# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1859_S222
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

222 From Bavaria.

subsidy of 25,000 silver rubles annually. Indeed, even in the
Greek-Catholic services the Holy Scripture is read to the Russian people
— and only this people is of the Greek confession — in the
Old-Slavonic language, which is unintelligible to it. Bibles in the Russian
language have not been permitted to be printed up to now. Emperor
Alexander I made an attempt, but the copies were, with few exceptions,
confiscated by the clergy; a large number of them are said still to be
rotting in monastery cellars to this day. — In the Lutheran, respectively
Reformed, provinces of Russia, Bibles are distributed in great numbers,
in particular also with the assistance of the British and North American
Bible Societies, not only, as the notice says, mostly in Esthonian and
Finnish, but above all in German, and then also in Latvian, Swedish and
Polish. (Freim.)

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From Bavaria.
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What the Roman Catholic schoolchildren in Bavaria are to learn about
Dr. M. Luther reads, in the new Catholic state catechism which was
introduced everywhere in 1854, as follows: "Martin Luther, professor at
Wittenberg, a man of violent temperament, at first declared himself
against the abuse which reckless men practiced with indulgences (in the
year 1517). But he soon set himself up on his own authority as a reformer
or improver of the Church, turned against the spiritual superiors,
especially against the Pope, whose supreme pastoral authority he
declared to be usurpation and tyranny, which was meant to find its end
through him. In accordance with his perverse views he rejected many
articles of faith which the Church received from Jesus and the Apostles.
He abolished the holy sacrifice of the Mass, fasting, confession, praying
for the dead, and many practices pleasing to God, declared good works to
be useless, and taught that faith alone justifies and saves. Moreover he
threw open the monasteries, permitted monks and nuns to marry,
granted princes and lords the right to seize the properties of foundations
and monasteries and use them at their pleasure. Finally he broke the vow
of chastity which he had solemnly taken as a monk and priest, and took a
nun to wife. Luther boasted that he drew his doctrine solely from the
Bible; but, led astray by a false interpretation of it, he soon fell into the
most manifest contradictions and errors. Thus he maintained that man
has no free will, and consequently can neither keep the commandments
nor avoid sin; that sin does not condemn man, if only he believes firmly,
etc. Notwithstanding this, he won a large following in a short time. For
the frivolous class of the people liked the comfortable doctrine, agreeable
to sensual man, and the abolition of the foundations suited covetous
great men very well. Moreover, Luther did not shrink from any means