# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1861_S154
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

154 Church and Contemporary Affairs.

nowadays, in so-called churchly papers, articles as if written with blood, which seem dictated rather by the spirit of a Philip II than by the Spirit of Christ — and that in papers of which one would have expected more Christian conscientiousness. What a monstrosity such a newspaper is, which holds in its right hand the olive branch of the Gospel and in its left a blood-dripping sword!

II. Abroad.

Heidelberg. In the "theologische Zeitschrift" of Dieckhoff and Kliefoth documents are communicated from which it appears that the Privatdocent of the philosophical faculty at Heidelberg, Lic. of Theology Le Beau, had his request for permission to hold theological lectures refused by the faculty for this reason alone: that he would not recognize the Reformed doctrine of the Lord's Supper as equally entitled with the Lutheran, and would not take part in the mixed celebration of the Supper with a merely reporting rather than a confessing formula of distribution; or, as Professor Rothe himself expresses it, because he "puts up with the Union introduced in Baden, indeed, but does not, like the Baden Evangelical territorial church and our own (the Heidelberg) faculty, joyfully confess it." Nevertheless the faculty pretends "that a teacher belonging to the theological faculty is not forbidden, nor even blamed, for his unconcealed confession of the Lutheran doctrine of the Supper as, in his judgment, the only one fully in accord with Scripture, and that on account of such a confession an applicant for the venia legendi could not be rejected by it." Do the gentlemen of the theological faculty also read logic, perhaps? Probably that too is a united one.

Sympathies for the Papacy. In Kliefoth's journal for December of last year there is an article headed "Caricatures of Conservative Churchliness," in which the union with the Romanists now being prepared among the United in Prussia is criticized. In it we read, among other things, excellently: "It is well known how strongly the 'Neue Preussische Zeitung' is committed to the rights of the pope over the papal state as the oldest in Europe. It does not consider that the origin of this papal state rests upon abominations such as those of Caesar Borghia, the model for Machiavelli's Prince, against whose deeds those of Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi are only deeds of witless innocence; and that the policy of the Roman see has been in the strictest sense the high school of that unscrupulous politics which sowed in Europe the seed from which the Revolution is now springing up. And still much less does the 'Protestant' Neue Preussische Zeitung consider that the temporal power of the papacy — which is claimed as the necessary condition for the spiritual government of the church, for 'the churchly independence' of the Roman church — even if it really were the oldest in Europe, which it is not, is nevertheless always a godless opposition to the ordinances of God, and therefore can never become right by any prescription. Even on the ground of secular politics it is indisputably nothing but a wretched caricature of the conservative principle — one which, as it is a sign of impotence, so also necessarily leads to ruin — when one allies oneself with every possible 'conservative' interest, of whatever kind it may be. But transferred to the churchly sphere, the 'solidarity of conservative interests' becomes a sacrilege against the things of God themselves. . When Luther left the Magdeburg convention, he said at parting from his friends the well-known words: Deus vos impleat odio Papae [May God fill you with hatred of the pope]! Such words are already in many places no longer tolerated in certain conservative-churchly circles, and there they smell of revolution and Antichristianity. But none the less they are true, so true that not one jot of them may be struck out; and it is a very ominous sign of the impotent weakness of the Evangelical Lutheran conscience of faith when such words are shunned like evil ghosts. Even today there is no evangelical fidelity of faith that is not filled with hatred against the papacy and does not long for the judgments of the living God upon the sins of Rome. But the 'solidarity of conservative interests,' which stands up for the holy right of the Roman see as a foundation pillar of discipline and order, is apostasy from the truth of the