# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1861_S138
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

138 From the Proceedings of the Rhenish Conference of Lutheran Pastors, etc.

...or that it is this confidence alone that justifies us, let him be
accursed."*) Accordingly, the papists would no doubt acknowledge
Dr. Kurtz, in his doctrine of faith, as one of their own. We Lutherans,
on the other hand, however much we consider him, as a person, to be a
true evangelical Christian, must declare decisively that in his doctrine of
faith he does not belong with us, but in this particular has fallen away
from the pure confession and gone over to the enemy.

——

From the Proceedings of the Rhenish Conference of Lutheran Pastors in
Prussia, Baden, and Nassau
on
The Doctrine of the Preaching Office,
by
Fr. Brunn, Lutheran pastor in Steeden, Duchy of Nassau.**)

In the theological discussions at our pastoral conferences a difference
had arisen between myself and some of my beloved brothers concerning the
doctrine of the spiritual office. After long mutual discussions, a divergence
in principles came to light which stood in sharp opposition to one another.
A reconciliation of these was, by the nature of the case, impossible; in the
end it came down only to the question of which of the opposing principles
was the properly Lutheran one, since we, as members and servants of the
Lutheran Church, held firmly to the conviction that our Lutheran
confession is the pure and unadulterated doctrine of the Word of God.

I personally had been aware, ever since I had begun to search more
earnestly into the questions of church and preaching office, and had grown
sober regarding earlier serious unionistic and pietistic errors in this
matter, that I, as a poor shipwrecked man, had humbly and willingly set
myself at the feet of Luther and the old fathers, in order to learn from
their sound and faithful exposition of Scripture. What I possessed of the
writings and sayings of the fathers on the doctrines in question I had read
through many times and turned over this way and that; in particular I
had carefully studied nearly all of Luther's relevant writings in the
original. My conviction concerning church and preaching office was, in a
certain sense, only the overall result of my research in Luther and the
ancients — certainly not, as Pastor Löhe later charged me, as a
consequence of a handwritten communication of the following pages, on
the ground that I had "trodden the path of Lutheran doctrines of men

*) Si quis dixerit, fidem justificantem nihil aliud esse, quam fiduciam divinae
misericordiae peccata remittentis propter Christum, vel eam fiduciam solam esse,
qua justificamur, anathema sit.

**) We share with our readers this piece, which has also appeared in pamphlet
form from Dörffling and Franke in Leipzig, in the expectation that it will be of
particular interest to our readers as the testimony of a servant of our church in
Germany closely bound to us.                              The Editor.