# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1862_S127
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church News of the Day.    127

I will pass over what proves this and thereby makes God's Word a public mockery. It will sufficiently appear from what has been said that the Greiz separation was no healthy soil with pure air and pure water. Into this circle the good Vollert of Clodra near Greiz came very soon into contact, through the neighborhood of his residence, and soon began, in his official practice, to lay the greatest weight upon the gradus admonitionis prescribed in Matt. 18 and upon the exercise of the ban connected therewith. Over this he came into various conflicts with the church government. Long-drawn-out negotiations arose as to how far he was entitled to exercise the ban. The church government believed that, under the existing church orders, it could not even concede to him the right to suspend the admission of communicants who seemed to him unworthy, pending a decision by the supreme church authority. He, on the other hand, demanded complete freedom in the exercise of the ban by virtue of his office. With this question others became mixed up as well: whether and how far a union with the Reformed legally and actually existed in Weimar, whether and how far the church government intended to exercise discipline over falsely-teaching and offensively-living pastors, and so forth. A decision, however, was forced by Vollert's relation to the Greiz separatists. The latter, after their withdrawal from the territorial church, chose him as their pastor. They went to his church every Sunday; he also came to Greiz during the week and held a devotional hour for them, and they also went to him for the Lord's Supper. To this circle individual persons from surrounding localities, dissatisfied with the doctrine and conduct of their own pastors, now attached themselves. Pastor Vollert and the Greiz separatists observed, in such cases, the procedure which they had also introduced among themselves. They sent the man to his own pastor and had him admonished according to Matt. 18:15; if he did not declare himself penitent, they carried out the admonition with two further witnesses, and if this too proved fruitless, they laid the case before the church authority. If no remedy followed, Pastor Vollert admitted the man to the sacrament without further ado, and, when it happened to occur, also performed in his own house the baptism of children born to him. Upon a complaint from the Reuss church authority concerning the unauthorized performance of official acts among Reuss subjects on the part of Pastor Vollert, the Weimar Consistory intervened. It forbade him all official acts among persons who did not belong to his congregation, ordered him to admit the Greiz separatists to the Lord's Supper only upon a letter of dismissal to be issued by their regular pastor, the head preacher in Greiz, and did not accept the declarations of individual Weimar subjects that they wished, on account of the false doctrine of their regular pastor, to withdraw from the territorial church. There now followed rather extensive negotiations between Pastor Vollert and the Consistory. When the latter based itself on the existing church orders and laws, Vollert declared that such human ordinances could not bind him if they were contrary to God's Word and the confessions of the Lutheran Church. When the Consistory demanded a letter of dismissal for the admission of the Greiz and other separatists, Vollert declared that the head preacher in Greiz, or the falsely-teaching pastor of a domestic parish avoided by a member of the congregation, was in fact no longer the regular pastor of that person at all, and therefore had nothing to permit them. Vollert holds himself bound in conscience and according to God's Word to admit to Word and Sacrament all those Christians who withdraw from their regular pastor on account of false doctrine or offensive conduct, believing that they must flee and avoid him as a hireling. The matter finally came to the point that the Consistory demanded of Vollert his signature to a declaration that he would render obedience to the existing church orders and laws and to the commands of his superior authority. When his reservation — that this held only insofar as it agreed with God's Word and the confessions of the Lutheran Church — was not accepted, he signed this bond even without that reservation, though with the verbal declaration that he thereby maintained the reservation he had made. But even with this, peace was by no means restored. When Vollert nevertheless continued to serve the Greiz separatists pastorally