# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S76
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

74 Proceedings of the tenth convention

(provocamus), in the way and measure that Dr. Luther in the Latin preface to his collected books gave needful and Christian admonition concerning his writings himself, and expressly made this distinction, that God's Word alone should be and remain the sole rule and norm of all doctrine, to which no man's writings are to be held equal, but to which everything is to be subjected." (Repetition. Of the Summary Formulation, etc. p. 570 f.)

Here the confessions appeal [*provocare*] to Luther's doctrinal and polemical writings. But how? "In the way and measure that Dr. Luther in the Latin preface to his collected books gave needful and Christian admonition concerning his writings," etc. It is indeed important that we have all of Luther's writings. When one wanted to collect and publish them, it was rightly said: Everything is to go in, even what Luther wrote as a monk. This happened, however, not because his earlier writings were equal to the later, but so that one might see how he was gradually enlightened. Luther would of course rather have seen all his writings put into the stove, as he says in his humility and in his zeal for God's written Word, but he finally gave way and thought: it is indeed well if everything is printed, so that one may see later by what way he became what he was and is. All the more important, however, is it that our confession does not commit itself absolutely to everything that Luther ever wrote, but, following Luther himself in this, confesses only the writings in which he, at last free from all papistic leaven, as a true reformer set forth in all articles of faith the pure truth drawn from Scripture. But even as regards these writings, a true Lutheran is not to follow Luther because Luther taught it, but because he has grounded it so convincingly from God's Word. Hence Luther himself, not only in respect of his first writings, writes thus: "I beg the Christian reader above all things, and beg him for our Lord Jesus Christ's sake, to read them very considerately and with great forbearance, and to know that before this time I was a monk and one of the truly senseless papists, who in the beginning of these matters was so full and drunk, yes, so utterly drowned in the Pope's doctrine, that I should have been ready to murder, had it been in my power, or at least would have taken pleasure in it and helped, that all those should be murdered who would not have rendered obedience to the Pope even in the least syllables. Such a zealous Saul was I at that time, as many still are today; and I was by no means so altogether ice-cold and frozen in defending the papacy as Eck and his like were, so that I thought that they defended the Pope more for their belly's sake than because they