# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1896_S30
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

30 Proceedings of the sixteenth convention

this word of Scripture must bind his conscience also in his practice. So in his practice, in any case in which, when he has been made aware of it, he holds fast to the practice, he denies the authority of God's Word, the rule, and such a person cannot possibly stand with us on the same ground of doctrine, even if he asserted it ten times, and even if he had it printed and distributed in ten thousand copies in his constitution. The right confession exists only where it really comes from the lips as a confession of the heart, not where the sound or the printed letters pretend to a confession. For that is no confession, that is deception and hypocrisy. Only where the confession of the mouth is also the conviction of the heart is the confession a real confession. The stubborn adherence to practice contrary to Scripture is therefore either a withdrawal of the confession, or is a proof that the confession was never really a confession.
What kind of practice a congregation or a synod has, one learns not only from what it says but also from what it practices. A congregation which on its pulpit kept permitting the testimony against the lodge system, but took good care not to touch the lodge people in its midst, cannot nevertheless say: How can you maintain that it stands so with us in practice that you would have to touch us, and, if it does not change, exclude us? That is precisely the danger in which we, who have the pure doctrine, stand, that when we also in regard to practice carry the pure doctrine, we think: now we have it! The doctrine of practice belongs indeed to doctrine. When we preach in this matter: "Come out from them, and be separate, do not defile yourselves with the abomination of the lodge, but come out from them; as many of them as are within among you, they shall separate themselves and give up their membership" — that is right doctrine. But there we are not to think that we have everything if in this matter we have the pure doctrine. We must demand that this be heard everywhere and exist rightly. No one may say to us: This you may not preach. It does happen that a new pastor receives from some quarter the instruction: "You may not preach here about the lodges; that causes trouble." Then the pastor will think: "I shall not heed that; when I think it is time, I shall also preach about it." But when he has now preached over and against the lodge abomination, and it has been put up with, he is not to think that now he has done his whole duty; now the doctrine exists rightly; now he has saved his conscience. He deceives himself perhaps very much. They let the sermon pass him perhaps and think: "Preach away! We stay, for all that, what we have been." And if he lets it rest there, he cannot say that now the doctrine exists rightly; still less has he satisfied the practice demanded by the doctrine. In this the congregation can with regard to the