# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1858_S145
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Some Remarks on Joining the So-Called Lutheran General Synod, Etc. 145

of truth and error has been wrought in those who are awakening, and
their conscience has been informed accordingly, then to that extent let
unanimous, open, manly protest and testimony be raised against the
prevailing errors and falsifications of doctrine, and submitted in
writing as well as represented orally, whenever these confessors should
happen to be chosen as delegates to the assemblies of the General
Synod.

Should such testimony, however, find no reception, entrance, or
attention, and should no open, honest struggle arise, but instead be
either rejected with scorn, or laid upon the table with contempt, or, in
worldly-wise fashion, put off indefinitely with empty consolations: then
thereby the reluctance of the said church body toward the truth
testified to it in the relevant articles of wholesome doctrine, and its
preference for the errors and falsifications of this doctrine hitherto
cherished and nurtured, and for its unionistic fraternizing with the
Reformed and with all sorts of branches and offshoots, becomes
sufficiently evident to warrant departing from it with a good conscience
and joining oneself to the confession-faithful portion of the Lutheran
Church.

But should this course of action, conformable to conscience, not be
taken by those who have recognized the truth, and room be given instead
by them to the favored expediency and human prudence, and should one
wait, into an indefinite distance, for still more sessions: then the
natural consequence — yet at the same time God's chastening earnestness
— would be this: 1) that in each individual among those who perceive
this, and are accordingly better informed in conscience, the faith and
spirit of witness, which would have grown stronger through confessing,
grows weaker through silence and delay; 2) that the conscience, already
sharpened by God's Word and the Church's confession, becomes dull again;
3) that love for the truth, which would have been kindled all the more
through confessing, grows colder in the heart; 4) that the unity in
spirit — that is, in the one and pure doctrine of the divine Word, in
the one faith and confession of the Church, which is a pillar and
foundation of the truth — grows ever looser and weaker between those who
are bound together by it and in it, a unity which would likewise, through
common confession, since each stands for all and all for each, have
grown mightier and stronger.

4) Does joining and remaining in the General Synod go against true
Christian love.

This holds true, now, in more than one respect. First of all, it is
evident that whatever contends against God's honor and the clear
pronouncements of his Word, against the confession of his Church
grounded thereon, and against the conscience held captive in God's Word
and the confession of the Church, contends also against true love toward
God in all three commandments of the first table, in those who, precisely
because their eyes of understanding have been enlightened by God's Word
concerning the doctrinal corruption of the so-called Lutheran General Sy—