# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1855_S340
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

340 The So-Called American Revision of the Augsburg Confession.

in the Mass; and now should the pupils dare to look for themselves into Bible and confession and, in the end, risk having to contradict their popes, called professors? What is more, even the congregations must be popes to these poor ministers. Did not one of their masters boast just recently that, to be sure, many of the younger ministers in the General Synod shared the teachings of the Lutheran confession on Baptism and the Lord's Supper, but that they took good care not to let their congregations notice it, because they would come off badly with them for it; and not one of the ministers who were thus pilloried by this speech as servants of men raised his voice against it! On the other hand, ministers here at Bellefontaine, together with a couple of congregational deputies, took it upon themselves to determine the confession of their congregations, and thus to deal with the consciences of the members of the congregation as they pleased: that, I should think, is the pope's own very manner of acting. So powerful is this Roman way of thinking — or rather, of not thinking at all — among the members of the Wittenberg Synod, that they view the ecclesiastical circumstances of Germany accordingly as well. Because the majority of the ministers of Germany are Rationalists, and thus have fallen away from the confession of the Lutheran church, is the whole Lutheran church of Germany supposed to have rejected the Symbolical Books in their entirety? Are the ministers the church? Among the Romanists it does indeed come to that, but among the Lutherans the church is the communion of all believers, some of whom may perhaps stand under the rule of false ministers, but this by no means makes those ministers members of the church. There are, even in Germany, despite rationalistic ministers and professors, still 7,000 and more who confess the good confession of the Lutheran church, which in any case still stands fully in force by right in many lands, and these are the Lutheran church of Germany.

Have pity on the poor, immature members of the Wittenberg Synod: they truly know not what they say. Must they let the devil put it into their heads to declare their faith in a document like the mutilated Augsburg Confession! — With all Lutherans who know what they confess, I believe neither in the unaltered Augsburg Confession, nor in any confession from the Apostles' down to the Formula of Concord — no, no, God in His grace keep me from that! In God and His holy Word I believe, together with the good confession of the Lutheran church, and namely with the unaltered Augsburg Confession, so help me God in His grace!

Recognize God's finger in this otherwise so distressing occurrence. To what the enmity of some spokesmen of the General Synod against everything called the church's confession leads, to what the indefinite confessional formula of the General Synod itself leads — that has for once come fully to light. I do not say that the many members of the General Synod who, with heartfelt longing for God's enlightenment, search the Word of God to see whether the Lutheran