# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 11 04_S35
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

-gregations to be regarded; for this document speaks only of an exception, whereas the Symbolical Books speak of the rule; that document contains a wise counsel for disputes that had arisen in individual congregations, and indeed only until a further decision, whereas the Symbolical Books contain the public confession of the whole Lutheran Church.

This document of Dr. Luther's can therefore by no means be decisive when the question is asked whether the retention of general confession alongside private confession accords with the previous custom of the Lutheran Church.

What has just been said also holds for two passages from the Instruction to the Visitors of the year 1528, §53 and §68, which deal with the matter that private confession should be left free to everyone, and that the well-instructed might even be admitted to the Holy Supper without any confession at all—from which it is inferred that the use of general confession must therefore be permitted all the more. But in both passages the reference is to freedom of conscience as opposed to the former papal compulsion, not to a freedom as opposed to good church order, and for that very reason no use has been made of this counsel of Dr. Luther's in any Lutheran church order.

Now if even in that document and in these two passages, which have the most appearance of a certain approval of general confession, the proverb holds that appearances deceive, then they are, moreover, outweighed by a great number of other passages already mentioned in the first section, all of which deal with the exclusive use of private confession, and are refuted so thoroughly by Dr. Luther's final and decisive declaration that no doubt can any longer remain as to his actual opinion. For in the Articles of the Consistory at Wittenberg, drawn up in the year 1542 by Dr. Luther and other theologians, it says as follows: "Oversight shall be exercised, that the parish pastors maintain a uniform practice and order in confession, and that particular Christian absolution be imparted to each one individually who laments his sin. And should it have occurred in some places that a pastor let those who intended to commune that morning step forward as a group and pronounced a general absolution over them, this shall by no means be." Finally, the following also prove this:

The Lutheran Church Orders,

namely up to the year 1739, that general confession and absolution were decisively disapproved of and never permitted. For although the custom existed in individual South German congregations—which the second Pomeranian Church Order of 1563, originally by Dr. Bugenhagen, also permitted, allowing the pastors to read a general confession aloud—even there the absolution always had to take place privately, so that after the act of confession the penitents came individually to the confessional, in order, where it was needed, to be further instructed and comforted from God's Word specifically, whereupon absolution was then given to each one individually with the laying on of hands. As proof of how strictly—indeed even under threat of removal from office—general absolution was forbidden, the following passages from the aforementioned Pomeranian Church Order may serve: "Therefore it shall be earnestly forbidden that the parish pastors absolve the people in general, en masse; the superintendents shall keep strict watch over this at the synods, and if anyone, out of greed, favor toward the people, or out of laziness, so as to be relieved of the work, pronounces absolution indiscriminately over the people in a crowd, the superintendent, if he has been admonished and does not desist, shall depose him from the preaching office as an unfaithful hireling."

[Footnote: This is, of course, not meant to prove that it is in itself culpable to hold general confession where it still has its rightful place in a congregation's order. It becomes culpable only when, as in the case cited, an already adopted, salutary church order is thereby broken. — The Editor.]

Similar prohibitions of general absolution are also contained in other church orders, e.g., the Gotha, Magdeburg, and Ulm orders; but that these were repeated even in more recent times is shown by the following passage from the Brunswick-Lüneburg Church Order of the year 1739: "The pastors shall absolve the simple people individually, and not two, three, or more at once, as has been experienced several times; for such shall not be tolerated." The later deviations from such salutary ordinances always had their ground in the corruption of pure doctrine, and the more this gained the upper hand, the more general became the practice of allowing general confession to exist not only alongside private confession, but at last to the almost complete exclusion of the latter. The pure Lutheran doctrine on the article of private absolution was corrupted, in particular, by Unionism, Pietism, and Rationalism: by Unionism, in that, to please the Reformed, people gave way ever more openly to their aversion to it; by Pietism, in that, through emphasis on the abuse present in the practice of confession, the whole practice itself was brought under suspicion; by Rationalism, in that the preachers—and then, naturally, the hearers as well—denied that those confessing were sinners in need of repentance, and denied, in particular, that the servants of Christ had the power to forgive sins.

The evil fruits of such deviations were a great number of ordinances, among which without doubt the first is the one issued in the Electorate of Brandenburg under the name of Frederick I in the year 1798. By it, private confession was indirectly abolished, in that everyone who made a "scruple of conscience" (?) of it, or who did not lead a manifestly offensive life, was permitted to go to the Holy Supper even without private confession. Such persons were only required to register with the preacher eight days beforehand, and then to take part in the general exhortation to repentance, in which mention is made of neither confession nor absolution. Similar ordinances appeared ever more frequently from then on, and finally drove out almost without a trace the so salutary private confession—something that occurred especially since the last third of the previous century.

It is true that general confession had earlier existed in some South German congregations, and later in Denmark, Sweden, and Holland; but on the one hand it has not yet been demonstrated that this occurred in the best period of the Lutheran Church rather than under the influence of covert Calvinism, and on the other hand—and chiefly—these are merely isolated exceptions, to which the example of by far the greatest part of the Lutheran Church stands opposed. Now if, according to what has been said so far, it is on the one hand easy to explain how, with the increasing corruption of pure doctrine, so salutary a practice as private confession fell ever more into decline, while general confession, on the contrary, could gain ever more ecclesiastical standing and even a complete preponderance, so that it almost entirely displaced private confession, then on the other hand, for the sake of the many advantages which private confession has over the general kind, all Lutheran preachers are urgently to be advised to work, through instruction and teaching, toward making its use more general again. To be sure, various obstacles will stand in the way of this praiseworthy endeavor, which at first will try to assert themselves as though they could by no means be removed; but faithful preachers and willing hearers will, the longer the more, become convinced of the contrary. For their sake, the principal arguments for the retention of general confession and against the introduction of private confession shall now be refuted in the following section.

(To be continued.)

(Submitted.)
Appeal for Mission among the Heathen Indians.

Lutherans! Our Lord Jesus Christ commanded his disciples, Matt. 28:19: "Go and teach all nations." The Christian Church has always obeyed this command, and has filled all lands with the sound of the Gospel. Thus the kingdom of God has also come to us, who are descended from the heathen. And as the Lutheran Church, being the salt of the earth, has already taught all the nations which formerly sat in the darkness of Popery, so has it likewise recognized it as its calling to carry the name of the Lord before the heathen. It was, in particular, Christian Friedrich Schwarz, who in the previous century preached for forty-seven years in the East Indies, and through his powerful influence on the minds of the heathen and their princes illustrates for us the effectiveness of the missionaries of old. Even now he has this universal praise, that his equal has not arisen again among the missionaries of modern times.