t was presented
to them, and taken up for consideration by their several Synods; and
the unanimity with which they adopted it is conclusive proof that it
was prepared according to the stipulated principles. By denying the
right of the several Synods of Ohio, and of any other Synod, to improve
or decide on their own doctrinal basis, within the fundamentals of
Scripture as taught in the Augsburg Confession, the enemies of the
Platform _renounce the principles of the General Synod_, which
expressly allows this right; and they also renounce the original and
universally acknowledged Independent or Congregational principles of
Lutheran Church Government, avowed by Luther, Melancthon, and all the
leading divines of our church, one part of which is the right and
obligation to form our own views of Scripture truth, and to avow them
to the world.

No individual can justly pronounce the Platform an invasion of his
rights; for it has never even been proposed by _its friends_ to any
Synod other than those at the request of whose members it was prepared;
and should it, at any time hereafter, be presented, it will possess no
authority unless conferred on it by Synodical action, in which each
minister has a right to participate. The war that has been and is still
waged against the Platform, by old Lutheran Synods, and papers, to whom
it was never proposed for adoption, is wholly offensive; and whilst we
do not deny the right of any Synod to take it up by way of counsel, the
intolerant and aggressive principles avowed by Old School papers, is a
direct assault on the rights of American or New School Lutherans, which
cannot in the end fail to unite them in measures of self-defence.

_Secondly_, the Plea is mistaken, in supposing that the friends of the
Platform profess to be the true representatives of the Lutheran Church
in the _symbolic_ sense of the term: for have they not reiterated, in a
score of publications, for five and twenty years past, that they do not
hold all the views of the former symbols; and does not the Platform
itself explicitly disclaim any such idea, by publicly protesting
against the errors of those books?

_Thirdly_, the idea of our "unchurching others," is openly disclaimed
by the Platform, as was proved above.

Again, says the Plea: "Those who undertake to change the doctrinal
basis of a church, take upon themselves an awful responsibility," p. 7.
True; but there is an equally awful responsibility resting on t