f
a conversation with a pastor of the General Synod, dated December 2,
1824, Andrew Henkel answered as follows the objection that the
Scriptures are sufficient, and that for that reason symbols are
superfluous: "I told him then that he had departed from the Augsburg
Confession, and, of course, from the Lutheran Church. He then told me
that the Bible was his creed, and not the Augsburg Confession, and that
the said Confession contained things which were not in the Scriptures.
I then replied and said that every fanatic and sectarian said so, and
that Lutherans as much considered the Scriptures to be the only guide in
doctrines as he or any other person did, but that it was necessary to
have some standard by which men could know how the Scriptures were
understood by this or the other denominations, as men varied materially
in their explanations of the Scriptures. I then demanded of him to show
wherein the Confession did not correspond with the Scriptures. He
referred me to the word 'real' in the article of the Lord's Supper, and
added that that word was inserted by the hotheaded Luther."

ANTI-ROMANISTIC ATTITUDE.

109. Church Governed by Word of God Alone.--The Tennessee Synod did
not only realize the importance of the Symbols for the Lutheran Church,
but had correctly apprehended also their spirit and doctrinal content.
This appears from her uncompromising attitude toward the Romanistic,
Reformed, Methodistic, and unionistic tendencies prevailing in the
Lutheran synods and congregations at the time of her organization. As to
polity, the cast of the first American Lutheran synods and congregations
was of the hierarchical type. The congregations were subordinate to
their pastors, the pastors and congregations to their respective synods,
as a rule called ministeriums, because, essentially, they were bodies
composed of ministers. David Henkel had experienced the tyranny to which
such an order would naturally lead and lend itself. The Tennessee Synod
must be credited with being the first, in a large measure, to recognize,
confess, and defend the inalienable rights of all Christians and
Christian congregations. The Henkels must be regarded as champions also
of the basic truth of all normal church-government, _viz._, that no one
is to govern the Christian Church, save Christ and His Word alone, not
the pastor, nor the ministerium, nor the synod, nor any sort of
majority. (1820, 23; 1828, 12.) In 1820, when the leaders of the