# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1863_S214
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

214 The Doctrinal Basis for the Union of the Evangelical Ministers' Union of Cincinnati.

office of preaching, that is, the command to preach the Gospel and to administer the sacraments, and because this office of preaching, this command, derives from God, it is accordingly of divine right. That is the solution of the riddle.

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"The Doctrinal Basis for the Union
of the
Evangelical Ministers' Union of Cincinnati."

Under this heading the "Apologete," organ of the Episcopal Methodists, communicates in its number of June 8 the confession of faith upon which ministers of 10 different "denominations" in the city of Cincinnati have entered into a union. We may well count this occurrence among the signs of the times — alas, however, among the many sad signs that characterize our time. For it is not the giving up of error and a union on the ground of truth that we find here, but rather the giving up of even some truth which several of those now united formerly held, while a common confession of grave errors and a suppression of important truths come to the fore in it. Of the means of grace nothing is made known except that they exist, and that Christians are to use them — not that they are means of grace. That man is justified by faith alone is indeed stated, but at the same time faith is listed among the Christian duties. The human will is declared, in grossly Pelagian fashion, to be free in the choosing and rejecting of good or evil, and so forth. The whole is a sad proof that the sects, while more and more losing confidence in their doctrines, instead of turning to the truth sink into indifference toward it. So the last state with them becomes worse than the first; for as long as the one in error still fights zealously for his error in the opinion that he has the truth, there is still hope that, when he at last recognizes the truth, he will fall in with it; but if the spirit of indifferentism takes hold of him, he has fallen upon the road to bare unbelief. Unionism of this kind is therefore manifestly more ruinous to the kingdom of God than even the most decided Calvinistic rigorism, for the latter still acknowledges that in God's word the whole counsel of God for the salvation of men is revealed and is to be held fast by man, while Unionism proceeds from the principle that the full truth is either not clearly revealed, or at any rate not necessary to be believed, and that truth and error, even in the most important points, are equally good and are therefore to be equally entitled to a place in the church as well.

What is communicated by the Apologete under the above title is as follows:

"This association consists of ministers of the Episcopal Methodists, Protestant Methodists, Baptists, Old School-, New School-, United-