# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1860_S38
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

38 Preface to the Volume of 1860.

connected with it) was a sin, would not give this up, and practiced church
discipline according to this teaching. (Loc. cit. V, 151ff.) Furthermore,
M. Siegmund Beerensprung, pastor at Tautenhain, was removed from
his office by the Electoral Saxon Upper Consistory in 1703, because he
stubbornly taught that believers who stood in grace had no need to come
to confession and obtain forgiveness anew; what one already had, one
need not first obtain; believers therefore also received nothing in
absolution. (Loc. cit. III, 127ff. Cf. Löscher's Unschuldige Nachrichten,
1707, p. 496.) Furthermore, M. Joh. Ge. Cuntius, pastor primarius at
Tönning in Holstein, was removed from his office in 1723 because he had
written for the Union and against the so-called compulsion to the
symbolical books and would not recant; wherefore his like-minded
associates highly celebrated him as a "martyr of union." (Ibid. 1723, p.
494f.; 1725, p. 760.) The same fate befell M. Ge. Klein-Nicolai, pastor
at Friessdorf and Rammelburg in the county of Mansfeld; he was
removed in the year 1706 because, first, he stubbornly maintained that
private absolution could be salutary only, 1, at baptism, 2, upon
readmission after excommunication, 3, in a particular special concern,
and 4, at the accomplishment of brotherly reconciliation; and because,
second, he taught that the unworthy received the body of the Lord only
in an offered, not an actual, manner. (Ib. 1706, p. 229f.) How our Church
has dealt with avowed chiliasts was shown in detail two years ago in the
"Lutheraner" (vol. 14, nos. 8 and 9) by the example of the minister
Georg Laurentius Seidenbecher, who, upon several opinions rendered,
at request, in the name of the whole theological faculty of Jena, by the
great and godly theologians Ernst Gerhard and Johannes Musäus,*)
and upon the judgment of the consistory at Gotha, with the approval of
Duke Ernst the Pious, was removed from his office on December 12,
1661.**) A remarkable

*) The last opinion states: "Should Seidenbecher, in such stubbornness, persist
even after this final single demand, we hold, in accordance with God's Word, the
oath of religion, and the practice customary in our churches, that he is to be
removed from his teaching and preaching office, and also, so that he may not
further propagate his erroneous delusion and give further offense, that he is to be
bound, by a corporal oath or at least by a signed instrument in lieu of an oath, to
propagate neither in writing nor by word of mouth, nor to instill in anyone, his
oft-mentioned doctrine of the thousand-year kingdom and whatever pertains to it,
nor to seek thereby to seduce anyone."

**) Another especially remarkable example of a Lutheran churchman removed on
account of his chiliasm is J. W. Petersen, superintendent of Lüneburg, who was
removed from his office in the year 1692 on account of this error, but who
afterward also fell into the abominable error of the restoration of all things and
into the most dreadful fanaticisms, and who, already in the following year, wrote
publicly: "Let no one deny the thousand years, except those whose torment is to
occur within them." See Heinsius' Church History, II, 815. Other chiliasts who
were removed, or at least placed under strict church discipline, are: Joh. Jac.
Zimmermann, first a repetent at Tübingen, later deacon at Bietig-