# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1874_S27
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 27 —

are committed to him. But how did the apostle Paul act in this? He writes in 2 Cor. 10:15, 16 thus: "Not boasting of things without our measure, that is, of other men's labors; but having hope, when your faith is increased, that we shall be enlarged by you according to our rule abundantly, to preach the gospel in the regions beyond you, and not to boast in another man's line of things made ready to our hand." Herewith the apostle declares at least this, that he had a definite rule for his apostolic office; where this rule did not apply, there he did not go. — Whoever therefore thinks that this Thesis is meant to say that, if there is no territorial delimitation (verhanden [sic]) present, God's hand is so tied that everything must necessarily and inevitably fall into disorder, is mistaken. Of all this there is nothing in the 5th Thesis. For by the first reason it is by no means denied that God can prevent everything. We know well that a man can drink poison and God can nevertheless keep him alive. Nor is it, according to the second reason, a compelling inference: Every preacher therefore lives continually in sins. It is quite false to say: whoever does not have the order and does not use it, sins. Our conditions are now only a cross, but not sin. We did indeed get into them through sin. But now that we are in them and cannot easily get out, much as we would like, we, as it were, move the LORD our God to pity. But if we wished to work with might toward this disorder remaining, then sin would indeed come in. Whoever despises the order sins. Our preachers must therefore bear these conditions as a great cross until God helps us level everything. We will certainly now be all the more careful not to offend against the matters stated in point 2.

But since the difficulty undoubtedly lay partly in the fact that it concerned only a human order, attention was drawn to the fact that it is a human order similar to the order of Sunday. This too is not from God but was instituted only by the Church. But had it not been instituted, the Church would not have appointed a definite day, recurring at equal intervals, for divine service; if it were held rather, for example, thus: that on some day or other the Christians assembled for divine service and then determined the next service only afterward, nothing else could possibly arise from it than disorder, confusion and perplexity. The observance of Sunday is evidently thoroughly necessary, wholly in accordance with God's will, and yet withal only an order of the Church.

But since by no proposals of amendment were the misgivings and difficulties on the other side removed, and since it was a matter here not of a doctrine of the divine Word but only of external arrangements and orders, and since one did not, so much over the Thesis set up as over the grounding of it, completely

[Handwritten pencil marginal notes in the right margin, largely illegible: beside "preach the gospel also ..." perhaps "bestimmte Regel" [?]; beside "But if we wished to work with might ..." an illegible note; beside "But since the difficulty undoubtedly ..." perhaps "Erkl. Sonntagsfeier" [?]. Underlined by hand in the print: "Whoever despises the order".]