# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1853_S248
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 248 —

— answered that, without authorization from our Synod, he could reply
only privately and thus not officially; that this was not the proper way
toward reconciliation, but that reconciliation had to be sought with our
whole Synod, as the path to peace had been set forth in No. 18 of the
first volume of our church periodical, the "Informatorium."

Further: that, following two subsequent private letters from Pastor
Habel to Pastor Grabau, our Reverend Church Ministerium also pointed
out, in a letter to the secretary of the Reverend Synod of Missouri, how
inappropriate and hurtful it was to our grievously injured congregations
that, beyond accepting their excommunicated members and sending
sectarian preachers to them, our Synod and its Ministerium should now,
in so important a matter, be shamefully passed over — or ignored as if it
did not even exist — while an offer of negotiation was extended only to
Pastor Grabau.

Further, that the Ministerium of the Reverend Synod of Missouri did
not deign to give our Ministerium any answer at all, but that only threats
and insults followed in the "Lutheraner" and its supplements:

Accordingly, the undersigned synod members, one and all, have
recognized it as their duty, in response to the wish and resolution
published in the sixth synodical report of the Synod of Missouri to leave
nothing undone by which peace in the Church might be restored, and in
response to the subsequent steps taken concerning us, to address an
answer and declaration to the Reverend Synod of Missouri, etc.,
assembled at Cleveland.

First, all the synod members testify before God and his holy Christian
Church that it is their unanimous prayer and wish to leave nothing
undone by which peace in the Church may be attained in a way pleasing
to God.

2. They must, however, just as unanimously and with one voice
testify that they do not recognize the path taken thus far by the
Reverend Synod of Missouri as the right one, but must acknowledge the
answer given by Pastor Grabau and by our Ministerium as founded in
truth — as also the later justification, read out to us, for refusing a
colloquy, in No. 14 of the second volume of our Informatorium.

3. After mature deliberation and repeated consultation, this unanimous
view has emerged, that the right way to peace is the following, which we
intend to pursue wholeheartedly:

That the Synod of Buffalo, now assembled, as representative of our
entire synodical body, offers reconciliation in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ, on his command and word: "Seek peace and pursue it," and "Be
diligent to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace," and "If
your brother sins against you, rebuke him between you and him alone,"
etc.

By this instruction, and thus in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, we
hereby again rebuke the Reverend Synod of Missouri — as our Synod did
in 1845, and as the synods of 1848 and 1851 likewise confirmed
according to our synodical letters — with the following.

Since the Reverend Synod of Missouri, even in its sixth synodical
report, acknowledges that we stand on a common confessional basis,
namely the symbolical books of our Evangelical Lutheran Church, and
only —