# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1860_S350
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

350 Church and Contemporary History.

forever. The General Synod has a well-defined doctrinal basis, and it is the one given above. All its subsequent declarations and actions bearing on this question must be taken and interpreted in agreement with this, its original and authentic declaration. The expression "'substantially correct'" (substantially correct), which is later used in its Constitution for the District Synods, and which has so often been quoted and misquoted, must conform itself to this, its first, clear, and unambiguous declaration." — We believe that the writer is entirely right, except on the point that the General Synod took a self-contradiction into its declarations concerning its doctrinal position not merely in later times, but already at its founding. Hence it was that the Tennessee Synod refused to join the General Synod in the year 1820, among other reasons, for the following: "1. because the (General) Synod does not teach that water baptism is regeneration; 2. because this body does not accept the elements in the Lord's Supper as being, in a bodily sense, the true body and blood of the Lord." (History of the American Luth. Church by E. L. Hazelius. Zanesville, O., 1846. p. 150, 151.) Nevertheless, we gladly grant that only the churchly, orthodox declarations of the General Synod carry authority, and that they do indeed set aside the unchurchly, symbol-contradicting ones — and consequently give to the members of the General Synod who wish to be orthodox the formal right as well to work for the purging of this body from its unionism and for a thorough reformation on the basis of the churchly confession.

A Papist against the Pope's Temporal Rule. In the Reformed Kirchenzeitung of October 15 we read: "In an unexpected way, the convert Brownson, in his Review, contends with great decisiveness against the continuance of the Pope's temporal rule. He sympathizes with the Italian people, and maintains that no other path to the unity of Italy stands open than to join with Sardinia, and therefore believes it right — since the Pope, after all, cannot help toward that end — that the people should take the only path by which help is possible for them. He also states as a certain truth that Jesus Christ did not hand over the temporal office of ruler to the priesthood, but rather entrusted the temporal to the laity and the spiritual to the priestly office, and for that reason thinks that it should be so in Rome as well. — Brownson is, as is well known, not a priest but a layman, perhaps the most skillful dialectician that the Roman Church has in America (one who, through his lectures, has agitated not without success). If we are not mistaken, he was at first a preacher among the Congregationalists, then a Unitarian, then a pantheist or unbeliever, and finally a (fanatical) Roman Catholic."

The Synod of the Southern District of Ohio was in session in June of this year. According to the printed proceedings, the president said in his report: "Since the question concerning the doctrine of Church and Ministry is now (!) an open one (!), and is also to be discussed at the next session of the General Synod, it would be very desirable if this Venerable Body too would discuss it." The latter, however, does not seem to have taken place; at least the Synod has not seen fit to publish anything on this doctrinal matter.

Several classes, as the Reformed Kirchenzeitung of November 1 reports, have refused to adopt Dr. Scherff's hymnal outright, as resolved by the Reformed Synod. It is now to be submitted beforehand to the various so-called classes for a vote. The use of the book is, however, permitted "provisionally."

II. Abroad.

Grand Duchy of Hesse. An ordinance of the Superior Consistory, approved by the sovereign, has recently appeared which is of importance for the standing of those who wish to be Lutherans in Hesse — namely, the decree that in all the Lutheran congregations of the land, henceforth only the small Lutheran Catechism contained in the Hessian Church Order of 1724 (the last reprint of the Church Order of 1573, which is also still in force in the Kassel part of Upper Hesse), together with the accompanying catechetical questions there appended, along with a "book of texts corresponding to the Lutheran confession," shall be used in religious