# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1858_S31
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Ecclesiastical-Contemporary Chronicle. 31

on the strength of which the director of the synod expressed his agreement with a petition presented immediately afterward by Rechtsrath Seiler, that numerical parity of the lay and clerical delegates at the general synods might be decreed, as in the year 1819; which petition was then likewise adopted by a vote of all against eight.

Concerning the fate of the Caspari catechism draft submitted after this, there could be no doubt, to judge by the diocesan synodal deliberations. Its introduction was, while acknowledging its manifold merits and recommending it for private use, unanimously rejected. The existing provisional arrangement is accordingly to continue until further notice; for public use, meanwhile, the textbooks of Bockh, Irmischer, Löhe, and Wucherer were recommended.

The last, seventh session, on October 29, resolved the following on the basis of an excellent, thorough report by Prof. Dr. Thomasius on the submitted core liturgy (Agendenkern): 1) "That the Ober-Consistory shall, on the basis of the core liturgy submitted, prepare a definitive liturgy and lay it before the next general synod for deliberation and final resolution." 2) "That the Ober-Consistory shall carry out this preparation according to the norms and proposals designated in the report." Here it should be noted that the report proceeds from the principle that no essential change is any longer admissible to the order of worship (liturgy) already sanctioned and introduced by royal authority; that it should rather be retained everywhere it exists; that where it is not yet in use, or where its use has recently been suspended, its introduction, or restoration, should be kept in view as a goal to be striven for. As for the form contained in the core liturgy for the churchly acts, however, these formularies will be subject to manifold modification and supplementation. 3) "That, until the definitive preparation of the liturgy, the use of the core liturgy shall be ordered as the rule, while the subsidiary joint use of the liturgical draft of 1836 and 1852, as well as of the so-called Munich liturgy, shall be permitted for those cases where the core liturgy either does not suffice or where its immediate use would give offense." After an address of thanks to the King had further been unanimously approved and signed, in which thanks were rendered to His Majesty in particular for having entrusted the direction of the Church to men as devoted to the confession as to the constitution and the throne, and who accordingly enjoyed the exclusive confidence of the territorial church, the assembly proceeded on October 30 into the church for the closing service, at which Dean Sixt preached the sermon. But thanks be to the Lord that his spirit of peace and faithfulness has so richly ruled over this synod, and has made it a blessing to the Church, though a vexation to its enemies!" The attempted machinations of the opposition party were entirely lost. What, one wonders, will Pastor Grabau say to this? Yet he had given the "Missourian" Ober-Consistory president a quite different prognosis.

Irvingianism. In the diocese of Augsburg, five Roman priests have become Irvingians, of whom it is said that they enjoyed the reputation of great religious earnestness and zealous fulfillment of duty. They are the following: Cathedral vicar Spindler, the pastors Fernsemer and Fischer, Dean Lutz, and Chaplain Egger. Concerning their removal from office and excommunication, the Sächsisches Kirchen- und Schulblatt writes: We cannot ourselves fault the result. But one must fault the process of investigation against those clergymen, and the treatment which is in part still being accorded them even now. It was a protracted and distressing investigation which the cathedral chapter began against those priests. Its starting point was the proposition that Irvingianism must be ungodly, because it arose outside the Roman Church. For this reason those men were to declare, among other things, as their own conviction: that outside the Roman Catholic Church there is no salvation; that only the Pope, and the bishops confirmed by him, are the organs ordained by God for the governance of the Church and the mediation of salvation; that the work in question was therefore no work