# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1898_S22
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

22 Proceedings of the seventeenth convention

seeks, and that he answer there as we have indicated above: first, that the words of Christ and the sign of the body and blood of Christ are the sacrament. Second, that he seek therein to strengthen his faith and comfort his conscience, so that we go out of ourselves and come to Christ. So you must prepare yourself to know how you are to use the sacrament; if you cannot do that, then the sacrament is not to be given to you." (XI, 841.)

Ibid.: "One must not throw the sacrament among the people in heaps, as the pope has done. When I preach the Gospel, I do not know whom it will reach; but here I am to hold that it has reached the one who comes to the sacrament: there I must not call it into doubt, but be sure that the one to whom I give the sacrament has grasped the Gospel and believes rightly."

Even Reformed churches acknowledge this. The acts of the Synod of Wesel of 1568, one of the constituent synods of the Dutch church, say: "No one shall be admitted to the Lord's table who has not first made a confession of faith and submitted himself to the discipline of the church."

The Laski Church Order of the exiles in London, 1550, says: "Therefore we admit no others to the use of the Lord's Supper than those who have openly, before the congregation or before the ministers and elders, made confession of their faith and willingly submitted themselves to Christian discipline."

The Zurich Zwinglians had fallen out with Bucer because of his approach to the Lutherans and forbade their students who were in Strasbourg at the university, hearers of Bucer and of the others, from partaking of the Lord's Supper in Strasbourg; they wrote: "Those who stand with us in sacramental fellowship confess by this very fellowship that they hold the same faith about the sacraments as we do. Now the young men who come from us do not have the same faith as you."

The Wittenberg Faculty declared in an opinion of the year 1568: "And just as undoubtedly the sacramentarians, all of them, would for the same reason not let anyone who is devoted and related to this confession and faith of our churches come to their communion; so devout and understanding pastors can" etc.

In his writing to the Frankfurters of the year 1533 Luther says: "It is true, where preachers give mere bread and wine for the sacrament, it matters little to whom they give it or what those who receive it can do and believe. . . . But since we intend to raise Christians and leave them behind us, and to give body and blood in the sacrament, we will not and cannot give such a sacrament to anyone unless he is first examined on what he has learned of the catechism."