# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1856_S82
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

82 A plea for the Augsburg Confession etc.

did not have the means to educate its children in its own institutions of learning, and in particular to train them for the Lutheran preaching office, so that it had to hand them over to the schools of other confessions and thereby expose them to their influence. In this way it has come about that the Lutherans have become more and more estranged from their proper teachings and church institutions, and could no longer find their bearings even in their own confessions. Although, indeed, under these unfavorable circumstances the Lutheran Church has become almost like a phantom, this will not remain so: it has a great calling to fulfill, one that concerns the spirit of the Church more than its body, and for that reason its teachings ought least of all to be held in low regard by its own children. It is, moreover, distressing that it is precisely the Augsburg Confession that is attacked for the sake of supposed errors — this noble, free confession, of world-historical significance beyond all others, which binds the conscience to no petty human tenet but to the Word of God alone. The distinctive doctrines of our Church do not hinder its spread; that is hindered by unfamiliarity with its teachings, which is often found even among its own children, and is in no way lessened by presentations such as that of the „Grundriß.“ False as these are, they would only increase the prejudice against our Church and stir up nothing but strife and quarreling within it. We need borrow no ornament from other churches for our own; ours is rich and glorious enough, and worthy that we hold it in honor and diligently search out its doctrine and whole character. The author closes with the wish that his writing might not wound but heal, not attack but defend, and prays for God's blessing upon our „Lutheran Zion.“ —

The kind readers will naturally find it fitting that I have presented this little writing to them directly in excerpt. To be sure, even in this way the Christian warmth and cordiality with which it is written could not properly come to the fore, as I would certainly have wished; yet the readers see that Mr. Pastor Mann has succeeded in demonstrating:

1. How the „Grundriß“ has grossly misrepresented the Augsburg Confession — when it lets it approve the ceremonies of the Mass, casts the appearance upon it as though it required the retention of ear-confession, makes people believe that it rejects a right Christian observance of Sunday, and finally presents its doctrine of the Holy Supper in such a way that one might think it ascribed to the sacraments the power to grant forgiveness of sins even to the unbelieving. Mr. Pastor Mann has called this a false representation, and is, as I see just now, taken to task for this expression by Dr. B. Kurtz; but how in all the world should he then describe more mildly what richly deserves the name of slander?!

2. Further, Pastor Mann has shown that in the doctrine of Christian liberty, on which the position of our Church toward the edifying ceremonies not contrary to the Word of God, toward the observance of Sunday, and