# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1896_S20
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

20 Proceedings of the sixteenth convention

"You only have to give the parson five dollars, then they will do anything." Is that not an offense? Truly, our office, especially in this country, is not in a position to take it lightly when disgrace and disrepute accrue to it! And further the unbelievers say: With Christianity and with being saved it seems not to be so dangerous after all; he never went to church, and now they have buried him in a Christian manner, have sung hymns in which the hope of salvation was expressed; the pastor has given a moving speech, they have prayed too — he will probably have been saved as well; and if he could be saved like that, why should I now make great exertions to be saved in some other way? And the weak in the congregation are disturbed by the thought whether it can be justified that one sings to the grave, preaches to the grave and prays to the grave, in a churchly, Christian manner, an openly unbelieving man who was also known as an unbeliever, when Scripture says: "When a wicked man dies, hope is lost." Whoever therefore takes it very lightly there and does not ask who is to be buried, or even buries whatever comes along, so long as it is dead, and if a congregation in the end even demands such a practice — for often it is the congregation that takes it very ill of the pastor when he brings enmity upon them by refusing a Christian burial — has there a practice contrary to Scripture, a violation of the norm which God, the Lord, has given in His Word for all cases where we have to act in churchly manner in burial matters.

In passing to the second half of the second thesis it must still be pointed out that it is not already governed by God's Word whatever in church practice has apostolic precedent, for which we have the example of the early Church. That deacons were chosen in Jerusalem does not say that we must now also choose deacons everywhere in our congregations, because the divine norm made it necessary, because without this institution we would not be conducting ourselves according to God's Word. The apostolic precedent, the example of the first Christendom in apostolic times, is of course important enough to us that we consider it, that we weigh whether what happened there might not also be beneficial for us; and if we establish something after an apostolic precedent, we know that it is not contrary to God's Word. But that the norm by which we must conduct ourselves is thereby given, one may not impose upon the congregation. Still less may that be made valid as a norm for the Church which was prescribed in the Old Testament for the Old Testament church. Thus in the time of the Reformation here and there, where Reformation was practiced not according to God's Word and out of God's Spirit but with enthusiasm [Schwärmerei, fanaticism], they wanted to impose the Old Testament yoke upon the New Testament Church. Yes, precisely that was a very prominent