# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1905_S160
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

160 Proceedings of the 26th General or

"A committee did indeed try to support and prove the accuser's three charges by means of all sorts of writings of the accused, carefully selected for the purpose, but the accused were denied the right to speak to them, to give their own explanations, to submit other documents, to defend themselves.

"Were the accused erring brothers? The Central District as such did not, in its 1904 sessions, consider it worth the love or the trouble to convince them of their error, but instead convicted them in their absence.

"Were the accused in the right? Did they, like Luther once at Worms, have God's Word on their side? The Central District refused to hear them, and convicted them unheard.

"The Central District was not even competent to render judgment, since only the one party, the accuser, was permitted to speak, while the other party, the accused, was excluded from the debate from the outset. Yet by passing sentence on the accused without allowing the offered clarification, it has quite plainly held a one-sided, unjust court, rendered a false verdict, and thereby gravely sinned. Whatever appears about the Cincinnati matter in the Central District's most recent report, however convincing some of its contents may seem to many: none of it counts for anything in the eyes of an upright, Christian-minded person, once he learns that a trial was held here in which the accused were not permitted to defend themselves.

"Festus answered the accusing chief priests and elders of the Jews: 'It is not the Roman custom to hand over any man to be put to death before the accused has met his accusers face to face and has been given an opportunity to answer the charge.' (Acts 25:16.) Nicodemus asks the Pharisees: 'Does our law judge a man before it hears him and knows what he does?' (John 7:51.) Does not God's word apply to us as well: 'You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor, nor defer to the great, but you shall judge your neighbor rightly' (Lev. 19:15)?

"In view of this and other passages of Scripture, the undersigned now also ventures to ask the Reverend General Synod to annul, as one-sided, the entire judicial proceeding of the Central District from last year in the case of Pastors A. and E. v. Schlichten, and to grant the two pastors, convicted unheard,