# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1855_S244
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

244 The Union.

Here only forbearance toward an individual was exercised, which, as already noted above, is something quite different from granting equal legitimacy to divergent doctrine, as the Union presupposes. This Union, in which doctrinal disagreement is regarded as harmless, is purely an invention of modern times. But even if the Reformers had ever inclined toward it—which is not in fact the case—we would still have to reject it, for Luther is a friend, Melanchthon is a friend, but Holy Scripture is a greater friend. As long as the Reformed Church does not unite with us in the scriptural confession, we must, for the sake of God and His truth, reject every church union, and in particular communion at the Lord’s Supper as its most essential expression. Dr. Müller’s objection (p. 339) is incorrect, that communion at the Lord’s Supper may not be denied to the Reformed and to the separate churches generally if one has baptismal fellowship with them. We have no baptismal fellowship with the Reformed Church in which the children would be baptized indiscriminately by Lutheran and Reformed pastors. What occurs in emergencies cannot establish a general right. At most, one could draw the following conclusion: if baptism is received among the Reformed in emergencies, then in emergencies the Holy Supper may also be received among them, and both may likewise be administered to them. Of course, it would still first have to be investigated whether the administration of the one Sacrament had remained as faithful to its institution as that of the other. To pursue this further is no more appropriate here than to answer the question—which may also be raised—whether, for the gifts of the Sacraments actually to be imparted, not only the preservation of Christ’s words of institution but also the right confession concerning the Sacraments by the Church as a corporate person is required.

Professor Müller, to be sure, believes that the Union is altogether indispensable for the Prussian territorial church; it appears necessary to him for theological scholarship, for the clergy, and for the congregations (cf., for example, pp. 352–54). Well, if it has divine law against it and is wrong before God, then all these institutions will simply have to do without it. And let no one believe that the Prussian territorial church, as long as it remains afflicted with this Union, will ever attain rest and peace. Whoever sows the wind will reap the whirlwind: this is shown here as well, and the saying will continue to prove true. At the establishment of this Union, wrongdoing was drunk like water. The dragoon actions against Hönigern and the imprisonment of the faithful Lutheran preachers are still a small matter compared with it; far worse is the deed itself: that this Union—which, if anything ever was, was a work in which the Church should have acted after the most mature deliberation and in the fullest ecclesiastical self-awareness—was created by cabinet orders and, while the people slept, thrown around their necks like a noose. We judge no one; an individual among those who did this may have had—to