# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1873_S15
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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am?": "Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt. 16:15, 16), and with these words gave expression only to the faith that lived inwardly in his heart. So the Apostles also speak (Acts 4:20): "We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." So now too the Unaltered Augsburg Confession is the expression of what our believing fathers, and with them all faithful Lutherans, believe. The Augsburg Confession is named as the only outward bond of fellowship in contrast to the fact that other church parties, for example the Papists, the Episcopalians, the Presbyterians, etc., designate also their church law and all sorts of outward ordinances as a necessary outward bond of fellowship. We, on the other hand, confess expressly in the seventh article of the Augsburg Confession that for the true unity of the Church it is enough "that the Gospel be preached in one accord according to a pure understanding and the Sacraments be administered in conformity with the divine Word," so that no human ceremonies, as is said there, nor other human ordinances, etc., are necessary for such unity. — When we now say that the Augsburg Confession is the only outward bond of fellowship among Lutherans, or else when one says that the pure doctrine of the divine Word, as it is confessed in the Augsburg Confession, is this bond, the two coincide completely.

As regards the "Note" appended to the second thesis, it is to be borne in mind that in the Danish and Norwegian church, as also within the Norwegian Synod connected with our Synodical Conference [*Synodalconferenz*], there is no express obligation to all the other Lutheran confessions. This comes only from the fact that the Lutheran church of those countries was not touched by the struggles which the Church in Germany had to undergo after the adoption of the Augsburg Confession in the sixteenth century, and which made necessary the very drawing up of further confessions to ward off the errors that had arisen. There was thus no necessity there for the express adoption of these further confessional writings. Undoubtedly there are now also false-standing so-called Lutherans who do say that they confess the Augsburg Confession, but who for that very reason do not accept the other Symbols, because they will not let the Augsburg Confession count in the sense of the latter. When we now say that the Augsburg Confession is the only outward bond of fellowship of the Lutheran Church, one might well make the reproach that we wanted to yield to these false spirits. We are far from that, as indeed the "Note" itself already meets such an accusation sufficiently. For the dear fathers themselves bear witness, partly in their private writings, partly even in the other confes-