pensable
for the peace and welfare of a Church that unity of sentiment should
prevail upon all important matters of faith and discipline among its
pastors. Hence I charge you to exert yourself in convincing our students
that the Augsburg Confusion is a safe directory to determine upon
matters of faith declared in the Lamb's book." (Spaeth, 1, 336.)
Accordingly Dr. Jacobs interprets the Gettysburg pledge as follows: "It
was a pledge to a distinctively Lutheran position. Such an affirmation
could never have been enforced in the proposed Lutheran-Reformed
seminary which the ministerium [of Pennsylvania] had had in mind. It
could not have been exacted of those who believed the confession to be
in error on those points which divide the Lutherans from the Reformed.
In justice, however, to those who might seem to have been acting a false
part in making this affirmation while they believed the confession to
contain errors, it must be stated, on the other hand, that the full
force of the declaration was not so clearly apparent in a period
directly following one when, as we have seen, the greatest living
theologian of the Lutheran Church in America could distinguish no
difference between the Augsburg Confession and the formularies of the
Church of England." This interpretation appears to be in agreement with
the solemn charge of Schaeffer, according to which the pledge refers to
that faith which distinguishes our Church from others." However,
Schmucker and his successors viewed the phrase "fundamental doctrines of
the Word of God" as a restriction, limiting the subscription to the
doctrines confessed by all evangelical denominations, thus eliminating
from the pledge distinctive Lutheran doctrines. And the historical
correctness of this view has never been satisfactorily refuted.
Schmucker declared time and again: "The Augsburg Confession was not to
be followed unconditionally; its binding force was expressly limited to
the fundamentals. The professor's oath expressly limits our pledge to
the Augsburg Confession to the fundamental doctrines of the Scriptures."
He wrote: "After the abandonment of the General Synod, in 1823, by the
Synods of Pennsylvania and New York, that body was chiefly sustained by
the zeal and activity of younger men, in connection with a few beloved
fathers who remained with us. At the very next meeting of the General
Synod, in 1825, I had the pleasure, as well as honor, to introduce, for
the first time in the