# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1863_S347
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Miscellany. 347

Synod, in every doctrine first to hear the testimony of the ancients, and to regard every deviation from it or development of it beyond the fathers with great caution and, we cannot deny it, with a good measure of mistrust; for the conviction has indeed broken through among us that the modern theologians have retreated in the knowledge of divine truth, and that progress is to be found on the side of the ancients. For progress is what builds up the congregations, the Church; regress is what destroys it; and that the disunity of the German churches has its origin and its nourishment in modern theology is indisputable. Modern theology scatters; the old theology gathers and unites. Modern theology does not stand under obedience to the Word of God, and therefore it cannot bind the conscience either, and hence can create no spiritual unity, no unity of conscience. The old theology binds the conscience through God's Word and so binds it together in the truth; there unity arises, a firm, spiritual unity, against which the mere unity under a strong church or even state-church regime is only a wholly external, wretched structure, which collapses at the first onset.

What the German Church lacks, its great sickness, is a lack of discipline in doctrine, hence the disunity in doctrine, and a lack of discipline in life, hence, for example, the shameful representation at synods, etc. Men have not only failed to honor the divinely ordained church discipline over doctrine and life, have not carried it out in earnest, but have despised it and trodden it underfoot; the devilish spirit of loving unionism in doctrine and life was worshiped, that was progress, that was development, that was liberality, that was scientific learning — and the living, almighty God, with his word: "put away from you what is evil!" — evil in life, or evil in doctrine, was despised and hated, hated with a truly fanatical hatred. But God will not be mocked; whatever a man sows, that shall he reap; they have sown the wind, now they reap the whirlwind.

"Thy Word, O Lord, is our heart's defense,
"And of thy churches the true fortress,
"Therein preserve us, dear Lord!"

Miscellany.

The Imputation of Original Sin. Ströbel writes in a review of Dr. Philippi's Dogmatics in Guericke's journal of the previous year: "Concerning the imputation and guilt of original sin, as of actual sin, it is rightly said (in Philippi's Dogmatics): '"The foundational deed of the fall from God is a single deed, performed by the whole race, in the person of the first father, with consciousness and freedom, and therefore imputed to the whole race in all its individuals (according to Augustine's Omnes suimus ille unus, "we were all that one man"); whereas the individual sinful deed, performed by the individual person, on