# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1874_S9
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 9 —

What is correctly inferred from the Symbols belongs rather to the content of the Symbols. Thus, for example, the doctrine of inspiration (the divine inspiration of Holy Scripture) is not expressly stated in the Augsburg Confession, but it lies in it implicite, for the Augsburg Confession never speaks of Holy Scripture otherwise than as being wholly and entirely inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Where it leads when one will not admit the consequences drawn from the Augsburg Confession appears, among other things, from the fact that the Jesuits assert that the Lutherans, despite the Augsburg Confession, could still be brought back into the papal church if they believed no more than what is expressly and by name stated in the Augsburg Confession. When, precisely on this ground, the Jesuit L. Forer had asserted that the Lutherans might teach nothing further than what is "expressly and by name to be found" in the Augsburg Confession, there was answered him, in "Des Evangeliſchen Augapfels Vertheidigung" [Defense of the Evangelical Apple of the Eye] (1673), among other things: "In the meantime those articles are nevertheless also comprised implicite in the Augsburg Confession which are in dispute between us and the papists, even though they have not been touched on precisely by name, explicite and expressly. It is enough if our side's opinion on such points can be gathered from the Augsburg Confession. . . . As, for example, there is a great dispute between us and them whether Holy Scripture is so constituted that the articles of faith must be proved and settled from it, whether it is the rule by which all controversies are to be decided? There is, to be sure, no particular article on this; but the Evangelical Estates give their mind sufficiently to be known on this point in another way, when they write in the preface: 'They submit their pastors' and preachers' and their own confession of faith, what and in what manner is taught on the ground of Holy Scripture in their principalities, etc.' A blind man can grasp that Holy Scripture is held to be the foundation of the articles of faith. . . . In the article on original sin it is not expressly said that the Virgin Mary was conceived in sin; but because it is said of all men who are born naturally that they are conceived and born in sin, it is easy to conclude that the Virgin Mary also is comprised among such men; otherwise she would have been specially excepted." The same is shown in what follows with respect to the doctrines of the certainty of salvation, the number of the sacraments, the invocation and veneration of images, and purgatory. Pp. 168–171. Compare "Lehre und Wehre" [Doctrine and Defense, a periodical], vol. XIV, p. 204 f.

Let us therefore not be intimidated. We are not going too far; we are making no new conditions of church fellowship; we are going no further than our fathers. But we must go so far that we