# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1862_S75
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Critique of the Report of the Seventh Synod of the Emigrants from Prussia, etc.    75

coated, so that the innocent little fish notice nothing amiss — it is called "an expecting, a claiming," instead of out of lust for dominion, he says, "out of propriety" (truly a fine bait, a lovely, smooth morsel!), and when the dear little creatures have taken the bite, then he pulls in and cries: You foolish fish are caught! Should the fish make a fuss and say: No, we are not coming after all, we also have the freedom "out of propriety" to stay away — obedience in matters indifferent is no matter of conscience — then the fisherman answers again: you foolish little things, I am not catching you as a "civil magistracy," but only "claiming" you "out of propriety." And now your obedience is a "matter of conscience"; if you wish to be disobedient, to let me pull in vain, since I only "expect" you "out of propriety," then you act against your conscience, you commit a knowing sin, and you shall be damned to the deepest pit of hell! The poor fish!

It is a remarkable distinction that Grabau has worked out and now maintains between the honor owed to bodily fathers and to the magistracy, and that owed to the shepherds and teachers in the church — the former, he says, is "of a bodily kind," the latter "of a higher and merely spiritual kind." How is this to be understood? Does "bodily" honor consist, perhaps, in bowing to the magistracy with the body alone among other things, while "spiritual" honor consists in bowing before the pastors with the soul as well? Are we then not also to show our parents and the magistracy spiritual honor, to hold them dear and worthy? And is not the shepherd also owed bodily honor? What strange things do come out of this Buffalo!

Thesis 3: "That matters of church order which God has not Himself commanded may not be forced upon the congregations, but must be introduced by way of instruction and free agreement in love, and that it is therefore wrong to tear congregations apart over the introduction of such matters." — One can see how the shameful tearing-apart of the congregations at Johannisburg, Wollcottsville, etc., through the imposition of the cent-fund, has evidently weighed rather heavily on the questioners' hearts. — Pastor Grabau answers with the old song: of the "fittingness" of obedience, etc. — a melody which he further embellishes with an added variation. "And therefore it is fitting for them, in these cases, to be obedient to the bishops, not jure divino (by divine right), but e luce divina et e fructu evangelii, that is, from the divine light of the Gospel and its fruit. Of an 'imposition' only someone can still speak whose heart is not guided by the knowledge of the Gospel and of the New Testament, and who, for example, supposes that a free agreement in love is necessary here! This notion would in fact abolish the Confession and the Formula of Concord; for a free agreement in love would be no obedience to the bishops at all, but rather a kind of contract made with them out of love — and thus, once again, an external work of the law." — A moment ago Grabau said that "fittingness" could not be demanded "of divine right,"