# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1875_S20
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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not distribute the Holy Supper, and if the resistance does not cease, he would finally have to leave such a congregation; for what one cannot do without sin one cannot do at all. We confess that a preacher cannot be a pastor at all if he is forbidden to question his congregation members, before the celebration of the Holy Supper, about faith, doctrine and life. If a congregation may and should take such obstinate opponents of the Beichtanmeldung into church discipline, it follows that a synod too has the right and duty to take into discipline, or respectively to exclude, a preacher in its midst who will not practice the Beichtanmeldung. Complaints were voiced here that even within the Synodical Conference [*Synodalconferenz*] there are still considerable deficiencies in this respect. And this too is a purpose of our gatherings, that we call attention to such existing deficiencies and work toward their removal. The individual synods should watch over their preachers and congregations in this also. To achieve that, however, visitations would have to be held diligently, so that such abuses among congregations and pastors might be made evident and removed. When it was discussed how things stand with such visitations in the individual synods of the Synodical Conference, it came to light that in most of them they have been introduced for a longer or shorter time and crowned with glorious blessing, while in some others they have scarcely gotten under way. It was also remarked that the president of a synod alone, with his many other duties, cannot properly attend to the important office of visitation and should therefore necessarily have visitors at his side. The smaller such visitation districts are, the better this office can be administered. When the president appears to settle a dispute, that is not a proper visitation, which achieves its purpose precisely when he comes uninvited. The pastors and congregations that wish no visitation need it most of all. Experience has also taught, however, that pastors and congregations have come to love this institution as soon as they have once become acquainted with it.

Since in the discussion about the distribution of the Holy Supper the expression had been used that the administrant of the Holy Supper holds the body of Christ in his hand, the question was asked whether this expression could not be objected to. The answer was: This expression is entirely correct and in accord with our doctrine. Does not the LORD Christ himself say at the institution of the Holy Supper, when he handed the bread to his disciples, not: This will be my body, but: This is my body. And Luther advises that, if a preacher is suspected of Zwinglianism, one should have him answer the question "what it is that he offers you with his hands, what hand and mouth here grasp," and if he does not come out with the plain answer that it is the body of Christ, he is a Zwinglian. We Lutherans