# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1859_S197
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Some Glosses on This Year's Sessions of the So-called, Etc.                                                      197

The most important subject of the deliberations — because it concerned the
faith and the confession, and stirred the hearts most deeply — was the
negotiations over the admission of the Melanchthon Synod, which had
separated from the Maryland Synod and whose confession is so poor and
truth-denying that even General-Synod men decisively expressed their
disapproval of it. Thus Dr. Mann said, for example: "he doubted not,
there was much good in the constitution of the Melanchthon Synod; he
would not however eat bread, though there was much good flour in it, if
there were poison in the same." Further, Dr. Krauth Jr.: "The M. Synod
does not appear to clearly recognize the doctrines of the Bible as tought
by our Church." Dr. Stohlmann: "He must certainly protest against the
name 'Melanchthon' Synod, for the name was not adopted in honor of
Melanchthon — for he indeed was the author of the Augsburg Confession —
therefore should the brethren of the M. Synod not cut to pieces the
confession, which is the work of that good man." As is well known, the
Melanchthon Synod rejects, as do the Platform Synods generally, the
scriptural doctrine of absolution, of the true, real presence of the body
and blood of Christ in the Holy Supper, of regeneration through the
sacrament of Holy Baptism, etc., and reviles these divine truths as
"errors" and as "Roman remnants." —

What now does the Word of God say — how should a Christian act, in the
right way pleasing to God, against such people? Does not the Word of
God still stand above the constitution of the General Synod? Surely the
General Synod cannot have sunk so low in its Americanized development
that it would treat the formal principle of the Reformation — that Holy
Scripture is the sole rule and norm in all church matters — as something
enslaving free men, to be cast off, putting in its place its own
self-fabricated constitution, forged in freedom, as a pope that should
bind the conscience more than the Word of God does? Christ says: "He
who loves me will keep my word" — but not: he will keep the ragged
constitution of the General Synod and despise my word. And yet in the
General Synod a great deal is said about the constitution and nothing
about the Word of God. But God's Word says, in Romans 16:17: "Now I
beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences
contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned, and avoid them." The
sincere Lutherans in the General Synod cannot deny — and indeed do not
deny at all — that the Melanchthon Synod causes division and offense
through its Zwinglian false doctrines, alongside the doctrine which they
have learned from Scripture and confess as the true, Lutheran one. What
then must such men do, if they wish to follow not a shameful, slothful
policy of love, but the will of their God and Lord? "Avoid them" — avoid
them, even if the General Synod should resolve the opposite a thousand
times over. What does an upright Christian care for synodical
resolutions, when they run counter to the Word of God?