# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1855_S160
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

160 Excerpts as Contributions to Pastoral Casuistry.

He is bound to this by the prospect of the great reward, if he wishes to enjoy it; and it will certainly be granted to him if he conducts himself well and diligently in this matter. For it is written in Daniel 12: “The teachers shall shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who instruct many in righteousness like the stars forever and ever.” And in Matthew 25 Christ declares that on the Last Day he will say to his faithful servants: “Well done, you good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much; enter into the joy of your Lord.”

Therefore, whoever among the preachers wishes to escape God’s judgment of wrath and eternal damnation, and instead to be preserved in God’s grace unto eternal salvation and to be highly honored therein, must remain faithful to God and to every one of his parishioners with all his heart. Thus he must not only do his part publicly from the pulpit with great earnestness, but likewise in private, and he must not imagine that he can excuse himself before God by this or that. Rather, he must regard it as absolutely certain that, so long as even a single means remains by which the soul of the erring and fallen person can and may be sought, he can never be excused before God and his judgment unless he employs that means to the utmost and thereby does his part, so that, to the best of his knowledge and intention, nothing is lacking on his part.

If the pastor and confessor alone can accomplish nothing with the fallen person, he should enlist his colleagues or other devout Christians and church elders, refer him to the consistory, and use whatever similar means may be available to him. If all this is of no help, then, as Christ says in Matthew 18, he should tell it to the congregation; that is, he should accuse him publicly before the congregation and rebuke his godless conduct, in the hope that he might yet be brought to a different mind and won back by this means. But if this too is of no avail, then he should testify publicly that Satan has taken him captive in his snares to do his will, 2 Timothy 2, to whom he has surrendered himself, and that he has thus condemned himself, Titus 3. Therefore he is to be regarded as a heathen and a tax collector, Matthew 18. By doing this, the preacher has sufficiently done his part, so that not only can he be fully vindicated before God and the world, but he will also possess the honor and praise of a faithful pastor of souls before God and all Christian people, both in time and in eternity. November 26, in the year 1573.

(See: Thesaur. consil. by Dedekennus, Vol. II, fols. 745–48.)

Note. Simon Musäus is not to be confused with the great Jena theologian Johannes Musäus. The former was the latter’s great-grandfather and, after having been exiled ten times because of his zeal for pure doctrine, finally died as dean in the Valley of Mansfeld in 1582.