# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1856_S80
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

80 A plea for the Augsburg Confession etc.

The „Grundriß“ itself cannot cite any special command of Christ regarding the observance of Sunday; nothing of the sort is found anywhere; and so we must agree with the Augsburg Confession, which holds the determination of the observance of Sunday to be a command of the Church, and which therefore declares, in opposition to the Roman bishops, that the Sabbath command is not to be taught in such a way as though man acquired, through the observance of it, a merit toward the soul's salvation. With the same firmness, on the other hand, it then maintains that the Church, for the sake of need and with good right, has instituted our Christian Sabbath, and that we must keep it for our own edification and that of our neighbor. A right Christian observance of the Sabbath, therefore — a resting both from outward labor and a spiritual communion with God and His Word — corresponds entirely to Article 28 of the Augsburg Confession, which moreover in masterly fashion holds forth God's Word alone as the ground of faith and the merit of Christ as that which alone confers salvation. Whoever reads Article 28 with due attention will not charge our confession with false doctrine even with respect to the Sabbath command.

What the „Grundriß“ calls the fourth and fifth false doctrines — the doctrines of regeneration through Holy Baptism and of the true presence of Christ in the Holy Supper — Pastor Mann summarizes, in order first to examine the views of the authors of the Grundriß concerning the sacraments in general. Without going further into the many exegetical and dogmatic questions attached to this doctrine, he leads his readers to the conviction that the authors of the Augsburg Confession, as in all its articles, so also in those on the Holy Sacraments, set forth their teachings with the greatest care and conviction and after the most conscientious study of Holy Scripture, so that every Lutheran ought to consider earnestly before charging our chief confession with error for the sake of this doctrine. That the Augsburg Confession attributes a truly inward worth to the sacraments, that it is precisely the doctrine of the sacraments, above all, that constitutes the distinctive character of the Lutheran Church, that it holds that grace is imparted through the sacraments — the work of regeneration, the beginning of the new creature, even in the heart of a child, the communication of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4) to us wretched creatures — all this the „Grundriß“ rejects, and puts in the place of this doctrine a view that sees in the sacraments mere signs, by which someone testifies to his faith and, provided he brings with him the right disposition of heart, is strengthened in faith. Now it is indeed already strange that the „Grundriß“ balks at holding the sacraments to be mysteries of the faith, since one must after all acknowledge so many mysteries of the faith, e.g. the Trinity, the incarnation of Christ, and so forth; nor, on such a view, is it apparent how the sacraments differ from other edifying rites; and when the „Grundriß,“ in its presentation of the doctrine of the Holy Supper, adds the qualification that