# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1858_S280
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

280 From the General Synod.

honor they have assailed. If you act thus, you will bear good fruit with
many. Should the great crowd nevertheless harden itself, and gnash its
teeth at you, and cry out loudly, and stop its ears, and thrust you out —
then let that happen to you in God's name. It is then your sign, before
God and men, that you belong to the number of God's chosen witnesses, to
whom it has always gone thus. What do we care for men, who are but a
handful of dust and pass away like shadows? To the Lord God alone, the
Eternal and Adorable One, be honor; him alone we will serve and obey his
will. The outcome then rests in his hand, and our victory is wholly
certain, as certain as God is true!

Do not let yourselves be intimidated by having the platform held up
before you and being told: "you have signed it, therefore you must be
silent and may not testify against it." Luther too had sworn obedience
and fidelity to the Roman pope. How often was he called "revolutionary"
when he began and completed the work of the Reformation; how often was
the oath held up to him which he had rendered to the pope. But he was
mindful that he had sworn eternal fidelity to his God in baptism, and
that this one oath annuls all others that stand contrary to it. When he
vowed obedience to the pope, he did so with an erring conscience. In his
error he held the pope to be the vicar of Christ and his word to be
God's Word. He therefore thought that by his obedience to the pope he
was rendering God an acceptable service. But when, by God's grace, he
came to the knowledge of the pure Word of God, and saw in its light who
the pope really is, and that obedience to the pope is hostility and
rebellion against God, he did not shrink from attacking the pope, in
God's armor, with fresh courage, and from testifying vigorously against
him — and overthrowing him. He went into battle in God's name, and the
victory was his. You faithful sons of the Lutheran church in the General
Synod stand in exactly the same position toward your paper pope, toward
the unionistic platform of your synod. You accepted it in the conviction
that you were thereby rendering God an acceptable service; you declared
for it with an erring conscience, since you did not consider that your
obligation to this platform would stand in contradiction to the
obligation you undertook toward your God in baptism. But now, by God's
grace, you recognize the opposite; you see that obedience to the
platform is disobedience and rebellion against God and his Word.
Therefore open, fresh and bold, the struggle that is appointed for you.
The other members of the General Synod can with no right whatever
reproach you with a breach of faith if you do this. They received you
into their fellowship as baptized Christians and as members of the
Lutheran church, and wish to be that themselves; and if you now, at
last, become earnest about your holy calling, your fellow synod-members
should least of all hold that against you. On the contrary, they should