# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1857_S102
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

102 The uproar over the most recent Superior Consistory generalia in Bavaria.

of the Superior Consistory kindled. So it was that one read, in the "Augsburg Daily," on October 23, the following notice:

"Since the Thirty Years' War, no event has among the Protestant population of Augsburg made so great a sensation as the disclosure that, according to a Superior Consistory Council rescript, not only private confession, but also a part of the long-proscribed (!!) church discipline is to be reintroduced. — To be sure, the generale already sent to all deaneries expresses itself to the effect that one should "proceed with well-measured regard for circumstances," but according to the interpretation of this passage it may be assumed that, where this highly important matter cannot for the moment be carried out on account of certain circumstances, one merely does not, for the time being, wish to apply any compulsory measures. — It has already become known through public papers that in Munich the Protestant church council, in the name of the congregation there, decidedly opposed this and declined the corresponding deliberation with the Protestant clergy there. As it is now manifesting itself here among a large part of the Protestant population, the same course of action may be expected from the church councils here. Were this, however, not to be the case, and should the significant changes in Protestant worship take effect, then indeed many conversions to the Reformed church might occur."

The latter was of course meant to be a mighty scare-shot, to shake the Superior Consistory to its deepest depths; but the second one, which the "Augsburg Daily" fired off right afterward, was surely meant to knock the supreme church authority quite out of all composure and bearing. For immediately after the above notice it lets this follow:

"The 'Fränkische Curier' received, from an honored hand, the following letter delivered to it: Nuremberg, October 20. Mr. Editor! With regard to your reports concerning an intended church discipline, I believe I must inform you that, should they prove well founded, a protest is being prepared here, in one of the foremost seats of Protestantism. The evangelical faith is founded on freedom of opinion and on the independence of the individual over against the clergy. If it departs from this its fundamental principle, if it tolerates any inquisition whatsoever, then its members do better to return into the bosom of the Catholic church, which after all has the advantage of possessing an independent clergy. The Protestant clergy is wholly dependent on the various territorial governments, and we may therefore possibly obtain in Germany thirty-two church disciplines and thirty-two different conceptions of our religion. The Catholic clergy, whose head is independent, holy, and infallible, can apply its discipline even against emperors and kings, and has at times applied it. Ours, whose existence and advancement depends on the respective territorial governments and their officials, would only be able to apply it against the people