# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1855_S308
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

308 Kingdom of Saxony.

-anity publicly. Should a clergyman's conscience thereby come into conflict with the oath he is to take, or has taken, then every man who loves honor will know what he must do in order in no way to violate his duty." — —

It may perhaps seem strange to many a reader that these debates on matters of faith took place in a purely political assembly; but the gentlemen who spoke rightly pointed out that, although they themselves were convinced that a Chamber of Estates is not the place for such discussions, they had felt themselves compelled in conscience, by the improper remarks made against their faith in the Second Chamber, not to remain silent, so as not to make themselves guilty of any denial of their faith. God be praised and glorified that such voices, heard throughout the whole land, have been raised aloud in our dear old Saxon fatherland. They fill one with great hopes for this land. With shame, however, one is reminded in this connection of many synods here at home, which are brazen enough still to write the Lutheran name upon their sign, and in which precisely the opposite is proclaimed by churchmen from what those laymen proclaimed in a Chamber of Estates. With what contempt have the synods here, for instance, which belong to the General Synod, hitherto spoken of the German state churches supposedly wholly swallowed up in rationalism, and how they have meanwhile preened themselves pharisaically on their supposedly preserved orthodoxy! While they themselves have cast off ever more articles of the faith as outdated superstition no longer tenable in this enlightened century and in this land of the Enlightenment, and have unwittingly fallen into the arms of a sanctimonious rationalism, the reviled churches of Germany are rising penitently from their dust and returning to the unchangeable foundation of the whole truth. Woe to the so-called "American Lutheran" Church if it continues on the path it has taken! The roles will soon be reversed, and in Germany one will think only with sorrow of the fallen daughter across the sea.

A second important subject which occupied the First Chamber of Estates was the religious oath of the ministers charged with matters in evangelicis. The old prescribed oath read as follows: "I hereby swear to God that I will constantly, and without any deceit, abide and persevere in the pure doctrine and Christian confession of these lands, as it is comprised in the first unaltered Augsburg Confession and repeated in the Christian Book of Concord; that I will practice nothing secret or public against it; and that, should I notice that others intend to do so, I will not conceal the same. So truly help me God!" In the year 1848 this oath was altered and formulated in the following manner: "I hereby swear to God that I will abide by the pure doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church as accepted in these lands, according to its tried agreement