# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1882_S20
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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doctrine here below is more to be wished than hoped for. We know very well, as we have already indicated above, that a servant of the orthodox church who falls into errors, even grave ones, is not for that reason to be removed from his office at once and excluded from the fellowship of the orthodox. We know very well that it is rather the holy duty of love of orthodox Christians and servants of the church first to try everything to help back, in love and meekness, a brother and fellow officer who has fallen into false doctrine. We therefore also know quite well that, if it were merely a matter, as regards Prof. Schmidt, of his having fallen into errors, even grave ones, it would be against love and wrong to renounce brotherly and church fellowship with him at once for that reason and to avoid him. We know quite well that in this case, after fruitless private attempts, the public Synodical Conference assembly would be precisely the right place where we should have to make the last attempt, together with it, to bring the one who has fallen into error back to the truth he has left, through God's grace (for which reason our Synod also, as soon as the present doctrinal controversy broke out publicly, urgently asked the then president of the Synodical Conference to call an extra convention of it to settle the controversy that had broken out, but alas! in vain). But we also know that a man who has by no means merely strayed from the truth, but

1. blasphemes the divine truth as ruinous error, appears publicly against those who confess it as against obstinate heretics, as their implacable enemy, publicly imputes to them before the whole of Christendom the rejection of the most important basic truths of the Christian faith, which they confess loudly and most decidedly, and the holding to the most abominable heresies, which they abhor from the heart and even curse, in that he ascribes to them, despite all their protest, his own rationalistic blasphemous inferences, which he draws from their doctrine, as blasphemous doctrines held by them, and who

2. in the church fellowship in which we have stood with him until now, seeks with all means at his command to set up divisions and schisms, "to draw away disciples," and to gain a following for himself,

we know, we say, that such a man is, according to God's Word, to be avoided as an enemy of the truth and of those who confess it and as a sectarian, and that those who are branded by him throughout Christendom as fallen from the truth, indeed as obstinate heretics, if they continue church fellowship with him further, indeed recognize him as a fellow member in a body representing their church fellowship, beside themselves