# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1862_S255
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary Affairs. 255

own cities, among the German population. According to the newly erected
tribunal of the Observer's caveats, nothing is to be said that is
disparaging to our confessions. So it is all over, then, with every effort
to spread, in the columns of the Observer, the truth and sound doctrine
concerning the Sabbath. For it is impossible to hold to the Sabbath
biblically without clearly demonstrating that the teachings of our
symbols are mistaken, and to demonstrate errors in our confessions is
certainly disparaging to them." To this the editor of the Observer replies:
"We think that the objections which some raise against our confessions
regarding the Sabbath are just as strong against the teachings of Paul,
with which our confessions agree in a remarkable way, namely as to those
points of the Sabbath doctrine over which there has been so much and such
useless dispute. We believe, moreover, that the laxity of some Lutherans
here and there in the Church, regarding the observance of the Sabbath, is
not to be charged to our confessions, but to a want of renewal of the
heart, which is hostile to God and not subject to the divine Law."

II. Abroad.

A New Doctrine in the Roman Church. Scarcely had the present Pope made
his Church a gift of the new doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the
Virgin Mary, than, on the occasion of the canonization of the Japanese
martyrs on the 8th of June of this year, he already venerated yet another
such doctrine. In the allocution held to the bishops on the following day,
Pius let himself be heard, among other things, as follows: "We rejoice in
that wonderful unanimity with which you, together with the other reverend
bishops of the whole Catholic world, have never failed to teach: that the
temporal power of the Holy See has been conferred upon the Roman Pontiff
by a special decree of divine Providence; that it is necessary, so that
the same Roman Pontiff, subject to no prince or worldly power, may
exercise, throughout the whole Church, with full freedom, the highest
power and authority — to feed and to rule the flock of God — which he has
received from Christ the Lord himself." There is only a twofold pity in
this: first, that one knows the Pope did not come to his temporal power
through any special provision of God, but through every kind of cunning,
fraud, forgery of documents, murder, and bloodshed; and second, that
according to God's Word every soul, and thus the Pope too, ought to be
subject to civil authority, and indeed that the servants of Christ in
particular ought not to rule, not to play the gracious lords in this
world, and not to have and use the carnal weapons of knighthood. Moreover
Mr. Pius is minded to claim temporal power not only for himself, but also
for all his beloved and faithful ones in the clergy. In that same
allocution he says of the enemies of his Church: "They do not shrink from
spreading among the people, with every kind of cunning and deception, that
the holy servants of the Church and the Roman Pontiff ought to be excluded
from all worldly power and dominion." Such, then, is the ultimate purpose
of the "Holy Father" — to saddle his noble creatures upon the world once
more as its worldly rulers and masters as well. Yet it almost seems as
though nothing will come of it, although indeed their worldly dominion
would be easier to bear than their seduction of souls.

The congregation of Pastor Ehlers in Liegnitz has, as the "Kirchliches
Zeitblatt" of the 1st of June reports, unanimously renounced the Upper
Church Council in Breslau. Pastor Ehlers himself, however, against whom
ecclesiastical-court proceedings have been initiated by the Upper Church
Council, has hesitated to do the same. While he nevertheless remains
subject to the Upper Church Council, he continues to serve the
congregation that has withdrawn.

The Waldeck Union. Under this heading Dr. Münkel writes the following
in his Neues Zeitblatt of the 6th of June: The little band of Lutheran
laypeople in the principality of Waldeck is in some distress. From the
unionist pastors they will not take the sacraments, and from the 6 or 7
Lutheran ones they cannot take the sacraments. The latter demand, by order
of the consistory, a certificate of permission (Dimissoriale) from their
unionist pastor for the performance of spiritual acts by any one of the