# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1876_S10
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 10 —

not, and is just as much as denying Christ. Therefore I beg that they would take good heed. It is true that, upon your body and soul, you shall not say: I am Lutheran or Papist; for neither of them died for you, nor is either your master, but Christ alone, and you shall confess yourself a Christian. But if you hold that Luther's doctrine is evangelical and the Pope's unevangelical, then you must not cast Luther away so completely; otherwise you cast his doctrine away with him, which you nevertheless acknowledge as Christ's doctrine. But rather you must say: Let Luther be a rascal or a saint, that is nothing to me; but his doctrine is not his, it is Christ himself. For you see that the tyrants are not concerned merely to kill Luther; they want to destroy the doctrine, and on account of the doctrine they rightly assail you and ask you whether you are Lutheran. Here you must truly not speak with reed words [evasively], but freely confess Christ, whether Luther, Claus or Georg preached him. Let the person go, but the doctrine you must confess. So St. Paul also writes to Timothy, 2 Tim. 1:8: 'Be not ashamed of the testimony of our LORD, nor of me, his prisoner for his sake.' If it had been enough for Timothy here that he confess the Gospel, Paul would not have bidden him not to be ashamed of him either; not as of the person of Paul, but as of one who was bound for the Gospel's sake. If now Timothy had said: I hold not with Paul, nor with Peter, but with Christ, and yet knew that Peter and Paul taught Christ, he would nevertheless have denied Christ himself thereby. For Christ says in Matt. 10 of those who preach him: 'He that receiveth you receiveth me; and he that despiseth you despiseth me.' Why so? Because, if they hold his messengers (who bring his word) so, it is the same as if he himself and his word were so held." (Luther, "Meinung von beider Geſtalt des Sacraments zu nehmen" [Opinion on receiving both kinds of the Sacrament], 1522. Walch vol. XX, 136, 137.)

If, therefore, one asks anyone: Are you Lutheran, that is, such a Christian as holds that faith to be the right one which God has had proclaimed again to Christendom through Luther? and he should say: No, I am not! then he thereby denies the Gospel, the truth itself. This is entirely the same as if someone in Christ's time had wished to say: I believe in the Messiah, but he would not have wished to be reckoned among the Galileans; such a one would have denied Christ as Peter did. Or whoever in the days of Arius did not wish to be an Athanasian would thereby likewise have rejected the Athanasian faith. Precisely because, therefore, the change of the Unionist name makes difficulties, this is a proof that the change is necessary and that the difficulties must be overcome. If the pure doctrine truly lies close to our hearts, we shall not heed the difficulties either.