# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1857_S297
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

By a Country Pastor.   297

certainly more apt to awaken joy than regret in every lover of the Gospel who also holds dear the divine command: Do not become the servants of men! It would be a very bad sign in his congregations if the patent of nobility of the clergy, torn up by Luther in godly zeal, were patched together again without trouble and exertion. Let him sigh, for all I care, with Goethe's parson: Holy dear Luther! you scraped the butter off your colleague's bread. May God forgive you that! Greater perhaps than his labor, however, is his vexation and wrath that, in spite of his scolding, cursing, and banning, those he has driven out do not perish without God's Word, without Sacrament, without burial, but rather refresh themselves in the meadow of the divine Word, and even hope to be saved! And for this misfortune of his the Missourians alone bear the blame. For that they shall and must and will be chastised. Can the divine one indeed remain indifferent while these Missourians deal out rights to the "children of men" (Inform. 5, 188), and even hand over to them the divine spark of evangelical freedom?! Raging and cursing do not frighten these people. By means of a church court the secular arm must be sent against them. Then "Might and Power" shall whisper into the ear of this Missourian Prometheus:

These are the fruits of your love of man: for
Not trembling before the wrath of gods, you have
Given rights to men beyond what was right,
And for this you shall keep watch over these wretched rocks
Upright, never bending the knee, without rest or slumber!
And many a sigh you shall groan and lament wholly
In vain: for implacably rages the mind of Zeus,
And every new ruler is severe and hard.
And your trespass demands penance toward the divine one,
That you may learn to submit to the sovereignty of Zeus
And to desist from your friendship toward men!

To make eyes at such a man instead of warning against him with indignation — after not only his presumptions and acts of violence in the church of Christ have become manifest, but also after God, in order to wake every conscience asleep in this matter, has allowed it to happen that he has repeatedly been caught and convicted of public malicious lying — that is, to say the least, a sad sign of moral slackness. The Missouri Synod, however, will, I hope, do its duty and denounce ever more earnestly and publicly this spiritual conjurer, who seeks to withdraw from believers the most precious pearls of the heavenly doctrine and to foist upon them instead the polished-up filth of his devilish teachings, framed with God's Word and pious, lovely speeches, and who in this business, with noise and raving against those who disturb him, abuses the symbols of the Lutheran church and the Lutheran office and name — so that everyone may learn to beware of him.