explanation
in 1827: "The ministry of the North Carolina Synod are charged with
denying the most important doctrine of the Lutheran Church, and have
been requested to come to a reciprocal trial, which they have
obstinately refused. . . . Those ministers, as it plainly appears,
entertain a strong personal prejudice against me, and have asserted
many charges with respect to my personal conduct, as well as with
respect to my doctrines. What shall I say? Have I not heretofore
offered them a reciprocal trial, even as it respects personal conduct?
Why did they not accede to it? They are truly injuring their own
reputation when they speak many evil things of me, in order to render
me ridiculous, and an object of persecution, and yet are unwilling to
confront me and prove their accusations by legal testimony. . . . I wish
a reciprocal forgiveness. But as it respects the difference with respect
to doctrines, it is necessary to be discussed, as that respects the
Lutheran community. Mr. Shober has most confidently charged me with
teaching 'that if a man only is baptized and partakes of the Lord's
Supper, [he] is safe; and that I call those enthusiasts and bigots who
insist upon further repentance and conversion.' Again he charges me with
openly supporting the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation, and of
forgiving sins like the papists pretend to do. Now I positively deny
these charges as being true, and if Mr. Shober does not confront me and
prove these charges by a legal testimony or testimonies, what can I
otherwise, agreeably to the truth, call him but a calumniator, or one
who bears false witness against his neighbor? I do not believe that any
man in the United States (or, at least, I have never heard of any)
teaches that, if a person only is baptized and receives the Lord's
Supper, [he] is safe exclusive of repentance. What a puerile conduct
some men manifest in trying to prove that the doctrine with which Mr.
Shober has charged me is erroneous, when no man nor class of men contend
for it! They are all the while fighting their own shadows. If the reader
will take the trouble to read my book entitled, '_Answer to Mr. Joseph
Moore, the Methodist;_ with a Few Fragments on the Doctrine of
Justification,' he may readily see whether I maintain the doctrines with
which I am charged, or whether I deny regeneration and the influence of
the Holy Spirit. Again, as little as I believe the doctrine of
transubstantiation, so little do I be