Chapter XV: Part 15

§ 192.4. =The Frankfort Parliament and the Würzburg Bishops’
Congress of 1848.=--As in the March diets of 1848 the magic
word “freedom” roused through Germany a feverish excitement,
it found a ready response among the Catholics, whose church
was favoured in the highest degree by the movement. In the
Frankfort parliament the ablest leaders of Catholic Germany
had seats. Among the Catholic population there were numerous
religio-political societies formed (§ 186, 3), and the German
bishops, avowedly for the celebration of the 600th anniversary of
the building of Cologne cathedral, set alongside of the Frankfort
people’s parliament a German bishops’ council. After they had at
Frankfort declared themselves in favour of unconditional liberty
of faith, conscience, and worship, the complete independence
of all religious societies in the ordering and administering
of their affairs, but also of freeing the schools from all
ecclesiastical control and oversight, as well as of the
introduction of obligatory civil marriage, the bishops’ council
met in October at Würzburg under the presidency of Archbishop
Geissel of Cologne with nineteen episcopal assistants and several
able theological advisers. In thirty-six sessions they reached
the conclusion that complete separation between church and state
is not to be desired so long as the state does not refuse to
the church the place of authority belonging to it. On the other
hand, by all means in their power they are to seek the abrogation
of the _placet_ of the sovereign, the full independence of
ecclesiastical legislation, administration and jurisdiction, with
the abolition of the _appellatio tanquam ab abusu_, the direction
and oversight of the public schools as well as the control of
religious instruction in higher schools to be given only by
teachers licensed for the purpose by the bishops, and finally to
demand permission to erect educational institutions of their own
of every kind, etc., and to forward a copy of these decisions
to all German governments. The main object of the Würzburg
assembly to secure currency for their resolutions in the new
Germany sketched out at the Frankfort parliament, was indeed
frustrated by that parliament’s speedy overthrow. Nevertheless
in the several states concerned it proved of great and lasting
importance in determining the subsequent unanimous proceedings
of the bishops.

§ 193. PRUSSIA.

To the pious king Frederick William III. (1797-1840) it was a matter of heart and conscience to turn to account the religious consciousness of his people, re-awakened by God’s gracious help during the war of independence, for the healing of the three hundred years’ rent in the evangelical church by a union of the two evangelical confessions. The jubilee festival of the Reformation in 1817 seemed to him to offer the most favourable occasion. The king also desired to see the Catholic church in his dominions restored to an orderly and thriving condition, and for this end concluded a concordat with Rome in 1821. But it was broken up in 1836 over a strife between canon and civil law in reference to mixed marriages. Frederick William IV. was dominated by romantic ideas, and his reign (1840-1858), notwithstanding all his evangelical Christian decidedness, was wanting in the necessary firmness and energetic consistency. In the Catholic church the Jesuits were allowed unhindered to foster ultramontane hierarchical principles, and in the evangelical church the troubles about constitution, union, and confession could not be surmounted either by its own proper guardian, the episcopate, or by the superior church councils created in 1850. And although the notifications of William I. on his entrance upon the sole government in 1858 were hailed by the liberals as giving assurance that a new era had dawned in the development of the evangelical national church, this hope proved to be premature. With the exaltation of the victory-crowned royal house of Prussia to the throne of the newly erected German Empire on January 18th, 1871, a new era was actually opened for ecclesiastical developments and modifications throughout the land.

§ 193.1. =The Catholic Church to the Close of the Cologne
Conflict.=--The government of =Frederick William III.= entered
into negotiations with the papal curia, not so much for the old
provinces in which everything was going well, but rather in the
interests of the Rhine provinces annexed in 1814, whose bishops’
sees were vacant or in need of circumscription. The first
Prussian ambassador to the Roman curia (1816-1823) was the famous
historian Niebuhr. Although a true Protestant and keen critic
and restorer of the history of old pagan Rome he was no match
for the subtle and skilful diplomacy of Consalvi. In presence
of the claims of the curia he manifested to an almost incredible
extent trustful sympathy and acquiescence, even taking to do with
matters that lay outside of Prussian affairs, eagerly silencing
and opposing any considerations suggested from the other side. A
complete concordat, however, defining in detail all the relations
between church and state was not secured, but in 1821 an
agreement was come to, with thankful acknowledgment of the “great
magnanimity and goodness” shown by the king, by the bull _De
salute animarum_, sanctioned by the king through a cabinet order
(“in the exercise of his royal prerogative and without detriment
to these rights”), according to which two archbishoprics, Cologne
and Posen, and six bishoprics, Treves, Münster, Paderborn,
Breslau, Kulm, and Ermeland, with a clerical seminary, were
erected in Prussia and furnished with rich endowments. The
cathedral chapter was to have the free choice of the bishop; but
by an annexed note it was recommended to make sure in every such
election that the one so chosen would be a _grata persona_ to the
king. The union thus effected between church and state was of but
short duration. The decree of Trent forbade Catholics to enter
into mixed marriages with non-Catholics. A later papal bull
of 1741, however, permitted it on condition of an only passive
assistance of the clergy at the wedding and an engagement by the
parents to train up the children as Catholics. The law of Prussia,
on the other hand, in contested cases made all the children
follow the religion of their fathers. As this was held in 1825
to apply to the Rhine provinces, and as the bishops there had, in
1828, appealed to the pope, Pius VIII. when negotiations with the
Prussian ambassador Bunsen (1824-1838) proved fruitless, issued
in 1830 a brief which permitted Catholic priests to give the
ecclesiastical sanction to mixed marriages only when a promise
was given that the children should be educated as Catholics, but
otherwise to give only passive assistance. When all remonstrances
failed to overcome the obstinacy of the curia, the government
turned to the Archbishop of Cologne, Count =Spiegel=, a zealous
friend and promoter of the Hermesian theology (§ 191, 1), and
arranged in 1834 a secret convention with him, which by his
influence all his suffragans joined. In it they promised to give
such an interpretation to the brief that its observance would be
limited to teaching and exhortation, but would by no means extend
to the obligation of submitting the children to Catholic baptism,
and that the mere _assistentia passiva_ would be resorted to as
rarely as possible, and only in cases where absolutely required.
Spiegel died in November, 1835. In 1836 the Westphalian Baron
=Clement Droste von Vischering= was chosen as his successor.
Although before his elevation he had unhesitatingly agreed to
the convention, soon after his enthronization he strictly forbad
all the clergy celebrating any marriage except in accordance with
the brief, and blamed himself for having believed the agreement
between convention and brief affirmed by the government, and
having only subsequently on closer examination discovered the
disagreement between the two. At the same time, in order to give
effect to the condemnation that had been meanwhile passed on
the Hermesian theology, he gave orders that at the confessional
the Bonn students should be forbidden to attend the lectures
of Hermesians. When the archbishop could not be prevailed on
to yield, he was condemned in 1837 as having broken his word
and having incited to rebellion, and sent to the fortress of
Minden. =Gregory XIV.= addressed to the consistory a fulminating
allocution, and a flood of controversial tracts on either
side swept over Germany. Görres designated the archbishop “the
Athanasius of the nineteenth century.” The government issued
a state paper justifying its procedure, and the courts of
law sentenced certain refractory priests to several years’
confinement in fortresses or prisons. The moderate peaceful
tone of the cathedral chapter did much to quell the disturbance,
supporting as it did the state rather than the archbishop. The
example of Cologne encouraged also =Dunin=, Archbishop of Gnesen
and Posen, to issue in 1838 a pastoral in which he threatened
with suspension any priest in his diocese who would not yield
unconditional obedience to the papal brief. For this he was
deposed by the civil courts and sentenced to half a year’s
imprisonment in a fortress, but the king prevented the execution
of the sentence. But Dunin fled from Berlin, whither he had
been ordered by the king, to Posen, and was then brought in 1839
to the fortress of Kolberg. While matters were in this state
Frederick William IV. came to the throne in 1840. Dunin was
immediately restored, after promising to maintain the peace.
Droste also was released from his confinement with public marks
of respect, but received in 1841, with his own and the pope’s
approval, in the former Bishop of Spires, Geissel, a coadjutor,
who in his name and with the right of succession administered the
diocese. The government gave no aid to the Hermesians. The law
in regard to mixed marriages continued indeed in force, but
was exercised so as to put no constraint of conscience upon
the Catholic clergy. Of his own accord the king declined
further exercise of the royal prerogative, allowing the bishops
direct intercourse with the papal see, whereas previously all
correspondence had to pass through royal committees, with this
proviso by the minister Eichhorn, “that this display of generous
confidence be not abused,” and with the expectation that the
bishops would not only communicate to the government the contents
of their correspondence with the pope, but also the papal replies
which did not deal exclusively with doctrine, and would not speak
and act against the wish and will of the government. But Geissel,
recommended by Louis of Bavaria to his son-in-law Frederick
William IV. instead of Baron von Diepenbrock (§ 187, 1) who was
first thought of, by his skilful and energetic manœuvring, going
on from victory to victory, raised ultramontanism in Prussia to
the very summit of its influence and glory.

§ 193.2. =The Golden Age of Prussian Ultramontanism,
1841-1871.=--In the Cologne-Posen conflict Rome had won an almost
complete victory, and with all its satellites now thought only
of how it might in the best possible manner turn this victory to
account, in which the all too trustful government sought to aid
it to the utmost. This movement received a further impulse in
the revolution of 1848 (§ 192, 4). In Prussia as well as in other
German lands, and there in a special degree, the Catholic church
managed to derive from the revolutionary movements of those times,
and from the subsequent reaction, substantial advantage. The
constitution of 1850 declared in Article xv.: “The evangelical
and the Roman Catholic Church as well as every other religious
society regulates and administers its affairs independently;”
in Article xvi.: “The correspondence of religious societies
with their superiors is unrestricted, the publication of
ecclesiastical ordinances is subject only to those limitations
which apply to all other documents;” in Article xviii.:
“The right of nomination, proposal, election, and institution
to spiritual office, so far as it belongs to the state, is
abolished;” and in Article xxiv.: “The respective religious
societies direct religious instruction in the public schools.”
Under the screen of these fundamental privileges the Catholic
episcopate now claimed one civil prerogative after another,
emancipated itself wholly from the laws of the state, and, on
the plea that God must be obeyed rather than man, made the canon
law, not only in purely ecclesiastical but also in mixed matters,
the only standard, and the decision of the pope the final appeal.
At last nothing was left to the state but the obligation of
conferring splendid endowments upon the bishops, cathedral
chapters, and seminaries for priests, and the honour of being at
home the executioner of episcopal tyranny, and abroad the avenger
of every utterance unfavourable in the doctrine and worship,
customs and enactments of the Catholic church. With almost
incredible infatuation the Catholic hierarchy was now regarded
as a main support of the throne against the revolutionary
tendencies of the age and as the surest guarantee for the loyalty
of subjects in provinces predominantly Catholic. Under protection
of the law allowing the formation of societies and the right
of assembling, the order of Jesuits set up one establishment
after another, and made up for defects or insufficient energy
of ultramontane pastoral work, agitation and endeavour at
conversion on the part of other peaceably disposed parish
priests, by numerous missions conducted in the most ostentatious
manner (§ 186, 6). Although according to Article xiii. of the
constitution religious societies could obtain corporative rights
only by special enactments, the bishops, on their own authority,
without regarding this provision, established religious orders
and congregations wherever they chose. As these were generally
placed under foreign superiors male or female, to whom in Jesuit
fashion unconditional obedience was rendered, each member being
“like a corpse,” without any individual will, they spread without
hindrance, so that continually new cloisters and houses of the
orders sprang up like mushrooms over the Protestant metropolis
(§ 186, 2). Education in Catholic districts fell more and more
into the hands of religious corporations, and even the higher
state educational institutions, so far as they dealt with the
training of the Catholic youth (theological faculties, gymnasia,
and Training schools), were wholly under the control of the
bishops. From the boys’ convents and priests’ seminaries,
erected at all episcopal residences, went forth a new generation
of clergy reared in the severest school of intolerance, who,
first of all acting as chaplains, by espionage, the arousing
of suspicion and talebearing, were the dread of the old parish
priests, and, as “chaplains at large,” stirred up fanaticism
among the people, and secured the Catholic press to themselves
as a monopoly. For the purposes of Catholic worship and education
the government had placed state aid most liberally at their
disposal, without requiring any account from the bishops as to
their disposal of the money. Although the number of Catholics
in the whole country was only about half that of the Protestants,
the endowment of the Catholic was almost double that of the
evangelical church. The civil authority readily helped the
bishops to enforce any spiritual penalties, and thus the inferior
clergy were brought into absolute dependence upon their spiritual
superiors. In the government department of Public Worship, from
1840 to 1848 under the direction of Eichhorn, there was since
1841 a subsection for dealing with the affairs of the Catholic
church which, although restricted to the guarding of the rights
of the king over against the curia and that of the state over
against the hierarchy, came to be in an entirely opposite
sense “the civil department of the pope in Prussia.” Under Von
Mühler’s ministry, 1862-1872, it obtained absolute authority
which it seems to have exercised in removing unfavourable acts
and documents from the imperial archives. And thus the Catholic
church, or rather the ultramontane party dominant in it since
1848, grew up into a power that threatened the whole commonwealth
in its very foundations.--By the annexation of Hanover, Hesse,
and Nassau in 1866, four new bishoprics, those of Hildesheim,
Osnabrück, Fulda and Limburg were added to the previous
eight.--Continuation § 197.

§ 193.3. =The Evangelical Church in Old Prussia down to
1848.=--On the accomplishment of the union by Frederick
William III. and the confusions arising therefrom, see § 177.
=Frederick William IV.= on his accession declared his wish in
reference to the national evangelical church, that the supreme
control of the church should be exercised only in order to secure
for it in an orderly and legal way the independent administration
of its own affairs. The realization of this idea, after a church
conference of the ordinary clergy from almost all German states
had been held in Berlin without result, was attempted at Berlin
by a general synod, opened on Whitsunday, 1846. The synod at
its eighteenth session entered upon the consideration of the
difficult question of doctrine and the confession. The result
of this was the approval of an ordination formula drawn up by
Dr. Nitzsch (§ 182, 10), according to which the candidate for
ordination was to make profession of the great fundamental
and saving truths instead of the church confession hitherto
enforced. And since among these fundamental truths the doctrines
of creation, original sin, the supernatural conception, the
descent into hell and the ascension of Christ, the resurrection
of the body, the last judgment, everlasting life and everlasting
punishment were not included, and therefore were not to be
enforced, since further by this ordination formula the special
confessions of Lutheran and Reformed were really set aside,
and therewith the existence of a Lutheran as well as a Reformed
church within the union seemed to be abolished, a small number
of decided Lutherans in the synod protested; still more decided
and vigorous protests arose from outside the synod, to which
the _Evang. Kirchenzeitung_ opened its columns. The government
gave no further countenance to the decisions of the synod, and
opponents exercised their wit upon the unfortunate _Nicænum_ of
the nineteenth century, which as a _Nitzschenum_ had fallen into
the water. In March, 1847, the king issued a patent of toleration,
by which protection was assured anew to existing churches, but
the formation of new religious societies was allowed to all who
found not in these the expression of their belief.

§ 193.4. =The Evangelical Church in Old Prussia,
1848-1872.=--When the storms of revolution broke out in 1848,
the new minister of worship, =Count Schwerin=, willingly aided
in reorganizing the church according to the mind of the masses
of the people by a constitutional synod. But before it had met
the reaction had already set in. The transition ministry of
=Ladenberg= was assured by consistories and faculties of the
danger of convoking such a synod of representatives of the people.
Instead of the synod therefore a =Supreme Church Council= was
assembled at Berlin in 1850, which, independent of the ministry,
and only under the king as _præcipuum membrum ecclesiæ_, should
represent the freedom of the church from the state as something
already realized. On March 6th, 1852, the king issued a cabinet
order, in consequence of which the Supreme Church Council
administered not only the affairs of the evangelical national
church as a whole, but also was charged with the interests of the
Lutheran as well as the Reformed church in particular, and was
to be composed of members from both of those confessions, who
should alone have to decide on questions referring to their own
confession. On the _Itio in partes_ thus required in this board,
only Dr. Nitzsch remained over, as he declared that he could find
expression for his religious convictions in neither of the two
confessions, but only in a consensus of both. The difficulty
was overcome by reckoning him a representative equally of both
denominations. Encouraged by such connivance in high places to
entertain still bolder hopes, the Lutheran societies in 1853
presented to the king a petition signed by one hundred and sixty
one clergymen, for restoring Lutheran faculties and the Lutheran
church property. But this called forth a rather unfavourable
cabinet order, in which the king expressed his disapproval of
such a misconception of the ordinances of the former year, and
made the express declaration that it never was his intention to
break up or weaken the union effected by his father, that he only
wished to give the confession within the union the protection
to which it was undoubtedly entitled. After this the separate
Lutheran interest so long highly favoured fell into manifest and
growing disfavour. Still the ministerial department of worship
under =Von Raumer=, 1850-1858, continued to conduct the affairs
of schools and universities in the spirit of the ecclesiastical
orthodox reaction, and issued the endless school regulations
conceived in this spirit of the privy councillor Stiehl. The
Supreme Church Council also exhibited a rare activity and passed
many wholesome ordinances. The evangelical church won great
credit by the care it took of its members scattered over distant
lands, in supplying them with clergy and teachers. The evident
favour with which Frederick William IV. furthered the efforts of
the Evangelical Alliance of 1857 (§ 178, 3) was the last proof
of decided aversion from the confessional movement which he was
to be allowed to give. A long and hopeless illness, of which he
died in 1861, obliged him to resign the government to his brother
=William I.= When this monarch in October, 1855, began to rule
in his own name, he declared to his newly appointed ministers
that it was his firm resolve that the evangelical union, whose
beneficent development had been obstructive to an orthodoxy
incompatible with the character of the evangelical church, and
which had thus almost caused its ruin, should be maintained
and further advanced. But in order that the task might be
accomplished, the organs for its administration must be carefully
chosen and to some extent changed. All hypocrisy and formalism,
which that orthodoxy had fostered, is wherever possible to be
removed. The “new era,” however, marked by the appearance of
liberal journals, by no means answered to the expectations which
those words excited. The ministry of =Von Bethmann-Hollweg=,
1858-1862, filled some theological and spiritual offices in this
liberal spirit; Stahl withdrew from the Supreme Church Council;
the proceedings against the free churches, as well as the severe
measures against the re-marriage of divorced parties, were
relaxed. But the marriage law laid down by the ministry with
permission of civil marriage was rejected by the House of Peers,
and the hated school regulations had to be undertaken by the
minister himself. The ecclesiastically conservative ministry of
=Von Mühler=, 1862-1872, which, however, wanted a fixed principle
as well as self-determined energy of will, and was therefore
often vacillating and losing the respect of all parties, was
utterly unfit to realize these expectations. The Supreme Church
Council published in 1867 the outlines of a provincial synodal
constitution for the six East Provinces which were still without
this institution, which the Rhine Provinces and Westphalia had
enjoyed since 1835. For this purpose he convened in autumn, 1869,
an extraordinary provincial synod, which essentially approved
the sketch submitted, whereupon it was provisionally enacted.

§ 193.5. =The Evangelical Church in Old Prussia,
1872-1880.=--After the removal of Von Mühler, the minister of
worship, in January, 1872, his place was taken by =Dr. Falk=,
1872-1879. The hated school regulations were now at last set
aside and replaced by new moderate prescriptions, conceived in
an almost unexpectedly temperate spirit. On September 10th, 1873,
the king issued a congregational and synodal constitution
for the eastern provinces, with the express statement that the
position of the confession and the union should thereby be in no
way affected. It prescribed that in every congregation presided
over by a pastor, elected by the ecclesiastically qualified
church members, _i.e._ those of honourable life who had taken
part in public worship and received the sacraments, there should
be a church council of from four to twelve persons, and for
more important matters, _e.g._ the election of a pastor, a
congregational committee of three times the size, half of which
should be reappointed every third year. To the district synod,
presided over by the superintendent, each congregation sends as
delegates besides the pastor a lay representative chosen by the
church council from among its members or from the congregational
committee. According to the same principle the District Synods
choose from their members a clerical and a lay representative to
the provincial synod, to which also the evangelical theological
faculty of the university within the bounds sends a deputy, and
the territorial lord nominates a number of members not exceeding
a sixth part of the whole. The general synod, in which also the
two western provinces, the Rhenish and Westphalian, take part,
consists of one hundred and fifty delegates from the provincial
synods, and thirty nominated by the territorial lords, to which
the faculties of theology and law of the six universities within
the bounds send each one of their members. Although this royal
decree had proclaimed itself final, and only remitted to an
=Extraordinary General Synod= to be called forthwith the task of
arranging for future ordinary general synods, yet at the meeting
of this extraordinary synod in Berlin, on November 24th, 1875,
a draft was submitted of a constitution modified in various
important points. Of the three demands of the liberal party
now violently insisted upon--

1. Substitution of the “filter” system in the election of
provincial and general synod members for that of the
community electorate.

2. Strengthening of the lay element in all synods; and

3. Abolition of the equality of small village communities with
large town communities

the first was by far the most important and serious in its
consequences, but the other two bore fruit through the decree
that two-thirds of the members of the district and provincial
synods should be laymen, and the other one-third should be freely
elected to the district synod from the populous town communities,
for the provincial synods from the larger district synods.
Also in reference to the rights belonging to the several grades
of synods, considerable modifications were made, whereby the
privileges of communities were variously increased (_e.g._ to
them was given the right of refusing to introduce the catechisms
and hymn-books sanctioned by the provincial synods), while those
of the district and provincial synods were lessened in favour
of the general synod, and those of the latter again in favour
of the high church council and the minister of public worship.
After nearly four weeks’ discussion the bill without any serious
amendments was passed by the assembly, and on January 20th, 1876,
received the royal assent and became an ecclesiastical law.
But in order to give it also the rank of a law of the state,
a decision of the States’ Parliament on the relation of church
and state was necessary. The parliament had already in 1874,
when the original congregational and synodal constitution was
submitted to it, in order to advance the movement, approved
only the congregational constitution with provisional refusal
of everything going beyond that. In May, 1876, the bill already
raised by the king into an ecclesiastical law, passed both houses
of parliament, and had here also some amendments introduced with
the effect of increasing and strengthening the prerogative of
the state. The main points in the law as then passed are these:
The general synod, whose members undertake to fulfil their
duties agreeably to the word of God and the ordinances of the
evangelical national church, has the task of maintaining and
advancing the state church on the basis of the evangelical
confession. The laws of the state church must receive its assent,
but any measure agreed upon by it cannot be laid before the king
for his sanction without the approval of the minister of public
worship. It meets every sixth year; in the interval it, as well
as the provincial synods, is represented by a synodal committee
chosen from its members. The head of the church government is
the Supreme Church Council, whose president countersigns the
ecclesiastical laws approved by the king. The right of appointing
to this office lies with the minister of public worship; in
the nomination of other members the president makes proposals
with consent of the minister. Taxation of the general synod for
parliamentary purposes needs the assent of the minister of state,
and must, if it exceeds four per cent. of the class and income
tax, be agreed to by the Lower House, which also annually has
to determine the expenditure on ecclesiastical administration.

§ 193.6. When preparations were being made for the extraordinary
general synod, the king had repeatedly given vigorous expression
to his positive religious standpoint, and from the proposed
lists of members for that synod submitted by the minister of
public worship all names belonging to the _Protestantenverein_
were struck out. Still more decidedly in 1877 did he show
his disapproval in the Rhode-Hossbach troubles (§ 180, 4), by
declaring his firm belief in the divinity of Christ, and when the
then president of the Brandenburg consistory, Hegel, tendered his
resignation, owing to differences with the liberal president of
the Supreme Church Council, Hermann, the king refused to accept
it, because he could not then spare any such men as held by
the apostolic faith. In May, 1878, Hermann was at last, after
repeated solicitations, allowed to retire, Dr. Hermes, member of
the Supreme Church Council, was nominated his successor, and the
positive tendency of the Supreme Church Council was strengthened
by the admission of the court preachers, Kögel and Baur. His
proposals again disagreeing with the royal nominations for the
provincial synod and for the =First Ordinary General Synod= of
autumn, 1879, led the minister of public worship, Dr. Falk, at
last, after repeated solicitation, to accept his resignation.
It was granted him in July, 1879, and the chief president of the
province of Silesia, =Von Puttkamer=, a more decided adherent
of the positive union party, was named as his successor;
but in June, 1881, he was made minister of the interior, and
the undersecretary of the department of public worship, =Von
Gossler=, was made minister. The general synod, October 10th
till November 3rd, consisted of fifty-two confessionalists,
seventy-six positive-unionists, fifty-six of the middle party
or evangelical unionist, and nine from the ranks of the left,
the _Protestantenverein_; three confessionalists, twelve
positive-unionists, and fifteen of the middle party were
nominated by the king. The measures proposed by the Supreme
Church Council:

1. A marriage service without reference to the preceding civil
marriage, with two marriage formulæ, the first a joint
promise, the second a benediction;

2. A disciplinary law against despisers of baptism and marriage,
which threatened such with the loss of all ecclesiastical
electoral rights, and eventually with exclusion from the
Lord’s supper and sponsor rights; and

3. A law dealing with _Emeriti_,

were adopted by the synod and then approved by the king. On the
other hand a series of independent proposals conceived in the
interests of the high-church party remained in suspense. The last
effected elections for the general synod committee resulted in
the appointment of three positive-unionist members, including the
president, two confessionalists, and two of the middle party.[549]

§ 193.7. =The Evangelical Church in the Annexed Provinces.=--In
1866 the provinces of Hanover, Hesse and Schleswig-Holstein were
incorporated with the kingdom of Prussia. In these political
particularism, combined with confessional Lutheranism, suspicion
of every organized system of church government as intended
to introduce Prussian unionism, even to the extreme of open
rebellion, led to violent conflicts. The king, indeed, personally
gave assurance in Cassel, Hanover and Kiel that the position of
the church confession should in no way be endangered. “He will
indeed support the union where it already existed as a sacred
legacy to him from his forefathers; he also hopes that it may
always make further progress as a witness to the grand unity of
the evangelical church; but compulsion is to be applied to no
man.” The consistories of these provinces were still to continue
independent of the Supreme Church Council. But the ministerial
order for the restoration of representative synodal constitution
increasingly prevailed, although the wide-spread suspicion and
individual protests against the system of church government,
such as the temporary prohibition of the Marburg consistory of
the mission festival, as avowedly used for agitation against
the intended synodal constitution, helped to intensify the
bitterness of feeling. But on the other hand many preachers by
their unbecoming pulpit harangues, and their refusal to take
the oath of allegiance or service, to pray in church for their
new sovereign, and to observe the general holiday appointed
to be held in 1869 on November 10th (Luther’s birthday),
etc., compelled the ecclesiastical authorities to impose fines,
suspension, penal transportation, and deposition. In the Lutheran
=Schleswig-Holstein= a new congregational constitution was
introduced in 1869 by the minister Von Mühler, as the basis of a
future synodal constitution, which was adopted by the _Vorsynode_
of Rendsburg in 1871, preserving the confessional status laid
down, without discussion. In 1878 an advance was made by the
institution of district or provostship synods, and in February,
1880, the first General Synod was held at Rendsburg. As in Old
Prussia so also here the conservative movement proved victorious.
The laity obtained majorities in all synods, and the supremacy
of the state was secured by the subordination of the church
government under the minister of public worship.

§ 193.8. =In Hanover=, where especially Lichtenberg, president of
the upper consistory, and Uhlhorn, member of the upper consistory
(since 1878 abbot of Loccum), although many Lutheran extremists
long remained dissatisfied, temperately and worthily maintained
the independence and privileges of the Lutheran church, the first
national synod could be convened and could bring to a generally
peaceful conclusion the question of the constitution only in
the end of 1869, after the preliminary labour of the national
synod committee. In 1882 the Reformed communities of 120,000
souls, hitherto subject to Lutheran consistories, obtained an
independent congregational and synodal constitution. Against
the new marriage ordinance enacted in consequence of the
civil marriage law (§ 197, 5), Theod. Harms (brother, and from
1865 successor of L. Harms, § 184, 1), pastor and director of
Hermannsburg missionary seminary, rebelled from the conviction
that civil marriage did not deserve to be recognised as marriage.
He was first suspended, then in 1877 deposed from office, and
with the most of his congregation retired and founded a separate
Lutheran community, to which subsequently fifteen other small
congregations of 4,000 souls were attached. As teacher and pupils
of the seminary made it a zealous propaganda for the secession,
the missionary journals and missionary festivals were misused
for the same purpose, and as Harms answered the questions of the
consistory in reference thereto, partly by denying, partly by
excusing, that court, in December, 1878, forbad the missionary
collections hitherto made throughout the churches at Epiphany
for Hermannsburg, and so completely broke off the connection
between the state church and the institution which had hitherto
been regarded as “its pride and its preserving salt.” A reaction
has since set in in favour of the seminary and its friends on
the assurance that the interests of the separation would not be
furthered by the seminary, and that several other objectionable
features, _e.g._ the frequent employment in the mission service
of artisans without theological training, the sending of them out
in too great numbers without sufficient endowment and salary, so
that missionaries were obliged to engage in trade speculations,
should be removed as far as possible; but since the seminary
life was always still carried on upon the basis of ecclesiastical
secession, it could lead to no permanent reconciliation with the
state church. Harms died in 1885. His son Egmont was chosen his
successor, and as the consistory refused ordination, he accepted
consecration at the hands of five members of the Immanuel Synod
at Magdeburg.

§ 193.9. =In Hesse= the ministry of Von Mühler sought to bring
about a combination of the three consistories of Hanau, Cassel,
and Marburg, as a necessary vehicle for the introduction of a
new synodal constitution. In the province itself an agitation
was persistently carried on for and against the constitutional
scheme submitted by the ministers, which wholly ignored the old
church order (§ 127, 2), which, though in the beginning of the
seventeenth century through the ecclesiastical disturbances of
the time (§ 154, 1), it had passed out of use, had never been
abrogated and so was still legally valid. A _Vorsynode_ convened
in 1870 approved of it in all essential points, but conventions
of superintendents, pastoral conferences and lay addresses
protested, and the Prussian parliament, for which it was not yet
liberal enough, refused the necessary supplies. As these after
Von Mühler’s overthrow were granted, his successor, Dr. Falk,
immediately proceeded in 1873 to set up in Cassel the court
that had been objected to so long. It was constituted after the
pattern of the Supreme Church Council, of Lutheran, Reformed, and
United members with _Itio in partes_ on specifically confessional
questions. The clergy of Upper Hesse comforted themselves
with saying that the new courts in which the confessions were
combined, if not better, were at least no worse than the earlier
consistories in which the confessions were confounded; and they
felt obliged to yield obedience to them, so long as they did not
demand anything contradictory the Lutheran confession. On the
other hand, many of the clergy of Lower Hesse saw in the advance
from a merely eventual to an actual blending of the confessional
status in church government an intolerable deterioration. And so
forty-five clergyman of Lower and one of Upper Hesse laid before
the king a protest against the innovation as destructive of the
confessional rights of the Hessian church contrary to the will
of the supreme majesty of Jesus Christ. They were dismissed with
sharp rebuke, and, with the exception of four who submitted, were
deposed from office for obstinate refusal to obey. There were
about sixteen congregations which to a greater or less extent
kept aloof from the new pastors appointed by the consistories,
and without breaking away from the state church wished to remain
true to the old pastor “appointed by Jesus Christ himself.”--In
autumn, 1884, the movement on behalf of the restoration of a
presbyterial and synodal constitution of the Hessian evangelical
church, which had been delayed for fourteen years, was resumed.
A sketch of a constitution, which placed it under three
general superintendents (Lutheran, Reformed, United) and
thirteen superintendents, and, for the fair co-operation of
the lay element in the administration of church affairs (the
confession status, however, being beyond discussion), provided
suitable organs in the shape of presbyteries and synods, with a
predominance of the lay element, was submitted to a _Vorsynode_
that met on November 12th, consisting of two divisions, like a
Lower and Upper House, sitting together. The first division, as
representative of the then existing church order, embraced, in
accordance with the practice of the old Hessian synods, all the
members of the consistory, _i.e._ the nine superintendents and
thirteen pastors elected by the clergy; the second, consisting at
least of as many lay as clerical members, was chosen by the free
election of the congregation. The royal assent was given to the
decrees of the _Vorsynode_ in the end of December, 1885, and the
confessional status was thereby expressly guaranteed.

§ 194. THE NORTH GERMAN SMALLER STATES.

In most of the smaller North German states, owing to the very slight representation of the Reformed church, which was considerable only in Bremen, Lippe-Detmold, and a part of Hesse and East Friesland, the union met with little favour. Yet only in a few of those provinces did a sharply marked confessional Lutheranism gain wide and general acceptance. This was so especially and most decidedly in Mecklenburg, but also in Hanover, Hesse, and Saxony. On the other hand, since the close of 1860, in almost all those smaller states a determined demand was made for a representative synodal constitution, securing the due co-operation of the lay element.--The Catholic church was strongest in Hanover, and next come some parts of Hesse, which had been added to the ecclesiastical province of the Upper Rhine (§ 196, 1), but in the other North German smaller states it was only represented here and there.

§ 194.1. =The Kingdom of Saxony.=--The present kingdom of Saxony,
formerly an electoral principality, has had Catholic princes
since 1679 (§ 153, 1), but the Catholic church could strike its
roots again only in the immediate neighbourhood of the court.
Indeed those belonging to it did not enjoy civil and religious
equality until 1807, when this distinction was set aside. The
erection of cloisters and the introduction of monkish orders,
however, continued even then forbidden, and all official
publications of the Catholic clergy required the _placet_ of
the government. The administration of the evangelical church,
so long as the king is Catholic, lies, according to agreement,
in the hands of the ministers commissioned _in evangelicis_.
Although several of these have proved defenders of ecclesiastical
orthodoxy, the rationalistic Illumination became almost
universally prevalent not only among the clergy but also
among the general populace. Meanwhile a pietistic reaction
set in, especially powerful in Muldenthal, where Rudelbach’s
labours impressed on it a Lutheran ecclesiastical character.
The religious movement, on the other hand, directed by Martin
Stephan, pastor of the Bohemian church in Dresden, came to a
sad and shameful end. As representative and restorer of strict
Lutheran views he had wrought successfully in Dresden from 1810,
but, through the adulation of his followers, approaching even
to worship, he fell more and more deeply into hierarchical
assumption and neglect of self-vigilance. When the police in
1837 restricted his nightly assemblies, without, however, having
discovered anything immoral, and suspended him from his official
duties, he called upon his followers to emigrate to America. Many
of them, lay and clerical, blindly obeyed, and founded in 1835,
in Missouri, a Lutheran church communion (§ 208, 2). Stephan’s
despotic hierarchical assumptions here reached their fullest
height; he also gave his lusts free scope. Women oppressed or
actually abused by him at length openly proclaimed his shame in
1839, and the community excommunicated him. He died in A.D. 1846.
Taught by such experiences, and purged of the Donatist-separatist
element, a church reaction against advancing rationalism made
considerable progress under a form of church that favoured it,
and secured also influential representatives in members of the
theological faculty of the university of Leipzig distinguished
for their scientific attainments. After repeated debates in
the chamber over a scheme of a new ecclesiastical and synodal
order submitted by the ministry, the first evangelical Lutheran
state synod met in Dresden, in May, 1871. On the motion of
the government, the law of patronage was here modified so that
the patron had to submit three candidates to the choice of the
ecclesiastical board. It was also decided to form an upper or
state consistory, to which all ecclesiastical matters hitherto
administered by the minister of public worship should be given
over; the control of education was to remain with the ministry,
and the state consistory was to charge itself with the oversight
only of religious instruction and ethico-religious training. The
most lively debates were those excited by the proposal to abolish
the obligation resting upon all church teachers to seem to adhere
to the confession of the Lutheran church, led by Dr. Zarncke,
the rector of the state university. The commission of inquiry
sent down, under the presidency of Professor Luthardt, demanded
the absolute withdrawal of this proposal, which aimed at perfect
doctrinal freedom. On the other hand, Professor G. Baur made the
mediate proposal to substitute for the declaration on oath, the
promise to teach simply and purely to the best of his knowledge
and according to conscience the gospel of Christ as it is
contained in Scripture, and witnessed in the confessions of the
Lutheran church. And as even now Luthardt, inspired by the wish
not to rend the first State Synod at its final sitting by an
incurable schism, agreed to this suggestion, it was carried
by a large majority. In consequence of this decision, a number
of “Lutherans faithful to the confession,” withdrew from the
State church, and on the anniversary of the Reformation in 1871,
constituted themselves into an Evangelical Lutheran Free Church,
associated with the Missouri synod (§ 208, 2), from which, on
the suggestion of some of the members of the community who had
returned from America, they chose for themselves a pastor called
Ruhland. There were five such congregations in Saxony: at Dresden,
Planitz, Chemnitz, Frankenberg, and Krimmitschau, to which some
South German dissenters at Stenden, Wiesbaden, Frankfort, and
Anspach attached themselves.

§ 194.2. =The Saxon Duchies.=--The Stephan emigration had
also decoyed a number of inhabitants from Saxe-Altenburg. In
a rescript to the Ephorus Ronneburg, in 1838, the consistory
traced back this separatist movement to the fact that the
religious needs of the congregations found no satisfaction in the
rationalistic preaching, and urged a more earnest presentation
from the pulpit of the fundamental and central doctrines of
evangelical Christianity. This rescript was the subject of
violent denunciation. The government took the opinion of four
theological faculties on the procedure of the consistory and
its opponents, who published it simply with the praise and blame
contained therein, and thus prevented any investigation. Also
in =Weimar= and =Gotha= the rationalism of Röhr and Bretschneider,
which had dominated almost all pulpits down to the middle of
the century, began gradually to disappear, and the more recent
parties of Confessional, Mediation, and Free Protestant theology
to take its place. The last named party found vigorous support
in the university of Jena. A petition addressed to it in 1882
from the Thuringian Church Conference of Eisenach, to call
to Jena also a representative of the positive Lutheran theology,
was decidedly refused, and, in a controversial pamphlet by
Superintendent Braasch, condemned as “the Eisenach outrage”
(_Attentat_). In =Meiningen= the _Vorsynode_ convened there
in 1870 sanctioned the sketch of a moderately liberal synodal
constitution submitted to it, which placed the confession indeed
beyond the reach of legislative interference, but also secured
its rights to free inquiry. The first State Synod, however, did
not meet before 1878. In =Weimar= the first synod was held in
1873, the second in 1879.

§ 194.3. =The Kingdom of Hanover.=--Although the union found no
acceptance in Hanover, after the overthrow of the rationalism of
the _ancien régime_, the union theology became dominant in the
university. The clergy, however, were in great part carried along
by the confessional Lutheran current of the age. The Preachers’
Conference at Stade in 1854 took occasion to call the attention
of the government to the “manifest divergence” between the union
theology of the university and the legal and actual Lutheran
confession of the state church, and urged the appointment
of Lutheran teachers. The faculty, on the other hand, issued
a memorial in favour of liberty of public teaching, and the
curators filled the vacancies again with union theologians.
When in April, 1862, it was proposed to displace the state
catechism introduced in 1790, which neither theologically nor
catechetically satisfied the needs of the church, by a carefully
sifted revision of the Walther catechism in use before 1790,
approved of by the Göttingen faculty, the agitation of the
liberal party called forth an opposition, especially in city
populations, which expressed itself in insults to members of
consistories and pastors, and in almost daily repeated bloody
street fights with the military, and obliged the government at
last to give way.--The negotiations about a concordat with Rome
reached up further in 1824 than obtaining the circumscription
bull _Impensa Romanorum_, by which the Catholic church obtained
two bishoprics, those of Hildesheim and Osnabrück.--In 1886,
Hanover was incorporated with the kingdom of Prussia (§ 193, 8).

§ 194.4. =Hesse.=--Landgrave Maurice, 1592-1627, had forced upon
his territories a modified Melanchthonian Calvinism (§ 154, 1),
but a Lutheran basis with Lutheran modes of viewing things and
Lutheran institutions still remained, and the Lutheran reaction
had never been completely overcome, not even in Lower Hesse,
although there the name of the Reformed Church with Reformed
modes of worship had been gradually introduced in most of the
congregations. The communities of Upper Hesse and Schmalcald,
however, by continuous opposition saved for the most part their
Lutheranism, which in 1648 was guaranteed to them anew by the
Darmstadt Recess, and secured an independent form of church
government in the Definitorium at Marburg. The union movement,
which issued from Prussia in 1817, met with favour also in Hesse,
but only in the province of Hanau in 1818 got the length of a
formal constituting of a church on the basis of the union. In
1821, however, the elector issued the so-called Reorganization
edict, by which the entire evangelical church of the electorate,
without any reference to the confession status, but simply in
accordance with the political divisions of the state, was put
under the newly instituted consistories of Cassel, Marburg,
and Hanau, in the formation of which the confession of the
inhabitants had not been considered. The Marburg Definitorium
indeed protested, but in vain, against this despotic act, which
was felt a grievance, less on account of the wiping out of the
confession than on account of the loss of independent church
government which it occasioned. The government appointed pastors,
teachers and professors without enquiring much about their
confession. In 1838 the hitherto required subscription of the
clergy to the confessional writings, the Augsburg Confession and
its Apology, was modified into a formula declaring conscientious
regard for them. But in this Bickell, professor of law at Marburg,
saw a loss to the church in legal status, an endangering of the
evangelical church; the theological professor, Hupfeld, also
in the further course of the controversy took his side, while
the advocate, Henkel, in Cassel, as a popular agitator opposed
him and demanded a State Synod for the formal abolishing of all
symbolical books. The government ignored both demands, and the
vehement conflict was quieted by degrees. With 1850 a new era
began in the keen controversy over the question, which confession,
whether Lutheran or Reformed, was legally and actually that
of the state. The ministry of Hassenpflug from 1850, which
suppressed the revolution, considered it as legally the Lutheran,
and determined the ecclesiastical arrangements in this sense,
and in this course Dr. Vilmar, member of the Consistory, was the
minister’s right hand. But the elector was from the beginning
personally opposed to this procedure, and on the overthrow of
the ministry in 1855, Vilmar (died 1868) was also transferred to
a theological professorship at Marburg. This, however, only gave
a new impulse to the confessional Lutheran movement in the state,
for the spirit and tendency of the highly revered theological
teacher powerfully influenced the younger generation of the
Hessian clergy. In consequence of the German war, Hesse was
annexed to Prussia in 1866 (§ 193, 9).--On the Catholic church
in this state, compare § 196, 1.

§ 194.5. =Brunswick, Oldenburg, Anhalt, and Lippe-Detmold.=--Much
ado was made also in =Brunswick= over the introduction of a new
constitution for the Lutheran state church in 1869, and at last
in 1871 a synodal ordinance was passed by which the State Synod,
consisting of fourteen clerical and eighteen lay members, was
to meet every four years, so as not to be a too offensive factor
in the ecclesiastical administration and legislation, which
therefore has left untouched the content of the confession. The
first synod of 1872 began by rejecting the injunction to open
the sessions with prayer and reading of scripture. =Oldenburg=,
which in 1849, by a synod whose membership had been chosen by the
original electorate, had been favoured with a democratic church
constitution wholly separate from the state, accepted in 1854
without opposition a new constitution which restored the headship
of the church to the territorial lords, the administration of the
church to a Supreme Church Council and ecclesiastical legislation
to a State Synod consisting of clerical and lay members.--The
prince in the exercise of his sovereign rights gave a charter
in 1878 to the evangelical church of the Duchy of =Anhalt= to
a synodal ordinance which, though approved by the _Vorsynode_ of
1876, had been rejected by parliament, and afterwards it gained
the assent of the national representatives.--In the Reformed
=Lippe-Detmold= there were in 1844 still five preachers who,
wearied of the illuminationist catechism of the state church, had
gone back to the Heidelberg catechism and protested against the
abolition of acceptance on oath of the symbols, as destructive
of the peace of the church. The democratic church constitution
of 1851, however, was abrogated in 1854, and instead of it, the
old Reformed church order of 1684 was again made law. At the same
time, religious pardon and equality were guaranteed to Catholics
and Lutherans. The first Reformed State Synod was constituted
in 1878.