# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1860_S352
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

352 Church-Contemporary Affairs.

Schiller's Oath. Prof. Cuno Fischer of Jena has recently communicated from the
university archive the religious oath which Schiller swore on taking up his academic
office. It reads, among other things, as follows: Ego Fridericus Schiller juro: 1. quod
puram Evangelii doctrinam congruentem cum tribus symbolis et augustana confessione
velim amplecti, profiteri atque etiam propagare, pro modo meae vocationis —
that is: "I, Friedrich Schiller, swear: 1. that I will accept, confess, and also spread
abroad, according to the measure of my calling, the pure doctrine of the Gospel
agreeing with the three Creeds and the Augsburg Confession."

Stockholm. Recently a Jew here wished to have the banns published for marriage
to a Christian woman. The court chaplain Anjou refused this. The consistory, appealing
to a decree of May 27, 1782, which states that "Jews may enter into marriage only
with their fellow believers, but not with any others," concurred in the preacher's
decision. The Jew has as a result brought his complaint before the supreme
ecclesiastical authority, the Ecclesiastic Expedition.

Roman Sympathies. The Nathusius people's paper declares in its issue of August 4:
"For our part we would by no means rejoice at this self-dissolution of Catholicism,
at the fall of the Pope or of his temporal dominion, for this fall would not benefit
the evangelical Church, but only its caricature — negation, flat unbelief, .. the
uncomprehending Protestant Englishmen, the Evangelical Alliance, the party of the
Protestant church-gazette, and whatever else is of that sort. If here and there
church-minded members of the evangelical Church also express the hope that the
Pope's fall will redound to a victory of the evangelical Church — which we cannot
lament enough — this testifies only to a political as well as ecclesiastical
short-sightedness which does our Church nothing but discredit."

Freienwalde on the Oder. Against the chief preacher Melcher, author of the
"Contributions to the Understanding of Holy Scripture, or the Origin of the
Writings of the New Testament" (partly in the spirit of the Tübingen school), an
inquiry was opened by the consistory half a year ago, which has now reached its
end with the result that he has been removed from office for defection from his
ordination vow, and condemned to the costs of the inquiry. He has given notice of
appeal to the Supreme Church Council. It is gratifying to see that here and there a
church government takes heart and removes a man from the holy office for the sake
of false doctrine.

Neudettelsau. The Ref. K.-Z. [Reformed Church Gazette] reports in its issue of
October 1 that, following Löhe's suspension, divine service in Neudettelsau is
being conducted, until further notice, by the neighboring clergy. Strong
disapproval, it is said, met with the conduct of Löhe's students at the service of
the Sunday following July 18. They mostly kept their hats on their heads as they
entered the church, and interrupted the preacher, just after he had begun his
sermon, with a unanimous, threefold "Amen!" The dean, to whom notice of this
scandalous incident was given at once, summoned Pastor Löhe and the students to
him, and, under threat of stricter measures should it be repeated, held up to
them their unseemly and unlawful conduct.

Laymen at the Synods. Speaking of the present composition of the Prussian
Lutheran General Synod, the Freimund remarks in its issue of September 13: "The
number of congregational deputies is thus equal to that of the pastors, which has
its questionable side in votes, and especially in the deciding of doctrinal
questions!" How is it that the German theological gentlemen can never think of the
laity as anything but dangerous people in the Church, while the pastor gentlemen
are nothing but harmless! How very differently thought the holy apostles, who did
not find it troubling that at the Synod of Jerusalem preachers and laymen were
present not merely in equal number, but the latter in a considerably greater
number, and joined in voting and in giving the decision! Acts 15.

Löhe, as we read just now in the Freimund, has been relieved of his suspension
and has re-entered upon his office.