# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1874_S41
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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impossible to begin the proceedings on the Augsburg Confession. One would have to go back and ask what is the doctrine of Holy Scripture on Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and so on. So the invitation surely cannot be understood in this way. According to its wording it would indeed seem that the invitation must be understood so that all Lutherans who in any way confess the Augsburg Confession are invited; yet it seemed hardly conceivable that the meaning was this, that all kinds of Lutherans were to be invited but excluded from the Arrangements Committee.

But even if one assumed, it was said, that only such Lutherans as confess the Augsburg Confession without reservation are invited, there would still be a difficulty. On that basis the General Synod would also be invited. For there is no doubt that the General Synod is meant too, since the proposal originated with the General Synod. Indeed, a prominent member of the General Synod declared under oath only recently that the General Synod confesses the Augsburg Confession just as without reservation as the General Council. The Council therefore expects in any case that the General Synod will also take part in the colloquium. And of course the General Council itself will appear at the colloquium as a body confessing the Augustana [Augsburg Confession] without reservation.

Now, unfortunately, it is certain that an unreserved confessing of the Symbols on the part of the General Synod and even of the General Council exists at most formally or on paper, in which we can by no means yet see a truly unreserved one. We could do that only if they declared that they had hitherto stood wrongly and now wished to take the right position. If all "synods that confess the Augsburg Confession without reservation" are invited, and yet the invitation is also sent to the General Synod, that is not honest. General Council and General Synod both know that they do not confess the Augsburg Confession without reservation, and yet they claim to be recognized as such. That does not rhyme.

That the Council itself does not confess the Augsburg Confession without reservation follows from the fact that it does not want to understand the rejection of the contrary doctrine in the tenth article as meaning that pulpit and altar fellowship with those teaching otherwise is thereby rejected; further, from the fact that in the seventeenth article it does not find the gross chiliasm of several of its members rejected. Such a body surely does not confess the Augsburg Confession without reservation! The General Council has therefore proved just as well as the General Synod that there is no unity among them in the doctrine of the Symbol; quite apart from the fact that a spirit different from ours prevails among them. They prove it also by their practice, that they lack the will to carry out faithfully the principles of the Confession, although the Council accepts the whole Book of Concord.