# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1916_S34
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

34 Proceedings of the twenty-sixth convention

because he has thereby made us especially fit and able for this struggle. Only the one who knows and has the Gospel is in the proper sense fit for the struggle against Rome. The more the Gospel in a church is clouded by human doctrine and human ordinance, the less is it skilled and able to wage rightly the earnest and important struggle against the powers of darkness, against the devil and his chief ally, the Pope. Why? Because only those who have the Gospel pure rightly recognize the papacy in its deepest ground, rightly see through the real mystery of its wickedness, and then, because only they have the right weapon against this mighty dark kingdom.

We say first: Only those who know the Gospel are also able to judge the papacy rightly; they alone recognize the whole depth of wickedness and godlessness as it lies hidden in the papacy. Luther says once: "With fleshly eyes the papacy cannot be seen or judged to be evil; but those who have the Holy Spirit and hold to God's Word, they can judge it." (I, 670.) In his polemic "Das Papſttum zu Rom, vom Teufel geſtiftet" [The Papacy at Rome, Founded by the Devil] he writes: "No man can believe what an abomination the papacy is; a Christian must be of no small spirit who is to recognize it." What Luther says here is full truth. It is indeed true that even men who know nothing of the Gospel can, by their reason and experience, recognize quite a number of the bad features of the papacy, quite a number of abominations, and judge them as bad, for example the moral dangers and grave injuries which the celibacy of priests brings with it, the dangers of auricular confession, its immoderate scraping together of money and goods, its presumptions toward the state, toward the civil government; but these are not the real abominations, the gravest dangers — these lie in the spiritual field, they concern the Gospel, the salvation of our souls. This "godlessness and the abomination of it is so great that no one can express it in words, and this abomination can be seen only with spiritual eyes." (Luther. IX, 269.) And spiritual eyes only he has whose eyes are enlightened by the Gospel of Christ, crucified for us and risen.

That eyes enlightened by the Gospel are needed to recognize the abominations of the Pope rightly, this experience also teaches us; we can see and experience it daily when we observe how men regard and judge this phenomenon, the papacy. Luther writes once in his lectures on Genesis (on Gen. 6:4: "There were also tyrants in the earth in those days") thus: "Moses has already said before that the Holy Spirit of the