# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1859_S152
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Eulogy on the General Synod. 152

what it means to me, touching the Lord Jesus Christ's coming at the Last Judgment. Therefore let no one make a joke or loose pleading out of it; I am in earnest. For I know Satan, by God's grace, to a great extent; if he can pervert and confound God's Word and Scripture, what would he not do with my words or another's?" (XX, 1374.) Finally, in his last confession, of 1544, Luther writes: "I count them all in one lump, however different they may otherwise be, who will not believe that the Lord's bread in the Supper is his true, natural body, which the ungodly man or Judas receives orally just as well as St. Peter and all the saints. Whoever, I say, will not believe this, let him leave me in peace with letters, writings, or words, and let him hope for no fellowship with me; nothing else will come of it." (XX, 2212.)

With this let us now compare the printed report which the General Synod sent to Germany in 1845 concerning its condition in doctrine and practice. It states there, among other things: "Only essential agreement in doctrinal and life-views was therefore required among us. According to the Formula or Church Order issued by the General Synod, candidates at their licensure and pastors at their ordination, after acknowledging the Bible as the sole infallible divine norm of their faith and life, need only make the following promise: 'We believe that the fundamental truths of the Bible are set forth in an essentially correct manner in the doctrinal articles of the Augsburg Confession.' As for our doctrinal views, we confess unreservedly — indeed we confess it loudly and openly — that the great majority of us are not Old Lutheran" (that is, Neo-Lutheran) "in the sense of a small party which bears this name in Germany. We are convinced that if the great Luther still lived" (see above, Luther's introduction to his Confession of 1528), "he himself would not be one. Nevertheless we are evangelical-Lutheran. Holding fast to Luther's chief principle, that God's Word alone is infallible, we have examined Luther's doctrinal structure by this standard and found it essentially correct. We stand here, as indeed in most of our churchly principles, on common ground with the United Church of Germany. The distinguishing views between the Old Lutheran and the Reformed Church we therefore do not regard as essential; and the direction of the so-called Old Lutheran party seems to us to be behind our age. The glorious Reformation of the sixteenth century was neither a sudden one, nor a perfect one. The great Luther made progress throughout his life, and at the end of his career regarded his work as unfinished. We follow his own counsel when we search for the truth in God's Word more than in his writings, and so seek to complete his work. Luther's particular view concerning the bodily presence of the Lord in the Supper is, by the great majority of our