# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1859_S119
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Difference in the Law between the Missouri Synod, etc. 119

...had to give up on that account. — It is precisely those in the
General Synod to whom God has given gifts, "pounds," who may indeed
"trade" with them; but let them know this: that no trading is possible
by which the devil is not made angry. Let them well grasp and take to
heart this, that if they wish to be faithful they must suffer
persecution, and most of all and most bitterly, like the Apostle Paul,
from "false brethren."

The first fact, now, why we call the General Synod dishonest before God
and men, is its hypocritical confession. The General Synod is descended
from the German Lutheran Church; but this Church never held merely the
Augsburg Confession and the Small Lutheran Catechism as its confession,
but also the Apology and the Smalcald Articles, etc. Why has the General
Synod rejected these confessional writings? Does it not believe what is
confessed in them? Why then does it call itself Lutheran? Let no one
object that the Swedish Church, for example, likewise has only the
Augsburg Confession. The objection carries no weight, for it is
something entirely different: not to have something, and to reject
something one has. But the real abomination is that it does not even
honestly accept the Augsburg Confession as it stands, but lets it pass
as correct only "in substance" (substantially correct). Such a
confession the Lutheran Church has never had. Therefore it is nothing
but hypocrisy that it calls itself "Lutheran." Why call oneself what one
in fact is not, does not believe, and therefore does not confess either?
The Unionists in Germany are far more honest on this score. The
"Lutheraner," No. 5, says of this feature of the General Synod: "When a
body says that it has a confession which is correct only in substance,
which is its confession only in substance, but does not state what this
substance consists in, but rather leaves every member of that body free
to accept or reject, for himself, of that confession, whatever seems
right or wrong, essential or nonessential according to the opinion of
each individual — then that is no confessing fellowship, but one that
veils its confession, that toys with its confession, that holds its
confession only for show; for it neither openly confesses what the
confession states, nor does it openly reject what it does not consider
correct in the confession. Therefore, although a confession is meant
chiefly to serve the purpose of making known the faith of those who
confess it, through this confession not even the members of the General
Synod itself — let alone others — can know what the individual members
actually believe or do not believe. So this sorry hypocrite's-confession
does not uncover the faith but covers it up; with this confession one
does not confess before the people, but plays hide-and-seek before
them." Is such hypocrisy not dishonesty before God and men? And all
members of the General Synod who recognize this insincerity,
dishonesty, and hypocrisy, and yet do not at least decisively and
publicly protest against it, make themselves partakers of that sin.