# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1853_S257
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 257 —

...renounce their pastors and churches — or would have had to. For not
one of all these factious people separated from us out of a recognition
of the truth, but out of sheer delusion and mistaken accusation, as soon
as they came under admonition and Christian church discipline for some
sin. To quiet their uneasy conscience they then often hypocritically made
use of Missouri's doctrinal views, as is well known to all Christians
among us who took part in the admonishing. Where, then, are the
dangerous errors on account of which the excommunicated would have
separated, or would have had to separate? The doctrine of the Church and
the preaching office [*Predigtamt*] cannot be the dangerous error, for
your own friend Löhe shares it with us, as does now the whole reawakened
Lutheran Church in Prussia. And it is indeed from that Church that we
have received our Christian church discipline. Still, we would gladly
hold Christian colloquies, other things being equal, on these now
so-called "burning questions of the church."

5. That the Venerable Synod of Missouri claims that those we have
banned are witnesses of the truth, able to testify that we had wished to
force our supposed errors upon them, and that we had burdened their
conscience with a practice founded on those errors, comes down to the
same error mentioned above: for the accusing party cannot be accepted as
a witness of the truth on the strength of common rumor. *Veritas ex
vulgo rumoribus aut maledictis inimicorum colligi non potest* ["Truth
cannot be gathered from popular rumor or from the slanders of enemies"],
as the Augsburg Confession rightly says. In the year 1841 the Missouri
preachers still made brotherly inquiry with us; this has since ceased on
the basis of Bürger's slanders.

Accordingly we exhort, finally and for the last time, the Venerable
Synod of Missouri to establish reconciliation with us by abolishing its
unjust and self-assumed judgment seat, releasing our excommunicated
members from its fellowship, referring them to our own synod, whose
ruling they have spurned, and seeking, on this open road of
reconciliation, doctrinal peace with us.

Should the Synod of Missouri fail to heed this, our final and last
exhortation — as it has indeed already indicated in its answering
letter, that it regards our exhortation merely as an accusation of
impenitence and will pay it no further regard — then we would have to
tell and declare to the whole remaining Lutheran Church the sin
committed against us for so many years.

With all due respect, and with the wish that God the Holy Spirit may
open the heart and eyes of the Venerable Synod of Missouri.
J. A. A. Grabau,
Buffalo, June 6, 1853. on behalf of the Synod.

"The Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, etc., in reply to the
Venerable Synod of Buffalo's letter of the 6th of this month, again
briefly expresses its deep regret that the latter has once more declined
the *Colloquium* [formal doctrinal conference] proposed by the Synod of
Missouri.

It would indeed be sufficient to refer the Venerable Synod of Buffalo to
our last letter of the 3rd of June, to convince it of the impropriety of
its grounds against our proposal, since it has brought forward
essentially nothing new against it; yet the Synod of Missouri feels
compelled to point out once more to the Venerable Synod of Buffalo how
unreasonable its demands are, and how reasonable the offer...