# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1855_S310
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

310 Grand Duchy of Baden.

the editor of the Evangelical Church Gazette, who declares in his foreword to the 1851 volume: "Those of a churchly mind must not content themselves with the thought that this provision (of § 2 of the Baden Union Charter) is null and void in itself; their sacred duty is rather this, that they publicly and solemnly declare it null and void, and bear with steadfast courage whatever consequently comes upon them. In this way they satisfy their duty far better than by voluntary withdrawal, which some there are now contemplating." — The end of his confessor's suffering within the Union Church was his expulsion from its service.

That the Baden press, in its government organs, should have spoken approvingly of this ecclesiastical-authority measure in various articles is easily understood; but what is hard to comprehend is that a reply on the part of the one attacked, as well as of his friends, finds no admission in the Baden newspapers. We here communicate the statement of Pastor Haag that lies before us:

"Ispringen, May 25, 1855. In reply to the two notices in the Landeszeitung which, with full approval of the ecclesiastical-authority measures, publish my dismissal from office, I take the liberty of responding here as follows:

Far from taking amiss the penalty imposed upon me for the disciplinary offense laid to my charge, or the judgments voiced about it, I owe it to the Lutheran Church and its members, as well as to all the friends sharing in my fate, to testify here as follows:

For twenty-six years now, faithful to the faith of my fathers, I have been a Lutheran believer at heart, and have, everywhere and at all times, confessed, defended, and administered the Lutheran doctrine and the Lutheran sacrament, under God's accompanying blessing. — This is my "extreme tendency"! In my small strength I hoped, up to now, by a courageous and steadfast confession of the Lutheran faith, to help the Evangelical Protestant territorial church rise again to the ancestral faith in its full glory; and I am also convinced that my confessing and suffering has, in the Church I served, done no harm anywhere, but everywhere furthered the spiritual and churchly life. This is attested by the church-statistical tables in figures — attested by the hearts of my former parishioners in their sympathizing love; my conscience bears me this witness in the peace of God — and this the day of the Lord will also make manifest.

The disobedience laid to my charge against the legal provisions of the Union Church consisted, however, in this: that I protested, in open complaint, against its lack of a confession, and against the religious books introduced by the General Synod in the year 1832, orally and in writing, again and again since their introduction; and finally, for about three years now, recognizing the further use of these books as sin, I ceased using them altogether in the administration of the sacraments, and indeed repeatedly declared that I would neither