# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1858_S276
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

276 From the General Synod.

made to tear it down, then we, if we are in the church militant, will be
armed for the fight and will try, with all courage, to do our duty."

It is commendable that the foregoing article speaks with honesty and
openness toward all those members of the General Synod who, in their
churchly conviction, do not stand on the basis of the General Synod,
particularly toward the strict Lutherans. Whoever is not "tolerant" (read:
indifferent) toward what he, according to his conviction grounded in
faith, recognizes according to God's Word as a lie, has, according to the
Review, no right in the General Synod; he is urgently requested not to
disturb its rotten churchyard-peace, and to look about, quite calmly and
with a smiling face, for another synod. We are indeed also of the
conviction that the author of that article speaks entirely in the sense of
the platform of the General Synod, that he has entirely the formal right
to call for this separation, even though faithful Lutherans will not let
him stop their mouths for that. In saying this, however, he says once
again what that address of leading men of the General Synod to the German
territorial churches of November 10, 1845 already stated in plain words:
namely, that this synod stands entirely on the standpoint of union and is
essentially unionistic. Its confession is grounded on "tolerance" (that
is, indifference); truth is to tolerate the lie, and in return the lie is
willing to render the same service. This is a shameful league, in which
only the truth, which is of God's Word, can lose, and be impaired and at
last wholly trodden under by the lie, which is of hell. For if a witness
of the truth appears in such a "tolerant" fellowship, his word is at once
cut off; he is told: you have no right to speak so here; remember the
platform which you have unconditionally signed; there you have no right to
speak according to God's Word and the Augsburg Confession, for these hold
good among us, by our common agreement, only conditionally — namely, so
far as our platform, in its unlimited sovereign right, is not thereby
infringed, and gives its consent to it." On the other hand, in such a
"tolerant" fellowship the lie has, it seems, the right to open its mouth
wide and, with a loud voice, to reject and revile God's pure Word and the
Lutheran confession drawn from it, and to abuse to its heart's content the
"exclusive symbolists," as they call the Lutherans faithful to the
confession. That is not contrary to the platform. Who, then, necessarily
draws the short straw in the General Synod? The truth, the confession of
the pure Word. And why? Because in the General Synod a new pope — and
indeed a paper pope — holds the government, and because this newfangled
unionistic pope, on account of his "tolerant" disposition, cannot bear the
testimony of the truth which disturbs the noble graveyard-peace of his
obedient synod and destroys the "union." For unionistic platform and
Lutheran confession