# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1859_S30
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

30 Ecclesiastical-Contemporary Chronicle.

These are printed together with the report and are to be discussed at the next session, but the conference districts are first to submit reports on them. However commendable such a measure may be in such a case, the theses themselves make for a sad showing. They are evidently "expediency" theses, worked out from the Union standpoint, a wretched jumble composed without principle and with an all-too-plainly documented ignorance of the coherence of the doctrine as a whole. The author of the theses himself remarks: "Given the present state of the parties' controversy over this doctrine, I believe it is our Synod's duty to come forward, as it were (!), in a mediating role, and these theses may perhaps be suited (?) to that end." — The Synod resolved to move that the delegate system, as it relates to the General Synod, be abolished and the collective system, as our own body follows it, be introduced. — Since the Synod had been troubled with irregular complaints, it passed the good resolution that it would never take up a complaint that had not first been brought before the respective church council and congregation. Pastors Ch. C. A. Brandt and Braasch were excluded from the Synod, and the request of the former pastor Schweizerbarth for the lifting of the suspension imposed on him was refused.

The Evangelical Association (the so-called Albright people) undoubtedly belongs among those American sects that surpass most others in blind, crude fanaticism, in spirit-mongering, and in spiritual arrogance. This sect, sadly, offers among all of them the least hope that it will ever turn back to the truth. To the present editor of its organ, the "Christliche Botschafter" of Cleveland, a Mr. Koch, even his own sect's ritual is still too orthodox! To the words: "We pray to Thee for this present person, that, as she comes to receive holy Baptism, she may also become a partaker of the forgiveness of all her sins through the spiritual new birth" — the aforesaid editor appends the following remark: "Here is expressed not only the Roman error, that one obtains the forgiveness of sins through Baptism, but there lurks in it yet another, namely, that one obtains the forgiveness of sins through the spiritual new birth. Which of all our preachers and members believes this? Not one! Why, then, say something one does not believe?" Further on he also wishes to see a change made in a formulary of his fellowship for the celebration of the holy Supper: "that the prevailing error of the Roman Church and of some other churches be confirmed, namely, that the holy Supper, like holy Baptism, is a sacrament for the forgiveness of sins." (See the cited paper of December 4 of last year.) These poor blind people will not rest until everything specifically Christian has been swept out of their sect and nothing is left but a haughty prattle about conversion and sanctification.

The Synod of Virginia, assembled October 22 of last year, has resolved to give up the practice of granting an ad interim license.

The Synod of Illinois, assembled October 2 of last year in Perry Co., Mo., celebrated, as we learn from a report in the Observer, the holy Supper in fellowship with a considerable number of people of various denominations.

The General Synod. Anspach, one of the co-editors of the Observer, writes in the number of November 12 of last year concerning the General Synod: "In this body a diversity of opinion regarding the sacraments is tolerated, and although there are some among our brethren who believe in a higher sense than others in the real presence of the Savior in the holy Supper, they nevertheless hold that this takes place in a spiritual and supernatural manner."

The English Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Ohio and the Adjacent States, at its meeting held October 25 of last year, passed the good resolution that all candidates for ordination should be examined in turn on the doctrines of the Augsburg Confession.

The "Lutheran Standard" remarks, on a report in the "Historical