97. Doctrinal Confusion.--The General Synod has always been a babel of doctrinal confusion. In it unity did not even prevail as to the doctrines which distinguish the Lutheran Church from the Reformed. From 1820 down to 1918 the General Synod, in its periodicals and by its representative men, and in part also as such and officially, defended and supported indifferentism, unionism, synergism, chiliasm, abstinence, the divine obligation of the Sabbath, and other un-Lutheran and distinctively Reformed doctrines. (_L. u. W._ 1917, 471; 1918, 43.) Doctrinal discipline never has had as much as a shadow of an existence within the General Synod. Nor did the Atchison Amendments effect any apparent and marked change in the spirit and attitude of doctrinal indifferentism. Reformed errorists were tolerated after as well as before 1913. In its issue of September 12, 1918, the _Lutheran Church Work and Observer_ declared: "Our body breathes the free atmosphere of America, and is not so legalistic and Puritanical as to think that every person who offends must be brought before the judgment-bar of the church for discipline." After as well as before 1913 some of the General Synodists continued to indulge in dreams of a millennium and union of all Evangelical denominations in America. (_L. u. W._ 1918, 87; _Luth. Wit._ 1918, 373.) The Sabbath-day was declared to be "of perpetual authority," and its observance as "binding on all by divine requirement." In 1918 the _Lutheran Church Work_ asked for state legislation to enforce the Sabbath, because the "Almighty Jehovah is 'the Lord of the Sabbath,' and has given us an indication of the importance which He places on His holy day by having put it even before the commandment in the Decalog which says: 'Honor thy father and thy mother.'" (_L. u. W._ 1918, 336; cf. 1915, 397; 1911, 510.) The same old Puritanical attitude was maintained by the General Synod also with respect to the prohibition movement. (_Proceedings_ 1917, 140 ff.)