American Lutheranism, page 9 by Friedrich Bente
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ch, because there are other Churches preaching Christian truths, which, by the grace of God, prove sufficient and powerful to save men. The Lutheran Church is the Church of the pure Word and the unadulterated Sacraments. It is the only Church proclaiming the alone-saving truth of the Gospel in its purity. It is the Church with a doctrinal basis which has the unqualified approval of the Scriptures, a basis which, materially, all Churches must accept if they would follow the lead of the Bible. And being doctrinally the pure Church, the Lutheran Church is the true visible Church of God on earth. While all sectarian churches corrupt God's Word and the Sacraments, it is the peculiar glory of the Lutheran Church that it proclaims the Gospel in its purity, and administers the Sacraments without adulteration. This holds good with regard to all Lutheran organizations that are Lutheran in truth and reality. True and faithful Lutherans, however, are such only as, being convinced by actual comparison that the Concordia of 1580 is in perfect agreement with the Holy Bible, subscribe to these symbols ex animo and without mental reservation or doctrinal limitation, and earnestly strive to conform to them in practise as well as in theory. Subscription only to the Augustana or to Luther's Small Catechism is a sufficient test of Lutheranism, provided that the limitation does not imply, and is not interpreted as, a rejection of the other Lutheran symbols or any of its doctrines. Lutheran churches or synods, however, deviating from, or doctrinally limiting their subscription to, this basis of 1580, or merely pro forma, professing, but not seriously and really living its principles and doctrines, are not truly Lutheran in the adequate sense of the term, though not by any means un-Lutheran in every sense of that term.
5. Bible and Book of Concord on Christian Union and Fellowship.-- Nothing is more frequently taught and stressed by the Bible than the truth that church-fellowship presu