# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1861_S382
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

382 Church and Contemporary Notices.

...then the editor of the Church and School Gazette, who had taken up the sender's cause, was sentenced on August 5, 1861, at the Royal Court in Leipzig, to a fine of 10 thalers and to reimbursement of costs.

The Grand Duchy of Hesse. From there it is written to the General Church Gazette: "Of the roughly 500 clergy who serve in the Evangelical Church of the Grand Duchy of Hesse, at least a hundred are decided Lutherans. On the ground of the so-called Friedberg Union Conference, which is made up of unionistic or at least union-friendly elements, there stand perhaps two hundred clergy."

Union Measures in Waldeck. Thus writes Dr. Münkel in his Neues Zeitblatt of September 13: That Pastor Rocholl laid down his pastorate at Sachsenberg on Jubilate Sunday of this year will probably already be known to many readers. The consistory presented him with the threefold demand: either to accept the united host, that is, the Union, or to lay down his office, or — to pay a fine of 20 Reichsthaler. They would have liked to see him go voluntarily, so as not to give the Union the reputation of freeing the church from the compulsion of law while nevertheless driving out the Lutheran preachers. But since Rocholl would not go, nothing was left but to harass him out by a less noisy route. Since, however, Rocholl stood firm against these petty vexations, they seized upon another opportunity to wear him down. Despite the objection of many people of Sachsenberg, they appointed a deacon who was expressly bound to the Union, and with that they truly achieved the desired goal. The Union was now in fact introduced and forced upon the people of Sachsenberg; and Rocholl laid down his office because he would not hold office together with the Union in one congregation. Doubtless this equally gifted and blessed, as faithful and gentle, witness will find his place again in Hanover, where he can build his congregation in peace. The Waldeck consistory has no use for such men; among the canonical qualifications of a clergyman, it ranks a united disposition above all else. So, as Rocholl was not the first capable man to have been shown the door, it seems he is not to be the last either. Just now a young clergyman is to be transferred from his meager post to another place as vicar. But the consistory will not transfer him until he has signed the Union agreement of 1859, although he was appointed without such an agreement even before 1859. The matter would make sense if he were to be transferred to a united congregation. But the very congregation to which he is to be transferred has decidedly refused united clergy and the Union. It is of no use — the Union must be introduced, the young clergyman must accept it, or he must remain in his starvation post until he is tamed. That is how they compel the clergy. How far they will succeed in mastering the congregations remains to be seen. A whole number of people from Corbach have already renounced the united pastorate, and 30 people of Sachsenberg have followed them; and once they have starved out the remaining Lutheran clergy — perhaps even sooner — the Union will have fully succeeded in creating a separation.

The Prussian Lutheran Church. It is distressing that the dear men who now bear such fresh witness against the erroneous teachings of the Breslau Upper Church College are evidently, at least in part, still themselves caught in serious error. Thus Dr. Münkel writes in his paper concerning Könnemann, who has published a tract against Huschke: Könnemann here presents the teaching — shared, to my knowledge, also by Diedrich, Pistorius, and others — that the Church exists only where the Word of God is taught purely and truly. Thus, apart from the Lutheran Church, there is no church at all. The proof is supposed to be Article 7 of the Augsburg Confession, that the Church is where the Word of God is taught purely and truly. Well and good! Yet it does not say there that the Church is only there; that is rather Könnemann's own addition. How Article 7 is to be understood is stated by an old theologian in these words: "In this article the Church is not described, as far as purity of doctrine is concerned, as it always in fact is, but as it always ought to be, and what the state of the holy Christian Church would be if it were in full flower and in its...