# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S48
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 48 —

brethren: the Missourians, they said, cause a splintering of the Church, because they set the boundaries within which doctrine may move too narrowly; but of course, those unhappy people did not know that in saying this they were describing what, as a consequence of their own attitude toward doctrine, already held true of themselves. We have remained with the pure doctrine within its — as they put it — narrow boundaries, and have said to no one: you must come to us and fit yourselves into these narrowly set boundaries; rather, we have proclaimed the truth and asked people to accept it, and they were unwilling, while others received it with joy. That is how the splintering came about among them. But those who found their way to us were drawn by the unanimous testimony of the truth. (Still,) we must first hold strictly to the theses, (so): we wanted, following this thesis, first to speak of the fact that our Synod began at a time when there was an almost universal falling-away from the Lutheran faith and the greatest ecclesiastical fragmentation. For once we become aware of that, it will become truly clear to us what God has done in granting and preserving unity among us in pure Lutheran doctrine. What, then, does "Lutheran doctrine" mean? What does it mean to be united in Lutheran doctrine, free from a Romanizing and unionistic direction? These are the points that each of us must now hold to first and become clear about. We now say of that time that it was — and still is — one of almost universal falling-away. Quite soon after Luther's death, a period began in the Lutheran Church in which opponents of Lutheran doctrine, from within its own midst, very nearly came to dominate it — for when the lion was dead, the foxes crept out of their holes; yet in those days there were still hundreds and thousands in whom Lutheran doctrine remained sealed, who staked goods and blood, everything, for it. It became an evil time, and a long, thirty-years' struggle for the truth followed, but victory came, and the triumph found its expression in the adoption of the Formula of Concord. — Throughout the whole of the 17th century, God gave his Church a time of rich blessing. It was overwhelmed with treasures of divine knowledge as at no other time — not even in the apostles' own time, as far as the people at large were concerned. But what happened all too soon? People relied on the fact that they possessed pure doctrine, and grew lazy, complacent, and presumptuous. The spirit of faith had in many cases evaporated, leaving only the empty shell behind. Then people arose — sincerely well-meaning people — who wanted to help the Church, and pressed now for a living Christianity. These were the so-called Pietists. A whole army of upright men wanted in this way to help the Church, seeking to breathe life into the beautiful but lifeless body through a predominant insistence on holy living. But this was a mistake. For as soon as one insists on pure living alongside doctrine, one may indeed produce so-called revivals, but one awakens only a sham life, since the life of faith springs solely from the living Word. Quite soon these people arrived at the point of moralizing. The core [of Christianity], they thought, lay in the moral rules the Savior gave us;