# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1862_S246
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

246 Literary Notices.

annoying and offensive to them that in Greiz no discipline whatever was
exercised, but all without distinction were admitted to the Table of the
Lord. In order now to satisfy their spiritual needs, they turned in 1855 with
a request to Vollert, that he should serve them. Vollert was alarmed at
this; he saw that he would thereby be drawn into conflict not only with the
Greiz pastor, but also with the Weimar church government — indeed with the
latter all the more. False doctrine rules in Weimar from below and from
above, if anywhere. Had he taken in the Greiz people and declared their
withdrawal to be right, he would thereby also have declared himself
released from his own church government. He turned the Greiz people away
at first. But then, when he was visited with a serious illness, he examined
the matter once more according to God's Word and according to the
teaching and law of the Church, and became convinced that, for the sake of
their emergency, he must serve the Greiz people so long until they should
have their own preacher. He therefore preached to them at Greiz, and
administered both sacraments to them, without neglecting his own
congregation on that account. Löhe's deaconesses at Greiz also received the
Lord's Supper from his hands. The separated Greiz people succeeded in
having this happen with the consent of their government, and in being
formally released from their parish bond.

All this still passed off quietly, even though much was said about it,
especially since people claimed to have noticed all sorts of oddities and
peculiarities among the separated ones that tasted very strongly of
separatism and enthusiasm. Then Vollert himself threw the spark into the
powder keg! In February 1859 he received a wandering journeyman ropemaker
from Goldberg in Silesia, who according to his own statement was a
unionist, publicly and solemnly into the Lutheran Church at Coldra. For
although he had already received the Lutheran Supper before this, people at
Neuendettelsau did not wish to admit him to mission service until he had
gone over to the Lutheran Church. The newspapers seized upon this incident
in their usual manner, and thereby occasioned the grand-ducal church
council to open an investigation, which spun out from this single case into
a whole series of others that had occurred and were still occurring during
the investigation. Among the newly arising cases there was one in
particular which hastened the decision. In the principality of Schleiz a
couple of awakened persons had separated from their pastor, because he
exercised no discipline and even admitted to the sacrament those who took
part in Methodist meetings and classes and were thus sectarians. They now
desired that Vollert should serve them, and Vollert did so, after receiving
no answer to an inquiry addressed to the responsible pastor. This case was
distinguished from the rest in that those who had withdrawn themselves bore
witness to their own pastor that he taught right doctrine. So it was a
matter solely of discipline, and there it came to light what Vollert was
really about.

Vollert wishes to be a stricter Lutheran. But strictness in the Lutheran
sense proceeds from the Gospel, and, in connection with it, from the