# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1858_S111
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On Lay Elders or Congregational Overseers. 111

...to administer the sacraments rightly, doing away with disorders
connected therewith; not coming so late to church, not chattering,
laughing, quarreling, or continually sleeping therein; pronouncing
blessings, cursing, swearing, profanation of the Sabbath and of God's
Word; sending the young diligently to school and instructing them in
piety. Second table: respect and obedience toward parents, preachers,
and magistrates upheld; peace and unity in the congregations fostered;
the scandalous consorting of young people, gaming-houses, gluttony,
drunkenness, etc., to be done away with. — Form of procedure: since it
is a holy work, regarded as pertaining to salvation, the minister shall
begin with pio voto (with prayer); shall first take up the most urgent
and oldest matter from the record; shall deliberate on the offense in
the absence of the offender; shall consider again how it is to be put to
him; shall hear his answer in his defense; the magistrate shall collect
the votes, etc.; then the church officer shall perform his office and
remonstrate against the sin from God's Word — and finally the record
shall be read aloud." (Corpus Juris Evangelicorum Ecclesiasticum, by
Moser. Züllichau, 1738, II, p. 517–20. — Of these church censures, Ph.
David Burk gives further report in his "Collections for Pastoral
Theology," I, 420, 486; II, 798–826.)

A further notice concerning lay presbyters within the evangelical
Lutheran Church as well is found in the larger work: "General Biblical
Lexicon, by Daniel Schneider, Superintendent at Erbach. Frankfurt,
1730," folio. There, under the heading "Elders," it says, among other
things, as follows: "In the Lutheran congregations, particularly in the
Empire proper,*) in Hesse, and in more regions besides, one likewise has
a kind of church seniors or elders, who also often remain in such a
function for their whole lifetime, once they have been drawn into it,
and whose task it is to help see to good discipline, and also to report,
to the proper quarter for correction, whatever runs contrary to it."
Schneider then communicates an order of elders, as it was introduced in
the domain of the Lutheran Count Friedrich Ernst of Solms and
Tecklenburg. This order bears much resemblance to the Cynosura of the
Württemberg church. Noteworthy are the 11th and 12th points, which read
as follows: "Should it happen, against expectation, that in one place or
another the pastors and school officials themselves do not perform
their office as they should, then the seniors shall also keep good
watch over their office in churches and schools, and shall, in
particular, report it at once to the consistory if the pastors are
found to be tardy and negligent in visiting the sick; as also they
shall see to the school order, and take care that parents do not
willfully keep their children from school. — Likewise, should the
seniors know of anything offensive and scandalous regarding those who
wish to go to the Holy Supper, they shall report it to the pastors." — —

*) "Empire" in the narrower sense = the Upper Rhenish, Bavarian,
Swabian, and Franconian Circles.