ew form. Their representative men had made a 'Recension' of the
Augsburg Confession, which made it mean everything it did not mean; and
now the General Synod, moved largely by the lobby influence which was
the power behind the throne, mightier than the throne itself, made a
recension of the Pittsburgh resolutions, which commuted [?] them into
the poison to which they had originally been [?] the antidote." (2,138.)
While the Amendment apparently gratified and conciliated the
conservatives, also those of the Pennsylvania Synod, the York Resolution
more than satisfied the liberals. Dr. Spaeth: "The _Lutheran Observer_
greeted the action of the General Synod on the last day of its
convention in an enthusiastic editorial: 'Now we know where we stand,
and there is no longer room for controversy and the personal abuse of
intolerant exclusionists. We all stand on the Augsburg Confession, with
the qualifications and moral restrictions defined in the accompanying
resolutions, so that we are true Lutherans ... without hyperorthodoxy
and exclusivism on the one hand or radicalism on the other.' And even
the Pennsylvania Synod looked upon the action of the General Synod as
the indication 'of an earnest desire to stand firmly and faithfully upon
the true basis of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, and to prevent
forever the reception of any synod which could not and would not stand
upon this basis.'" (134.) Even such out-and-out Reformed theologians as
Schmucker, Kurtz, Brown, Butler, etc., did not find the York Amendment
and Resolution too narrow. (_L. u. W._ 1909, 91.) The General Synod,
they maintained, adopted the Augsburg Confession "as to fundamentals,"
the doctrines held in common by all Evangelical denominations. "We
repeat, this received the unanimous sanction of the General Synod," Dr.
Brown declared in his pamphlet "The General Synod and Her Assailants."
(13.) Rejecting the position adopted 1865 by the Pennsylvania Synod that
"all the doctrinal articles of the Augsburg Confession do set forth
fundamental doctrines of Holy Scripture," J.A. Brown continues: "The
General Synod does not now seek, nor has she ever sought, to magnify
non-essential doctrines, or to make of chief importance those matters in
which she differs from other orthodox" (non-Unitarian) "denominations;
but has aimed at a catholic Lutheranism that might embrace the various
portions of the Lutheran Church in the land, willing to unite on such a
basis, and also br