# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1859_S198
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

198                                    Some Glosses on This Year's Sessions of the So-called, Etc.

"Avoid them" — even if one were reviled as an utterly stupid,
un-Americanized Old Lutheran, indeed as an enemy of the Kingdom of
God. "Avoid them" — even if the most splendid speeches were given
about the preservation and promotion of "beloved Zion," about Christian
feelings and mutual love, and whatever else all that nonsense may be
called. For, as has been said, God has nowhere commanded that one obey
the American-Lutheran heroes of peace and love, but rather: "This is my
beloved Son; hear him!" And he says, through the mouth of the holy
Apostle: "avoid" — and it is rascals, rascals through and through, who
strike the Holy Spirit across the mouth and say: do not avoid them —
however grand, fine, and sweet the English speeches they can deliver.
What does the dear God care for fine speeches? To be obedient is better
than making speeches!

It further says, Titus 3:10: "A man that is an heretic, after the first
and second admonition, avoid." A heretical person is one who puts
forward doctrines that overturn the foundation of salvation, defends
them stubbornly, and blasphemes the truth. Now the doctrine of
absolution and the sacraments is just as much a foundation of salvation
as the doctrine of God, of Jesus Christ, of faith — for of what use to me
are God and the merit of Christ, which God out of grace wills to give to
poor sinners, if Satan takes from me the means by which I can know for
certain that grace has been given to me as well, and by which alone I can
know it and lay hold of it in faith, other than through the means God has
ordained for that purpose, through Holy Absolution and the Holy
Sacraments? They are true devil's heretics who overturn the blessed
doctrine of absolution and the sacraments. — But the Melanchthon Synod
is just such a sect, doing exactly that. Now these people have been
admonished once, and again, and many times, even by members of the
General Synod itself. Therefore such poor, unhappy, stubborn people —
even though they are already members of a synod — are to be "avoided,"
for the honor of God and His truth, to prevent giving offense to the
weak, and out of love for them themselves, so that they may see this in
earnest and come to their senses; that is, one does not acknowledge them
as brothers in the faith, does not go with them to the Table of the Lord,
etc. But if they are not yet members of an ecclesiastical, brotherly
fellowship, and it is only a question of admitting such a heretical synod
— one that harbors "poison" within itself, that "tears the confession to
pieces" — then it surely takes a hardened brow to push almighty God
aside and extend the hand of brotherly union to Kurtz and his following.

Yet that is exactly what the General Synod has done! At first it seemed
as though the Melanchthon Synod would not be admitted, but would this
time be sent home with the advice to remove the objectionable matter
from its constitution, so as to be admitted afterward. That would at
least have been the beginning of an honest course of action, the beginning