# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1879_S17
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 17 —

There are very many so-called Lutherans who think that a characteristic of the Reformed is strict church discipline, and a characteristic of the Lutherans, on the other hand, no church discipline or a very mild one. But that is a thoroughly false view! How much Luther already thought of the exercise of church discipline we see from this, that at the colloquy for concord held at Wittenberg in the year 1537 between the German and the Swiss churches he said to the Swiss that in church discipline things stood better with them than in Germany. The reason why Luther did not press still more for the carrying out of church discipline lies not in his not having recognized its salutary effect, but in his having such heavy struggles for doctrine that they left him no time for the organization of the Church. He constantly complained that there was no church discipline. It is true that our Church, in the passage already cited against the Schwenkfeldians, does not make the truth of the Church dependent on church discipline, but it does make the condition of a congregation dependent on it. Is it not then dreadful to want to charge our Church with holding nothing of church discipline? Here we should also consider how severely Paul rebukes the Corinthians for their neglect of church discipline, so severely that afterwards he could hardly comfort them again. A congregation that has no church discipline sins gravely, and a larger church body should not suffer having congregations that do not want to exercise church discipline. For the honour of God, for the welfare of the whole Church and of the individual souls, we should press that it be exercised, and not let it be treated as something incidental. Our Confessions bear unambiguous testimony to this.

In the Apology it says: "So also our preachers always state besides that those shall be banned and excluded who live in public vices, whoredom, adultery, etc." (Art. XI. Of Confession. p. 165.)

And in the Smalcald Articles: "The great ban, as the Pope calls it, we hold to be a purely worldly punishment and it does not concern us ministers of the Church. But the small, that is, the true Christian ban is that one shall not let manifest, obstinate sinners come to the Sacrament or other communion of the churches until they improve and avoid the sin." (Part III, Art. 9, p. 323.)

Whoever has subscribed our symbolical books has also subscribed these two passages, and it is a great defect when a congregation does not exercise church discipline. How necessary the exercise of it is, is also attested by

Joh. Fecht, died 1760, who is regarded by many as one of those who had urged church discipline less strictly. "The whole edifice of the Church of Christ rests on two supports: on the presentation of sound doctrine and on the maintenance of church discipline. As the former