# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1862_S220
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

220    Church News of the Day.

wished to raise, held before him repeatedly and with great zeal: "He should put his misgivings in his desk and think them over again and again for at least ten years before he brought them forward!" Surely a masterpiece of ecclesiastical-government wisdom! — On p. 9 it is reported that in the letter of the Eastern Ministerium to the Toledo congregation of May 1859, it was said regarding the synodical bond: "Where there is authority, including ecclesiastical authority, it is ordained by God (cf. also the Second Synodical Letter, p. 69, the case of P. Krause)." — On pp. 11 and 12 it says: "Although our thesis (that in disputes arising, the correct understanding of the Augsburg Confession can and should properly and better be taken from no other source than Luther's writings), as the Senior and the synod (pp. 35, 37) had to admit, was taken from the Book of Concord, it was nevertheless spitefully dragged through the mud. . . . Indeed, it is falsely asserted on p. 37 by the Senior (and the synodical members who side with him): "'We taught, to be sure with the Formula of Concord, that you must take the sole proof (this too is printed in letterspaced type in the synodical letter) of the true sense of the Augsburg Confession from Luther's writings.'" In a postscript Pastor Habel writes the following further, under date of April 6 of this year: "After this was written, a copy of the decree of deposition against P. Kühn came to me. Among the alleged grounds for deposition stands also the speaking about the synodical letter. By this I see the gauntlet openly thrown down before me, and I therefore declare, in addition: that I must regard P. Grabau and his ministerium, together with all who do not rebuke him, as my opponents, and will treat them as such, though I will endeavor to act in a Christian manner. P. Grabau and his followers remain opposed to me, and I to them, so long as they do not make right their wrong in doctrine and life. It goes without saying that, since my office is not Grabau's but God's, I will acknowledge neither a suspension, nor a deposition, nor anything else of the sort from my opponents." — These are only some of the glimpses into the doings of the Buffalo Synod which a man affords us who once, dazzled by its glory, published for its comfort that notorious lengthy article in the Informatorium bearing the title: "A Look into the Missouri Synod." From the latter synod he had evidently carried over some leaven of right doctrine, and this now, it seems, is bringing the Buffalo synodical dough into a ferment which is certainly very unpleasant to the Herr Senior and his partisans. Everyone should now be able to see that our struggle against the doctrine and practice of the Buffalo Synod has certainly not been needless wrangling. What would a synod like the one named, with a man like Grabau at its head, have wrought here still, had it not been promptly and vigorously opposed, and its thoroughly un-Lutheran character not been exposed!

The Canada Synod has again had the misfortune of being brought into connection with the General Synod. And again the Lutheran and Missionary has been the instrument of it. In the 28th number of that paper the following appeared: "A petition from the Canada Synod was read, in which it was requested that the constitution of this body be so altered that the admission of the said synod as a part of the General Synod might be permissible." The present officers of the Canada Synod, however, declare: "Asked about this, we answer that the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Canada has passed no resolution that would justify such a petition, nor have we, as present officers of the said synod, signed any such petition." Who indeed can have played this trick upon the gentlemen? Fortunately, this time the watchful officers escaped the danger, in which their synod once again hovered, of being identified with the general synod.

Romanism. It is remarkable how the Romanists, in their claim to be "the only saving church," on the ground of their Pelagianism confess themselves to the crudest indifferentism. Thus we read in Oertel's New York Catholic Church paper of June 19, under the heading "The Only Saving Church," the following words: "The condition of the heathen differs quite particularly from that of baptized Protestants. Heathen, who through no fault of their own are in error, and who God (!)