Schmidt - Scriptural character of the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord's Supper

Probably the side of Lutheran theology that is viewed as the most suspect from outsiders is our Sacramental views.  Most Protestants see it as remnant of Catholicism which doesn't fit with Justification by Faith.  For us Lutherans, however, it is difficult to talk about Justification by Faith without talking about where we get that faith, which includes the promises in the sacraments, and so Loy's book on Justification I posted earlier ended up talking a lot about Sacraments as well.

I was looking for a good defense of our teaching on the Lord's Supper and eventually found this work.  The author, Henry Immanuel Schmidt was a Prof at Columbia College in New York as well as a Lutheran Pastor.  On one level, this is a response to a SS Schmucker article on Lord's Supper that seems to be the same as he published in The American Lutheran Church. The author is also seems quite conversant with the German theological scene, especially the work of Thomasius.  He even says he translated some of Thomasius's works into English and that they would be forthcoming.  If only I could find those....

Anyway, he writes a solid defense and explanation of the Lutheran view, including how Christology is tied up with the Eucharist, even if Thomasius's Kenotic Christology does have its critics.

The source is from archive.org.  It is actually there twice http://www.archive.org/details/scripturalcharac00smitrich and http://www.archive.org/details/scripturalcharac00smit  Both list the author as Smith.  I suspect he Americanized his name after this was published in 1852.  My text is a mixture from both sources - it was clearer on some pages than others.  The publishers included some advertizements at the end.  I have included the English pages, but have renumbered the pages to be consecutive instead of restarting page numbers at 1...

The mid 18th Century had a few different conventions for Greek printing than we do today.  Usually the combination omicron upsilon was written with the upsilon vertically above the omicron.  Since there is no unicode way of keeping this, I converted it into separate letters.  In addition they often used the letter "stigma" for the combination of sigma tau.  This I have retained.

SDG

Ken McGuire