# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1862_S248
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

248 Literary Notices.

that a Lutheran pastor in the Weimar territory had administered the
sacrament to a Reformed congregation without a certificate of permission.
This the church council had afterward approved quite readily. So wherever
the Union was at stake, there it was praiseworthy to break the church
order; whereas whatever went against the Union had to bend most strictly
under the church order. The church council indeed had good reason for
this. For after Vollert had set up a free table for Schleiz and Greiz, he
could have done the same for the Duchy of Weimar. But then no order could
any longer be maintained. He therefore had to insist, despite his own
inconsistencies, that Vollert must require a certificate of permission every
time he served strangers.

For the other matter, the church council demanded of Vollert that he not
use the power of the keys without the church council's permission each
time. This was the real point at issue. Vollert proceeded from the
conviction that the ban was a right of the individual congregation, which
could never be taken from it. Whether a soul was to be absolved or bound,
turned away from the Supper or admitted to the Supper, was to be decided
by the pastor alone, of course with the congregation's participation. "As
surely as I may absolve," he said, "just as surely may I also bind, both
without first inquiring of the authorities." A territorial church and a
sovereign church government can scarcely be said still to exist on this
assumption, if the highest ecclesiastical power passes exclusively into the
hand of the individual congregation. Vollert was reminded that the old
Lutheran church orders had expressly bound the right of the ban to the
consent of the consistories and placed it under their oversight, and indeed
for the reason of guarding against the arbitrariness and tyranny of
individual pastors, and of preventing one pastor from banning someone who
had been admitted to the Supper by another pastor. Vollert would hear
nothing of this. He maintained that the old church orders were mistaken on
this point and needed to be improved. Nowadays, he said, things stood so
badly that the church government no longer wanted to know anything of
discipline. In that case one had to follow the rule of the old theologians
and jurists, which they expressed in the words of P. Leyser: "If the
Church is negligent in church discipline, a preacher must nevertheless
keep his own conscience and may not give the Holy Supper to them" (the
ungodly).

The church council saw well that it was ill disputing with this man. After
many fruitless negotiations, it put to the defendant the simple question,
to be answered with yes or no: whether he would "render obedience to his
appointed superiors and submit willingly in all points to the existing
ecclesiastical laws and orders." Since Vollert then declared that he could
only obey so far as obedience agreed with God's Word, the church council
saw clearly that Vollert would let only his own conviction count as church
order, and it dismissed