ublished a "Lutheran Almanac,"
featuring on its title-page the pictures of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin
as "those great Reformers," and listing as "great theologians of the
Lutheran Church" also the names of Herder, Paulus, Ammon, Bretschneider,
Wegscheider, Gesenius, Roehr, etc. (_Lutheraner_ 10,15.) This is a
true-to-life picture of the General Synod in her palmiest days--
Zwinglianism, Methodism, Rationalism being the most protruding features.
(4,198.)

45. Verdict of Contemporaries.--In his pamphlet _The Distress of the
German Lutherans in America_, Wyneken said with special reference to the
English part of the General Synod: "They have totally fallen away from
the faith of the fathers. Though enthusiastic over the name 'Lutheran'
and zealous in spreading the so-called 'Lutheran' Church, they, in a
most shameful and foolhardy manner, attack the doctrines of our Church
and seek to spread their errors in sermons, periodicals, and newspapers,
notably the doctrines of Baptism and the Lord's Supper and the connected
important doctrines of grace, of the two natures in Christ, etc. ...
Besides, they are ardent advocates of 'new measures' and altogether
Methodistic in their method of conversion." In 1845, after severing his
connection with the General Synod on account of its refusal to renounce
the Reformed doctrines and usages advocated by Schmucker, Kurtz, and
Weyl, Wyneken denounced the General Synod as "Reformed in doctrine,
Methodistic in practise, and laboring for the ruin of the Church, whose
name she falsely bears." (_Lutheraner_ 1845,96.) In a letter to Walther,
dated December 11, 1844, Dr. Sihler wrote: "Our main enemies here in
Ohio are not only the Methodists, but also the false brethren, the
so-called General Synod, which, as generally known, is decidedly
Reformed in the doctrine of the Sacraments, and in its practise
decidedly Methodistic." Again, in 1858, Sihler branded Kurtz, Schmucker,
and others as "open counterfeiters, Calvinists, Methodists, Unionists,
and traitors and destroyers of the Lutheran Church." (_L. u. W._ 1858,
137.) The _Lutheran Standard_, October 27, 1847, declared: "History has
already recorded it for posterity that the General Synod is not an
Evangelical Lutheran body, inasmuch as it fails to adhere to just those
doctrines by which the Evangelical Lutheran Church differs from other
denominations. History declares that the General Synod has expressly
and without disguise renounced the disti