of Christ [North
Carolina Synod], I request the opinion of your Synod on the above
points." The answer, formulated by R. J. Miller and Peter Schmucker, and
approved of by the ministerium, was: "We do not say that all who are
baptized with water are regenerated and converted to God, so that they
are saved without the operation of the Holy Spirit, or in other words,
without faith in Christ." "We do not believe and teach that the body and
blood of our Lord Jesus Christ are bodily received with the bread and
wine in the Holy Supper, but that the true believer receives and enjoys
it spiritually together with all saving gifts of His suffering and
death, by faith in Jesus Christ." (681.) According to the report of the
Henkels, the doctrine of predestination as taught by the Presbyterians
was also touched upon, for in it we read: "One of the members declared,
and sought to maintain, that it was impossible for a man to fall from
the grace of God after he had once been truly converted. Another denied
the doctrine of Baptism as laid down in our catechism and in the Second
and Ninth Articles of the Augsburg Confession. The offer was made to a
third to prove to him from his own handwriting that he denied the
doctrine of the Lord's Supper as set forth in the Tenth Article [of the
Augsburg Confession]. They offered to have the letter read; but our
opponents did not agree to this. A book was placed before him and a
passage was pointed out to him, in order that he might read what Luther,
of blessed memory, himself teaches on this question. He closed it
angrily and pushed it away. A fourth put the question: 'Can I not be a
[Presbyterian] predestinarian and also a Lutheran?' For he believed that
the [Presbyterian] doctrine of predestination could be proven from the
Bible. He received the answer: 'If he believed as the Predestinarians
believe, then he belonged to them, and might go to them, it did not
concern us.'--For these reasons we believed to be all the more certain
that they were not true Evangelical Lutheran preachers, and this we also
told them without reservation." (_Tenn. Rep_. 1820, 24 f.) In connection
with the doctrine of regeneration by Baptism, the Henkels also referred
to the error of the enthusiasts, gaining ground increasingly within the
North Carolina Synod, _viz_., that conversion and regeneration was
effected by anxious shrieking, united praying, and the exertion of all
powers of the body and soul. (32 f.) The rupture, t