# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S41
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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the general rule of the Apostle Paul, Romans 14:23: 'Whatever is not of faith is sin.' In which chief saying (which indeed goes further still) this meaning is doubtless included, which is proved by the whole disputation of the Apostle, that everything is sin in which a man does not have such an assurance of his conscience, which may be called 'faith,' that what he does is not wrong. Therefore it is not enough to justify an action where a man is not exactly assured that what he intends is wrong, yet must doubt whether it might be wrong. For it is already sin in itself to put oneself into the danger of sinning. On the contrary, it is indeed needful, where I want to resolve on doing something after deliberation, that I have a certainty in my soul that I am doing right in it. As the Apostle cited, in the passage referred to, teaches about the eating of foods not forbidden in themselves, that whoever eats even with a single doubt is condemned. Therefore in such a case one must strive to arrive at a full quieting of conscience and to be assured of the divine will, or one must choose the safest part, in which one need not doubt the divine will, as for example in this matter, to refrain from this disputable marriage; for then we know for certain that we do not sin by such abstention. Now, in the matter at hand I do not see how the man who intended such a marriage could get so far as to rely on it with an assurance of his conscience, but everything that he could use for his purpose could at most bring the matter so far that he would hold the prohibition not to have been shown to him clearly enough; yet the fundamentals cited above will never let him rest, so as to believe without doubt and without scruple that he is doing right. The words attached to the commandment in Leviticus 18, to which people generally appeal, give those who maintain the commandment something to do, but they still do not give the other side such an assurance as conscience could rest upon. That some, both jurists and theologians, especially when a dispute arose at the end of the last century on the occasion of a Jew's marriage, have stood for the permission, and some may still stand for it, may again, as a human authority, not satisfy the conscience, all the more because, on the other hand, the almost universal teaching of the other foremost theologians of ours stands for the prohibition and, if the conscience wished to seek rest in those votes (suffragiis), such rest would not be left to it. So that, by all reckoning, I cannot see how a person of good understanding, who is able to weigh the points of the controversy (momenta controversiae) and also makes such an inquiry with proper diligence, could get further, from all the fundamentals that may be used by the opposing side, than into some doubt whether it is indeed certainly forbidden, where he namely, from a prepossession, does not let the force of the arguments fully