"It is a duty of faith for all Lutherans . . . to observe the restrictions on church communion with all [due] rigor themselves, and to judge all dispensations [from them] as sin and heresy. . . ."

     "Es ist eine Glaubenspflicht für alle Lutheraner . . . selbst die Grenzen der Kirchengemeinschaft in aller Strenge zu beobachten und alle Dispensationen als Sünde und Häresie zu verurteilen. . . ."

     Tom [G. A.] Hardt, "Keine Kirchengemeinschaft mit Häretikern!  (Nulla communicatio in sacris cum haereticis)," Lutherische Blätter 12, no. 65 (Juli 1960):  83 (62-83).  "It is their duty to prevent whole generations of theologians from being taught that that Confessionalism [(which is to say, a commitment to church discipline)] and Donatism are the same thing" (83).  For the Church is always threatened by two dangers:  the enthusiastic ("schwärmerischen") misuse of excommunication on the one hand, and the renunciation of the justice of it for open sinners, schismatics, and heretics on the other (70).