# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1876_S14
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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Holy Supper, lest there be a scandal in the congregation and the preacher lose money by it, especially if the unbeliever is a rich man who pays a great deal. That souls are being lost, he does not ask about. But if it were one of those who pay little or nothing, he would probably make few difficulties and exclude him from the congregation.

"But these fellows must be the right high arch-devils, who give me mere bread and wine and let me hold it for the body and blood of Christ, and so miserably deceive me. That would be too hot and too hard; God will strike in shortly."

So Luther's faithful heart was stirred by such an abomination, so that he thought God could not look on any longer. Now one thinks such men are precisely the right representatives of the Savior; they let themselves be celebrated as such, while they are only representatives of the infernal serpent.

"Therefore, whoever has such preachers or expects such of them, let him be warned against them as against the very devil in person." (Warning writing to those at Frankfurt on the Main, to guard themselves against Zwinglian doctrine and teachers. 1533. W. XVII, 2446.)

That is a Lutheran testimony. Especially at the Holy Supper it becomes evident whether one is a heterodox person. If, nevertheless, a congregation receives such a man and admits him to the Holy Supper, it thereby seals his false doctrine, indeed, it enters with him into the closest fellowship. For there is no closer fellowship than that into which we enter through the Holy Supper. Nothing is so intimately joined as two Christians, because the same Jesus is in them, so that Christians in him become, as it were, one person. Of this unutterable mystery Paul speaks in the words of 1 Cor. 10:17: "For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread." From this it follows also what a dreadful outrage it is to give the Supper to one who stands in a different faith from him who administers it to him.

If, therefore, people from other church communions come to us, it cannot yet be sufficient for us that they approve our confession and say Yes to it, but we are also to ask such persons whether they reject the errors of their former false communions. If they say: No, then we can neither receive them into the congregation nor admit them to the Holy Supper. To holding fast the right doctrine belongs also this, that one rejects the false doctrine. If we do not demand this in the most decided way, we make in fact union with the heterodox and let the opinion arise in them that errors have a right also in our Church.

It is also undoubtedly true that he who does not reject the contrary does not truly accept the proposition itself, but only in appearance. Most confess the pure doctrine out of pure indifference. If they came into such