# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1882_S52
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 52 —

can also say this: If there is anyone in this assembly who feels impelled to do and suffer something for Christ's sake, here stands one! But as long as God has assigned me my post, God will help me to remain faithful. I accept all admonitions and warnings, but by no means the facts and conclusions. I should have very much to correct. But if I cannot speak and defend myself, that is of no help to the matter at all, or very little. I will only say one thing more in conclusion: This whole procedure would have had a greater value for me if the procedure had been arranged differently beforehand. It may be that it is blindness in me here, but I can say nothing about it. But I know of no case where anywhere, be it Arius or Zwingli, anywhere a delegate who had been accused of false doctrine was simply rejected under the pretext of false doctrine. I do not know whether such a case has occurred in church history. My own Synod has the duty to take me in hand. I have made no secret of my position. No one from the Wisconsin Synod admonished me when there was still no storm there. But no! I have been coldly rejected here, rejected with tumult, as often as I wanted to open my mouth to say a short word.*) — I am quite ready to say, together with Pastor Stöckhardt**), in general: If in what I have written there is anything wrong or anything of false doctrine in any way, I reject and curse it. I will by no means hold fast to what cannot stand before the truth of God; but let it be shown me wherein it consists." — — To the question: Whether he was then not recognized as a delegate? — the Synodical Conference answered: No, he was not recognized.

*) Compare the declaration of the Synodical Conference on page 57.

**) This refers to the following remark of Pastor Stöckhardt: "Prof. Schmidt has, precisely also to me, now and then in his 'Alten und Neuen' made the reproach that I had imputed something to him or substituted something false, thus judged him unjustly, and precisely also did not always make use of friendly expressions. I can assure you that I too have sometimes wavered as to which expression I should choose when I wished to answer his 'Altes und Neues.' I asked myself: Have you not done him too much wrong with your judgment? Yet according to my best conviction I did not find myself compelled to take anything back. Some things I did indeed set right. Meanwhile I still think of the word of the Apostle about the perfect man who also fails in no word. I do not believe it is so that I could not also fail in a word. If now perhaps in this written polemic an unjust, unfriendly, loveless word has offended Prof. Schmidt and has done the matter too much wrong, as God indeed knows best, — I wish it to be publicly taken back. I feel impelled precisely for that reason to confess this here, because I know that such small injustices can bore into the heart so that they hinder repentance."