# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1859_S256
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

256 Church and Contemporary History.

...number of June 9 of this year: "So: Watson maintains that water-baptism is the door to the church. Yet an article of faith in the disciplinary code of the Episcopal Methodist Church says (however): The visible Church of Christ is the congregation of true believers. So we too have always understood from the Word of God that no one who has passed the years of innocence (?) can become a member of the Church of Christ without being born again, or without being a true believer. Now, however, Watson and Co. present water-baptism to us as the door. To be sure, they will not admit that this is the new birth; but if the demands of the divine Word — repentance, faith in Christ, and a new creature — are unconditionally necessary, then must not, on Watson's own claim, water-baptism, which is supposed to be the door, itself produce these things? In the Gospel, Christ, who is the door, is the sole object of salvation. But if water-baptism is the door, is it not then, consequently, also the great matter of salvation?" — Thus the United Brother drives the Methodist into a corner: with his orthodox phrases borrowed from the Episcopal church — phrases behind which he wants to hide his unbelief from the Lutherans — he plainly cannot hold his ground against his more honest brothers in unbelief.

From the General Synod. In the April number we reported the deposition of the false teacher Joel Swartz by the English Ohio District Synod. From the Missionary we learn that the Miami Synod, which belongs to the General Synod, received the said Mr. Swartz at its meeting at Lancaster, Ohio, on May 4, with the declaration that it had, after thorough investigation of the matter, arrived at the conviction that Mr. Swartz had rejected only the following errors: 1. approval of the ceremonies of the Mass; 2. auricular confession or absolution; 3. denial of the divine obligation of the Christian Sabbath; 4. baptismal regeneration ex opere operato; 5. the gross and material presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Holy Supper — while he firmly held the fundamental doctrines of God's Word as taught in the Augsburg Confession; and that in his practice Mr. Swartz had done nothing more than hold "prayer meetings," conduct "protracted meetings," take part in "union meetings," and exchange pulpits with other evangelical preachers. Since he was now willing to sign the doctrinal basis and to conform his practice to that which prevails in the Miami Synod, it regarded Swartz's deposition as entirely irresponsible and, given the facts of the case, wholly unjustified. — This matter needs no commentary, despite all the Jesuitical evasions the "Reverend" synod resorts to.

Union. The pastors of the western district of the "German United Evangelical Synod of North America" have withdrawn from it and have thereupon constituted themselves the "United Evangelical Synod of the Northwest." As their motive it is stated: "because they are convinced that the reproach of rationalism justly rests upon them so long as they remain in the said body." Also among the signers is Mr. Hartmann of Chicago. Dr. Harkey's hope of strengthening the unionistic element within the General Synod by means of these Union people would seem, by this, to have been pushed rather further off. A curious feature of the new synod is that it has made the well-known "Alliance" creed its basis, that it declares itself to be "united-evangelical" (only without saying what it wishes to unite with the Gospel), and that, for the promotion of its church-delusion, it has introduced fines for its members. The Hausfreund [House Friend], formerly published by the old synod, is now the organ of the new one.

The Synod of Pennsylvania met on June 20 and the following days. The (re-elected) president, Welden, expressed in his report, among other things, his disapproval of the admission of the Melanchthon Synod into the General Synod, because the latter was contrary to the Lutheran faith and confession. This prompted the Reverend Jul. Ehrhardt, who had to report on the president's report, to lay before the synod a series of resolutions in which the synod's continued, faithful adherence to the church's confessional symbols was to find official expression. The president of the General Synod, Schäffer, declared this superfluous, and so the resolutions were laid on the table, after a certain Mr. Martz, pastor at Harrisburg, had addressed the synod with an "eloquent speech" on liberty of conscience.

Methodism. The editor of the Fröhliche Botschafter of Dayton, Ohio, recently quoted the thirteenth article of the Methodists' confession of faith thus: "The visible Church of Christ is the congregation of true believers." For this the editor of the Methodist Apologist accused him of twisting the thirteenth article of faith for the sake of his argument and smuggling in the word "true." The editor of the Fröhliche Botschafter thereupon shows that this word is indeed found in an older edition of the Methodists' articles of faith (he cites one from 1808), but that it is, admittedly, missing from the new one (edited, is it, by Nast?).