# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1862_S52
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

hold him to be deserving of the ban, and could not in good conscience avoid him as a Gentile and a tax collector." — What was the reply to this? Let the reader hear and marvel at how brazenly Grabau dares to twist Luther's plain words. Literally, the synodical report goes on to say: "Hereupon Pastor Müller was to hear the answer, when the doctrinal points should come up. He was, however, met with the objection that this was not the sense of that passage of Luther's, but rather that the whole congregation, as such, must clearly hear, at the time of exclusion, why the sinner is being banned, so that they may know and judge — that is, so that each may judge for himself (following all the stages of admonition) — why the sinner is to be held deserving of the ban. For this, it was said, is the very opposite of a blind slip of paper from the officials." — Of the second of the seven theses mentioned above, it says on p. 27: "In the second thesis it is asserted that neither the individual pastors nor the ministeria have power to demand obedience from Christians as from their subjects, and that they may not, particularly in matters indifferent, require that congregations accept their proposals, ordinances, and so forth, as though bound to obedience by the Fourth Commandment, even if the congregations should fail to see the usefulness or necessity of the proposal made." That one cannot meet this thesis with the bare assertion that Christians do indeed owe this very obedience — that much Grabau has learned from us; but from the error of his ways he has, alas, not turned. So he was compelled to take refuge in serpentine twists and turns, in order nevertheless to entangle consciences in the Fourth Commandment as though it demanded such obedience toward preachers. He says of this, in his prepared explanation: "This thesis concerns the obedience of church members in matters indifferent. We have long been convinced, on the basis of the Augsburg Confession, Articles XV and XXVIII, that it is permitted [liceat] to Christian bishops and pastors, as well as to orthodox, regularly constituted church ministeria, synods, etc., not merely to set down good church ordinances on paper, but actually to make them, that is, to introduce them [ordinare], and that it befits [convenire] the parishioners and parish-people [the hearers], in such cases [where it is not a matter of rejecting false doctrine or establishing true doctrine], for the sake of love and peace, to be obedient to the bishops and pastors, so that everything in the church may proceed in good order — that is, so that love and peace may be planted in the churches. As for the Fourth Commandment, it is not mixed into this insofar as it demands an obedience of subjects, as toward civil authority; rather, the preaching office, by its divine nature, is placed within the teaching of, and among the persons named in, the Fourth Commandment — that is, among fathers and mothers, parents and masters — and is included and comprehended there as well [2 Corinthians 12:14], insofar as it is, in its own way, a divine order belonging to the Fourth Commandment. This