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1860
“For these rites,”
[says the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Art. 13, § 4.
5,] “have God’s command and the promise of grace which are
peculiar to the New Testament. For when we are baptized, when
we eat the Lord’s body, when we are absolved, they ought
certainly to assure us that God truly forgives us for Christ’s
sake. And God at the same time, by Word and by rites, moves
hearts to believe and conceive faith, just as St. Paul says,
‘Faith cometh by hearing.’ Rom. 10:17. But just as the Word
enters the ears, in order to strike hearts, so the rite itself
meets the eyes, in order to move hearts. The effect of the
Word and of the rite is the same, as it has been well said by
Augustine that a Sacrament is ‘a visible Word,’ because the
rite is received by the eyes, and is, as it were, a picture of
the Word, signifying the same thing as the Word. Wherefore the
effect of both is the same.”
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| Loy's Church in Delaware, Ohio, north of Columbus, is in the paws of ELCA. Rev. Kenneth DeWalt, a student of Lenski, served the congregation for 30 years. After that, a series of interim pastors followed. Another hymn-writer besides Loy, Emmanuel Cronenwett, also served St. Marks. |
Loy
But to be… marks of
profession among men is not the chief end of the Sacraments.
Therefore those who teach that this is their only purpose are
grievously in error.
The truth which the
Scriptures teach and the Church of the Reformation confesses
is so distasteful to many that, in their endeavor to escape
it, they can think of no better purpose for which the holy
Sacraments were ordained than that of being marks of
recognition as Christians. All the power and grace of
these divine institutions is thus denied, and the
holy Sacraments with their potency and mystery and heavenly
comfort are reduced to mere labels by which the observer may
know who wants to be regarded as a Christian and who does not.
From Loy, Matthias. The
Augsburg confession: An Introduction To Its Study And An
Exposition Of Its Contents Columbus, Ohio: Lutheran Book
Concern, 1908.
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| Pastor Emmanuel Cronenwett |
