# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1857_S347
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Ecclesiastical Movements in Bavaria.   347

already introduced in many congregations. In these many congregations the movement that broke out in November and December had little or no success at all. It exercised its influence chiefly in those congregations in which the liturgy had been introduced only shortly or immediately before, or was just about to be introduced. All the arts of the party, and in particular the most extensive use of the press, which readily opened its columns to the unchurchly, were needed in order to produce, among those standing farther off, especially abroad, the appearance of a great victory won.

Let us see further how matters stand in this respect with the other subjects upon which the movement threw itself, especially church discipline and the hymnal.

With regard to church discipline it has already been mentioned earlier that, with the exception of the rescript on the safeguarding of the spiritual office, which contains a few points bearing upon this, the matter was really not one of ordinances to be executed at once, but of preparations for further deliberations to be undertaken by the diocesan synods and by the General Synod. But for the understanding of the matter it must further be added that the deliberation on this subject at the General Synod of 1853 can scarcely be called anything but premature. It is a fact that on church discipline no proposal whatever had been laid before the General Synod on the part of the church government. It would lead too far here to show how it came about that the subject nevertheless came up for discussion. Let only this be mentioned here: that, over and above the committees necessary for the proposal of the church government and for the standing business of the General Synod, a special committee for church discipline was subsequently elected; that this committee found itself in visible embarrassment as to the proposals it should make to the General Synod; and that, with essential modification of the motions put forward by the committee, the resolutions were, in content and formulation, the product of the oral discussion, the work of the moment. The reporter does not adduce this in order to describe the resolutions adopted as hasty ones — they were not that in the least — but in order that, from the simple course of the matter, the oft-repeated accusations against the church government on account of hierarchical, "discipline-mongering" tendencies may appear in their groundlessness. If anywhere, then in this matter the church government had no tendency at all. Out of these resolutions, which moreover were adopted without contradiction or misgiving on the part of the lay deputies, there afterwards flowed the so violently attacked decree of the Upper Consistory of July 2, 1856, concerning the restoration of church discipline; these resolutions found, so far as they bore upon the matter, almost verbatim acceptance in the likewise sorely assailed decree of the same date, Norms for the Safeguarding of the Spiritual Office against undue de-