# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1898_S24
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

24 Proceedings of the seventeenth convention

In an opinion of the Wittenberg Faculty it says: "The use of the Lord's Supper, like all sacraments, is a public testimony and confession of which church's member each person is, and what doctrine, faith and religion each one holds for himself, believes and confesses, and also holds without doubt to be the eternal and unchangeable divine truth. When, then, through rejection of our doctrine and confession it finally appears that someone is not a member of this church and condemns it in his conscience as erroneous, he may not be received and admitted, through the partaking and use of this Supper among us, into the fellowship of the churches of God. For such an acceptance would give the appearance that one tacitly praised and approved the unjust and erroneous condemnation of this church's faith and doctrine by the opposing party, or else in an ungodly, contemptuous manner dismissed it lightly, regardless of what one believes and holds concerning this Supper."

The Leipzig Faculty wrote in 1648: "It is certain, and the Apostle Paul teaches it clearly in 1 Cor. 10:17, that among the final purposes of the holy Supper, besides the strengthening of faith, this too is not the least, that the communicants thereby make known the unity in faith which they have with one another, inasmuch as from the beginning of Christendom this communion has been regarded as a sign of unanimity in faith in all places of the Christian name. Into which unity, then, through the admission of the aforementioned Calvinist persons to the holy Supper, those are improperly taken in who do not have the true faith concerning the holy Supper."

In the *Tractatus de Casibus Conscientiae* [treatise on cases of conscience] Balduin writes: "With those with whom we partake of the same Supper we have fellowship, and we thereby tacitly recognize their doctrine."

Deyling writes in his *Institutio prudentiae Pastoralis* [instruction in pastoral prudence] of 1768: "The sacraments are signs of confession. Those who partake of the sacraments together thereby confess the same faith, and are to be members of the same church, bound together in spiritual unity among one another." (p. 473.)

Even Spener, who in his time could bring himself to recommend that one allow someone to subscribe to the symbolical books insofar as they agree with God's Word, nevertheless held fast to this, since he says in his *Theologische Bedenken* [theological opinions]: "Since communion with a congregation brings with it that one also approves that congregation's doctrine, especially in the article on such a sacrament, . . . I do not see how we can make use of communion with those churches whose doctrine of communion itself we do not believe and confess to be correct, and so make one confession with the mouth, another with the deed itself." "Thus this sacrament is always in the