# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1916_S40
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

40 Proceedings of the twenty-sixth convention

yoke with unbelievers; for what fellowship hath light with darkness?' etc. It is hard to separate from so many lands and people and to maintain a distinct doctrine. But here stands God's command that everyone should guard himself and not be of one mind with those who lead false doctrine or intend to maintain it with fury. Therefore our consciences are well excused and assured on that account. For one sees plainly 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." (M., p. 336 f.) That is the chief abomination of the Pope, that he condemns the Gospel, that is, the doctrine that we poor sinners are saved solely through the free grace of God in Christ, through faith in this our only Redeemer, and puts in its place, as necessary to salvation, not God's commandments but his own human commandments, human ordinances; that he curses those who proclaim this Gospel to Christians; that he teaches Christians to doubt their state of grace and their salvation and curses those who teach the contrary, and thus takes from Christians all hope of their inheritance, which Christ has yet obtained for them by his blood. And all this he does in the name of God and Christ, as his visible vicar on earth, who alone can open and shut heaven, who has received from him the power to govern the whole Church, whom all must obey, who alone has received from God the power to interpret Scripture and to determine what divine doctrine is, who is infallible and cannot err in the explanation of the doctrine of faith and life and of all that concerns the government of the Church, so that everyone who wants to be a Christian and be saved has to submit to his pronouncements. Thus he tears consciences from God's Word and binds them to his power, so that no one can be saved without him. That is the dreadful tyranny which the Pope exercises over consciences and wants to exercise, that he demands obedience to his word for God's sake, on pain of the loss of eternal salvation, and yet does everything in his power to lead those who follow him, who listen to his word, with himself not into heaven but into hell. Therefore the Pope is the Antichrist, the great chief enemy of our Savior and his Church, who has done and still does the Church more harm than all other enemies, even than crude unbelief, which rages and storms with open blasphemy against the Lord and his Anointed. We abide by Luther's judgment, which he pronounces in a sermon: "So see now whether the Pope is not the highest arch-abomination of all abominations, whom Christ and Daniel mean, and the true End-Christ, of whom it is written that he sits in the temple of God, among the people where Christ is named, where his kingdom, Spirit, baptism, Word and faith are to be, since through his swarm of spiritual law he interferes in Christ's office and kingdom, wants to rule over consciences and with his decrees and