the Platform “grants liberty in regard to all the other topics, omitted from the Augsburg Confession in the American Recension of it.”  For it adds, “We are willing, as heretofore, to admit ministers who receive these views, provided they regard them as non-essential” (that is, as non-fundamental, not, as has been asserted by others, as of minor or of little importance), “and are willing to co-operate in peace with those who reject them.”  To the List of Errors rejected no one is required to subscribe, and it is published by the Synod as a disclaimer of these errors, which are often imputed to us, but which are rejected by the great body of the American Lutheran Church.  The Platform cannot, therefore, with truth, be said to exclude old-Lutherans, unless they are so rigid as to regard their own views on these disputed points as essential, and are unwilling to co-operate in peace with their brethren:  and in that case it is certainly preferable for all parties, that they should organize a Synod for themselves.

Says the author of the Plea, p. 6:  “Suppose some Episcopal ministers having arrived at the conviction that some of their church canons were wrong,” “would it be regarded as anything else than a most astounding presumption, for such men to dare to change the character of the church canons and denounce some of them as errors, and at the same time to maintain that they themselves are the true representatives of the Episcopal Church, and can unchurch others?” Here are three positions, all of which we regard as erroneous.  In the first place, it is not presumptuous, but a Christian duty, when ministers of a church are firmly convinced, that the avowed standards of their church contain some tenets contrary to the word of God, publicly to disavow them, that their influence may not aid in sustaining error; and if the majority of a synod participate in this opinion, it is their duty to change their standards into conformity with God’s word.  The Augsburg Confession itself was such, a disclaimer of Romish errors, and avowal of the truth:  and if it was the duty of the ministry in the sixteenth century to make their public profession conform to their belief of Scripture truth, it is equally the duty of every other age.  But although their case involves the principle objected to by the Plea, the following cases are more exactly analogous.  The Episcopal ministry and laity did, after the American Revolution, change their doctrine, that the king is the head of the church and adopted the opinion that no civil officer, as such, has any office in the church.  They accordingly rejected from their creed Article XXI., and also excluded from their liturgy and forms of prayer, all allusion to the king as the head or governor of the church.  Listen to the testimony of the Episcopal ministers of Maryland, in 1783, soon after the acknowledgment of the independence of this country.  They passed a number of resolutions,