# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1850_S147
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 147 —

[stuck in false doctrine]. I answered him that he must first prove this. He
said he had no time for that now, could only negotiate with us before his
church council, but would have me called before it the following Monday.
This then took place, and so on Monday evening I went to his house,
accompanied by the three men in whose hearing he had accused me of false
doctrine, and by another impartial witness, Mr. Sommer, a mission
student. There, however, he would not allow at all that these three men be
present, and was also altogether unwilling to enter into proof of his harsh
accusation against me, but said instead that I had been summoned to be
told that I had no further business here. I declared to him and to the few
members still siding with him, who along with the council were present,
that this was unchristian and dishonest, and insisted that he must prove to
me wherein I taught falsely. But no one would hear me; indeed, Pastor
Winkler fell into such a rage that he shoved me three times on the chest
with his arm. After I had once more testified that a great wrong was being
done to me, but all words of kindness and earnestness were wasted on
Winkler, we went on with heavy hearts. To try the utmost, I wrote him an
urgent letter the following day, hoping he might perhaps have grown
calmer overnight. In it I asked him to grant me a conversation in the
presence of Mr. Sommer, who delivered the letter by hand, so that, with
God's help, I might bring him to a recognition of his great sin and
injustice toward me and of his insincerity in this whole matter. He would
not accept the letter at all, not even after Mr. Sommer had briefly
conveyed its content to him, but sent it back to me unopened. Since it had
now, after long patience, become most certainly plain that Mr. Winkler
would in no way allow the complaining part of his congregation, troubled
in conscience, to bring the matter before an impartial, orthodox
committee in which they could have placed their confidence, nothing
remained for them but to renounce him. This they did in due form, citing
three important reasons:

1. That Pastor Winkler had, for more than a year, on many
repeated occasions, been guilty of abominable abuse of the ban, in
that he acted in this not according to the divine order clearly
prescribed in Matthew 18, but arbitrarily, thereby showing
himself, as in other respects too, in many ways domineering,
contrary to 1 Peter 5;

2. That he did not accept the representations his congregation
members were obliged, for conscience's sake, to make to him, but
instead twisted them and presented them as an accusation being
brought against him.

3. That when they agreed to his proposal and wished to bring the
matter before an honest, competent, confessionally faithful
church tribunal and have it decided according to God's Word, and
had long since brought forward their part of the committee to be
formed, he thwarted every attempt to bring such a tribunal about,
and at last, after more than a month and a half of waiting, showed
himself fully to be one who will by no means come into the light,
because his deeds are evil.

(NB.) Pastor Winkler has also made himself guilty of the sin of
breaking the congregation's own constitution.
Signed, August Crämer.