ily a
fundamental doctrine or a doctrine essential to the Christian scheme. It
admits the inference that not all of the doctrines of the Augsburg
Confession are essential to the Lutheran scheme. It denies that all the
doctrines of the Augsburg Confession are essential to the Christian
scheme. It holds that non-fundamental aberrations from the Christian
scheme are not subject to church discipline. It also teaches that denial
of some of the doctrines of the Augsburg Confession is not a matter of
church discipline. In brief, the General Synod, according to the Address
of 1823, held that there are errors subject to discipline, while others
are not, but defined and enumerated neither the former nor the latter.
It failed to draw a line of demarcation between the doctrines which may,
and which may not, be denied with impunity. Indeed, the Constitution
adopted 1820 speaks of "Jesus Christ as the Son of God and ground of our
faith and hope." (Art. III, Sec. 2.) Possibly, however, the General
Synod was not ready in 1823 to enforce the ban on Socinianism. That the
sentiment against it was hardly as pronounced as is frequently assumed,
appears also from the fact that the General Synod, in 1825, appointed a
committee to prepare a hymn-book, liturgy, and a collection of prayers,
in the English language, "adhering particularly to the New York
Hymn-Book and German Liturgy of Pennsylvania as their guides." (11.) The
New York Hymn-Book referred to was Quitman's and the Pennsylvania
Liturgy the one of 1818, both tainted with rationalism. In the
resolutions, however, adopted in the same year with respect to the
Gettysburg Seminary, Jesus is confessed as "God over all, blessed
forever." (5.) And the Pastoral Letter of 1829 declares that the Church
is in need of a confession of faith in order to protect herself against
the Socinians. (17.)

23. Gettysburg Subscription Limited.--At the time of organization of
the General Synod, Samuel S. Schmucker and F. C. Schaeffer of New York
apparently occupied a relatively advanced confessional position.
According to a letter of Schmucker, dated Princeton, February 20, 1820,
they had promised each other to labor with all earnestness that the
Augsburg Confession should be raised again from the dust, and that every
one subscribe to its twenty-one articles, and declare before God, by his
subscription, that they agree with the Bible, not _quatenus_, but
_quia_. (Singmaster, _Dist. Doct._, 44.) In 1826 Schmuc