# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1863_S158
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

158 Church and Contemporary History.

These are, roughly, the essential, wholly clear points of chiliasm, and these doctrines are supposed to render man unfit for the struggle against the ungodly world, because they drive him to flee before it." In what follows, Freimund seeks to prove that chiliasm turns out to make one "sober," not wishing to clear away fruitlessly things that, according to the prophets, will surely come upon Christendom, nor to strive after goals that Christ alone, through his own direct intervention, will bring to pass. In any case, it is worth noting that we have thereby obtained, from the above, a Neudettelsau definition of the essence of chiliasm.

Grand Duchy of Hesse. Thus we read in the Ev. Kz. [Evangelische Kirchenzeitung] of February 21: The most significant event in the Hessian "territorial church" in recent years is the introduction of a new ordination formulary, according to which all evangelical clergy of the land are to be ordained alike, without regard to whether one belongs to the Lutheran, the Reformed, or the Union confession — which three confessions are expressly recognized as lawfully existing within the administrative complex of the Hessian "territorial church" — and further without regard to whether the ordinand is to take up an office in a Lutheran, Reformed, or Union congregation. The ordination takes place quite generally upon "the reformational confessions of our church, foremost the Augsburg Confession." It remains wholly indeterminate which church is meant by "our church" — whether the Lutheran, the Reformed, or the Union, or the Hessian "territorial church" (that is, the administrative complex of the three churches), which as such has no confession at all, least of all a reformational one, since it has existed only since 1832. Just as little is it said which Augsburg Confession is meant, the unaltered or the altered. Yet this entire indefiniteness is intentional, and it is just as incontrovertibly certain and clear that by the new ordination formulary a confessional foundation is meant to be given to the "territorial church" which it has not had until now and which, by its character as a mere administrative complex, it cannot have at all. And what sort of foundation that is, is equally certain and clear. The ordinand is bound to the "reformational confessions" — which means, however: equally to the Lutheran as to the Reformed, which can mean nothing other than the consensus of both churches. Had the ordination formulary been quietly accepted, the union in the Grand Duchy of Hesse would thereby have been fully introduced and carried through. But this did not happen. Many faithful servants of the Lutheran church felt disquieted in conscience by the new ordination formulary and sacredly bound to stand up for the endangered right of their confession. No less did a considerable number of patrons feel so (among them the Counts of Erbach-Erbach and Erbach-Fürstenau, Leiningen, Solms-Rödelheim, and Görtz; the Barons von Günderode, Löw of Steinfurth, Georg Riedesel of Eisenbach, and Schenk von Hermannstein). These patrons first held, in the summer of 1860, with the participation of several Lutheran pastors of the land, an assembly and deliberation at Darmstadt. After earnest and thorough discussion, the patrons resolved upon a petition to the Grand Duke, which was signed and submitted at the highest quarters. In this petition the grave scruples of conscience against the O. F. [Ordinationsformular] were laid before him, and the Grand Duke was asked to meet these scruples by having

"an addition given to the ordination formulary, at the ordination of clergy for the service of the Evangelical Lutheran church, which would place beyond doubt the obligation to the particular confession of this church."

To this petition there came a most exalted reply, in which the request was refused, with the explanation given that the confessional status of the evangelical congregations of the Grand Duchy — and hence also of the Lutheran congregations — would not be altered by the wording of the new formulary. A covering letter which the Minister, Baron von Dalwigk, appended to this reply, describes it as self-evident that "the clergyman who is bound to the confession of the evangelical church in general shall, in the congregation in which he