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 "the first two morning sessions after the opening of the convention shall be devoted to the discussion of doctrinal points and important practical questions." 115. Articles on Church Polity.--According to the second of the eleven articles of Ecclesiastical Power and Church Government, the church "has no power to bind the conscience, except as she truly teaches what her Lord teaches, and faithfully commands what He has charged her to command." The third reads: "The absolute directory of the will of Christ is the Word of God, the canonical Scriptures, interpreted in accordance with the 'mind of the Spirit,' by which Scriptures the Church is to be guided in every decision. She may set forth no article of faith which is not taught by the very letter of God's Word, or derived by just and necessary inference from it, and her liberty concerns those things only which are left free by the letter and spirit of God's Word." The fourth continues: "The primary bodies through which the power is normally exercised, which Christ commits derivatively and ministerially to His Church on earth, are the congregations. The congregation, in the normal state, is neither the pastor without the people, nor the people without the pastor." This paragraph permits of an interpretation that opens a loophole for Romanism. According to the sixth article "a free, Scriptural General Council, or Synod, chosen by the Church, is, within the metes and bounds fixed by the Church which chooses it, representatively that Church itself; and in this case is applicable the language of the Appendix to the Smalcald Articles: 'The judgments of synods are the judgments of the Church.'" This seems to imply that the judgments of synods are as such correct and binding. The tenth article reads: "In the formation of a General Body the synods may know, and deal with, each other only as synods. In such case the official record is to