# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S35
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1884. 33

XVIII, 2098.) Note this well. Whoever binds consciences to a doctrine and does not say and prove: so it stands in Scripture, is a wretched tyrant over consciences, yes, he makes himself God. We should simply know that no man is safe from error. As Luther writes: "He alone can boast that he has erred in no point who is without sin in this life." (Concluding Remarks to the Exposition of the First 22 Psalms. From the year 1521. IV, 1621.) From this one can infer that it is not at all immodest to say: Even a Hunnius can err, a Gerhard, a Quenstedt too, and however they are all called, can err. Whoever will not admit this is a dreadful worshipper of the creature.

John Gerhard also writes of the Fathers: "Although we are ready to confirm all and every article of our faith which are in dispute between us and the papists with clear and plain testimonies of the old Fathers, and although this has often already been done by our people, we can nevertheless neither acknowledge, nor may we, the writings of the Fathers as the norm of doctrine in the Church: 1. because this dignity and authority belongs solely to the canonical writings of the prophets and apostles; 2. because the Fathers themselves bid us test their writings by the norm of the divine canon; 3. because the papists themselves deny that the authority of the Fathers is always authentic (that is, one cannot always know whether the Church Father did write it to whom it is ascribed); 4. because the Fathers do not agree with one another throughout, either in the doctrines of faith or in the interpretation of Scripture; 5. because many writings of the ancients have perished; 6. because, on the other hand, those that are still extant are falsified and corrupted in many places; 7. because in the writings of the Fathers dross is found joined with the gold, stubble with the precious stones, the leaven of human opinions with the sweet dough of heavenly doctrine." (Loc. de eccles. § 203.)

We therefore do not know at all what all the Fathers taught, since many of their writings are lost or also falsified. Even to Gerhard's Loci, for instance, shortly after his death in the Frankfurt edition, many wrong things were added. Therefore the Fathers can never be the norm of doctrine.

Finally, the authority of Scripture consists also, 3., in this, that it alone is the legitimate judge in all religious controversies. We see this in the example of Jesus Christ, Matt. 4:4, 7, 10. What a wonderful spectacle, which all angels and archangels beheld with astonishment, how the Son of the living God, when he fights with the devil, only cites Scripture! Three times Satan fought against him over the doctrine that Christ is the Son of God. And three times the Lord says only: "It is written." The third time had to