# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1875_S8
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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we are speaking of such an oral Word, when it is believed in earnest and openly confessed before the world, as he says in Matt. 10:32–33, Mark 8:9: 'Whoever confesses me before men, him I will confess before my Father and his angels.' For many there are who know it well in secret, but will not confess it. Many have it, who yet do not believe or act accordingly. . . . Where you now hear or see such Word being preached, believed, confessed and acted upon, have no doubt that surely there must be a true Ecclesia sancta catholica, a Christian holy people, 1 Pet. 2:9, even if there are very few of them." ("On the Councils and the Churches," of the year 1539, Halle ed. XVI, 2785 ff.)

In the General Council, for example, the right confession is indeed on paper, but in practice it is otherwise. Now it is quite possible that confusion still prevents the same from seeing this necessary connection between confession and practice. When one speaks of hypocrisy in this case, one speaks only objectively; but strictly theologically it is not rightly spoken; in the language of Scripture one must call it a "denial." That, moreover, is not the reason why we do not extend the hand of brotherhood to the Council and maintain no church fellowship with it, as if we took them for hypocrites.

In this thesis a distinction is made between churchly acts that flow directly from the confession and those that move within the sphere of Christian liberty and yet may not contradict the confession. In the first class would be placed, for example, the acts of holy Baptism, of the holy Supper and of absolution, which directly realize the confession, since according to it they must be administered in accordance with Christ's institution. Besides this there are acts of the second class, in which the church has liberty but may not use it contrary to the confession. Thus, for example, nothing is said about how congregational meetings must be arranged. In the Acts of the Apostles and elsewhere we find only general hints about it. To arrange them is a matter of Christian liberty. The arrangement would, however, run contrary to the confession if the right to vote were given to those to whom it does not belong, such as women and children. Remarkable is John Arndt's conduct in the dispute over exorcism. Arndt knew very well that exorcism is not commanded in God's Word; he will also have been aware that exorcism is not exactly an adequate expression for the doctrine of original sin. But when he saw that the Crypto-Calvinists were pressing for the abolition of exorcism because it bore such emphatic witness against their doctrine that the children of Christian parents are by nature in God's kingdom, he did not let it rest with merely preaching the pure doctrine of original sin, but also set himself against the abolition of exorcism,