# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1857_S287
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary History.   287

league bears the name "San fedesta" or Holy Faith, and its members take this oath: "I, N. N., swear before Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, before the ever-virgin Virgin Mary, before all the saints in heaven, and before thee, holy Father, that I am willing to have my right hand cut off, my throat cut, and to die in the most frightful torments of hunger, and that I wish to be condemned by Almighty God to the eternal torments of hell, should I betray or denounce any one of the honored fathers and brethren of the Catholic-Apostolic Society (of this league), or should I not with all my conscience obey its laws, or should I refuse my assistance to any one of the brethren. I swear to stand fast in the defense of the holy cause to which I have attached myself, and to spare not a single one of the infamous band of the Liberals, whatever his descent, his lineage, or his fortune may be; to show no mercy before the tears of children or of the aged, and to shed to the last drop the blood of the infamous Liberals, without regard to age or rank. Finally, I swear undying hatred to all enemies of our holy Roman Catholic religion, the only true one." (Freimund.)

Austria. In Austria a new marriage law has appeared, doubtless a fruit of the Concordat. Under the earlier legislation the children of mixed marriages, when the father was a Protestant, had to be reared according to their several sexes; if the mother was a Protestant, all the children followed the father. The present law requires by means of reservations that all children of mixed marriages become Catholic. (Freimund.)

The Reformed Church. The "Conference of Reformed Brethren," as it styles itself, already set on foot at the last Kirchentag and announced still earlier, was held on April 22 at Bremen. In the "Evang.-Ref. Kirchen-Zeitung" of Göbel at Erlangen it is said of it: "The attendance at the conference alone was on the whole satisfactory and gave gratifying testimony that warm sympathy for Reformed character and Reformed interests has after all not yet died out everywhere where the German tongue is spoken. The neo-Lutheran movement would gladly have us believe the like, but truly! it will not reach its goal thereby." Twenty-nine preachers were present. "Painfully missed," the report says, "was the complete absence of the brethren from South Germany and from the eastern part of Prussia." We think that if the "attendance at the conference alone" does not do so, the proceedings themselves testify still more plainly that the "warm sympathy for Reformed character" is indeed dying out in Germany. Superior Consistorial Councilor Dr. Sack of Magdeburg read a paper on the following thesis: "What have the German Reformed churches which still stand in a larger organic connection to observe at present, in order on the one hand to preserve their doctrinal and liturgical type, and on the other hand not to close themselves against a union that is opening up?" On this he said among other things the following: "Whether there are at present such churches in Germany might well be doubted, since in three regions where they existed — Rhineland-Westphalia, Baden, the Palatinate (Rhenish Bavaria) — the Evangelical Union is advancing in a manner no longer to be checked; perhaps also in Nassau and Dessau, although conditions there are not more particularly known to me. Since the Reformed Church of Hanover, according to the recently published and highly instructive memorial, has never yet stood in such a connection but is only now striving after it; since the Reformed congregations in the eastern provinces of the Prussian state have had no distinctive organic bond since the abolition of the Reformed church directory in the year 1808. There would remain, then, only Hesse and Bremen. In the former land there is a ferment which seems to wish to change matters either by a union or by a renewed strict separation. And the church of the free city of Bremen contains a complex of congregations which, though in several respects especially important, is not larger. . . .

Now I lay down as an axiom that the Reformed — specifically the German Reformed — Church has enough that is distinctively true and good to join only such a union as one in which she is recognized by the other side as of equal standing and is invited with love and confidence to an exchange of the gifts of both. Where this is not the case, in the measure in which it is not the case, let the Reformed Church refuse the union, or withdraw from one already begun. In the measure, I say, for this can vary greatly. But in general it stands fast that the German Reformed Church must and can be sufficiently sure of herself rather to suffer violence and be robbed than to be absorbed, and with her own consent