# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1857_S141
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Uproar over the Newest Ober-Consistorial General Decrees in Bavaria. 141

failed, and though it had even been given into the book trade, in order through a closer exposition of the sense in which the several general decrees had been issued, to calm the agitated minds, entirely and utterly in vain. For however excellent and worthy the address is in form and content: that was not the tone that could find an echo where sentiment stood with the Nuremberg Protest; for it was decidedly the tone of a churchly mind, the tone of conscientious firmness amid all gentleness and every assurance of Christian freedom. Thus there soon appeared again in the public papers repeated, at times defiant declarations, that those alarmed had not been calmed by the address, that nothing could calm them but the abolition of the general decrees; so it came about that even after this address had been made public, in places that had hitherto held back — such as Bayreuth, Ansbach, Augsburg, Hof, etc. — protests were submitted to the church authorities, with or without reference to the address, partly by the church councils concerned, partly by the citizenry, all of which amounted to one thing: the suspension (that is, the halting) of the enforcement of the general decrees, together with the widespread demand that at the next general synod, where matters were to be thoroughly settled, just as many lay as clerical members should be elected — whereas hitherto the lay members had numbered only half as many as the clerical.

But one must know the address of our Ober-Consistory in order to appreciate at its full worth the continued resistance to the general decrees. I am sorry that space does not permit printing the whole address; but especially for the sake of my readers abroad I must communicate some of it word for word.

The supreme principle (it says there, after a brief introduction) — the supreme principle from which a church government worthy of the name must proceed at all times and before all things — should scarcely need discussion or emphasis. It rests on the recognition that our Church is what the Christian Church has always been: "not a school that is still seeking, but a fellowship that already possesses." On a blessed possession, which men do not make but which God bestows in Christ, rests all truly Christian fellowship. Bound to this possession, the Church has in it freedom and life; loosed from this possession, she falls into death and dissolves into arbitrariness. It is not in freedom that we have Christ, but in Christ that we have freedom. For He is the truth.... From the possession of the one, ancient, and eternal truth it is our task to heal new harms and remove inveterate abuses.

The manner, however, in which this is to be done marks out for the Church her innermost nature, her most proper calling, by virtue of which she lives in the following of Christ. As Christ's first coming on earth took place not to judge the world but to make the world blessed, so too the Church's task takes shape accordingly. She has not the office of judge, still less the sword of the judge,