# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1879_S18
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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brings about the inner life of the Church, so the latter governs the outward. For the nature of man in this frailty is so constituted that he is not easily moved and kept in his duty by the mere setting before him of what is good, but that we here and there also need outward guidance or, when we have strayed, a censure and punishment, whether a milder or a sterner one, and finally, when we have become incorrigible, cutting off from the whole body by exclusion. These acts are called, in one word, church discipline. The stricter the ancients were in it, the more negligent have we become in it in this last time of the world. And this lack of discipline is the chief cause of the decay of our Church. This lack of discipline began already with our Reformation. For because the (Roman) clergy had previously exercised it alone, to the exclusion of the other estates, and indeed at their pleasure, mostly also in their own interest, often tyrannically, we fell in the Reformation into the other extreme and left to the preachers only the preaching of the Word, and what belongs to church discipline we left to the civil authority alone. So that the latter, in most places, thought it was losing something of its right if church persons exercised a censure either in the consistories or in any other way. But where a shadow of discipline still remained, the hands of the church persons, even in the consistories, were so bound by the political lords that gradually no discipline at all could be exercised. Upright theologians of our Church have complained continually of this our defect and have demanded the reintroduction of a stricter discipline. This was done in particular by J. Saubertus of Nuremberg in a special book in the year 1636, to which he gave the title "Zuchtbüchlein" [Little Book of Discipline], in whose first part he proves the very great necessity of this discipline from Holy Scripture, as also from the constant practice of the ancient Church and from the public doctrine of our symbolical books; in the second part he refutes 52 objections of the politicians against this discipline; and finally in the preface he adds corroborating testimonies of theologians living at that time: Chr. Schleupner's, J. Gerhard's, Joh. Schmid's, J. M. Meyfart's, J. Meelführer's, Lor. Lälius', J. V. Andreä's, G. König's, J. Weber's, and so forth. This little book has been praised by all who since that time have written on church discipline, especially Dannhauer in his "Gewissenstheologie" [Theology of Conscience]." (Instructio pastoral. p. 164 sq.)

Had church discipline remained in force in the Lutheran Church of Germany, the latter would not now lie in ruins.

And if we here in this country let it fail in this respect too, our Church too will fall; indeed, the corruption that followed in Germany the decay of church discipline would here become still far more dreadful, because most of the new immigrants come over with the opinion that this