# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1863_S384
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

384 A Provisional Reply.

that in both commandments an actual desire is likewise forbidden, one which
comes to appearance in the domain of concrete sins," (naturally the
prohibition of inherited desire is included in both commandments as well).
"The ground of the division must accordingly lie in the objects of desire,
and here we think that the ninth commandment deals with inherited family
possession, while the tenth, by contrast, speaks of the property which the
individual himself has. In both respects, however, we are not to sin
against our neighbor through '"envy and base covetousness."' (Luther,
in the Large Catechism, Erlangen edition, 21, p. 89)."

A Provisional Reply.

The latest number of the "Lutheran Herald" contains a new article
from the pen of Dr. Seyffarth on Negro slavery, in which are found in a
nutshell all the horror stories otherwise to be read here and there in
abolitionist writings about the African slave trade and about slavery in
the South. With this the Reverend Dr. S. means to overthrow the doctrine
we have upheld in "Lehre und Wehre," [namely] that of Holy Scripture and
of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, that slavery is not in itself sin.
But granted that all the hair-raising things Dr. S. reports were true
(which he himself, in his well-known good-naturedness, really seems
inclined to accept), even so it could only be thought by one who puts the
combinations of his own fancy in the place of logical conclusions that
this doctrine is thereby overthrown; which, though it may perhaps pass
muster in the field of chronology, is hardly likely to find many
adherents in the theological field.*) If, moreover, Dr. S. professes to
have read out of our exegetical-dogmatic presentations, as our opinion,
that "the present Negro slavery in the United States is a divine
ordinance which must be preserved and spread"; that "whoever does not
accept this is no true Lutheran and Christian"; that "the present civil
war, on the part of the North, is a struggle against God's commandment"
— then we find it hard to see in this anything but a confusion of
ingenious combination with logical consequence, and rather an immoral,
malicious manufacturing of consequences.

*) What, we wonder, would the holy Apostle Paul have said, had anyone
tried to refute his teaching on slavery with horror stories of this
kind? — Or can it be that Dr. S. does not know that slavery in the
Roman Empire, of which the Apostle is speaking directly, unfortunately
furnishes stuff enough for just as hair-raising, and indeed strictly
well-attested, horror stories? In case of need we can supply those too.