# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1896_S15
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1896. 15

care is to be taken that the baptized, or those who are to be baptized, are also taught or will be taught. For in the same context He says: "and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." Therefore our practice of Baptism is also correct insofar as in infant baptism we take care that instruction is added to Baptism, not as the Jesuits do, who travel through heathen lands, sprinkle the multitude right and left with water and then count them as baptized Christians. Thus our practice of Baptism is governed by God's Word, by Christ's own mouth, in His instruction to the Church for all times.

Our practice of church discipline is likewise governed in God's Word, and indeed first with regard to the cases in which it concerns sins that only one person knows, or only very few. There we have Matt. 18 as the rule by which we are to act. We act rightly if we first of all see to it that brotherly admonition and reproof are in use in our congregations; for we have here an express command of Christ: "If your brother sins against you, go and rebuke him between you and him alone." It is not left to us whether we want to swallow what our neighbor has done to us and let it pass, in order rather not to start a quarrel and not to have a disturbance; but here we have a divine norm: "Go and rebuke him," and whether you are ever so gentle, and whether you are ever so timid and hostile and hateful toward all disturbance, all that by which you might direct your discretion, whether you would do it or leave it, has nothing to say here; for here it is a matter that is not left to your discretion, but your action and the practice of the Church and congregation is established by God's Word; if it is so, then it is right, and otherwise it may not be; and if it is otherwise, however well meant, it is nevertheless wrong and perverse. — Accordingly our practice of church discipline is right when we do not suffer that sins which are to be dealt with between four eyes, or before two or three witnesses, be brought into the whole congregation. For Christ, the Lord, has forbidden it and commanded the contrary and established for all times that in the case of such sins the procedure is to be as He prescribed in Matt. 18. — Then there are, however, sins which may even be attacked, punished and condemned in the assembly of the congregation, and one may not say: "You must first discuss this between four eyes, must observe the first step, and then before witnesses, and so observe the second step, and only then may you come before the congregation." For that would mean applying a norm to a case for which it is not intended, measuring something by a standard by which it is not to be measured. For Matt. 18, insofar as the first and second steps are in question, does not deal with sins which already all