# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1874_S17
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 17 —

blance of a thing is, however, no sure mark of its origin. More correctly we find, with Pfaff, the origin of the parishes in the age of the apostles. For in the first three centuries after Christ's birth, when the Christians still borrowed nothing from the heathen, definite parishes and church boundaries (ecclesiarum limites) were already established. Whoever traveled from one parish to another had need of letters of recommendation (2 Cor. 3:1–3; 3 John 12) in order to be admitted there to the Sacris [sacred rites]. Necessity and usefulness themselves demanded the establishment of parishes, because without parochial right no church order and discipline can exist. By agreement (ex pacto) and for the sake of good order, congregational boundaries or parishes were established after the pattern of the synagogues, of which each had its parishioners. But since it is certain that whole synagogues, of which there were very many at Jerusalem and elsewhere, accepted the name and teaching of Christ, nothing is more consistent with the truth than that those parishioners retained the parochial rights and that other Christians imitated their good order, though in such a way that the jus bannarium, or the right of compulsion and prohibition, was added only in the fourth century and later." (Institutiones prud. past. p. 69 sq.)

Deyling means to say: If ever in the Church there was talk of a parish, one meant by it a neighborhood around a church, and not some number of people whom a preacher has picked out at his pleasure, while another in the midst of them in the same place likewise selects a number for himself whom he serves pastorally. He rejects Böhmer's assertion (who was, by the way, a writer hostile to the orthodox Church) that the customs of the Christians had their origin in heathen practices. Deyling maintains rather that the parishes had their origin in the Jewish divisions of synagogues. For a synagogue in the cities included a number of streets. The Christians had therefore already practiced this earlier, and merely transplanted such a division into the Christian Church. —

As to Mosheim, he writes: "From the purpose of the teaching office and from other grounds and reasons it can be concluded with complete certainty that the so-called parochial or pastoral right [Pfarrrecht] is of divine right, as old as the Church, and already held in the first congregations at Jerusalem. Acts 2:46; Rom. 16:14, 15. At least the so-called pastoral right is juris divini imperfecti (of imperfect divine right). Because without it the cure of souls cannot be carried on and the office of the servant of the Gospel cannot suitably be administered in all respects. . . . To the pastoral right belongs: 1. that the congregation of Christ be divided into many smaller ones and each have its own place of assembly, which is called a parish. It seems as if even the first church had been divided into such parishes. Peter converted many thousands at Jerusalem. These could not possibly assemble in one house, and the congregation there must therefore have been divided into certain parts, which assembled in different places and had their presbyters and deacons. Since there were seven deacons at Jerusalem, it is to be supposed that the congregation consisted of seven parishes; yet this is a conjecture, though it comes fairly near to a proof. Acts 2:46. . . . So it was also with the Roman congregation. Paul speaks in Rom. 16:14, 15 of a congregation that assembled at Aquila's. That must therefore have been a particular congregation out of the great Roman one. 2. It belongs to this that the particular congregations have their own teachers, who conduct the divine service and administer the sacraments; and