# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1859_S75
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Extracts from Fr. Balduin's Tractatus De casibus conscientiae. 75

be heard freely by all, including even those to whom the enjoyment of
the sacraments is forbidden; indeed the banned need, more than the rest,
the diligent hearing of the preached Word, as the means of their
conversion. This is the judgment of the late Luther in his sermon on the
ban.

As for the intercourse of a banned person with other believers, the
prohibition of it must not extend further than Christian love allows.
Therefore one must indeed refrain from close association with the
banned, so as not to give the appearance of despising church discipline
or of becoming a partaker in another's sins; hence we are forbidden to
have any dealings with them; but we must not lay aside a well-wishing
disposition toward them, but should rather have compassion on their
misery, admonish and comfort them, pray for their conversion, and thus
in every respect show ourselves eager for their rescue.

The ban also does not abolish civil intercourse, contracts, and trade
dealings with the banned — unlike in the Papacy, where, when
magistrates or parents are banned, the subject's oath of allegiance and
filial obedience are dispensed with. But since the ban touches only the
ungodly person himself, not his friends and relatives, subjects still owe
obedience to the magistrate, children to their parents, and the wife to
her husband even if he is banned, and may still make use of his service
whenever necessity requires. For the ban does not bring about the
separation of those whom God and nature have permitted to be joined,
but only a separation from a particular congregation in churchly
matters, until true repentance follows.

For this reason Augustine, in the 75th epistle, rebukes Auxilius, a young
bishop, for having placed Classicianus, a soldier, along with his whole
household, under the ban; for the son ought not to be banned for the
father's sin, nor the wife for the husband's, nor the servant for the
master's. Spiritual punishment, he says, binds the souls of which it is
said: The soul of the father is mine, and the soul of the son is mine; the
soul that sins, it shall die.

II.

May a whole congregation, on account of certain notorious crimes
committed by the greater part of its members, be put under the ban all
together?

Answer. In the Papacy this indeed happens often, where the bolts of the
ban are hurled against whole churches held to be heretical, without
distinction as to whether their members are seducers or the seduced.
But those who judge rightly consider it in no way advisable that, on
account of errors or sins — however great and notorious they may be —
an entire church be put under the ban.

For, 1) at the very least the children and the simple-minded are free
from those sins, and for their sake the whole church must be spared,
lest the innocent be struck by so severe a discipline; for God...