# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1857_S339
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Ecclesiastical Movements in Bavaria.   339

tory redounds in fact to its praise. The masses that had been set in motion to take part were therefore not satisfied. The spokesmen told them in the newspapers that they could not be satisfied, and thereby they were relieved of the trouble of reading the Address itself. Suspension was accordingly the demand that was repeated again and again before the decision of the Highest Quarter, without the demanders, to be sure, when they were asked what in fact was to be suspended, having been able to give a sufficient answer.

In the meantime, however, those of church-minded disposition in Nuremberg had not been idle either. Little as they were friends of the whole business of addresses, and although they knew that the King by no means regarded and received such petitions with favor, they still did not think they could remain entirely silent — and this the less, since their opponents had taken it upon themselves to speak in the name of all the Evangelical Lutheran inhabitants of Nuremberg: a presumption that would have appeared warranted if no protest against it had been entered from any side. The petition of the church-minded therefore had to describe itself as a counter-declaration. It is short, and the reporter will not deny himself the pleasure of communicating it verbatim. It runs:

"With great regret we, the most humbly undersigned members of the Protestant church congregation of this city, have learned from the public papers that a petition has been made to Your Royal Majesty by a number of our fellow citizens, who take it upon themselves to speak in the name of all the inhabitants of Nuremberg, on account of recent ordinances of the Royal Upper Consistory, in which a complaint concerning the violation of constitutional and ecclesiastical rights is to be laid before the throne of Your Royal Majesty. We deplore such a step, because already through the summons to take part in it, issued by way of the greatest possible publicity, many minds have been disquieted and misled into regarding their dearest possessions as really endangered — as the said document of complaint also attempts to set forth — and because it has thereby still further increased the agitation which, though by no means in all places, as is there asserted, yet unhappily in our city, is showing itself.

We do not indeed fear that Your Royal Majesty will find the complaint that has been raised to be in any way well founded, since the resolutions against which it is directed contain nothing contrary to our dear evangelical faith and consciousness or to our church constitution, but rather were laid before Your Royal Majesty for approval by the Royal Upper Consistory merely in the exercise of its constitutional rights and solely in consequence of the motions and resolutions of the last General Synod, as the lawful representation of our church, and were approved by the same Most High authority, or have proceeded from what was thus most highly approved; since, further, they decidedly reject all merely external police measures in the ecclesiastical sphere, and in general, against the will of the congregations,