# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1896_S37
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1896. 37

and proper manner, to diminish and to increase, as is at any time regarded as most useful, most helpful and best for good order, Christian discipline and decency, evangelical well-being and the edification of the churches." So also a congregation cannot make what it has itself instituted binding on the consciences of its members. That he who has sinned must do penance is certain; for God the Lord has fixed this clearly and plainly in His Word for all times. That this penance is also to be made known and the offense given is to be removed, Christ, the Lord of the Church, has set up as a demand for all time. But if a congregation had, say, introduced an order that penance must take place in a certain form — say, so that the announcement that the sinner is penitent and asks forgiveness of those whom he has offended is to be proclaimed from the pulpit, while the sinner steps before the altar in the sight of the assembled congregation — then the congregation cannot treat this in the same way as the sentence: If your brother sins against you, etc., cannot bind the conscience to keep this order, and cannot treat one who does not keep this order as one who has sinned against a commandment of God, and take him into church discipline, and, if he does not submit, put him out. That will not do. There the boundary must always run clearly and sharply between the two, the one which God has commanded and the other which the congregation has ordained.

But of course a Christian congregation is not now to make out of this truth a cloak of wickedness, so that all human order might now be arbitrarily put out of sight by anyone and the congregation allow a licentiousness to break in on this free ground. The congregation has the right, in the things which Christ has left free, to order and to change; but that is left to its discretion, not to an undisciplined, planless, boundless caprice. Also for what the congregation does on this free ground, it must give account, as account must be given for every word, not only when it is spoken from the pulpit. There it is to see well how it makes use of its right. Therefore the Confession also says, "that the Church of God in every place and at every time has authority, according to its circumstances, to change such ceremonies as may be most useful and edifying to the congregations of God." But when it now holds what it has ordained to be the most useful and edifying for the time, it should nevertheless guard again, because this is the most useful and edifying, against treating it as standing with divine validity. Even if it is ever so useful and edifying and for the time nothing better can be devised, this measure does not by that move out of the position of free things into the realm of the things definitely prescribed by God.