# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1853_S261
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 261 —

The Venerable Synod of Missouri objects that it, too, made no condition
in this *Colloquium* [formal doctrinal conference]; that it did not, for
instance, make it a condition that the banned members be first
readmitted by us. Indeed — sadly, you have not done that; but we have
demanded the readmission of the banned members among us, in Christ's
way — namely, that the Synod of Missouri, as a sensible, Christian
co-preserver of the Church, refer them to its own synodical court, which
it has unfaithfully abandoned, where they may either still seek their
right or let themselves be convinced, in penitence, of their wrong — and
that toward a blessed, joyful readmission. But now the Synod of Missouri
foolishly wishes to boast of having omitted exactly what it ought to
have done according to Matt. 18! — namely, that it demanded no
readmission of the banned members among us — and wishes to conclude
from this that we, too, should make no condition. Is that not
unreasonable and perverse?

Plainly evident now is

the curse that the Venerable Synod of Missouri brings upon itself, for:

By its refusing conduct it confesses that it wishes to persist in sin
against the eighth and fifth commandments toward its Lutheran fellow
Christians; that it will not release our excommunicated members from
its fellowship; that it will go on strengthening them through factious
preachers, and support, to their eternal ruin, all who flee wholesome
Christian discipline. It confesses that it does not wish to make right,
before God and man, the wrong — crying out to heaven — that it has
committed against us in the past and still commits now, and it holds
fast to the abominable principle:

"A Lutheran church authority may receive the banned members of another,
when there is a doctrinal dispute within the Church, and indeed for as
long as the dispute lasts."

Or: a dispute over points of doctrine within the Lutheran Church
immediately gives either party the right to receive the other's banned
members, and further to incite the other's members to separate from
their preachers, until the dispute someday comes to an end!

This reprehensible principle the Venerable Synod of Missouri will not
give up, but rather defends and holds fast to it as a sacred matter of
conscience, wishing to keep on practicing it — and will only let itself
be shown a wrong here or there in individual acts that have occurred
along the way. That is the soul-destroying delusion of conscience in
which the Synod of Missouri lives. But a Christian conscience demands
the public abandonment of such a principle, and a Christian conduct in
keeping with that abandonment.

Has not the Synod of Missouri now condemned itself, as one that sins and
is perverse, and lays waste the Church of God?

Nothing remains for us but to make known this abomination — which the
Synod of Missouri has practiced, still practices, and wishes to go on
practicing — to the whole Lutheran Church, according to Matt. 18: "Tell
it to the church."

May merciful God look upon this, rescue the afflicted, and at last put
bit and bridle into the mouths of all the haughty, unreconciled
layers-waste of Christ's vineyard.

Buffalo, June 21, 1853.

J. A. A. Grabau, S. M. [Senior Minister]
in the name and on behalf of the Church Ministerium.