§ 41. The doctrinal system which Arndt so sincerely revered, was brought to this country by the Lutheran pastors who visited our shores at a very early period. Dr. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, an eminently enlightened and holy man, was enabled, by his well-disciplined mind and great administrative powers, to create order among the scattered Lutherans whom he found in this country. He was exceedingly zealous in maintaining the purity of the Lutheran faith, to which he owed all his peace and his hopes. He gave unusual prominence to the Symbolical Books—to _all_ of them, mentioned by name—in the various constitutions of congregations organized or influenced by him, and very properly claimed that none who rejected them could honestly bear the name of _Lutherans_. We will give only one illustration, of many which might be adduced, to show the fidelity with which he held to the Lutheran Symbolical Books, as enumerated by Arndt in the last paragraph of his Preface to Book I., in this volume. Dr. Muhlenberg states in an official Report for the year 1747, which he transmitted to Halle (_Hall. Nachr._, pp. 234, 235), that he had visited a congregation in Maryland, in which great dissensions prevailed at the time, occasioned by efforts made by certain individuals to alienate the Lutherans from their faith and church. He says, “Before we commenced public worship, I asked for the Church Record, and wrote certain propositions and articles in it in the English language, and among other statements, made the following: That our German Lutherans held to the holy Word of God, in the prophetic and apostolical writings; further, to the unaltered Augsburg Confession, and the other Symbolical Books, etc.(3) I then read the same publicly to the congregation, and explained it to them in the German language, and added, that every one who desired to be, and to remain, _such_ a Lutheran, should subscribe his name.” He informs us that the genuine Lutherans readily subscribed; the rest, who had unlutheran sympathies, withheld their names.