examined from the standpoint of what is demanded by consistency with accurate theological definitions and clear conceptions of church polity. But he will find just as much that incurs the same judgment in the proceedings of the synods that united to form it. The faults peculiar to each synod were lost, while only the common faults of them all remained. The General Synod was a protest against the Socinianizing tendency in New York and the schemes of a union with the Reformed in Pennsylvania and with the Episcopalians in North Carolina. It stood for the independent existence of the Lutheran Church in America, and the clear and unequivocal confession of a positive faith. It failed, as its founders in the several synods had failed, in specifically determining the contents of this faith. It was not ready yet, as these synods were not ready, to return to the foundations laid by Muhlenberg and his associates, and from which there had been a general 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