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er also verbally, whereupon he said with an arrogant gesture and autocratic tone: 'That is not the point; I only ask, Do you want to, or do you not want to?' We answered: 'We did not want to.' He declared, 'That is all I desire to know'; and saying which he rapidly turned about and hastily ran away from us. In the mean time the multitude of our opponents moved toward us, proposing the same questions. We answered as before. The leaders among them endeavored to maintain that, in order to decide the dispute, we were not bound to the constitution, but only to the majority of the votes of the preachers and delegates, which majority they had; and that it was reasonable and fair for us to act according to it in this dispute. But we thought that the doctrine of the Augsburg Confession (being assured, as we were, that it can be proved by the doctrine of the Bible) should be of a greater weight to us than the voice of a majority of men who are opposed to the doctrine and order of our Church. After a brief altercation of this kind they went into the church, and we followed. Here the President [Stork], in a long speech in German, endeavored to prove what he had asserted before. The Secretary [Shober] made a still longer speech in English, in which he endeavored to prove that we were not at all bound to act according to the constitution or order of our Church; although he himself, with the approval of Synod, had written the constitution and had it printed, this was not done with the intention of making it a rule or norm by which we, as members of Synod, were to be guided in our transactions; it was merely a sort of draft or model according to which, in course of time, one might formulate a good constitution, if in the future such should become necessary. However, it was proved [by the Henkels] from the constitution itself that it had been received as just such an [official] document, sanctioned, after previous examination and approval by several ministers, by Synod and ordered to be printed. To this he [Shober] answered that such had not been the intention of Synod. Haste and lack of time had caused him to write it thus without previous careful consideration; therefore, now everything had to be governed and judged according to the majority. But we were of the opinion that it would prove to be a very unreasonable action to reject a constitution which a few years ago, according to a resolution of Synod, had been printed and bound in 1,
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