F. Bente

“ They breathe the Lutheran spirit revealed in the manly words of C.P. Krauth: "The Lutheran Church can never have real moral dignity, real self-respect, a real claim on the reverence and loyalty of her children while she allows the fear of denominations around her, or the desire of their approval, in any respect to shape her principles or control her actions. It is a fatal thing to ask, not, What is right? ”

“ Who can be a Christian and deny the essence and existence of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, the atonement, the doctrines of repentance and faith in Christ, the necessity of justification before God and of sanctification of the heart, or the moral law as the rule of life, the doctrine of immortality and our future destination? ”

“ Lutheranism, therefore, standing, as it does, for the complete separation of State and Church, as well as liberty and equal religious rights for all, is inherently American; while the Reformed confessions, inasmuch as they advocate religious intolerance, civil legislation favoring their own religious tenets, etc., are in conflict with the principles of American freedom. A Reformedist, in order to become a true American, must sacrifice some of his confessional teachings, while the Lutheran symbols are in need of no purging to bring them into harmony with American ideals. ”

“ We only ask a church government which shall bind us by the gentle laws of love and peace, which shall take offenses out of the way, which shall be an aid in causing all things to be done decently and in order in the Church—which shall be a safeguard to conscience, and shall not lay, nor attempt to lay, burdens on it. The decisions of a synod which shall be such a government representatively will indeed be merely human, as the decisions of all earthly governments are merely human—nay, often manifestly wrong ”

“ As long as the General Synod regards with equal favor, and is ready to receive, the Old Lutheran as well as the American Lutheran Synods, the symbolical men have a vast advantage, and they, no doubt, regard it as a triumph when the General Synod, meeting after meeting, continues to hold out its arms to every Lutheran synod, and recommends as heartily the reviews and institutions which are laboring to upturn its present foundations, as it does those which are known to hold the sentiments which it has hitherto fostered. ”

“ Observer, April 8, 1864: "We ought to be one in the doctrine of faith which embraces the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, while we should practise love with respect to other things. By fundamental doctrines we understand such and such only as are necessary to make a man a true child of God. ”

“ In this most critical moment, when our Church, which is distinguished for the simplicity of its service, the purity of its doctrines, and the excellency of its church-discipline, was about to sink into oblivion, just at this important moment the General Synod was brought into existence, and through this body the Theological Seminary and College grew up which now are in efficient operation and in a flourishing condition. Now our children may be instructed in all the different branches of the sciences by pious and well-trained teachers of our faith. ”

“ And she has lived and waxed stronger and stronger, and the General Synod has been a mighty agent in sustaining and extending her beneficent work, and is destined to see a future which shall eclipse all her glory in the past. Heaven pity the fate of the man who looks upon the General Synod as having been a curse to the Church, or an inefficient worker in it—who imagines that Lutheranism would be stronger if the General Synod were weaker, or that truth would be reared upon the ruins of what she has been patiently laboring for nearly forty years to build." (Spaeth, 1, 383.) ”

“ If any should object to such faith, or any part of it, or refuse to be convinced of the excellence of our discipline, they have their choice to unite with such of our Christian brethren whose particular views in matters of faith and discipline may suit them better. I hold it, however, as indispensable for the peace and welfare of a Church that unity of sentiment should prevail upon all important matters of faith and discipline among its pastors. ”

“ They keep silence.... But why do so many of our pastors hold a false, Puritan doctrine of the Sabbath? Because they have learned no better. If the students in our institutions would learn Luther's true doctrine concerning Sunday and sanctifying the holy-day, they could not, after becoming pastors of Lutheran congregations, take part in the fanatical doings of the sects. But, as it is, they go hand in hand with the sects, invite them to their churches, and permit them to present a false doctrine of the Sabbath to their Lutheran church-members. ”

“ Every Lutheran of this country should have endeavored to lead our foreign brethren to the General Synod, showing them that the pure spiritual Lutheranism of this land is so much better than the leather-bound symbolism of the Bavarian autocrat, as our political institutions are better than those of the old Fatherland. ”

“ The enthusiasm and warmth of natural religion have given way to a religion of form and ceremony. They have taken the life and beauty out of the Bible, and made it a code of dry and inspired theology. Instead of preaching, they have almost invariably talked theology, and theology alone. Our Church has never been in need of would-be theologians, but we have been and are now sorely in need of pastors and preachers. They have discouraged honest investigation, if that investigation has the least taint of rationalism. ”

“ Seiss taught: "There is a first resurrection at the beginning of the Millennium, and a second resurrection at the end of the Millennium. The one embraces the martyrs and saints,—who are 'blessed and holy,' 'who have fallen asleep through Jesus,'—the other is the resurrection of the remaining dead." Seiss also denied that the Papacy is the true Antichrist. In the Lutheran Cyclopedia, published by Jacobs and Haas, Dr. Seiss states: "That there have been teachings and beliefs put forth, and usually called chiliasm, which are heretical and subversive of the true Gospel, there can be no question. ”

“ The Lutheran faith has suffered terribly in the past by attempts of union and cooperation with various Christian denominations and tendencies. Usually they have penetrated insidiously into our spirit, and poisoned our own life-roots, and taken possession of our palaces. But these damages have been wrought through an attempted unity with men who are not at one with us in the profession of a common faith. ”

“ May those, then, who are opposed to the progress backwards, to liturgies, to priestly gowns, to bands, candles, crucifixes, baptismal regeneration, the real presence, priestly confession and absolution, and all other phases of the half-papists, stand firmly by the old Observer. ”

“ If, when the General Synod affirmed that the fundamentals were correctly taught, she had declared or implied that the non-fundamentals were incorrectly taught, no Lutheran who believed that the Augsburg Confession is sound on all the doctrinal points it touches, or who believed that none but fundamental doctrines are set forth in the Confession, could have received the Formula. She satisfied herself, therefore, with an affirmative about fundamentals, making neither an affirmation nor denial in regard to non-fundamentals. ”

“ As between me and the men the decision must be, that the acceptance of one is no more than the refusal of the other, the cause of my election. But between the one and the other the difference is made by the willingness to receive, wrought by me through the offer, and the unwillingness to receive, wrought by the man himself in spite of the offer. Faith is not the cause of our general election. ”

“ In spite of its irreproachable confessional basis the General Council was imbued with a spirit of indifferentism and unionism, though of a finer grade and quality than that prevailing in the General Synod. In accordance with its principle that fraternal cooperation and union of necessity presupposes unity in doctrine and practise, Missouri, instead of participating in the hasty organization of the General Council, insisted on Free Conferences in order first to bring about real doctrinal agreement, the prerequisite of every God-pleasing external union. ”

“ The Lutheran World, January 17, 1901: "In our own General Synod any of our churches came to look upon the Catechism as unfriendly to vital piety, and they cast it out. Today even there are still those among us who oppose and resist the use of the Catechism under the false notion that it is the enemy of practical religion. Their idea of religion is the Methodistic notion. Fitness for church-membership, according to their view, comes through the pressure and appointments of the big meeting. ”

“ With the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church we have now been in correspondence for twelve years, and every interchange of delegates only strengthens the conviction expressed at its commencement, that it 'would draw more closely the bonds of Christian union, and so level the mountains and elevate the valleys of sectarianism as to prepare the way of the Lord in His coming to millennial glory.' We rejoice to-day to greet a delegate from that large and influential body of Christians, and tender to him our Christian salutations and brotherly love. ”

“ In their supreme disgust for innovations they have made our Church as inflexible and unfit for the various conditions of modern life as the customs and practises of the Middle Ages would be out of place now. They have been completely oblivious of the fact that there are necessarily change and progress in theology and religion as well as in everything else. True, there are certain fundamentals that never grow old; equally true is it that there are some non-essentials that change with the varying hours. ”

“ J.A.W. Haas wrote: "If evolution as a biological theory remains within its limits and knows its sphere, it will not contradict the claims of Christianity. If we avoid a materialistic philosophy in biology, and if we do not make nature all-controlling, we can accept evolution as not in disagreement with Christianity." "But, on the other hand, Christianity must be careful not to demand as Biblical facts old hypotheses of species. It must differentiate between statement in popular religious language and the interpretation which tradition has put upon Biblical statement. ”

“ Like ourselves, they acknowledge the Augsburg Confession as their common bond of union, and have, ever since the commencement of the last century, sustained a peculiar and intimate relation towards our Church. It is only by discipline and forms of church-government that we are separated, and we trust that the step which has now been taken will draw us still more closely together, and tend to our mutual edification and progress in Christian activity as well as in brotherly love. ”

“ Pietists, who insist that the terrors of conscience must be of a peculiar nature and degree, and that faith must be accompanied by a happiness and a sanctification of a special kind and measure before a sinner may fully be assured of his pardon and conversion,—they all may be, and, in fact, naturally are, in sympathy with one or the other form of New-measurism and revivalism; but Lutherans, who believe in a Gospel of real pardon and power—never. ”

“ Resolved, That we deeply sympathize with all loyal citizens and Christian patriots in the rebellious portions of our country, and we cordially invite their cooperation, in offering united supplications at a Throne of Grace, that God would restore peace to our distracted country, reestablish fraternal relations between all the States, and make our land, in all time to come, the asylum of the oppressed and the permanent abode of liberty and religion. ”

“ True unity is oneness in faith, as taught in the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are one with the Church of the apostles because we hold its faith; one with the Church of the Reformers, alone because we hold its faith. Outward human forms are nothing; ecclesiastical government, so far as it is of man, is nothing; all things are nothing, if there be not this oneness of faith. With it begins, in its life continues, in its death ends, all true unity. There can be, there is, no true unity but in the faith.... ”

“ We thank God, who has led us to see the truth, and we thank Him for freeing us from the temptation of embarrassing ourselves with the pretense of a present absolute consistency with our earlier, very sincere, yet relatively very immature views." (Spaeth, 2, 114 f.) Walther, who had rounded out almost a quarter century of faithful Lutheran work when Krauth was still a champion of the original basis of the General Synod, gloried in this frank and manly retraction of Krauth as "an imperishable monument of the sincerity of his convictions." ”

“ The one token of this unity, that by which this internal thing is made visible, is one expression of faith, one 'form of sound words,' used in simple earnestness, and meaning the same to all who employ it.... You may agree to differ; but when men become earnest, difference in faith will lead first to fervent pleadings for the truth, and, if these be hopelessly unheeded, will lead to separation. All kinds of beliefs and unbeliefs may exist under the plea of toleration; but when the greatest love is thus professed, there is the least. ”

“ Love resulting from faith is God's best gift. Love that grows out of opposition or indifference to faith, God abhors. There can be no true love where there is not also true hatred,—no love to truth without abhorrence of error.... In Christ we can alone find unity. ”

“ A dwarf, standing on the shoulders of a giant, can see farther than the giant himself. A confession of faith, therefore, ought not to be like the laws of the Medes and Persians, but subject to improvement and growing perfection. Luther and his colaborers explained the Bible more correctly than any like number of their contemporaries. But we do not believe that they understood it as well as God's enlightened people of the present. Indeed, an intelligent Sunday-school child has a clearer insight into the plan of salvation, etc., than John the Baptist, the greatest of prophets. ”

“ God restores free choice, but man himself must make the choice and decide in favor of grace; the will of man is the third cause of conversion; children cannot believe, and are saved without faith of their own; Baptism does not work regeneration; heathen are saved if they follow their natural light; in the Eucharist Christ's body and blood are not received orally nor by unbelievers; close communion militates against the unity of the Church; a Church is orthodox so long as it adheres to the fundamental doctrines held in common by all Evangelical communions ”