics, and so themselves compelled and forced us to take up the cause of those whose consciences could not endure this eternal damning, reviling and abusing, and who therefore sought with us the unabridged enjoyment of the means of grace, and whom we, if Pastor Grabau had not blasphemously branded our pure evangelical Lutheran doctrine as heresy and, in spite of the difference in doctrine, had admitted brotherly and churchly fellowship, would have earnestly referred back to their own pastors, though in our conviction gravely erring. We think also that, in the case of such godless public exercise of the ban upon us, it has already been sufficiently proved how frivolously, how unjustly, how popishly Pastor Grabau wields that church discipline which a poor sinner ought to exercise only with trembling hands.

As a special question, Pastors Grabau and von Rohr have laid before the brethren in Germany this further one: "Whether, in the said doctrinal controversy, the one Synod has a right to set up counter-altars in the congregations and parishes of the other?" Against the accusation hereby pronounced against us we believe we have already justified ourselves by what has been said above. Yet we take leave to remind of the following in reply.

First, we have never, not in the remotest degree, ourselves taken a step to draw away from the Buffalo Synod even a single soul; all who have been provided with God's Word by us have turned to us unsolicited for help in their spiritual distress, and only the love of Christ and of the souls redeemed by Him has moved us,