# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 05 28_S158
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

158

now following, from the hands of a Lutheran preacher and with a Lutheran congregation, actually go out of their former church fellowship and enter the Lutheran Church;

4. that the preacher under no condition let himself be hired and bargained for temporarily, but on the other hand also recognize the right of the congregation, should he, which God forbid, fall into false doctrine or offensive conduct and persist therein against all admonition and discipline according to Matt. 18:15-17, then to depose him forthwith;

5. that the congregation pledge itself to set up and maintain among themselves church discipline according to the order of the Lord Christ in Matt. 18:15-17;

6. that every co-calling member of the congregation be held to subscribe these points. It would also be a question whether the establishing and maintaining of Christian congregational schools, which on the average the preachers themselves conduct, ought not likewise to belong to those points, since experience shows that here and there there are also congregations of older settlers who despise the pastor's offer to keep a congregational school without any special remuneration, and send the children only to the English district school. But how pitiful are the prospects for the future of such congregations, which are so frivolous and godless in regard to the spiritual and churchly care of their children!

Secondly, the chairman made inquiry of the assembled brethren, in order of seniority in office, that each who had anything to bring forward, in which he desired the counsel of the Conference, should now do so.

The question was then raised:

1. Whether one must visit the sick even when not called? Answer. It would properly be fitting that every father of a house or lodging (in the case of unmarried boarders), upon the onset of a serious illness, should send at once to the pastor and give him notice of it, so that he might promptly fulfil his duty of visiting the sick. Nevertheless the pastor has to do the same if he hears of such cases of illness otherwise, even if he knows that his visit is not welcome. For since God smites the body only for the sake of the soul, the preacher, as physician of souls, especially in cases where the patient's faith of experience is not certain to him, has to see whether and how the suffering of the body works upon the soul of the sick person, whether he is thereby first more thoroughly softened and prepared for the wholesome working of the Law of God unto repentance: this is then to be set before him as kindly as earnestly, in order thereby to produce godly sorrow. But if this is already present, the visit of the pastor is just as necessary, in order, by presenting the evangelical promise of grace, to awaken and enliven faith all the more powerfully, and to comfort the soul with the certainty of the forgiveness of sins in the blood of the Lord Christ. But if the sick person already stands in faith, a visit of the preacher is also then fitting, in order to strengthen, by the comfort of grace in the divine Word, the faith that is frequently weakened or assailed in such a case.

With the above question the following was then connected:

3. Whether one must exhort the sufferer at the sickbed to the enjoyment of the holy Supper? Answer. Since it is unfortunately a common experience that one class of hypocrites and mouth-believers regards the holy Supper, in a superstitious and thoroughly popish manner, as a sure means by whose enjoyment one will infallibly come into heaven after death, while another class of these people, on the contrary, holds that death will promptly follow when the holy Supper has been received, the pastor should take good heed and make a distinction; for instead of exhorting such people to the enjoyment of the holy Supper, he should rather first earnestly set the Law before them and sharpen it upon them wholesomely, and also thoroughly rebuke this twofold superstition, where it becomes manifest. The evangelical enticement and inviting to the Sacrament is to be recommended only when the sick person has a sincere, though weak, faith.

4. How is the pastor to conduct himself when the grown-up children, who moreover have been confirmed by him, then also follow the parents who have fallen away and were previously admonished without fruit?

He has to instruct and admonish the latter with all earnestness and diligence, not to fear the parents but God, and in this case to lay to heart the word belonging here: We ought to obey God rather than men. In all other matters they should be subject to their parents, but where, as here, God's Word, faith and conscience are concerned, they should declare to their parents, as freely as humbly, that they would not and could not be partakers of their sin. Here it is a matter of confessing Christ and of being mindful of the saying: "Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven." Everyone who separates from an orthodox congregation against all better instruction, whether from malice and self-will, or from weakness and fear of men, does not thereby, according to imagined American freedom, part from this or that local congregation and be able, with impunity, by joining another to remain as before a "good Christian," but cuts himself off by such apostasy at the same time from the whole Church and from God Himself, casts His Word behind him, grieves and angers the Holy Ghost, falls from faith, sins grossly against love, and treads Christ's blood under foot and throws himself into the arms of the devil. Conversely, on the other hand, if children in such a case were also forsaken by the parents, the Lord would take them up, provide for them outwardly, and ground them all the more firmly in the Word and faith.

5. May a father confessor with a good conscience conceal the name of a thief who has confessed to him his hidden theft and has made restitution of it through him? Answer. Yes! for the pastor has to do not with the civil law in and for itself, but with the conscience of his parishioners. If, then, one of these awakens from his sleep of sin and confesses to his confessor, who indeed stands in Christ's stead, an earlier sin remaining hidden until then, it is a secret between the two, even if that earlier sin had been a murder. Yet, naturally, where it is possible, as for example in the case of theft, restitution must be made and the example of Zacchaeus followed. But if it is to be feared, in case, for example, the one formerly robbed is not a Christian-minded man, that a greater offence would arise if the latter learned the name of the former wrongdoer, then this must not be done in the restitution of the thing taken, even if the one formerly robbed insists upon it. He must then be earnestly admonished on account of his unreasonable demand.

6. Is it then absolutely necessary, after sufficient instruction, for Reformed or Union people who have received the holy Supper from a Lutheran pastor and with a Lutheran congregation, always to insist expressly that, after the declared acknowledgment of the Lutheran doctrine of the holy Supper as agreeable to Scripture, they also disapprove the Reformed as contrary to Scripture? Answer. Yes! because only through this disapproval, pronounced plainly and flatly, can one become certain of the honesty and sincerity of the preceding acknowledgment of the Lutheran doctrine; for with the traditional indifference, customary in the land, regarding purity of doctrine, and with the deceit and trickery of the heart, it is much to be feared that very many, in order to obtain the holy Supper, will indeed outwardly confess what is scriptural in the Lutheran doctrine, but inwardly nevertheless remain in the delusion that the Reformed is also not wrong. Thus, through the fault of the instructing preachers and through their fear of men and half-measures, they would keep an unclear and uncertain conscience about truth and error in matters of the doctrine of faith and the salvation of souls, which is certainly no small harm. If, on the other hand, as is fair, the Lutheran preachers, after sufficient instruction on the truth of the Lutheran and the error of the Reformed doctrine, and after adequate assurance that those instructed have sufficiently grasped both with the understanding, demand thereupon, along with the acknowledgment of the Lutheran doctrine as alone agreeable to Scripture, also the declared disapproval and rejection of the Reformed as contrary to Scripture, then they have at least done their part, partly to keep their own conscience