If, then, it be competent for these several Synods, or Conferences, to change the Westminster Confession and Thirty-nine Articles, which were prepared far more deliberately, and with much less restraint, and had become equally venerable by age, without any one pretending to deny their authority, or to pronounce the measure "presumptuous," why may not the Synod of Wittenberg, and other similar bodies, correct the Augsburg Confession, by the omission of several tenets, believed not only by her members, but by the great body of American Lutherans, to be unscriptural?
Now the Definite Platform was prepared at the request of the leading members of those Western Synods, according to a plan previously agreed on among them and others, for the express purpose of being proposed for discussion, correction, and _adoption by these Synods;_ and, until so acted on, was a mere unofficial proposal, _such as any friends of the church have a right to make_.

And who can dispute their right, or the right of any Synod, to adopt a Confession of Faith for herself, when the Constitution of the General Synod originally conceded this power specifically to each Synod, and still does so, in Article III., Section 3, by requiring them only to adhere to the _fundamental_ doctrines of the Bible, as taught by our church?
Is not a Lutheran Synod possessed of as much power as an Episcopal or Methodist convention?
And although an individual necessarily drew up the document, it was prepared according to the plan decided on by about twenty brethren, and claimed no authority until acted on by Synod.

The Definite Platform could never, _with truth_, be regarded as the work of a few individuals.

Its inception was the result of a consultation of a large number of influential brethren, especially of the West, who had been convinced by the aggressions of surrounding symbolists, that a decided, but also a more _definite_ stand on the ground of the General Synod, was necessary in self-defence.

It was prepared and published at their request, not as an official document, but as a draft of such a basis as they had agreed on.