the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God and the only infallible rule of faith and practise?" "Do you believe that the fundamental doctrines of the Holy Scriptures are taught in a manner substantially correct (wesentlich richtig) in the doctrinal articles of the Augsburg Confession?" (43. 45.) Prior to 1864 the General Synod as such, however, was not in any shape or manner committed to the Augsburg Confession constitutionally. In 1835, when the Constitution was amended, Synod as such remained non-committal. The doctrinal basis then adopted and embodied in the Constitution does not mention the Augsburg Confession. It reads as follows: "All regularly constituted Lutheran synods holding the fundamental doctrines of the Bible as taught by our Church, not now in connection with the General Synod, may at any time become associated with it by adopting this Constitution and sending delegates to its convention, according to the ratio specified in Art. II." (_Proceedings_ 1839, 49.) Evidently this deliverance, though marking an advance over the Constitution of 1820, intentionally omits a direct reference to the Augustana. Till 1864, then, the exact constitutional basis of the General Synod as such was not the Augsburg Confession, but the indefinite phrase: "the fundamental doctrines of the Bible as taught by our Church." All other confessional deliverances of the General Synod till 1864 may be summarized as follows: The fundamental doctrines of the Bible, _i.e._, the doctrines in which all evangelical (non-Socinian) Christians agree, are taught in a manner substantially correct in the doctrinal articles of the Augsburg Confession.