# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1858_S225
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lehre und Wehre.

Volume IV.    August 1858.    No. 8.

-On the Transfer of Preachers.

(Continuation and Conclusion of the excerpt from Joh. Ludw. Hartmann's Pastorale Evangelicum, Nuremberg 1697.)

We have shown how a duly called servant of the church may pass from one parish to another, in that we have distinguished between a change sought out of one's own presumption, and one that has come about through legitimate authority — which latter alone we approve; between a change that a man has sought and solicited for himself, and one offered of its own accord, resting on lawful grounds and not on ambition or personal advantage; between hearers who love their pastor and those who do not love him; between the negotiation that precedes a call and the call itself.

1. This is confirmed not only by the different reward spoken of in 1 Tim. 3:13, but also by the different gifts of Rom. 12 and 1 Cor. 6, and the different talents of Matt. 25 — chiefly because God punishes the rebellious, Matt. 25 — and if a man may desire the office of a bishop, 1 Tim. 3, he may all the more accept it once it is offered him.

2. To this is now added the apostolic practice, in that Paul transferred Timothy and Titus — who, like us, were called mediately — from one place to another for the greater benefit of the church: Acts 17:15, 1 Thess. 2:2, Acts 18:5, 1 Cor. 4:17, 1 Tim. 1:3. Let us add, further, from canon law, the consensus of the ancient church, from the letter of the Roman bishop Anterus, who lived in the third century. He says: "Know that transfers of bishops may take place as the common benefit and the common need require, but not as the will and lust for power of any one man may desire. Saint Peter, our teacher and the first among the apostles, was transferred from Antioch to Rome for the sake of usefulness, that he might be of more use there."*) Eusebius, too, was transferred by apostolic authority from a—

*) Even though it is very uncertain, indeed improbable, that Peter was ever bishop of Rome, the passage above nonetheless shows how firmly convinced the church of the third century was that preachers might be transferred from one congregation to another.
                                                                          The Translator.