# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1898_S9
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1898. 9

only as one whom one can use as a witness, but also is to allow to count as a witness. That applies to all those who are not united in faith and confession with the congregation in whose midst, and with the pastor through whom, the baptism is performed. As sponsors, who are to take part in the act of worship as an act of worship at the baptism, one naturally cannot use people with whom we cannot practice fellowship in worship at all. How can we ask someone to kneel down with us and pray, when we know that his prayer is not our prayer? When a papist who knows the doctrine and practice of the papal church and holds them to be right says in the Lord's Prayer, "Hallowed be thy name," he prays that the doctrine that is current in his church may go forward, and that the practice that is carried on in his church may be preserved, furthered and blessed by God. He thereby prays for all the bulls that his pope has issued, including those in which he has cursed us Lutherans and condemned us to hell. He thereby prays for all the abominations that stand in the acts of the Council of Trent, where the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith is cursed and anathematized. When an Ohioan today prays the First Petition in the Ohio sense, he thereby prays against us; he thereby prays that our doctrine of election [*Gnadenwahl*, election of grace] and conversion might be struck down, silenced, recognized as error and done away with, while we pray: Lord God, keep us until our blessed end in this blasphemed doctrine of thy holy Word concerning the gracious election of thy children for Christ's sake, and in the truth which we confess, that man is converted and saved by grace alone and in no sense, to no degree, in no way as a result of his own conduct or doing. And further, when we ask someone of erroneous belief to give the promise that he will faithfully and diligently instruct this child, should it be deprived of its parents before it comes to the right use of its reason, in the chief parts of the Small Catechism, especially also on the Lord's Supper, what it is and for what purpose it was instituted, then we are asking him to instruct this child, or to have it instructed, in a doctrine which he himself rejects, the opposite of which he believes and confesses as his own doctrine; and he must either commit the abomination of having a child instructed in a doctrine which he himself holds to be false doctrine, or else he must come to the thought: "In the end it makes no difference what one teaches; whether one teaches as I have my children instructed, or teaches as I am to have this child instructed, it is all one." In both cases we have given the man offense. Let us take good care that we do not, in performing the holy sacrament, give offense to someone whom we ourselves have invited. No, here we should have a clear path and say: "That will not do. We can indeed have you as a witness at this act