l recession from
twenty-five to thirty years before. Lament defects as we may, the
General Synod saved the Church, as it became anglicized, from the
calamity of the type of doctrine which within the New York Ministerium
had been introduced into the English language." (_History_, 361 f.)

DOCTRINAL BASIS.

22. First Statement on Doctrinal Position.--The "Address of the
General Synod to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the United States"
of 1823 contains the following reference to the doctrinal attitude of
the General Synod: "An acquaintance with the history of the Christian
Church in the past ages, as well as a knowledge of her present condition
throughout the world, establishes the fact that mankind are prone on
this subject to fall into contrary extremes; some maintaining that if
our external conduct be correct, it matters not what we believe, and
others contending that as long as our creed is sound, the Church has
little to do with private deportment. But the principle which the
General Synod conceive to be taught in Scripture, and which they would
recommend to the Church at large, is this, that we should view with
charity, and treat with forbearance, those who have fallen into an
aberration of non-fundamental importance either from the faith or the
practise of the Bible and the Augsburg Confession; and on the other
hand, that we are bound 'not to eat with a fornicator, or a covetous, or
an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner,' but to 'put
away from among us such wicked persons,' and that 'a man that is an
heretic,' who denies a fundamental doctrine, a doctrine essential to the
Christian scheme, we are in like manner bound 'after the first and
second admonition to reject.'" (14.) A fair analysis of this document
yields the propositions: The General Synod receives the Bible and the
Augsburg Confession. It distinguishes between fundamental and
non-fundamental doctrines and aberrations from both. It holds that some
of the doctrines of the Bible are not fundamental. It also holds that
some of the doctrines of the Augsburg Confession are not fundamental. It
enumerates neither the doctrines of the Bible nor of the Augsburg
Confession regarded as non-fundamental. It defines fundamental doctrines
as doctrines essential to the Christian scheme, hence, non-fundamental
doctrines as not essential to the Christian scheme. Indirectly it admits
that a doctrine essential to the Lutheran scheme is not necessar