# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1858_S235
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Transfer of Preachers. 235

...than one could prove from that same commandment that it is wrong for a man to seek a neighbor's child in marriage by regular means. Indeed, by that same commandment the patrons could not previously have sought and requested their present pastor from another church either. Moreover, a pastor is not a bondservant of the secular authority (the congregation), but a servant of Christ and of his church.

If, then, God the Lord calls him elsewhere through the regular call of those who have the power and right to call in the church, this is not to be regarded as a forbidden desire, but rather as a lofty divine work — to recognize his divine providence in the governing and preservation of the church, and to follow his divine will obediently in every respect.

18. It belongs here, moreover, what the blessed Dannhauer says in his Theologia Conscientiae, II, p. 986: "A preacher who is sought after may, by the congregation to which he must be openly brought, not be secretly withdrawn from the congregation from which he may not be called away in secret, without the knowledge and consent of the territorial ruler in whose domain that congregation lies.*) Supposing that the one who is called is bound to the calling congregation by the condition of a stipend or a scholarship, he must nevertheless be openly requested back — without prejudice, however, to the honor of God and the welfare of the church: the second table yields to the first. If, for example, the preacher sought could be more useful to the congregation from which he is called than to the congregation to which he is called; and if the latter could do without what would otherwise be due to it, then the conscience of the calling party yields on the strictness of its right; but if not, then the conscience of the party from whom the call proceeds rightly releases the one called."

19. In short: one must carefully distinguish temptation from calling — the latter coming about from a blameless cause, or from the concurrence of all causes, when the one who calls has a right to call; when the one who is called is callable; when he is free of binding obligations; when the call takes place in a manner pleasing to God and gracious, without violation of the commandment that one shall not covet another's goods — so that the one called is to be requested, not seized by force, from the one who has a right to him — when, further, necessity presses, whether very great or absolute, ordained from heaven and bound up with danger to the general good, where one must yield to God and dissolve lesser bonds (for Moses did not sin, although he was a foster son of Thermuthis and had received benefits out of Egypt, when he fled and valued fellowship with Christ more highly than the treasures of Egypt), or

*) Among us this requirement would be met if the calling congregation gave brotherly notice concerning the vocation to the congregation from which a preacher or teacher is being called away.
                                                                          The Translator.