# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1898_S18
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

18 Proceedings of the seventeenth convention

offense. But one gives offense first of all always by doing before others what God's Word forbids, or by leaving undone what God's Word demands. But the Lord's Supper is also a confession. Even insofar as it was instituted by Christ, the Lord's Supper is a confession that Christians are here together who stand under one LORD, in one faith, on one baptism, whose God and Father is one, who are therefore bound to one another in a unity in God their LORD, in Christ their Savior, and in faith in him; that whoever comes here to the sacrament believes what is taught here, and in particular also believes what is taught and done here regarding the holy sacrament, so that whoever approaches the altar of the LORD in a Lutheran church steps forward with a confession in his deed that he here desires to partake, and does partake, of Christ's true body and Christ's true blood, offered under the bread and wine to eat and to drink. Furthermore, the Lord's Supper is by its whole intention a confession. The Apostle says: "For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come." This is expressed in particular also in our Lutheran way of using a formula of distribution at the distribution and, while we hand out the bread, saying: "Take and eat, this is the true body of your Lord Jesus Christ," and, when we hand out the cup, saying: "Take and drink, this is the true blood of your Lord Jesus Christ." It has been objected against us that we permit ourselves something here to which we have no right; namely, that we have no right to add anything to Christ's words of institution; Christ did not say: "This is my true body" but only: "This is my body," and we have no right to alter Christ's words and, as we think, to improve them. To this there are two replies: 1. When the LORD Christ said: "Take, eat, this is my body," etc., he did indeed say that it is his true body, for only his true body is "given for us," and only his true blood was "shed for us." So in that respect it would not be a perversion of Christ's words but at most an explanation or a wording in which what Christ expressed with his words comes to expression in another way; and we would not thereby be doing the same as the fanatics [*Schwärmer*] do when they deny that Christ in the sacrament gives his true body and his true blood to eat and to drink. 2. We would indeed not frame the words of institution thus at the consecration, but as the LORD Christ himself spoke them. But at the distribution we do not use Christ's words of institution at all, but our confession words. There we do not have a consecration at work, but we speak a confession; these are not Christ's words that we speak there, but our words, our confession words. When