# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1898_S25
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1898. 25

in the churches as a *publicum symbolum* and *tessera* [public symbol and token] of religion and confession of faith."

Calvin himself writes in his *Institutes* [*Dogmatik*]: "The marks of the visible church are the pure preaching of the Word and the lawful use of the sacraments; so that we recognize as members of the church those who, through the confession of their faith and the example of their life and participation in the sacraments, confess with us the same God and Christ." (*Instit.* IV, 1, 8.)

We must conclude from this that by a Lord's Supper practice departing from God's Word, in which one gives the sacrament and admits to the table of the LORD, whether unbelieving and impenitent sinners or members of erring churches, one not only violates the divine norm which was given for the administration of the sacraments by God himself through Christ and his apostles, and so sins against God's Word, but also violates and sets aside a principle of church fellowship and of living together as a church, instead of taking account of the commonality of church life through a correct, conscientious observance of the divine norm. When the Holy Sacrament is administered here during the days of the Synodical Conference [*Synodalconferenz*], there come to the table of the LORD not only members of the local congregation but also members of other congregations. When these now step forward, everyone who sees it, including every member of the local congregation here, has the right to assume from it that they are all genuine Lutheran fellow Christians who are one with them in faith and confession. But whoever acts in this matter otherwise than conscientiously according to God's prescription creates confusion thereby; he tears down, for his part, this principle of church fellowship and belonging together, of living and working together as a church. So for this reason too, because the Lord's Supper is properly speaking a meal of fellowship and a common confession of all those who partake of it, a confession that they do not belong to the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Ohioans and the Iowans, but belong to the orthodox Lutherans, we should be truly conscientious in the administration of the Lord's Supper. And indeed the duty to see that it is conscientiously administered rests not only on the preachers but also on the members of the congregation. It does, alas, happen that members of weaker congregations take it ill of their pastors when they turn certain people away from the Lord's Supper, especially if these are perhaps influential, well-to-do people, and even that a congregation presses its preacher not to turn the man away. That is not a praiseworthy care, that the man should not lose a blessing which his God and LORD may have intended for him; indeed, we are not to want to bless anyone contrary to God's Word, we are not to make anyone blessed contrary to God's Word