# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1862_S82
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

is proven, must be set aside, then the Senior could have answered with the same right: with the mere assertion of its having-been-proven the matter is not yet settled either; the assertion must itself first be capable of being proven, from God's Word and the church orders. And of such childish trivialities it is then said: "The whole synod expressed its approval of this."

Thesis 7: "A false, unjust ban is sin, and just as I ought to fear sin, the devil, and hell, so I ought to fear false banning. False doctrine concerning the ban, too, if stubbornly maintained, makes the church false." — The correctness of this thesis Grabau grants, but adds: "but it is false to regard an unproven ban, or one merely decried as false out of hatred, as one would the devil"; "also, false doctrine must not exist merely in imagination and pretense, but in orderly and public demonstration from God's Word. And for that we shall no doubt need the synod." Having stumbled, in the sixth thesis, over "can," Grabau now stumbles in this one over — "is." For one cannot express something more positively than by saying, not: a ban that can be proven false and unjust, but simply and plainly, "a false, unjust ban." How can Grabau now object to this: "but it is false to regard the unproven, etc."? Of such a ban the questioners are not speaking at all. A "false, unjust ban" quite simply cannot at the same time be "a ban falsely decried." It is simply impossible for the self-righteous Grabau to concede a matter that displeases him. He must carp at everything. — When he says at last that to prove the false doctrine concerning the ban one would need the "synod," he can hardly mean his own synod by this; for that synod has, in fact, by accepting and approving all these Grabauian false doctrines and sophistries, sufficiently proven that it is in no way qualified for the task. The congregations will do very well to "look to themselves" and "examine themselves." —

The worldly-conformed, externally legalistic, unevangelical character of the Buffalo Synod shows itself also in how it handles the financial affairs of its realm. The "ordaining" of cent-funds, etc., with a ban threatening from afar, has by now become somewhat distasteful to them. But whoever holds and knows nothing of the Gospel and of free love must always fall again into perverse ways. That the state levies a property tax is in good order; but if the church does the same, it has strayed onto wrong paths, however beautiful and sweet the words in which it wraps up its proceeding. In the state, things go according to wealth; in the church, according to love — free love. — The debt on Martin Luther College at Buffalo is to be paid off. How, then, does the Buffalo Synod go about this? First, the treasurer is to submit to the church ministerium a list showing the remainder of the debt-portion, principal and interest, taken on by each congregation. Then every congregation is to be called upon