# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1879_S24
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 24 —

at this time another ban should be set up; for many things come up that first require a cognitio [investigation]. Now we cannot see how the cognitio is yet to be arranged and ordered at this time." (Letters, etc., collected by de Wette. Berlin. 1827. IV, 388.)

The right of suspension or of refusal of the Lord's Supper every preacher has according to the saying of Christ: "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine." This right no man, no creature can rob us of; it is the conditio sine qua non [indispensable condition] of pastoral care. When Luther says he did not introduce church discipline in order not to make factions, he means to say: he did not want to be, by pressing for it, the cause of the whole of Christendom, which he had received from the papacy, splitting. We have nothing of the kind to fear: for we cannot split the Church, it is already split.

How Luther consoled himself over the lack of church discipline in the narrower sense of the word by having at least doctrinal discipline we learn from the following words of his: "The ban is commanded us, that if anyone sins against God's commandment and will not listen, that one bind his sin to him. . . . But the world (praise God!) is now so pious that one does not need the ban, although it is flooded with sins. For it is full of avarice, hatred, envy, deceit, yes, full of shame and vice. Yet there is no sin there that one could ban. Now everything is called honestly and respectably done, livelihood sought, everything must be holiness, and in the devil's name all have become pious. Therefore this our ban has no place any more on account of life. We cannot set up this ban. But if we cannot ban the sin of life, we do ban the sin of doctrine. The ban we have nevertheless kept, in that we say: The Anabaptists, Sacramentarians and other heretics one should not hear; ban and separate them from us. This is the most necessary thing. For where the doctrine is false, there life cannot be helped. But where the doctrine remains pure and is preserved, there one can well counsel life and the sinner. For there one has the absolution and the forgiveness, when it comes to doctrine. But if the doctrine is gone, one goes astray, and finds neither binding nor loosing. Then all is lost." (On Matt. 18:18. Erlangen edition, vol. XLIV, 94 f.)

That the civil authority was often to blame that church discipline did not come into force in Luther's time is attested by the following citation from his works: "Where it (the civil authority) hinders the Church's censure and punishment, and will not permit or let go the ban as Christ instituted and commanded it, but fosters, cherishes and so helps toward offences: then from God's handmaid it becomes the bondservant of the wretched devil in hell." (On Joel 3:17. VI, 2406.)