# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1853_S249
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 249 —

— separated only for the sake of external order; and further, in that same
synodical report, resolves to seek reconciliation with the Synod of
Buffalo within the Church; and likewise confesses, in "Der Lutheraner"
No. 8, ninth volume, its own organ, that it has never regarded us as a
sect or a non-church — we admonish it to recognize how great and
dreadful is the sin with which it has, for almost nine years now, been
reaching into an office not its own, has presumed to sit in judgment over
us and over our members who stand under church discipline, has
repeatedly overstepped our synods as the proper authorities, has not
referred our erring and sinning church members who turned to it back to
their own synod — namely ours — but instead, dreadful to hear, has in
two synodical resolutions at Chicago and St. Louis made it a sacred duty
for them to separate from our pastors and call rightly-believing teachers
of their own — instead of directing them to their own synod and church
court, if our pastors had truly sinned or erred in their pastoral care,
whether in life or in doctrine — especially since the Synod of Missouri
itself later confesses that it stands with ours on a common confessional
basis.

Is it not a terrible sin here — against the Lutheran sister synod, against
our congregations, our pastors, and most of all against Christ's poor
straying sheep — that altar has truly been set up against altar within a
single Lutheran congregation, with the help of another Lutheran synod?
That it is the openly stated principle of the sectarian preachers to accept
any and every person who leaves us, which "Der Lutheraner" attempted to
justify by claiming that this must happen in order to act consistently and
logically?

How many souls have, for nine years now, thereby been led into
temptation in our congregations, withdrawing from wholesome church
discipline at every application of it and fleeing to the sectarian rival
altar, in order to defy their own pastor! How many have fallen! How
many, running from church discipline for open sins of greed, injustice,
irreconcilableness, unchastity, and other vices, refusing to hear their
congregations, have been immediately received, absolved, and given
communion by the sectarian preachers Bürger or Lochner, Ernst, etc.!
How many have, in these nine years, died in such irreconcilableness
toward personal adversaries, or toward the congregation, pastor, and
synod they abandoned — whom they themselves recognized as being in
the right, hating only the person of the pastor — dying unrepentant, and
in some cases in despair! How many more are still in such danger,
emboldened by the backing of the Synod of Missouri! We therefore
admonish the Reverend Synod of Missouri, now assembled, in the name
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, for the sake of its own soul and of
the many souls led astray, for whom our Savior shed his blood, and
whose blood he will require of the Synod of Missouri — the souls that
have been and will be lost through its uncalled-for, sinful, un-Lutheran,
and unchristian interference in the church discipline and spiritual
jurisdiction of another Evangelical Lutheran synod — that the Reverend
Synod turn back from this dreadful and ruinous path, for its own sake
and for the sake of our straying church members, and cease to insult us,
to treat us as a sect, and to kill us morally and our erring church
members spiritually; and thus, that it hear us and let itself be won over,
not to fail to take this fair, Christian path of reconciling itself, through
heartfelt —