# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1882_S16
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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(Formula of Concord, Declaratio, Art. III, §§ 52, 53, p. 621.) Prof. Schmidt indeed raises, again and again, the claim that precisely with his synergistic doctrine of free will and conversion, in particular with his doctrine of election and his fight against the opposite doctrine, he must save the pure doctrine of justification by faith alone; but this is nothing other than a quite dreadful blindness; for since according to his doctrine faith, salvation and election have man's good conduct from his own natural powers as their "presupposition," so that the former depends on the latter, he makes faith, salvation and election a partial product of man. But God's Word says: "By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." (Eph. 2:8-10.) Oh, it cannot be told what Satan has in mind with the doctrine of Prof. Schmidt! Under the pretext and fair appearance of having to stand up for justification and salvation by grace alone through faith, by which appearance many an honest soul too is only too easily blinded, Satan now wishes, by means of a secret trick, to take this doctrine from our orthodox American Lutheran church and leave her no more than a deceptive appearance of it. Therefore we are today once more compelled to testify, with our Confession, before God and His church: "From this article nothing can be yielded or conceded, though heaven and earth and whatever will not remain should fall. 'For there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved,' says Peter, Acts 4:12, and 'with his stripes we are healed,' Isaiah 53:5. And on this article stands everything that we teach and live against the Pope, devil and world. Therefore we must be quite certain of it and not doubt, otherwise all is lost and Pope and devil and all win the victory and the right against us." (Smalcald Articles, Art. II, 1, § 5, p. 300.)

A further false doctrine of far-reaching significance of which we must accuse Prof. Schmidt is this, that no believer can be certain of his election. Already in those theses and antitheses, sent, as already noted, in the year 1879 to a member of the faculty of our seminary at St. Louis, Prof. Schmidt confessed also this grave error of his. Thus read his first two antitheses, which he himself calls his "counter-doctrine": "1. If election is defined in the narrowest (resp. dogmatic [!]) sense as the determination, made from eternity, of all who believe steadfastly to the end to the infallible attainment of salvation, then no believer can in this sense be certain of his election as one revealed in the Word of God