The Hungarian Reformed Church has a singular history, in respect of Creeds. The Report of the Council goes very minutely into the detail of eleven confessions held successively by that church. Of these, there survive two—the Helvetic Confession and the Catechism of Heidelberg, by which ministers and office—bearers are still bound.
[German Churches.]
Next as to Germany. As the several states have their separate ecclesiastical usages, the same rule does not apply everywhere. For an extreme case of absence of toleration, we may refer to the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg. Lutheranism is the established religion; and the Duchy is the stronghold of mediaeval conservatism both in politics and in religion. The, removal of Baumgarten from the University of Rostock is an example in point; and the decree is so characteristic, and illustrative that it deserves to be given at length.
"We have to our sincere regret been given to understand that, in your writings published in and since the year 1854, you have advanced doctrines and principles that are in the most important points at variance with the doctrines and principles of the symbolic books of our Evangelical-Lutheran Church and of our rules of Church Discipline, to such an extent as to amount to an attempt to shake to the very foundation the basis whereon these doctrines and principles and our church rest. In order to reach more exact certainty on these things, we have assembled our Consistory to consider this matter, and from them we have received the annexed opinion, by which the above-mentioned view has been fully confirmed.
"Whereas, then, it is required by our Church Ordinances of 1552 and 1602 (1650) that the Christian doctrine shall be taught 'pure and unchanged,' as it is contained in Holy Writ, the general symbols of the Christian Church, in Dr. Luther's Catechism and Confession, and in the Augsburg Confession of 1530, and that, if an academical teacher fall away from these, he shall be proceeded against; whereas, further, in Articles II. to IV. of the Reversals of 1621, the sovereigns gave the States the assurance that in the University of Rostock there should be neither appointed nor tolerated any other teachers but such as should be attached to the Augsburg Confession and the Lutheran religion: the establishment of the University of Rostock on the pure doctrine of the Christian symbols and of the Augsburg Confession has been repeated in § 4 of the Regulations upon the relations of the town of Rostock to the State University of 1827, and once again in § 1 of the Statutes of the University of 1837; no less do the statutes of the Theological Faculty of Rostock of 1564, and the later Regulation as to this Faculty of 1791, bind the members of the Faculty to expound the writings of the Prophets and the Apostles in the sense laid down in the general Christian symbols, in the Augsburg Confession, the Smalkald Articles, and the writings of Dr. Luther; your appointment of 31st August, 1850, referred you to the Statutes of the University and of the Theological Faculty, and also directed you to comport yourself in accordance with the rule and line of the revealed word of God, the unchanged Augsburg Confession, the formula concordia, and all the other symbolic books received in our (lands) country, as well as with the Mecklenburg Church Ordinances relating to these, without any innovation; you also on your induction on the 19th of Oct., 1850, bound yourself by oath to the duties contained in your appointment and to the Statutes of the University and of the Theological Faculty."
[Removal of Baumgarten from Rostock.]
"We can the shorter time entrust you with the vocation of an academic teacher of the Evangelical-Lutheran Theology as you have united with your backslidings in theological doctrine at the same time political doctrines of the most delicate kind, deduced relatively from those; and we will, therefore—after hearing of our High Consistory, and after the foregoing resolution of our ministry according to § 10, Lit. H. of the Ordinance of 4th April, 1853, relating to the organisation of the Ministers—hereby remove you from the office, hitherto filled by you, of an ordinary Professor of Theology in our State University of Rostock."