# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1863_S255
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church-Historical Notices of the Day. 255

...made a report. Justice requires that we now also communicate the following correction, found in Ehlers's periodical, from Zöller in Wollin. It reads as follows:

"In No. 6 of Hengstenberg's Evangelical Church Gazette for 1863, p. 69, the following report is found regarding the conference held in October of last year:

'One has agreed, in a very sensible resolution, that obedience is to be given to the ordinances of the Supreme Church Council, but that it is left to everyone how he squares its authority with himself, whether he derives it from divine or from human right. One can only wonder that this was not understood of itself, that it had first to be resolved.'

This report is thoroughly false, and in order, so far as lies in me, to oppose the various mistaken judgments of the public press concerning the conference at Angermünde, I declare

that at the said conference, whose proceedings I not only followed with lively interest from beginning to end, but for the greater part conducted myself, no resolution was passed — neither the one described in the Evangelical Church Gazette as "very sensible" and yet "curious," nor any other — that touched on the doctrinal question or on the practical conduct of the pastors.

At Angermünde people had not at all come together in order, in the manner of the Union, to conceal the existing discord behind some union-formula certainly very easy to find, and to feign a false peace, but rather to open the way toward an honest peace, pleasing to God, in the truth."

Pastoral Hints from the Church Fathers.

When we threaten with anything, let it be done with sorrow, in that we threaten out of Scripture with the punishment to come, so that not we ourselves, in our own power, but God, may be feared in our speech. (Augustine. Ep. 64, ad Aurelium.)

A far weightier and more dangerous obligation rests on those who will have to give account for many souls. Whither should I, unhappy man, turn, if I should carelessly guard so great a treasure, that precious good entrusted to me which Christ has esteemed more precious than his own blood? If I had gathered up the blood dripping down from the Lord at the cross, and kept it with me in a glass vessel, and had to carry it back and forth again and again, in what great anxiety would I be, in so great a danger? (Bernard. Serm. 3, de Adventu Dom.)

It is not for nothing that at the handing-over of the sheep it was so often repeated: Peter, lovest thou me? And I indeed think that thereby it was meant to signify as much as if Jesus had said to him: If your conscience does not bear you witness that you love me, and indeed love me greatly and perfectly — that is, more than your own, more than your kin, more even than yourself — so that the number of this my repetition is fulfilled, then do not take up this charge, and do not go in to my sheep, for whom indeed my blood has been shed. A dreadful word, and one that could crush even the fearless hearts of all tyrants! (Bernard. Serm. 76, sup. Cantica.)