# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1855_S336
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

336

(Submitted by Pastor Hoyer.)
The So-Called American Revision of the Augsburg Confession.

Several ministers of the eastern and western synods connected with the General Synod have drawn up a document published under the following title: Definite Platform, doctrinal and disciplinarian, for Evangelical Lutheran District Synods, constructed in accordance with the principles of the General Synod, that is, Groundwork of Doctrine and Church Discipline, for Evangelical Lutheran District Synods, drawn up in agreement with the principles of the General Synod. This Groundwork was produced in such a way that the Augsburg Confession was mutilated by striking out all the articles offensive to the mutilators, that the rejection of certain determinations not contained in the Augsburg Confession but indeed in other Lutheran confessions was attached to it, and finally that the disciplinary order of the General Synod was added.

Two of the synods connected with the General Synod have expressed themselves on this Groundwork laid before them.

I. The Wittenberg Synod of Ohio.

which assembled on September 6 of this year at Bellefontaine, Logan Co., Ohio, and elected Pastor J. Crouse as president, Pastor J. W. Goodlin as secretary, and Pastor G. N. H. Peters as treasurer, adopted the following resolution concerning the aforesaid Groundwork, brought in by the gentlemen L. Sprecher, J. W. Goodlin, J. G. Biddle, and C. E. Jordan:

"Since it is the duty of the disciples of Christ to confess their religion before the world (Matthew 10:32) not only through holy conduct and life, but also by remaining in the doctrine of the apostles and bearing witness to the faith which was once delivered unto the saints (Jude 3), Christians from earlier times have accordingly set forth some summary of their doctrines or a confession of faith. Such confessions, which are also called symbols, are the so-called Apostles', the Nicene, and other confessions from the first four centuries after Christ."

"So likewise the Lutheran Reformers of the sixteenth century, when they were summoned by the Emperor before the Diet at Augsburg, presented the confession named after that latter city as a statement of their chief doctrines, in which, as they themselves confess, they refuted only the greater part of the errors that had crept into the Roman church. Afterward Luther and his co-workers further changed their views on some subjects contained in that confession, as, among others, on the Mass, and taught purer views in the Smalcald Articles."

"Further, a quarter century after Luther's death, these and other writings of Luther and Melanchthon, together with another work,