# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1873_S17
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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...[the Confession] and the right understanding of it either have not reached, or at least have not stood by it, or perhaps have even undertaken to suggest a strange understanding of it, and yet in spite of all that want to be of the A. C. [Augsburg Confession] and to take refuge in it and boast of it, from which then grievous and harmful divisions have arisen in the pure Evangelical churches . . . Therefore necessity requires that such controverted articles be so explained from God's Word and proven writings that everyone of Christian understanding may perceive which opinion in the controverted points is in accord with the Word of God and the Christian Augsburg Confession, and which is not." (Repetition. Preface, fol. 255.)

Luther: "Therefore all who believe and live according to the doctrine of the Confession and the Apology (Augsb. Conf.) are, according to such faith and doctrine, our brothers, and their danger concerns us as much as our own. Nor can we abandon them as members of the true Church; they may join us if they wish; they may do so quietly or publicly, and may live among us or abroad. This we say and confess." (Judgment on the Recess [Reichsabschied] of 1530. XVI, 1857.)

Selneccer: "Although now His Electoral Grace with some other estates, who put forward their misgivings" (with regard to the Book of Concord) "might well have been content and patient if they had confessed the first part of the Book of Concord; yet His Electoral Grace wished . . . to be sure of the matter among his theologians, preachers and professors, and first required subscription from all preachers in the whole land, whereupon there was not a single one who would not willingly have subscribed after instruction had been given, and afterward also from the professors in both universities, Leipzig and Wittenberg; where, however, some were found who in Wittenberg put forward their excuse and yet confessed the first part of the Christian Book of Concord. To these His Electoral Grace ordered the following answer: When we find that they are in agreement with the first part of the Christian Book of Concord, provided this is seriously meant by them, they cannot refuse the subscription to the explanation of the controverted articles, considering that the same is directed to the books of the preceding first part and is sufficiently safeguarded in the preface of the Christian Book of Concord, that through the said explanation nothing new is made and only the misunderstanding that had arisen in the controverted articles hitherto raised is illuminated in Christian right understanding and unanimity. Dated Dresden, 3 Jan. 1581." (Carpzov, Isagoge in libros symbolicos, p. 20 f.)

Rudelbach: "In every way it must be held that he is without symbols (asymbolos) [symbolless], who contests the significance of such determinations as those contained in the Formula of Concord for the development of knowledge and doctrinal presentation in the Church. . . . Among believing Lutheran Christians no difference of view can obtain when the question is whether we are to accept the Formula of Concord as our own." (Hist. krit. Einl. in die A. C. Dresden 1841. p. 130.)

After these testimonies, therefore, it is ecclesiastically fully justified when we say that the Unaltered Augsb. Confession is the only outward bond of fellowship of the Lutheran Church. — This latter