and most grateful love to God and to Christ. Upon this everything
depends, and this makes the ordinance truly edifying and comforting in
its influence. These benefits may be derived from this ordinance by all
Christians; and to all who have true faith, or who allow this ordinance
to have its proper effect in awakening attention to the great truths
which it exhibits, it is a powerful, divinely-appointed means of grace,
whatever theory respecting it they may adopt--the Lutheran, the Reformed,
or even the Roman Catholic transubstantiation, gross as this error is."

_The American Recension of the Augsburg Confession_.

The general principle, on which this Recension was constructed, is to
present the doctrinal articles entire, without the change of a single
word, merely omitting the several sentences generally regarded as
erroneous, together with nearly the entire condemnatory clauses, and
_adding nothing_ in their stead. All that the Recension contains is
therefore the unadulterated Augsburg Confession, slightly abridged. The
following list will show, that _almost the entire Confession is thus
retained,_ a single article only being omitted, viz.: that on Private
Confession and Absolution.

ART. I. _Of God:_ retained _entire_.

ART. II. _Of Natural Depravity:_ entire, except the omission of the
words, "by baptism and the Holy Spirit." The condemnatory clause is
also given, except the name " Pelagians and others, &c."

ART. III. _Of the Son of God and his Mediatorial Work:_ retained
_entire_.