# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1850_S120
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 120 —

theology too, that a small error is bound to corrupt and falsify the whole
of Christian doctrine. For doctrine is so precisely measured out and, in
fact, so exactly apportioned, that one can neither add to it nor take
anything from it without grave, noticeable harm. Therefore doctrine
ought to be like a fine, solid golden ring, with no crack or break in it; for
as soon as such a ring gets a crack or a break, it is no longer whole. All
the articles of our Christian faith are one, and again the one are all; and
where a man lets one go, the others will surely, in time, follow after it one
by one, for they all hang together and belong together." Thus far Luther.

If this is so — and who among us would deny it? — it follows, secondly,
that although the Church does not cast off those who err out of weakness,
nevertheless, within a rightly believing particular church, on any given
point — and so also within our own synodical fellowship — on those points
it is impossible for differing doctrines to be carried on side by
side as equally valid. Were a church to permit this, it would
thereby give itself up; it could no longer apply to itself the apostle's word
that the church is a pillar and ground of the truth; it would thereby take
its place among those union churches whose characteristic mark is that
truth and error hold equal standing within them, despite all the
hypocritical protestations these mishmash-churches raise against this
charge as groundless. Above all, then, that apostolic word now applies to
us: "Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among
you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the
same judgment." 1 Cor. 1:10. Wherefore our Luther rightly writes: "Life
can indeed be sinful and wrong — indeed, alas, it is all too wrong; but
doctrine must be exactly right and, without any doubt, without sin at all.
Therefore nothing but the sure, pure, and single Word of God alone must
be preached in the Church. Where that is lacking, it is no longer the
Church." (Opp. Hal. Tom. XVII, 1686.)

The third point I feel compelled to note further is that the doctrines now
at issue are not among those that have not yet come up for discussion in
the Church, but rather among those which not only have already been
clearly and plainly set forth by our most enlightened theologians in their
private writings, according to God's Word, but concerning which our
whole Church has already, in her public symbols, laid down her common,
decided confession before all the world. Indeed, these are doctrines
around which the great struggle of the age of the Reformation truly
turned, and in which the very character of our Church is properly
mirrored. If, then, we were to yield on these points, we must well consider
whether by doing so we would not in fact renounce our Church; whether
we would not thereby cease to be faithful servants and members of it;
whether we would not thereby break the precious oath we have sworn to
our Church's confessions, and concede to the enemies of our Church that
the struggle of our fathers three hundred years ago was, at least in part,
an unlawful one — a struggle for errors and against the truth.

The fourth point which I take the liberty of recalling here is, finally, this:
although the points in dispute do not concern fundamental articles of the
Christian faith, and we are therefore certainly all far from