# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1873_S16
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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...confessional writings, that the real confession of the Lutheran Church is the Unaltered Augsburg Confession. For this, the following proofs:

Testimonies to the Thesis itself:

Formula of Concord: "Since in these last times the gracious God, out of pure grace, has brought the truth of His Word (puritatem verbi sui) out of the horrible darkness of the papacy, through the faithful service of the dear man of God, Dr. Luther, back to light, and the same doctrine, drawn from and according to God's Word against the falsification of the papacy and of other sects, has been summarized in the articles and chief points of the Augsburg Confession, so we confess also this same first Unaltered Augsburg Confession (not because it was composed by our theologians, but because it was taken from God's Word and is firmly and well grounded therein), exactly as it was composed in writing in the year 30, etc., and handed to Emperor Charles V by several Christian electors, princes and estates of the Roman Empire as a common confession of the reformed churches at Augsburg, as in this time our Symbol, through which our reformed churches have been separated from the papists and other rejected and condemned sects and heresies; inasmuch as it was the custom and usage in the ancient Church that the following synods, Christian bishops and teachers referred themselves to the Nicene Symbol and professed it besides." (Repetition. From the Summary Statement, etc., fol. 256. b.)

Jacob Andreä: "Inasmuch as Your Electoral Grace may see from the enclosed writing, which is not meant to suggest that it is a new confession, by which we should, from the Augsburg Confession, as from the right, single Symbol of unity in doctrine, in our churches have drawn up new formulas of concord, but to use it as long as . . . until by God's grace the churches of the Augsburg Confession have again been brought into good, lasting unity." (Proposal to Electoral Saxony concerning the Form. Conc. 1570. Unschuld. Nachrr. 1718, p. 192.)

Calov: "The Unaltered Augsburg Confession, as it was presented to Emperor Charles V in the year 1530, is the real Symbol of our churches, by which they separate themselves no less from the Papists and Zwinglians than from other heretics." (Synopsis controvers. secundum seriem articulor. A. C. Wittenbergae 1685. p. 3.)

Testimonies to the "Note".

Book of Concord: "So we wish hereby once more to have testified publicly before God and everyone that with the often-mentioned present declaration of the controverted articles we have made no new or different confession than that which was once presented to Emperor Charles the Fifth, of Christian memory, at Augsburg in 1530, but have directed our churches and schools first of all to the Holy Scripture and the Symbols, then also to the aforesaid Augsburg Confession . . . . have wished." (Preface to the Book of Concord.)

Formula of Concord: "Although the Christian doctrine in the same Confession has for the most part remained unassailed (apart from what the Papists did), yet it cannot be denied that some theologians have deviated from several high and prominent articles of the said Confession,