# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1862_S63
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary Notes. 63

Word-bound conscience, and therefore, amid all obedience toward church government and amid all suffering that may befall us through it, one nevertheless remains ever free, and is never a rebel. This is my pastoral answer to you, who have asked me. On the controverted questions I do not enter at all here. Even the free Americans recognize that the Church cannot subsist without church government, and they exercise it themselves through synods. Whether it is now exercised with synods or without them, whether it is conferred through princes or not through princes, that is all one and the same — church government remains divine nonetheless." We remark on this only so much: that Mr. Pastor Harms has, by this answer, only made his ignorance of the matter plainly evident. Luther, by contrast, writes of the bishops: "Their governing is nothing other than driving home God's Word, that they may lead Christians and overcome heresy." X, 465. "Neither the Pope, nor a bishop, nor any man has power to set a single syllable over a Christian man, unless it happen with his own will; and whatever else occurs, that occurs out of a tyrannical spirit." XIX, 88. "There has St. Peter, with a single word (1 Pet. 5:3), overthrown and condemned all the government that the Pope now exercises, and shows plainly that they have no power to command a word, but that they alone are to be servants, and to say: This says your Lord Christ, therefore you shall do this." IX, 821. "A bishop, as bishop, has no power to impose any statute or ceremony on his church without the consent of the churches, whether given in plain words or tacitly. . . . Therefore we cannot grant the bishops, by either church or civil law, the power to command anything to the churches, however right and godly it might seem — for nothing evil may be done in order that good may come of it. Should they undertake to proceed by force, and to compel it, we must neither obey nor consent to it, but rather die: so as to preserve the distinction between these two governments, that is, for the sake of the will and the law of God, against godlessness and the robbing of churches." XVI, 1207, 1209.

The Prussian Lutheran Church. It is observed with joy that among those pastors who have renounced the church-government doctrine of the Supreme Church Council [Oberkirchencollegium], clarity in right doctrine is on the increase. It is the sadder to hear that the divisions are increasing in the congregations themselves as well. Ehlers reports: In Rogasen, too, there now exist two Lutheran congregations side by side. Namely, Lutherans there have separated from the O. K. C. and called Pastor Könnemann to be their pastor. At their request, Pastor Diedrich installed him in his office on the 25th Sunday after Trinity of last year.

The Prussian Lutheran Church. On October 31 of last year, Pastors Diedrich, Wolf, and Räthjen united "provisionally" at a conference in Neu-Cöln into a synodical congregation. They have reported everything to the Royal Ministry and requested state recognition.

Dr. Graul. The following we read in the Leipzig Evangelical Lutheran Mission periodical of October 15 of last year: "After our former Mission Director, Dr. Graul, had — a year and a half ago — carried out a resolution long cherished by him and repeatedly discussed with the Board, to hand the directorship over into other hands, and had exchanged his former position for that of a teacher, particularly of the properly missiological subjects, in the Mission House, of an advising member of the Board and deputy of the chairman, it became apparent, the longer the more, that this arrangement of things agreed upon at that time was attended with various inconveniences, which made a change seem desirable. In particular the feeling and the recognition pressed themselves upon the new Director ever more inescapably — a feeling whose justice one could not but acknowledge — that in this way he could not enter so fully into the position and activity needful, as the interest of the cause itself required. This led to repeated private discussions and negotiations within the Board, in consequence of which Dr. Graul, under date of October 15, submitted a request, grounded in the above considerations, for release from his previous position. It was exceedingly hard for us to accede to this request and to let a man depart from our midst who, for now eighteen years, with such devotion, often under the most difficult and adverse circumstances, and accompanied by so visible a blessing of God, had devoted his best