# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1851_S182
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 182 —

contribution of 2 shillings a month; but because the schoolteacher who had been hired led a disorderly life and nothing was done to remedy this scandal, he had refused to go on giving his contribution, and thereupon Pastor Winkler had refused him the sacrament. Since a warden of Winkler's congregation had then declared in a public meeting, "the Buffalo gang should clear out of the church," Mr. Herbst had stayed away from the congregation and no longer attended church, but had then, at the urging of several others,*) held a reading service [*Lesegottesdienst*] in his own house, because Pastor Winkler, when asked whether he agreed with that warden's statement, had given an evasive answer. Several months later Pastor Winkler had him summoned, through a warden, to appear in church at 10 o'clock the following Sunday. He went there and asked why he had been summoned. Pastor Winkler answered him, through a warden: "He will find out." At this Mr. Herbst left the church, and on that same day was placed under the ban from the pulpit, without the slightest admonition having been given him beforehand at any time.

It was thus shown that our Synod, in caring for those people, did what it had to do according to duty and conscience; for, 1. Pastor Winkler had shown himself to be a false teacher by his acceptance of Grabau's errors and his joining of Grabau's synod; 2. he had, moreover, expressly declared our Synod to hold false doctrine. How, then, could our Synod have directed those people, who sought refuge with us, back to Pastor Winkler, who himself admits that he is separated from us in doctrine? Would we not then have shown ourselves to be plain indifferentists?

The objection that those people were, after all, under the ban, and that even the ban of a false teacher is to be respected, was refuted as follows:

1. The people who issued the call to Pastor Schaller were not under the ban; they only joined afterward, and not without a prior investigation of whether they had been banned rightly or wrongly.

2. One must not judge the church by the people who happen to be the active parties in issuing a call; for these may perhaps not be children of God at all — one must rather look to the hidden children of God, even if they are only the children in the cradle.

3. Missionary Baierlein, when asked on his conscience, could not maintain that he had gained, from his own examination of the records, historical certainty that Christ's rule in Matthew 18:15 had been precisely followed in every case.

After these discussions the brothers Baierlein and Clöter withdrew what they had said regarding the first ground for separation. The second ground for separation was passed over, because the objection raised against it had already been examined earlier and found groundless.

As for the third point of separation, it appears from the president's reply of April 5 of last year how promptly the complainants applied for their part of the committee. Had Pastor Winkler, on the other hand, been in earnest about getting the committee formed, he would not have advised Pastor Crämer, in a letter, to go home, because he did not believe the committee would

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*) Their names are: August Manske, Wilhelm Busch, Rudolph Schäke, etc.,
who likewise were placed under the ban without any prior admonition at all.