# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1859_S74
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

74 Extracts from Fr. Balduin's Tractatus De casibus conscientiae.

...whole ministerium, with the addition of some elders, before whom the
sinner shall again be examined, his offense earnestly set before him by
the superintendent, and he shall be admonished to acknowledge it and to
cease from sinning. If he will not hear this judgment of the church
either, then he shall by public verdict of the whole assembly be declared
deserving of the punishment of the ban.

Thereupon the execution of this verdict shall be carried out by the
superintendent, or by the pastor to whom the consistory assigns it. He
shall have the sinner, through the worldly authority, placed at a certain
spot in the church on an appointed day; he himself shall then announce
to the congregation from the pulpit that this person, although he has
been admonished several times, persists obstinately in a manifest crime
(which is to be named specifically), since this cannot happen without
great offense to the church, nor without the most evident danger of
falling into the divine wrath; therefore it has been resolved, in the
public assembly of those charged with this matter, that such a one, as a
rotten member, be excluded from the fellowship of the church, and be
cut off from participation in the Holy Supper, from the office of
sponsor, from weddings, and from all association with honorable
persons, until he acknowledges his offense and does earnest penance;
therefore the congregation is admonished to withdraw itself entirely
from such a person, as from a rotten member, to have no association
with him, but to regard him as a severed member. Thereupon the banned
person shall be led out of the church by the sexton and left to his fate.

This spectacle must indeed not be mocked; rather, because it is the
sharpest discipline of the church, one should behold it with great fear,
and with due compassion toward the wretched person pray that God
would lead him to the knowledge of his sin and work earnest repentance
in him, that his spirit may be saved. For this severity is not applied for
the destruction of the soul, but rather the salvation of the soul is
sought, as Paul writes concerning the incestuous man at Corinth: I have
decided to deliver him to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the
spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus, 1 Corinthians 5:5; and
therefore, although the banned person is excluded from the enjoyment of
the means of salvation and from fellowship with the saints, he must not
be entirely kept back from hearing the Word, but should rather be
admonished to attend the sermons gladly, as the ordinary means of his
conversion; and if this can be done without offense in the particular
church from which he is excluded, a special place shall be assigned to
him where he may hear the Word, and after the sermon is finished he
shall be led out of the church again by the sexton; but if offense is to be
feared, it is safer to admit him to hear the Word in another particular
congregation — only he must not be entirely cut off from hearing the
sermons. For the Word of God must...