# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1857_S107
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The uproar over the most recent Superior Consistory generalia in Bavaria. 107

the suspicion suggests itself that they were not meant to become known to the other members of the church. Those over whom power is being exercised (!) were not supposed to know, not to learn, how and by what rights it would proceed. Must not such an advance of spiritual power, especially taken together with the partial implementation of the issued ordinances already reportedly under way, awaken and nourish the suspicion that it is chiefly hierarchical aspirations that underlie the most recent measures of the church government?" — That the decrees were sent out to the parish offices in order to communicate them, and in particular the one on church discipline, to the church councils and to discuss them with them — that these "Protestants" ignore; were the Superior Consistory generalia perhaps supposed to have been published by means of wall placards, of sweet memory? For even had one wished to have decrees, which for the most part deal only with the gradual initiation of better conditions, read out from the pulpits, their literal content would still, for obvious reasons, have remained hidden from most of those "Protestants." How then did they nevertheless come to knowledge of them, if the matter was conducted so secretly? — But of course: "More even than the lack of openness, it is the content of the decrees of the royal Superior Consistory which gravely disquiets the Evangelical Lutheran church congregation" (the address continues). "Freedom of conscience, freedom of expression of opinion, equality before the law are rights guaranteed to every Bavarian subject in the constitutional charter. But these very rights are also sanctified and secured by the laws of our church. They, and in them the cornerstones of Protestantism, are shaken and threatened." — Here we must again pause a little and reflect. Freedom of conscience, it is said, has been shaken and threatened by the decrees of the Superior Consistory, and — thereby the constitution violated; that is the accusation. And indeed the constitutional charter declares, in Title IV, § 9: "Every inhabitant of the realm is guaranteed complete freedom of conscience; domestic devotion may therefore be forbidden to no one, to whatever religion he may profess." Now, has the Superior Consistory perhaps, in those decrees, forbidden anyone domestic devotion? No one asserts that, no one can assert it either; the violation of the constitution must therefore lie elsewhere. Let us look further. Appendix II to the constitutional charter determines "concerning the external legal relations with regard to religion and church societies;" and there it says, in the second chapter, which deals with the choice of confession of faith, § 5: "The choice of confession of faith is left to every inhabitant of the state according to his own free conviction." Has the Superior Consistory perhaps, through its decrees, hindered those zealous "Protestants" from choosing another confession of faith according to their own free conviction? By no means. They themselves are so very much aware of this that they have already threatened to choose another one, to become Reformed or Catholic