# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S68
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

66 Proceedings of the tenth convention

written down, since they too were not standing in such a struggle over this doctrine as we are. But now we are not likewise to go on speaking somewhat carelessly, and yet also not to make those teachers into heretics, but just to say: Here the dear men often spoke somewhat carelessly.) "And hence he also tried to correct by a convenient interpretation much that the ancients had expressed too inconveniently. For he often condemns and rejects from Scripture in the heretics those very sayings which one reads in the fathers in just so many words." (That is exceedingly important. Augustine condemned propositions in the heretics of his time which had been found a good hundred years before in pure teachers! According to this we are therefore to ask nothing when someone now calls out to us: How can you condemn that? Is it not in this and that book? No! there is a great difference when you now say: 'We are elected in view of faith,' and when those dogmaticians said it, when there was as yet no such dispute and when everyone took it in the best sense. Now one may take it in the best sense of none of our teachers. Just by this the church has fallen into such deep corruption, that one has regarded precisely the perverse in the writings of the fathers as something altogether precious.) "He is also not only such a censor in other men's writings, but has also drawn up two books of retractions on his own writings." (Here we see what an honest man Augustine was. He had written glorious writings for a number of years, which circulated through the whole of Christendom; people copied them, they went from land to land. Every bishop wanted to have them as soon as they appeared. But Augustine did not let himself be incensed by great praise. He wrote rather now two whole books bearing the title: *Retractationum libri duo*, that is, two books of retractions. These are usually placed at the very beginning in editions of his complete works. In them he goes through all his writings and retracts what is downright false, and what could be misinterpreted he puts right. Those are good teachers who do this. He himself saw with horror what perverse things he had written, and would not depart from the world before he had retracted it. So he has taught us by his own example that one must not accept the writings of the fathers without more ado, without testing. He did not suffer his words to be cited in order to establish that false doctrine thereby.) "And so one learns from Augustine with what care and what impartiality the writings of the fathers must be read. For in the first place he seeks from Scripture the true opinion. Then, if the fathers held to the foundation, he interprets their utterances honestly according to the analogy of faith, even if they have something inconvenient. But he does not suffer them to be set against the foundation. But if the error concerns the foundation, as Cyprian's about baptism, then