Pf11: Don’t be “persecutors of faithful servants”

      This concludes from Part Pf10 (Table of Contents in Part Pf01) in a series presenting C. F. W. Walther's 1874 Der Lutheraner essay on "Who are the Pfaffen?", the good and the bad. — Walther summarizes this article by warning "our Lutheran Christians" against falsely accusing faithful pastors. — From Der Lutheraner, vol. 30 (1874), p. 52-3: 

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Who are the Pfaffen?

[by C. F. W. Walther; Part 11]

May God graciously preserve our Lutheran Christians, who have been visited again with the pure doctrine of the Gospel, from such grave sin. For persecutors of faithful servants of Christ, especially if they wanted to be Christians at the same time, have never been at ease, and their sin has gone unpunished. As it is said: “that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you.” Heb. 13:17. 

Even a righteous preacher, who is an enemy of all priestly rule [Priesterherrschaft], may at times, because he still has flesh and blood, be tempted to be a little impetuous. A godly Christian must not immediately use this to accuse his faithful pastor [Seelsorger] of having at least a “Pfäffish nature”. Rather, he must point it out to him as a sinful weakness in love and gentleness and then try to cover it up. In these atheistic times, preachers must suffer great disgrace from the world for the sake of their difficult service to the congregations and allow themselves to be looked upon everywhere as hypocritical Pfaffen who themselves did not believe what they preached and only sought to keep people in the darkness of past times for the sake of money: righteous Christians should gladly bear this disgrace with them and be as little ashamed of them as of Christ, whose servants they are. As the Apostle Paul warns his Timothy: “Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the Gospel according to the power of God.” 2 Tim. 1:8. W. [Walther]

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      When I began translating this essay, I wanted to know what Walther meant by "Pfaffen". I thought he only wanted to educate his readers against clericalism, the kind exhibited by the LC-MS organization "Gottesdienst". But the more I read, the more I wondered that there were instances of Missourian pastors being pejoratively called "Pfaffen" by congregational members, and so he wanted to ward this off. — May Walther's article educate readers, like me, on this important topic.