# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1916_S15
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1916. 15

of the true Church of Christ and his Gospel; rather, that it has hardened and obdurated itself still more in its wickedness. Down to the most recent time the papacy not only rejects the Gospel and maintains its shameful doctrine that man must earn his salvation himself, but it reviles the divine truth of the Gospel in the most shameful way, calls it a pestilence to be abhorred, a source of all rebellion and immorality; it heaps shameful abusive names on the faithful confessors of the true Gospel, calls them seducers and blasphemers, men whose god is the belly. The Pope would still today persecute the confessors of Christ with fire and sword, as he so abundantly did in earlier times, if he had the power to do so. What our fathers once charged against the papacy in our Confessions still holds today in its full extent. Not a single point has the Pope retracted, but he has only grown ever more insolent in defending his blasphemous doctrine. Thus we read, for example, in the Smalcald Articles (Müller, p. 337): "It is plain to see the great errors that prevail in the Pope's realm, and Scripture cries out with all its might that such errors are the doctrine of the devil and of Antichrist. The idolatry in the abuse of the Masses is manifest, which, besides that they are worth nothing, are abused for shameful profit and trafficking. The doctrine of repentance has been wholly falsified and corrupted by the Pope and his followers. For they teach thus: sin is forgiven on account of our own work, and they add to this that one should nevertheless doubt whether the sins are forgiven. Besides, they do not teach that for Christ's sake sin is forgiven without merit, and such forgiveness of sins is obtained through faith in Christ. By such teaching they take his honor from Christ and rob consciences of true and certain comfort and abolish the true divine services, namely the exercise of faith, which struggles with unbelief and despair over the promise of the Gospel. Likewise they have also obscured the doctrine of sin and invented their own ordinances, how one must recount and confess every sin, from which came all sorts of error and finally despair. After that they devised their own satisfactions, whereby the benefit and merit of Christ were also obscured. From this indulgence followed, which is nothing but lies and was devised solely for the sake of money. What abuse and dreadful idolatry has followed from the invocation of the saints! What shame and vice have come from the prohibition of marriage! How the Gospel has been obscured by the teaching about vows! There it was taught that such vows are before God a righteousness and earn forgiveness of sins, so that the merit of Christ is transferred to human ordinances and the doctrine of faith wholly destroyed. And they have put their foolish and frivolous ordinances in place of the true