# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1894_S29
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1894. 29

to the Word of Scripture first credit and confirms it — thereby he sets himself above God. When the pope says, in that he wants to rule on earth as Christ's vicar: Whoever does not keep my laws, which are binding on all consciences, cannot be saved — that makes the papacy into gross enthusiasm. For Ps. 138:2 says: "Thou hast magnified thy name above all through thy Word." Through the Word, then, God's majesty stands in the world at the highest and most exalted. Exaltation above the Word is exaltation above God. To ascribe to oneself the authority of the divine Word means to seat oneself as God in the temple of God. And he ascribes to himself the authority of the divine Word who, partly, wants to decide on the truth content of this Word and of the doctrine founded upon it, and partly, as it were, to be a source of truth for faith and life. With this Scripture is basically removed from the midst and in its place the authority of the man of sin is set. And that is the gross enthusiasm of the papacy.

Luther writes on Daniel 8:24 (VII, 526): "The help and cooperation of the spiritual estate is this, that they serve the pope, both with studying and teaching, so that his gestures and proposals are strengthened and maintained. For he (the pope) lets his proposals go forth unthinkingly. . . . Neither he nor his people consider that they are saying anything good or right; but it is enough that it be said, and they defy and rely on the mad delusion of the people, who say that the pope cannot err. . . . So now, since everyone is persuaded that this king of gestures cannot err, indeed even the most learned, the most prudent and the most spiritual, they take up with unspeakable zeal and reverence the loathsome filth, drivel and dung of his proposals. Thereafter, since a fool can say nothing but foolish things, they must betake themselves to the heavy, toilsome labor of glossing, steering, interpreting, rhyming, pulling this way and that, so that it may appear as if it were right what the defiant fool or drunkard spews out. . . . Therefore he also does not worry about it, nor does he need it, that his doing be strengthened by his own power. Let him spew freely, even if he sleeps and snores meanwhile, then we have at once an article of faith, confirmed by such foreign help, which is to be held in the whole Church. Hence arose these words of the same abomination, with which the pope says in his bulls: De proprio motu, that is, we do it from our own motion of papal holiness; de certa scientia, that is, with good conscience and knowledge; item de plenitudine potestatis, that is, from full power which he has and may use. . . . For all his affairs one may neither judge nor criticize; one must read and hear it all with obedience and submission. . . . And this is just what the devil has feared and forbidden in the canon law (so that nothing is sought