# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1861_S224
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

224 Churchly-Contemporary Notes.

fast. The Hessian ordinator (among them Prelate Zimmermann, so very zealous for the
Gustavus Adolphus Society) pledges, and the Hessian ordinand is pledged, to
set before the congregation "the whole Christian religion," as it is "attested" in the "reformational
confessions," both those of the German-Lutheran and those of the Swiss Reformation — that is, just as much upon the Lutheran as upon the Reformed doctrine, which
means, upon neither of the two. With this pledge he is then sent just as readily to Lutheran
congregations as to Reformed, today perhaps to a Reformed one, a year later again to a
Lutheran one. And because in the last organizational edict of 1832 the
Lutheran and the Reformed confession are still expressly recognized in the "territorial church,"
and because even now the Small Lutheran Catechism is prescribed for exclusive use in the Lutheran congregations of the
land, it is presupposed — as the
co-editor of the Allg. K. Z., the most influential member of the church authority, Dr.
Palmer, has also declared in an article of the latter — that the clergy pledged "in general"
are nevertheless in each case to teach the particular doctrine, be it Lutheran, be it Reformed,
as it happens to fall out, today the one, tomorrow the other. For this Palmer has been thoroughly derided by his former colleague Schenkel in the latter's new paper as the "Hessian clergy engaged in constant change of confession." To what sort of
general doctrine, then, is the Hessian clergyman pledged? Is there such a thing?
What do ordinator and ordinand think of at this solemn act before the face
of God? Is it not a deeply distressing offense when the clergyman is pledged upon his conscience
to take up the role of an actor, who today figures in the costume of the
Augsburg Confession, and a year later must explain to a new congregation that he did so only
because no other costume was in favor with his previous congregation, but that he can now
also give them the Huguenots on request? For the rest, the patrons and the clergy,
so many as stand faithfully by the confession, are jointly preparing an attempt to loose the ban
with which the Hessian church is stricken.

Münkel has been created a doctor of theology by the theological faculty at Rostock.

Pastor Wolf in Magdeburg has, as Ehlers' Kirchenblatt reports, followed the example
of Pastor Diedrich and on April 15 declared to his congregation that he renounced the
spiritual jurisdiction of the Upper Church Council and the binding force of the synodical resolutions, but that he still regarded himself as bound to his call and called upon his
congregation to remain in the same relation to him which his call sets forth.
At the same time he declared that he wished to maintain church fellowship with people who stand as Ehlers does,
but not with all the pastors of his hitherto church body. Ehlers accordingly proposes the immediate convening of a general synod, since
it now concerns "the being and non-being of the church body altogether, and probably still
more."

Palatinate. After the synod of this territorial district had declared in one of its resolutions: "The church authority is granted the power, wherever the new hymnal (edited in
a believing sense) still meets resistance among a considerable part of the church members,
to make such arrangements that this part also may be given opportunity
to satisfy its religious needs" — thereupon in Neustadt an der Hardt the abolished old (rationalistic) hymnal was by presbyterial resolution taken back into use alongside the new one. This concession, however, did not satisfy
the unbelieving party. There went out from the ministry therefore the direction to take the
old hymnal into exclusive use, and the presbytery obeyed.
Against this Dr. Ebrard now protested and at the same time stated publicly in the Ev. Blätter,
among other things: "In that that party rejected the above concession and insolently
insisted that exclusively the old hymnal must be used,
it has shown that it is not concerned with toleration and freedom of conscience for itself, but with
intolerance and coercion of conscience against the Bible-believing, confession-faithful part of the congregation." The consequence of Dr. Ebrard's having submitted on April 2 a protest
against those orders to the ministry of state for the interior for church and school affairs was that the protester was put on retirement and thus
removed from the church government.

"Oculi and Laetare, or a short report of the events that took place at the beginning of March in the ev.-
luth. parish of Saatzke, together with three sermons belonging thereto, by
J. Diedrich, pastor of the ev.-luth. parish of Saatzke." Under this title there has appeared from A. Oehmigke in Neu-Ruppin a pamphlet reporting on the proceedings connected
with the sending of a commission on the part of the Upper Church Council in Breslau into
the congregations of Pastor Diedrich, after the latter had officially given notice of his own and his congregations'
withdrawal from the body of the Prussian Lutheran church. Pastor Lehmann says of this writing: "The more restlessly it storms and surges in it, the more requisite
does calm and deliberate reflection seem to me before a public judgment upon what
it brings. And for such cases in particular the old German proverb holds: One man's
speech is no man's speech; one ought to hear them both."