# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1856_S83
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

A plea for the Augsburg Confession etc. 83

toward confession as well, rests, and likewise in the doctrine of absolution and of the sacraments, especially of the Holy Supper, our Augsburg Confession grounds itself with firm, complete obedience upon the Word of God. Dr. Kurtz, to be sure, thinks that Pastor Mann has appealed to human authority where only Holy Scripture ought to hold good, but he does not say where; he calls the exegesis with which Pastor Mann contends for the Lutheran doctrine of the Holy Supper one that is repugnant to the sound reason of most men and contradicts the laws of recognized exegesis, but by this he only shows that, like the common rationalists, he takes sound reason as his interpreter of Scripture, and that he has not yet gotten beyond the principles of rationalistic exegesis. But let us not trouble ourselves further with this senseless talk, which scarcely a Stephani would have indulged in — he who chose for the frontispiece of his book on the Holy Supper a depiction of Catiline giving his fellow conspirators his blood to drink: the authors and defenders of the „Grundriß“ have to this day again and again assured their patrons and friends that their doctrine is that of Holy Scripture, without ever furnishing a proof from Scripture, and so long as they persist in this and call upon sound reason as the proof of their doctrines, it is of no use to argue with them. Let us rejoice in the voice which rises for our good confession from the very midst of the General Synod, and which expresses the conviction not of one man alone but of many. It will find an echo in the hearts of many who, led by the conflict aroused by the „Grundriß“ to an examination of our confessions, must also be guided to an understanding of them. But once the many faithful hearts who in the General Synod entreat God for the illumination of His Spirit have examined it, they too will recognize that our confession is a faithful expression of the Word of God, of Holy Scripture, worthy to be held in high honor by us as the banner of our struggle and of our victory over the world. Through the idle talk that it is not American but rather foreign to agree with the Lutheran confession, that the principles of those who confess with our Church and accordingly carry on the building of the Church may not be adopted because they are propagated by foreigners — through this astonishing contradiction no one who knows anything of faith and Church will let himself be kept back from assent to our confession. To the German form of the Symbols, beautiful though it is, the confessors do not hold fast at all — not at all to the form of them, which derives from the theological school of the Reformation era; they hold fast to the doctrinal content, because it is agreeable to Scripture, and this is neither German nor American but Christian, and when the confessors, in agreement with this doctrinal content, build the Church, that is a right ecclesiastical building, whether it is erected in Germany or in America.

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