# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1894_S34
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

34 Proceedings of the fifteenth convention

according to the fullness of his insight, and may do according to his plenipotence, shall according to the Tridentine decrees be severely punished, because they make themselves guilty of two sins. Namely, first, of wantonness (petulantia), wanting to interpret Scripture themselves, and second, of imprudence (imprudentia); for if they wanted to interpret Scripture themselves they could only distort Scripture, since they would not interpret it according to the sense of the Church, that is, of the pope."

That finally the pronouncements, interpretations, edicts and decrees of the Antichrist can be received with complete confidence like God's pronouncements, because he cannot err, because he is infallible, the papists also state quite frankly. But for this we do not need to collect the voices of the Roman hierarchy from long-past times; we want to point only to the Vatican Council held in 1870. This proclaimed in the Constitutio Dogmatica I Pastor aeternus the infallibility of the pope teaching ex cathedra and at the same time explained the expression ex cathedra: "When, exercising the office of shepherd and teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his highest apostolic authority, he defines (definit) the doctrine of faith and morals, to be held by the whole Church."

So we have proved from the writings of the papists that they themselves characterize their Antichristianity as what Luther and our Confessions present it to be, namely that it is sheer enthusiasm, sheer Schwarmgeisterei. By and large it stands in the papal church so that it has in church, school and home all sorts of works and ceremonies, prayer books and images, but in church no Scripture preaching and in the home no Bible. The papacy can get along in church, school and home without God's Word.

2. The Wildly Degenerate Enthusiasm.

By wildly degenerate we mean that it degenerates into wild, abominable carnality.

a. Brethren of the Free Spirit in the 13th and 14th centuries. They are the clear pantheists. They assert: The totality of human beings and God are one and the same. And that a person does not know this is the sin; but when one becomes conscious of it, that is redemption, and then one has the right theology, spirit and piety. The virtues of Scripture are nothing, only the life of the Brethren of the Free Spirit is pious and may not be judged, not even their licentiousness. Their enthusiasm is taken from Amalric of Bena, who said: God must become man; God became man in Abraham according to his righteousness, in Christ according to his mercy and goodness. In me, Amalric, the Holy Spirit has at last become man, and whoever through speculation becomes like me is a man of the Spirit and without sin.