# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1861_S320
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

320 Church News of the Day.

points of doctrine, with God's help, to arrive at one and the same understanding, and to draw the bond of Christian brotherly fellowship closer through personal association. By God's grace this purpose has been achieved, and no doctrinal difference remains among us that could in any way hinder us from standing toward one another in full church fellowship. Even the fact that the three named pastors had erred with respect to the Supreme Church Council, but those of the Liegnitz diocese had not, did not in the least hinder the unifying consciousness of common membership in one and the same Church. For differing views on the constitution did not divide us, in that, on the one hand, we of the Liegnitz diocese were entirely clear in our own minds that we should have to follow our three brothers if our common opponents did not recant the false doctrine of church government which they had publicly defended, and if the General Synod left them in their offices; while, on the other hand, the three pastors who had withdrawn declared that they would without delay place themselves again under the Supreme Church Council as soon as the papistic doctrine of church government defended by some members of the Council should be rejected by the hoped-for General Synod. (They also declared that they were willing, for the time being, to put up with the synodal resolutions, only that they did not wish to be bound to them unconditionally.) — Convinced as those assembled were that Pastor Diedrich, in the controversy he has conducted, is free of personal hatred toward his opponents, they nevertheless considered it their duty to admonish this warrior, so richly gifted by God, that in future, in his polemical writings, while maintaining all firmness and decisiveness in handling the matters at issue, he should avoid injurious expressions and spare persons as far as possible — an admonition which Pastor Diedrich accepted. Finally, it was further resolved by the Liegnitz diocesans to address an appeal to their brethren in office in Prussia, urging them for their part to further, as best they could, the coming about of the general synod petitioned for by the parishes of Erfurt, Liegnitz, and Reinswalde, and at the same time to declare publicly that they remain in sacramental fellowship with the pastors Wolf, Diedrich, and Räthjen, notwithstanding their withdrawal from the Supreme Church Council. This appeal, signed by the Liegnitz diocesans (only Pastor Geßner was not present), reads as follows: "Appeal to the pastors and congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia. A general synod has been petitioned for by three of our parishes. We, the undersigned pastors of the diocese of Liegnitz, address to you, beloved brethren, the cordial request that you, for your part, further as best you can the coming about of the same. For we have the oppressive feeling that, if this sole canonical way to a possible understanding among us, and to a hoped-for reunion with the separated brethren, is not taken, our situation would grow ever more unbearable the longer it continued. We recognize the doctrine of church government as asserted at the last synod by the prominent members of the Supreme Church Council, not disapproved by the majority, and recently set forth in the pamphlet of the Herr Director of the Supreme Church Council, Privy Councillor Dr. Huschke: "Provisional Defense, etc." — we recognize this doctrine as contrary to Scripture and to the Confessions, and we declare that we cannot refuse sacramental fellowship to the four separated pastors, because we see ourselves standing with them on one and the same confessional ground. May the Lord grant us all grace, in humility, to recognize and to do what love for our dear Church and consideration of its present grave condition enjoins upon every one of us, and may He Himself, according to His mercy, do what serves our peace!

Reinsch. Ehlers. Semm. G. H. Gumlich. Alb. Ebert. Christ. Fengler. Witte, elected pastor of the parish of Alt-Kranz."

Vienna. Since the issuance of the new Protestant Law, the formation of Gustavus Adolphus Associations has been proceeding in earnest in the very midst of Vienna itself, as the Allg. K. Z. reports from there under the date of July 25.

Bohemia. The solemn commemoration of the day of death — 446 years ago, on July 6 — of the martyr Johannes Hus was observed this year with divine services on July 7, the following Sunday, in the Bohemian, non-Roman-Catholic churches!