26. Authentic Explanation of Doctrinal Basis.--In his _Popular Theology_, published for the first time in 1834, S. S. Schmucker wrote: "The General Synod of the Lutheran Church has adopted only the twenty-one doctrinal articles, omitting even the condemnatory clauses of these, and also the entire catalog of Abuses corrected. No minister, however, considers himself bound to believe every sentiment contained in these twenty-one articles, but only the fundamental doctrines. Accordingly, the pledge of adoption required at licensure and ordination is couched in the following terms . . .: 'Do you believe that the _fundamental_ doctrines of the Word of God are taught in a manner _substantially_ correct in the doctrinal articles of the Augsburg Confession?' The Lutheran divines of this country are not willing to bind either themselves or others to anything more than the fundamental doctrines of the Christian revelation, believing that an immense mass of evil has resulted to the Church of God from the rigid requisition of extensive and detailed creeds. . . . We can see no sufficient warrant for any Christian Church to require as a term of admission or communion greater conformity of view than is requisite to harmony of feeling and successful cooperation in extending the kingdom of Christ. . . . Had the early Protestants endeavored to select the principal and fundamental doctrines of Christianity, required a belief of them from all applicants for admission into their ranks, and agreed among themselves that discrepance of views on matters of non-fundamental nature should neither be a bar to ecclesiastical communion nor fraternal affection, they would have saved the Church from the curse of those dissensions by which piety was in a great degree destroyed and on several occasions the very foundations of Protestantism shaken." (Edition of 1848, 50 ff.) In 1850, attacking Reynolds in the _Lutheran Observer_ on account of his defection from American Lutheranism, Schmucker stated: From the very outset the General Synod had abandoned the distinctive Lutheran doctrines, and nevertheless retained the Lutheran name; in spite of his deviations from the Lutheran symbols he, with perfect right, could call himself a faithful Lutheran. (_L._, 6, 139.) Schmucker, "the most authentic interpreter of the Constitution of the General Synod and that of its theological seminary," never identified the "fundamental doctrines of the Bible" with the twenty-one articles of the Augsburg Confession. According to him the fundamentals are obtained by striking from the Augustana everything that is objectionable to any Evangelical Church and retaining the remainder as the substance of Protestantism. All of the fundamental doctrines, Schmucker declared, are contained in the ecumenical creeds; everything else is trans-fundamental, not required by the General Synod for Christian union and communion. In his sermon at the convention in Winchester, 1853, Schmucker maintained that