# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1882_S68
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 68 —

one calls his attention to it, he says: Oh, the old writers had that too! But nowhere did those old writers who were regarded as orthodox use the phrase "on account of faith." But whether we judge rightly about the old dogmaticians is not at all what divides us. It is in fact a sad thing that in the midst of the Lutheran Church, instead of Scripture and the Confession, people want to return to the dogmaticians and to make the people believe that, if we wanted to prove an error against the dogmaticians, we would not be true Lutherans. That is a Lutheranism to which I will never confess. If Lutheranism is to mean that one must agree with every old dogmatician in every respect, and if not, that one is then no Lutheran, I will have nothing to do with it. We have never held this papistic principle, that we subscribe to every sentence of the old dogmaticians. And when Pastor Muus says: Yes, three hundred years old!! — that is not true. Rationalism has penetrated the Lutheran Church for the last century and a half. There we have not a single acknowledged orthodox dogmatician. But Schmidt and his friends now include this period too, so as to make people believe that for three hundred years it was taught so. No! No! For a century and a half there has been no dogmatician to whom it would occur to a true Lutheran to appeal. In the last decade of the 16th century and in the course of the 17th century lived the dogmaticians who were held to be good Lutherans. But none among them said: What I have written, that one must believe. It is shameful that such a voice is raised only in the Lutheran Church! What do we ask about the dogmaticians when the question is asked: What is truth? Where in all the world were we Lutherans taught so? Our poor farmers would be in a bad way if I said to them: Look, here I have a big book, but it is in Latin, you of course do not understand it; the great Gerhard wrote it; therefore you must believe what is in it. They could rightly say: Well, farewell, Mr. N. N., we have nothing more to do with one another; if you belong to such a sort of Lutherans, I will have nothing to do with it. — When you, Pastor Muus, say: The dogmaticians hung out the "intuitu fidei" as a banner, that is nothing. What do I ask about the banner! Show me where the "intuitu fidei" stands in the Bible. Not a word of it stands in the Bible, not a word in the Symbols. — And as for the second question, whether there is something good in man that moves God to election, you yourself are in this respect against the dogmaticians. They said: Not even what is wrought in man by grace could be a ground of the election of grace, let alone what is supposedly good in man by nature. Quenstedt says that plainly, for example. — We appeal to the Fathers in different senses. Pastor Muus does it in order to catch and bind us. We do it because he