# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1862_S51
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Seventh Synod of the Lutheran Church Immigrated from Prussia, Etc. 51

the Missouri Synod is still far from envying those of our brothers in office over there who, under the church government of their secular territorial lords and chief bishops, indeed have here and there abundant income, honor, and good ease and comfortable days, but no congregations in which God's Word, in keeping with the church's confession, can display its formative and educative power freely and unimpaired. —

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(Contributed by Prof. Crämer.)

Seventh Synod
of the Lutheran Church Immigrated from Prussia, Etc.

Under this title there lies before us the latest synodical report of the Buffalo Synod. That we too would once more be remembered with dishonor in this wretched document was to be expected. The would-be forceful, but in fact utterly powerless, expressions — "the Missourian mob," "the Missourian mob's lackeys," "Missouri's sectarian doctrine," "Missourian swindling and errors," etc. — have by now become a standing feature of the Grabauite documents, so much so that one might almost doubt their genuineness should they ever lack this infallible mark. Still, compared with earlier reports, we get off rather lightly this time, and the reason for this seems to be that almost the whole report turns on a quarrel that arose within their own ministerium. On this occasion the Herr Senior Ministerii, Grabau, once again exercises his diabolical art of twisting passages of Holy Scripture, the Symbols, and Luther to suit his own sense, with such truly Jesuitical refinement that, however much it disgusts us to stir the Grabauite filth, it would nevertheless, for the sake of the importance of the matter, be well worth the trouble to examine the whole proceeding thoroughly. Would that one of the dear brethren, to whom more leisure is granted than to the writer of this, might feel urgently moved to do so by the following few, but truly heart-rending, pieces of evidence.

Some Wisconsin pastors of the Buffalo Synod, Müller, Habel, etc., had developed scruples over a certain case of excommunication in the congregation of Pastor A. H. Schultze, and had drawn up seven theses, which they sent to the Herr Senior Ministerii. Now when this matter was discussed at the synod, Pastor Müller, according to the synodical report, p. 22, expressed one of his scruples verbatim as follows: "He, M., finds this judgment (the judgment of Grabau in question) incorrect in this, that it declares the ban upon C. to be just. Proof: Dr. Luther says in his treatise on the Keys: No one should be banned whom the congregation did not hold to be deserving of the ban. From this it follows that the pastor in Emmot (Schultze) ought not to have banned him until he had brought the members of the congregation to the conviction that C. was impenitent. If this were not the case, the congregation could not