adopt the Platform. Dr. Mann was right when he characterized the Platform as "the emasculated Augsburg Confession." (Spaeth, 178.) 58. Spirit of "Synodical Disclaimer."--While the first part of the Platform eliminates the distinctively Lutheran doctrines, the second part emphatically condemns them and teaches the opposite tenets of the Reformed Church. On exorcism the Platform remarks: "In the American Lutheran Church it was never received, and is regarded as unscriptural, and highly objectionable, under the most favorable explanation that can be given it." (23.) On private confession and absolution: "How dangerous the entire doctrine of absolution and forgiving power of the ministry is to the spirituality of the Church and to the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith in Jesus Christ, is clearly evident." "John 20, 23: 'Whosesoever sins ...' either refers to a miraculous power bestowed on the apostles to discern the condition of the heart, and to announce pardon of God to truly penitent individuals; or it confers on the ministry, in all ages, the power to announce, in general, the conditions on which God will pardon sinners; but it contains no authority for applying these promises to individuals, as is done in private absolution." (26.) On baptismal regeneration: "If Baptism is not a converting ordinance in adults, it cannot be in infants. ... Of regeneration, in the proper sense of the term, infants are incapable; for it consists in a radical change in our religious views of the divine character, law, etc.; a change in our religious feelings, and in our religious purposes and habits of action; of none of which are children capable." Regeneration "must consist mainly in a change of that _increased_ predisposition to sin arising from action, of that preponderance of sinful habits formed by voluntary indulgence of our natural depravity, after we have reached years of moral agency. But infants have no such _increased_ predisposition, no _habits_ of sin prior to moral agency, consequently there can be no change of them, no regeneration in this meaning of the term." "Baptismal regeneration, either in infants or adults, is therefore a doctrine not taught in the Word of God, and fraught with much injury to the souls of men, although inculcated in the former Symbolical Books." (30f.) On the hypostatic union: "The chief error on this subject is the supposition that the human and divine natures of Christ, to a certain extent, interchange attributes. This, in common with all other Protestant churches, we regard as contrary to the Holy Volume." "The supposition that humanity in any case acquired some attributes of divinity tends to give plausibility to the apotheosis of heroes and the pagan worship of the Virgin Mary." The Platform emphatically condemns the doctrine of Article 8 of the Form of Concord: "Hence we believe, teach, and confess that the Virgin Mary did not conceive and bring forth simply a mere man, but