# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1860_S87
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Present Tension among the Separated Lutherans of Prussia.    87

did not understand the matters, that they must especially watch the pastors, as if these had some quite special secrets in mind. These, of course — if only someone knew how to play cleverly on that string (and it was often enough played rather crudely) — were swayed now this way, now that. The one somewhat firm point of reference, then, was the Supreme Church Council, and all credit must go to its diligence and good will. It presides in fact, it has the laity on its side and many pastors likewise from the outset; and finally, in the haste, it is left to carry out precisely the most important matters according to its own judgment. Besides this it alone has the drafting of the synodical resolutions in its hands." That is not exactly a strong letter of recommendation for the synods, and to whoever is surprised at this Diedrich replies: "They should remember that among us anyone who has no idea of the church struggles of our day can be elected to the synod by a majority vote, and we have all too often experienced that the most important matters, on which even pastors could hardly judge so easily, are very quickly settled by majorities, only to go on burning afterward in many a conscience." The consequence of this was: "Now the course was steered right, now left, at one and the same synod, even on a single day"; and Diedrich describes the other consequence in these words: "Hence the often-heard saying among us: the best thing about the synodical resolutions is that no one knows them rightly and observes them even less. The thing is sadly true, but seen in God's light it is irresponsible."

So here too, in a fellowship of nothing but believers, is the general lament over synods and the complaint that the synods are either a drag on the wheel, or at best the fifth wheel on the wagon. All the more reason to be glad that there is still a Supreme Church Council, without which everything would fall apart and every congregation would finally stand for itself. Yet, as has been said, Diedrich wants neither the synods, because they accomplish too little, nor the Supreme Church Council, because it can accomplish too much, nor either of them, because both are mixed with laymen. But what will he put in their place? The matter will then become very simple. The few congregations that secede with him will be sifted hard; he himself supposes that they will remain very small. The like-minded pastors, who alone hold the government, will join together into a kind of synod or conference, where they discuss their affairs, take counsel and give it, and otherwise each does as he pleases, at his own risk. Synodical resolutions will not be made again. It would, he says, already be best now to throw the resolutions of the general synods from 1840 onward, one and all, into the fire, so that one would have no more bad conscience over the paper. What one is to follow in the congregations and at the synods stands sufficiently in Scripture and in the Catechism. A blessed age of the church, in which one has gotten rid of authorities, synods, church law, and ordinances — this nightmare of the church — and governs the congregation so simply and freely! That will then go the way it did in the times