# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1882_S19
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 19 —

and keep me in it. Likewise, that He wished to secure my salvation so well and surely, because through the weakness and wickedness of our flesh it could easily be lost out of our hands, or be torn and taken from it by the cunning and might of the devil and the world, that He ordained it in His eternal purpose, which cannot fail or be overthrown, and laid it for safekeeping in the almighty hand of our Saviour Jesus Christ, out of which no one can snatch us, John 10; therefore Paul also says, Rom. 8: 'Because we are called according to the purpose of God, who shall separate us from the love of God in Christ?'" (§§ 45-47, p. 714.) In the Latin translation recognized by our church as correct the sentence reads thus: "Therefore Paul builds the certainty of our salvation upon the foundation of the divine purpose, inasmuch as he concludes from the fact that we are 'called according to the purpose,' that 'no one can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'"*)

Of this erroneous doctrine of Prof. Schmidt also, that no believer shall or can become certain of his election and therefore also of his salvation, we must therefore hereby publicly and solemnly renounce. For otherwise we could no longer say with the whole holy Christian church of all times: "I believe — a life everlasting," and could no longer teach our dear Christians and already our children to confess with the whole orthodox evangelical Lutheran church: "In which Christendom He daily forgives abundantly all sins to me and all believers, and at the Last Day will raise up me and all the dead, and will give me and all believers in Christ eternal life. This is most certainly true!" Yes, we should otherwise have to answer the fifth question of our Christian catechism questions: "Dost thou hope also to be saved?" instead of with our church: "Yes, I hope so," with: "No, I do not hope so!" (namely not with certainty of faith. Cf. "A. u. N." I, p. 235, Antithesis 2.)

However dangerous and ruinous the false doctrines are in which Prof. Schmidt is thus caught, we should nevertheless, on account of this fact alone, not yet lodge a protest against an unconditional recognition of Prof. Schmidt as a member of our Synodical Conference assembly, if other circumstances did not come in which compel us to it.

We know very well that an absolute unity of the church in the

*) "Therefore Paul builds the certainty of our blessedness upon the foundation of the divine purpose, inasmuch as he concludes from the fact that 'we are called according to the purpose,' that no one can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." [Printed in Latin: "Ideo Paulus certitudinem beatitudinis nostrae super fundamentum propositi divini exstruit, cum ex eo, quod 'secundum propositum vocati sumus', colligit, 'neminem nos posse separare a dilectione Dei, quae est in Christo Jesu, Domino nostro'."]