More Krauth

On the nature of altar fellowship among Lutherans:

As the Word of God and the Confessions of the Church teach the inviolable sacredness and supremacy of truth, and the obligation of the utmost simplicity and directness in asserting and defending it, that RULE FOR THE ALTAR alone accords with both, which withholds from coming to our altars those who deny any part of the divine truth, those who are voluntarily ignorant of it, and who neither desire nor would permit us to teach it to them, who have never examined and do not mean to examine the grounds on which we rest our confession of it, who either know nothing and care nothing about it, or regard it as false, or look upon it as too ummportant even for contempt — those who are in, and intend to remain in, communions which owe their existence to a denial of the very truths which gave our Church her full distinctive being, and to the assertion of which our fathers witnessed by their Confession, their toils, their sacrifices, and, when need was, by their blood, — those who, mistaking or abusing the name of Charity, and converting what they call Love into a foe to the truth, no longer a love by which faith works, but a love which works without faith against faith, those who sink the communion of our Lord's broken body and shed blood to the sphere of mere social courtesy. (p. 358 Documentary History of the General Council)