# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1850_S121
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 121 —

wanting, unlovingly and wantonly, to brand as heretics those who err in
them, these doctrines nonetheless stand in such close connection with the
most important doctrines, with the fundamental articles of our Christian
faith, that departures from them must, by their consequences, in the end
necessarily overthrow the very foundation of the faith.

Well then, my dearest sirs and brothers, let us now go to work in the
name of the LORD. May God's Word, this *unicus judex omnium
controversiarum* [sole judge of all controversies], be our judge too, and
indeed our only judge; the Church of God our witness; the glory of God
and the salvation of the redeemed our sole purpose; the awareness of
God's nearness, before whom our inmost being lies uncovered, heartfelt
and unfeigned brotherly love, unhypocritical humility and untiring
patience, the governing powers over all our words; God's promise to hear
the prayer for light and wisdom and to let it succeed for the upright, our
comfort; but far, oh, far from us be all bitterness and self-assertion: then
Jesus Christ, the invisible Head of His Church, will graciously be in our
midst and will gloriously carry through our work — which is, after all, not
ours but His work — and will soon turn our present sighing under trial
into joyful psalms of praise and thanks for His help.

Yes, "to the law and to the testimony" — let that be our watchword;
whatever may then happen, with this watchword each of us must be
victorious: for to be overcome by God's Word — that is to be victorious.
Amen.

Annual Report of the Präses of the Synod,
submitted to its sessions in the year 1850 in St. Louis.

As is my duty, I hereby render to the Reverend Synod the annual report
required by our Constitution:

I. Out of our midst, and away from the battlefield of the Church still
warring and sighing here on earth, and — as we have no doubt — into the
fellowship of the Church triumphant in heaven, there to receive the crown
of righteousness, four dear members of our ministerium were, in the past
synodical year, called away by death, by the invisible Head of His Church,
according to His counsel — wonderful to us, though holy — namely:

1. Mr. C. H. Siegmund Buttermann, formerly pastor at
Chester, Randolph County, Ill.; he died on July 12 of last year of cholera.

2. Mr. Gotthold Heinrich Löber, formerly pastor and professor
at the seminary for preachers at Altenburg, Perry County, Mo.; he died on
August 19 of last year as a result of a nervous fever.

3. Mr. August Wolter, formerly pastor and professor at the
seminary for preachers at Fort Wayne, Ind.; he died of cholera on August
31 of last year. Finally,

4. Mr. Lorenz Flessa, formerly pastor near Union, Franklin Co.,
Mo.; he died as a result of a lung ailment on the 2nd of last month.

Further particulars on the life, work, and godly end of these our dear
brothers have already been communicated to the Reverend Synod through
the "Lutheraner," to which I take the liberty of referring in this regard.