# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1875_S12
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 12 —

does not come from the heart and that they are not in earnest with their confessing. For whoever does not act according to his confession shows by it that, either out of church politics or even out of ignorance of the scope and consequences that flow from his confession, he omits the practice that accords with his confession. We can recognize no such church body calling itself Lutheran, in which the prevailing practice contradicts the confession, as a truly, purely or faithfully Lutheran synod, and may also maintain no fellowship of faith and of church with it, but must unceasingly rebuke earnestly such actual hypocrisy and denial of the confession. That no churchly union may be entered into with such church bodies is attested by our confessional writings in the Formula of Concord, Art. X. There the Interimists, who yielded to the enemies of the truth in the adiaphora (or Mitteldinge) and came to terms with them, are rejected. These Adiaphorists did not wish to be such fools as to set themselves against the enemies and the power of the Emperor in time of persecution for the sake of such adiaphora. Against this our confession says: "Likewise among the true free adiaphora or middle things there are to be reckoned such ceremonies as have the appearance of, or, in order to avoid persecution, wished to give out the appearance that our religion were not far from the papistic" (or some other erring one) "or were not very much opposed to us; or if such ceremonies are so intended, thus demanded or" (indeed) "adopted" (when they are), "as if thereby and through it both opposed religions were reconciled and became one body, or again an approach to the papacy and a departure from the pure doctrine of the Gospel and true religion should take place or gradually follow from it. For in this case it shall and must hold, as Paul writes in 2 Cor. 6: Do not pull at a strange yoke; what has the light in common with darkness? Therefore go out from them and separate yourselves, says the LORD."

When our confession here speaks of the papistic religion, the same holds of every other false religion. We must also take careful care to guard against the appearance of being at one in such adiaphora with the Reformed and with newly arisen sects. Everyone must be able to recognize at once that we are no sects, no Baptists, no Methodists, no Episcopalians, and so forth. The confession-faithful Lutherans did not wish to maintain any fellowship of brethren in the faith with the Interimists or Adiaphorists. When, therefore, a member renounced such a congregation and came to the faithful Lutheran pastors, he was received. For the Adiaphorists were counted among the false teachers and were placed on the same level as the papists, Calvinists, synergists, Majorists and Schwenkfeldians, although they called themselves Lutheran