# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1930_S22
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22 Proceedings of the thirty-second convention

preached in Pisidian Antioch first in the synagogue, and indeed until the moment when the Jews contradicted and blasphemed, Acts 13:45. And then he made the solemn declaration: "It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles," v. 46. It went similarly in Iconium, Acts 14:1, in Thessalonica, Acts 17:1, in Corinth, Acts 18:4, where he too was finally compelled, in the face of the resistance and blasphemy of the Jews, to make the declaration: "Your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean: from henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles," v. 6. Even later, when Paul came to Rome as a prisoner in the year 61, after he had already in the year 58 written his glorious epistle to the Christian congregation at Rome, he called together the chief of the Jews in order, if possible, to win them for the Gospel, Acts 28:17 ff. And only when they too, on the whole, resisted the Gospel did he remind them of the word of the prophet Isaiah, chap. 6, which under similar circumstances had also been used by Christ, Matt. 13:14, 15; Mark 4:12; Luke 8:10, 11; cf. also John 12:39-41. As long as the apostles had to deal with lack of knowledge and with weakness in the apprehension and understanding of the doctrine of Scripture, as long as there was still some hope that men could be won for the pure Gospel, so long they exercised forbearance, longsuffering, kindness, so long they were ready to forgive much for love's sake.

So it was also at the time of the Reformation; especially Luther and the co-workers standing nearest to him practiced thus. In the Apology, in Art. III, § 122 (*Conc. Trigl.*, 188), we read: "The apostles do not exhort to such love without cause, which the philosophi [philosophers] have called ἐπιείκειαν [equity, gentleness]. For if people are to be and remain together in unity, whether in the Church or also in secular government, they must not reckon up all faults against one another on the gold-scales; they must let one another pass over a great deal, as with the water, and always make allowance, as much as ever possible, and have brotherly patience with one another." As long as it was a matter of weakness, of infirmities, of lack of knowledge or also of human faults in connection with the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments, Luther — and with him the other reformers of Germany — went really to the utmost limit of what is permitted. Seldom have sermons been preached in the history of the Church under similar circumstances that express the spirit of true peace and of the effort to preserve unity in the Spirit as do the eight sermons which Luther, after his return from the Wartburg, delivered at Wittenberg from the 9th to the 16th of March 1522. For although Luther, in the time between December 1519, when he still said ("Sermon von dem hochwürdigen Sakrament des heiligen wahren Leichnams Christi" [Sermon on the Venerable Sacrament of the Holy True Body of Christ], XIX, 426 ff.): "Although the people are not now given both kinds every day as formerly, neither is it necessary," and October 1520, when in the writing "Von der babylonischen Gefangenschaft der Kirche" [On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church] he demanded the Lord's Supper in both kinds, had come to the right knowledge and knew well that it was a matter of clear Scripture doctrine, he nevertheless could still say in the fifth sermon of the series named: "Although I hold it for certain that it is necessary to take this Sacrament in both kinds according to the institution of Christ, our dear LORD, as the three evangelists and St. Paul have clearly described it: yet one should not so quickly and suddenly