l," etc. The second declares: "The true unity
of a particular church, in virtue of which men are truly members of one
and the same church, and by which any church abides in real identity,
and is entitled to a continuation of her name, is unity in doctrine and
faith and in the Sacraments, to wit, that she continues to teach and to
set forth, and that her true members embrace from the heart, and use,
the articles of faith and the Sacraments as they were held and
administered when the Church came into distinctive being and received a
distinctive name." The third article distinguishes general and
particular symbols. The fourth emphasizes that these confessions are a
testimony of unity and a bond of union only when "accepted in their own
true, native, original, and only sense." Those who "subscribe them must
not only agree to use the same words, but must use and understand those
words in one and the same sense." According to the fifth article the
unity of the Lutheran Church "depends upon her abiding in one and the
same faith." Article six reads: "The Unaltered Augsburg Confession is by
preeminence the Confession of that faith. The acceptance of its
doctrines and the avowal of them without equivocation or mental
reservation make, mark, and identify that Church, which alone, in the
true, original, historical, and honest sense of the term, is the
Evangelical Lutheran Church." According to the seventh article the only
churches "entitled to the name Evangelical Lutheran are those which
sincerely hold and truthfully confess the doctrines of the Unaltered
Augsburg Confession." The next article reads: "We accept and acknowledge
the doctrines of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession in its original sense
as throughout in conformity with the pure truth of which God's Word is
the only rule. We accept its statements of truth as in perfect
accordance with the canonical Scriptures: We reject the errors it
condemns, and believe that all which it commits to the liberty of the
Church of right belongs to that liberty." The ninth article declares
"that the other Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, inasmuch
as they set forth none other than its system of doctrine and articles of
faith, are of necessity pure and Scriptural," and that all of them "are,
with the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, in the perfect harmony of one
and the same Scriptural faith." (Ochsenford, _Documentary History_, 178
f.) According to the By-laws of the Constitution