# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1863_S366
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

366 Report of the Sixth Regular Synodical Convention of the Norwegian Evang.-Luth. Church.

-cordingly and in truth regard it as a gift of God, even though it is given to us through men.

The sin that we would commit by misusing Sunday could be compared to that of not wanting to build a church. For it has been commanded to us by God neither to choose this particular time, Sunday, for the use of God's Word, nor to provide such a place, a church; but it is indeed clear that we must have both, both time and place, for this purpose, and it is sinful self-will when we are unwilling to agree on this with our fellow Christians, but instead, like the Sabbatarians, take a different day than the one the whole church has chosen, or are unwilling to provide such a house for divine worship as all others find fitting and suitable. But ideas on this point are often very confused; on the one hand some wish to ascribe such authority to the congregation that one may expel people and thereby declare them heathen and rob them of the goods of the church, because there is this or that order which they do not understand and therefore do not wish to take part in; on the other hand others wish to have the right not to submit to any congregational order and not to acknowledge the obligation that, for the sake of peace and love, rests upon us in this matter.

It was further mentioned how people, often out of false fear that Sunday might be abolished or its significance weakened, wish rather to call it a divine ordinance and thus, on their own self-chosen path, lie and deceive in God's name to that end, in order to bring people to an imagined stricter piety. It is, by the way, with this fear as with the similar one that many felt in the days of the Reformation, that the doctrine of justification by faith alone, without works, might make people secure in their sins. This preaching did indeed work that way with some; but was this the fault of the Reformation, which did not fail to speak of the fruit of faith in good works? No — rather, those who taught the necessity of good works for salvation led people, with this lie, not to salvation but away from it. The same outcry now resounds against us, that we would be giving cause for the desecration of Sunday; but as the papists did with their doctrine of works, so also the teachers who wish to make Sunday into a divine commandment lead people only into idolatry. Many people have fallen, through the false doctrine of Sunday, into the most pitiable superstition: the best of them think they have fulfilled the third commandment when they go to church on Sunday or read a sermon and otherwise use no word of God at all during the week; others do not do even that much, but make a great matter of conscience out of working on Sunday; thus they think they have fulfilled the third commandment by being idle on Sunday, or sleeping, or undertaking the most useless things; indeed there are some who, for example, are utterly terrified