# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1859_S78
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

to fear, and to cease from his disorderly life, lest he bring upon himself
an even sharper punishment of God.

Postscript. We believe we render our brothers in office a service by
sharing with them, in a faithful translation, the excellent instruction of
the late Balduin on the exercise of the ban. Two wrong paths lie close at
hand: the one is that, out of fear of man, faintheartedness, or love of
ease, one neglects this church discipline so earnestly enjoined upon us
by Christ — even where no insurmountable hindrances stand in the way,
given the congregation's condition — and does not even attempt it; the
other is that one wishes to introduce and exercise the ban too stormily
and hastily, while the congregation is still too immature for it, or that
one allows passion, anger, and fleshly lusts to intrude into this matter.
How many sins may occur along the one or the other wrong path! How
much mischief is stirred up when a carnally minded, arrogant,
presumptuous man takes the ban into his hands! Balduin's instruction is
altogether well suited to guard us against both wrong paths.

One will surely not doubt the applicability to our own church situation
of instruction which, to be sure, accommodates itself to the ecclesiastical
circumstances of Electoral Saxony. Balduin, indeed, has in view the
institution of the Lutheran consistorial constitution, and seems to allow
the congregation little or no share in church discipline; but this only
seems so: in principle he stands entirely on the Lutheran standpoint,
and recognizes in the consistories nothing other than representatives
and deputies of the whole church, appointed to decide matters of church
discipline in its name and with its presumed consent. If, then, we put in
the place of a consistory a properly constituted congregational
assembly, Balduin's instruction is perfectly applicable to our
circumstances; and even though we have here no appointed
superintendents to whom the pastor must report as a second instance,
it is nevertheless self-evident that a conscientious, careful pastor will
lay a case of church discipline that arises before an experienced
colleague, or preferably before the synodical president, for advice, so
as to commit no ill-considered blunder in so weighty a matter. Finally,
it hardly needs mention that it is not necessary to imitate all the
individual formalities, both at exclusion and at readmission, as they are
described by Balduin. These have themselves, even in earlier times,
differed from church to church. So they may — indeed must — differ
even now, according to circumstances, so long as what is essential
remains.

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