# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1898_S19
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1898. 19

we say: "Take and eat, this is the true body of your Lord Jesus Christ," this is not a repetition of the words of institution, as at the consecration, indeed, even according to the Lutheran Confessions, what we speak there is a repetition of Christ's words; rather, what we speak at the distribution is our confession. So the Lutheran church has regarded it, and so also the enemies of the Lutheran church have regarded it. All who had an interest in having it concealed that here the true body and the true blood of Christ are given to eat and to drink have been eager to get rid of this formula, either to abolish it altogether or to put something in its place in which the confession has vanished. Melanchthon already gave the advice to use at the distribution the words "The bread which we break is the communion of the body of Christ," etc., as a formula of distribution. When people in the Palatinate wanted to become Calvinist, the Lutheran formula of distribution was very inconvenient there and had to go. When in later times in Germany people brought about the Union, the Lutheran formula of distribution was put aside; instead of saying "Take and eat, this is the true body," people said "Jesus says: this is my body," with the sense: now let everyone think what he will. There what we have and want to have in our distribution of the Lord's Supper has fallen away, namely the confession, which already lay in, and was intended by, the formulas of distribution in use in antiquity when at the distribution one said "Christ's body, the bread of life" (*corpus Christi, panis vitae*), "Christ's blood, the cup of life" (*sanguis Christi, calyx vitae*), simply an explanation of what was being handed out. And when in the American Lutheran church the change took place whereby a church that had formerly been Lutheran had become a church Lutheran in name but not in substance, the change from a confession in the formula of distribution to a formula of distribution that was no longer a confession had also taken place. The old Pennsylvania service book [*Agende*] of the year 1748 was first printed in 1786, and indeed with the beautiful Lutheran formula: "Take and eat, this is the true body," etc. Mühlenberg, when he composed the service book, would indeed have preferred not to use this formula of distribution, for he was a Halle Pietist, and Pietism is by nature unionistic. But there were people who insisted that the confession be clearly expressed. So the Lutheran and unmistakable formula of distribution came into the Lutheran service book of 1748 and 1786. But when in the year 1818 the second edition of this book appeared, it read: Christ says: This is my body, etc. The confession was gone, because Lutheranism was gone. For that reason we hold fast to this, that in the Lord's Supper we have a confession and make a confession, and let us not be misled in this, that after our fathers we also hold to this, precisely, that