# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1859_S196
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

196 Some Glosses on This Year's Sessions of the So-Called etc.

Apostle Paul wills. It is not only not diligent in keeping this
unity in the Spirit, it is not merely lazy in this Christian duty, but
its deepest spirit is enmity, bitter enmity against the holy
Apostle and against all who dare to strive after this unity in the Spirit.
Let no one be deceived by sweet words and splendid speeches. Let
someone once make the attempt, make it a matter of earnest diligence, and put forward
the motion at the G. Synod that, for instance, the Zwinglians Kurtz and Schmucker,
and the Chiliast Vogelbach — who evidently do not stand with the Lutherans
in unity of spirit — be summoned to appear, so that they might first
be instructed in all love and calm and won over for the truth, and
then be called upon to recant their false teachings, so that
in this way a unity in the Spirit might at last be gained. That would indeed
be something well-pleasing to God, an act of obedience to God, a work
of upright Christianity. But let only one person dare to try to
follow the exhortation of the Holy Spirit. What a storm, what fury,
what bitterness would then spray forth from those loving hearts, what
wrath would seize the pious folk, what mighty speeches would resound
about tyranny of faith, inquisition, popery, lovelessness, unchristian conduct!
For the spirit whom the G. Synod serves has, in just this way, his own
holy scripture, his own sort of Japhet-Bible, and in this devil's-scripture Ephesians
4:3 reads roughly thus: "Be diligent to keep the unity of the purse for
the benefit of beloved Zion" — that is, of one's own glory — by permitting
divisions and by the firm alliance and the resolute struggle
against all who would dare to strive after unity in the Spirit, a common hope, one
faith, one mind, the same judgment, and even the same speech,
and thereby endanger the unity of the purse." — That is
the terrible thing about the devil, the liar from the beginning, that he can so
blind people that they no longer know what is right and wrong, what
is sin and what is a work pleasing to God — indeed, that precisely the good is
turned into evil and evil into good. Thus, to the G. Synod,
Ephesians 4:3 and 1 Corinthians 1:10 evidently count as sin and folly, and
the opposite as virtue and wisdom; and because it now wants to be virtuous, wise,
and prudent, it naturally acts accordingly. Thus, for instance, spoke,
during the proceedings, a member of the G.S. against a motion under
consideration, with a certain vehemence, and simply on the ground that the
word "absolution" occurred in it — "he did not, however, like that word at
all." Now, had the G.S. wished to act according to the exhortation of the Holy
Spirit — namely, to be diligent in keeping the unity of the Spirit —
since whoever cannot bear the word absolution is indeed very much
at odds with Holy Scripture and the Lutheran confession, this member should
at once have been questioned further and, with all love and patience and deep
earnestness, corrected. Instead, this remarkable utterance — either
unspeakably stupid, or one that betrays Christianity at heart — was not
addressed at all. And that is then called a spirit of love, a spirit of brotherhood, "admirable
Christian feeling." What is sin to God is, to the General Synod, virtue! —