r) pronounced this rite not indeed as necessary, but yet as
_highly useful_, in order to remind the people very impressively of the
power of sin and the devil; it was not remarkable that the zealous
adherents of Luther were also unwilling to abandon his views on this
subject. Hence we find that _in all countries in which the views and
example of Luther were rigidly adhered to, as in Saxony, Wuertemburg,
Hanover, Sweden, and other places_, a strong attachment to exorcism
prevailed, which was often regarded _as the criterion of orthodoxy_."
"Some Lutherans cherished exorcism with a kind of _passionate
fondness_." "In the sixteenth century exorcism was alternately defended
in one place and disapproved in another; and in the latter half of the
eighteenth, attention was again directed to the subject partly by
accidental circumstances, and partly also by the great changes in the
department of theology. The result has been that exorcism has been
entirely abolished in different individual towns; and in several
countries. This, for example, was the case in Regensburg in 1781, in
Hamburg in 1786, and since 1811, in all Sweden." "In other Protestant
Lutheran Stales, it is still left to the choice of the parents, whether
they will have their children baptised with or without exorcism." "The
author (says Siegel) was himself placed in the unpleasant predicament
in the year 1836," of having been requested to perform baptism with
exorcism!!

(_f_) _Dr. Sigismund J. Baumgarten_ of Halle, one of the most learned
and profound divines that ever adorned the Lutheran church, who himself
published one of the best and the most extensively circulated editions
of the symbolical books in 1747, not only inserts the Directory for
Baptism (which inculcates exorcism) among the symbolical books, but on
p. 637 bears the following testimony: "The Directory for solemnizing
marriage, as well as the following _Directory for Baptism_, are found in
the _oldest Corp. Doctrinae_, in the _Thuringian, Julian, Brandenburg_,
and first DRESDEN EDITIONS, and also subsequently, in the Leipsic and
Reineccian," p. 637.

From these historical testimonies the following points are clearly
established:

1. That the Directory for Baptism, in which _exorcism_ is prescribed,
was certainly received into the first and authentic edition of the
German Book of Concord, or collection of symbolical books. This is
attested by Drs. Guericke, Sig. Baumgarten, and Koellner. It was
s