Chapter IV: The Counter-Reformation (11)

§ 175.2. =The Attitude of Catholicism toward
Protestantism.=--Every Catholic bishop has still on assuming
office to take the oath, _Hæreticos pro posse persequar_. The
Jesuits, restored in A.D. 1814, soon pervaded every section with
their intolerant spirit. The huge lie that Protestantism is in
matters of State as well as of church essentially revolutionary,
while Catholicism is the bulwark of the State against revolution
and democracy, was affirmed with such audacity that even
Protestant statesmen believed it. The Roman Jesuit Perrone
(§ 191, 9) taught the Catholic youth in a controversial Italian
catechism that “they should feel a creeping horror come over them
at the mere mention of the word Protestantism, more even than
when a murderous attack was made upon them, for Protestantism and
its defenders are in the religious and moral world just the same
as the plague and plague-stricken are in the physical world, and
in all lands Protestants are the scum of all that is vile and
immoral,” etc. In a pastoral of A.D. 1855, Von Ketteler, Bishop
of Mainz, compared the Germans, who by the Reformation rent
the unity of the church, to the Jews who crucified the Messiah.
Romish prelates have vied with one another in their abuse
of Protestants and Protestantism. In A.D. 1881, Leo XIII.
speaking of the spread of Russian nihilism, charged Protestant
missionaries with spreading the dominion of the prince of
darkness. Prof. Hohoff of Paderborn, in his “Hist. Studies on
Protestantism and Socialism,” Paderb., 1881, reiterated the
accusation: “Yes, it is so, Protestantism has begotten atheism,
materialism, scepticism, nihilism. The Reformation was the
murderer of all science, the greatest foe of culture and learning,
and the falsifier of all history.... Melanchthon’s _Loci_ may
be styled the most unscientific production in the domain of
dogmatics.... Yes, the Reformation has proved a prime source of
superstition, a step backward in the history of civilization....
The Catholic church has been the champion of conscience,
reason, and freedom.... No one is thoroughly capable of judging
historical facts without prejudice as the believing Catholic
Christian.”--But while the vast majority of Catholic writers
thus abuse Protestantism, others like Seltmann of Eberswald seek
to win over to the ranks of the Romish church those who can be
befooled by fair speeches. The “Protestant” correspondents in
Seltmann’s periodical write under the cloak of anonymity.--In
Spain the Reformation was long attributed to the Augustinians,
who were jealous of the Dominicans as the only dispensers of
indulgences, and to Luther’s desire to marry; but the poet Nuñez
de Arca in his “_Vision de Fray Martin_,” attributed it to the
corruption of the church and papacy of its time, and regarded
with sympathy the spiritual struggles of the reformer. Though as
a good Catholic he concludes his poem with the ban of the church
against Luther, he yet describes him as a just and well-deserving
man.

§ 175.3. =Romish Controversy.=--In the beginning of A.D. 1872
the Waldensian Professor Sciarelli published as a challenge
the thesis that the Apostle Peter never set foot in Rome, and
Pius IX. with childlike simplicity gave his consent to a public
disputation, which came off at Rome on 9th and 10th February.
Three Protestant champions, with Sciarelli at their head, were
confronted by three Catholics, headed by Fabiani, before 125
auditors admitted by ticket. Both sides claimed the victory; but
the shorthand reports were more widely read through Italy than
could be agreeable to the papal court.

§ 175.4. =Roman Catholic Union Schemes.=--While American
Protestant missionaries strove zealously for the conversion of
the schismatical Eastern Churches, Rome with equal diligence but
little success endeavoured to win over these and the orthodox
Greeks to her own communion. There was great joy over the
conversion of the =Bulgarians= to Romanism in A.D. 1860.
Taking advantage of a national movement for the restoration
of a patriarchate independent of Constantinople (§ 207, 3),
some French Jesuits succeeded in persuading a small number of
malcontents to agree to a union with Rome. In 1861 the pope
consecrated an old Bulgarian priest, Jos. Sokolski, archbishop
of the united Bulgarian church. Very soon, however, he and almost
all his followers returned to their allegiance to the Greek
Orthodox church. Leo XIII. in his _encyclical_ of A.D. 1880, by
giving conspicuous honour to Cyril and Methodius, and uttering
kind sentiments about the Christian church in the East, and
conferring high rank on dignitaries of the Eastern church,
seeks to smooth the way for a union of the two great churches.

§ 175.5. =Greek Orthodox Union Schemes.=--In A.D. 1867 the
Archbishop of Canterbury addressed a letter to the Patriarch
of Constantinople and the whole Eastern church, to open the way
to a common understanding and union of the churches, sending a
modern Greek translation of the Book of Common Prayer, and asking
their assistance at the consecration of an Anglican church at
Constantinople. The patriarch Gregorius [Gregory] granted this
request, and answered the letter in a friendly manner, passing
over the Anglican’s warnings against superstitious additions
to the doctrine, _e.g._ mariolatry, but characterizing all the
contrary doctrines of the Thirty-nine Articles as “very modern.”
At the same time vigorous measures were being taken with a
similar object by members of the Russian and of the Anglican
churches. In 1870 Professor Overbeck of Halle undertook to act
as intermediary in these negotiations. He had in 1865 published,
in answer to the papal encyclical with syllabus of December 8th,
1864 (§ 185, 2), a tract with the motto _Ex oriente lux_, in
which he placed the claims of the Orthodox eastern church before
the Roman Catholic as well as Protestant. On the opening of the
Vatican Council in 1869 he advocated in a pamphlet the breaking
up of the papal church and the formation of Catholic national
churches. In North America Professor Bjerring, of the Catholic
seminary for priests at Baltimore, took the same position. In
March, 1871, he went to St. Petersburg, was there ordained as
an Orthodox priest, and on his return to New York instituted a
Sunday service in the English language according to the Greek
rite. Of any further advance in this direction of union nothing
is known.

§ 175.6. =Old Catholic Union Schemes.=--Döllinger (§ 191, 5) in
A.D. 1871 was hopeful of a union not only with the Greek, but
also with the Anglican church, and similar hopes were entertained
in England and Russia, and distinguished representatives of both
communions took part in the Old Catholic congresses (§ 190, 1).
On the invitation of Döllinger, as president of the committee
commissioned by the Freiburg Congress of A.D. 1874 to treat
about union with the Anglican church, forty friends of union from
Germany, England, Denmark, France, Russia, Greece, and America
met in conference at Bonn. After a lively debate the cleft
between East and West was bridged over by a compromise treating
the _filioque_ as an unnecessary addition to the Nicene symbol,
and asserting that, however desirable a mutual understanding
on doctrinal questions might be, existing differences in
constitution, discipline, and worship presented no bar to
union. The Catholics presented the Anglicans with fourteen
theses essential to union, in which the anti-Protestant doctrines
were for the most part toned down, but transubstantiation
distinctly asserted. Subsequent conferences never got beyond
these preliminaries. It was, however, agreed that, in case of
necessity, Anglicans and Old Catholics might dispense the supper
to one another.

§ 175.7. =Conversions.=--The most famous converts of the century
were Hurter, the biographer of Innocent III., the Countess Ida
von Hahn-Hahn, writer of religious romances, Gfroerer [Gfrörer],
the church historian, the radical Hegelian Daumer, the historian
of ante-tridentine theology Hugo Lämmer, and Dr. Ed. Preuss, who
had written against the immaculate conception and for criminal
conduct had to flee the country. In A.D. 1844 Carl Haas, a
Protestant pastor, went over to the Romish church, but the two
new dogmas of Pius IX. led him to study the works of Luther. He
now returned to the Lutheran church, vindicating his procedure
in a treatise entitled, “To Rome, and from Rome back again to
Wittenberg, 1881.” Also the Mecklenburg Lutheran pastor, Dr. A.
Hager, who, after his conversion, had undertaken the editorship
of an ultramontane newspaper in Breslau in 1873, was obliged
in a few years to resign the appointment. His return to the
evangelical church was being talked about, when he suddenly died
in 1883, after having received the last sacrament in the Catholic
church. The climax of abuse of Luther and the Lutheran church was
reached by the Hanoverian Evers, who had gone over in 1880; in
all his scandalous and vituperative writings he describes himself
on the title page as “formerly Lutheran pastor.” His mud-throwing,
however, was carried so far, that even the ultramontane _Köln.
Volkszeitung_ was constrained to advise him to write more
decently.

§ 175.8. The Mortara affair of A.D. 1858 attracted special
attention. The eight-year old son of the Jew Mortara of Bologna
was violently taken from his parents to Rome because his
Christian nurse said that two years before, during a dangerous
illness, she had baptized him. The church answered the entreaties
of the parents and the universal outcry by saying that the
sacrament had an indelible character, and that the pope could not
change the law. Again in A.D. 1864, the ten-year old Jewish boy,
Joseph Coën, apprentice weaver in Rome, was decoyed by a priest
to his cloister and there persuaded to receive baptism. In vain
his mother, the Jewish community, and even the French ambassador,
urged his restoration; and when, in A.D. 1870, the temporal power
of the pope was overthrown, the lad, now sixteen years old, had
himself become such a fanatical Catholic that he refused to have
anything to do with his mother as an unbeliever.

§ 175.9. In the Tyrol in A.D. 1830 there were numerous
conversions from Catholicism to Protestantism (§ 198, 1).
A Catholic priest in Baden, Henhöfer of Mühlhausen, influenced
by the writings of Sailer and Boos, went over to the Lutheran
church in A.D. 1823, and continued down to his death in A.D. 1862
a vigorous opponent of the prevailing rationalism. Count Leopold
von Seldnitzsky, formerly Prince-Bishop of Breslau, felt obliged
in 1840, in consequence of the conscientious objections he had
to perform his official duties toward church and state during
the ecclesiastico-political controversies of 1830 (§ 193, 1),
to resign his appointments. He was subsequently led in A.D. 1863,
through reading the Scriptures and Luther’s works, after a sore
struggle, to join the evangelical Church. He devoted all his
means to the founding of Protestant educational institutions at
Berlin and Breslau. He died in A.D. 1871, in his eighty-fourth
year. The proclamation by the Vatican of the dogma of
infallibility drove many pious and earnest Catholics out of the
Romish communion. Of these Carl von Richthofen, Canon of Breslau,
engages our special interest. Son of a pious Lutheran mother, and
trained up under Gossner’s mild spiritual direction (§ 187, 2),
his gentle and deeply religious nature had attached itself to
the Roman Catholic church of his father only under the illusion
that the Romish doctrine of justification was not wholly
irreconcilable with the evangelical doctrine. He at first
submitted to but soon renounced the Vatican decree; was
excommunicated by Archbishop Förster, voluntarily resigned
his emoluments; joined the Old Catholics in A.D. 1873, and
the separated Old Lutherans in A.D. 1875. In the following
year he died a painful death from the explosion of a petroleum
lamp.--Upon the whole Rome has made most converts in America
and England; and she has suffered losses more or less severe
in France, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and Bohemia.

§ 175.10. =The Luther Centenary, A.D. 1883.=--The celebration of
Luther’s birth was carried out with great enthusiasm throughout
all Germany, more than a thousand tracts on Luther and the
Reformation were published, statues were erected, special
services were held in all Lutheran churches, high schools, and
universities, and brilliant demonstrations were made at Jena,
Worms, Wittenberg, and Eisleben. There were founded at Kiel a
Luther-house, at Worms and at the Wartburg Luther libraries, in
Leipzig and Berlin Luther churches. At Eisleben a bronze statue
of the reformer was solemnly unveiled representing his tearing
the papal bull with his right hand and pressing the Bible to his
heart with his left. Another noble monument was raised by the
munificence of the emperor by the issuing during this year of
the first volume of pastor Knaake’s critical edition of Luther’s
works. A “German Luther Institute” aims at assisting children
of the poorer clergy and teachers, and a “Reformation History
Society” has undertaken the task of issuing popular tracts on the
persons, events and principles of that and the succeeding period
based upon original documents. Protestants of all lands, with the
exception of the English high-church party, contributed liberally;
the Americans had a copy of the great Luther statue of the Worms
monument (§ 178, 1) made and erected in Washington. Even in
Italy the liberal press eulogised Luther, while the ultramontanes
loaded his memory with unmeasured calumny and reproach. The
threatened counter-demonstrations of German ultramontanes fell
quite flat and harmless. The =Zwingli Centenary= of January 1st,
A.D. 1884, was celebrated with enthusiasm throughout the Reformed
church, especially in Switzerland. On the other hand, the
celebration of the five-hundredth anniversary of Wiclif’s death
on December 31st, 1884, created comparatively little interest.

II. Protestantism in General.[526]

§ 176. RATIONALISM AND PIETISM.

At the beginning of the century rationalism was generally prevalent, but philosophy and literature soon weakened its foundations, and the war of independence moved the hearts of the people toward the faith of their fathers. Pietism entered the lists against rationalism, and the Halle controversy of A.D. 1830 marked the crisis of the struggle. The rationalists were compelled to make appeal to the people by popular agitators. During A.D. 1840 they managed to found several “free churches,” which, however, had for the most part but a short and unprosperous existence. They were more successful in A.D. 1860 with the _Protestantenverein_ as the instrument of their propaganda (§ 180).

§ 176.1. The old =Rationalism= was attacked by the disciples
of Hegel and Schelling, and in A.D. 1834 Röhr of Weimar found
Hase of Jena as keen an opponent as any pietist or orthodox
controversialist. That recognised leader of the old rationalists
had coolly attempted to substitute a new and rational form
of doctrine, worship, and constitution for the antiquated
formularies of the Reformation, and drew down upon himself the
rebuke even of those who sympathized with him in his doctrinal
views.--In A.D. 1817 Claus Harms of Kiel, on the occasion of
the Reformation centenary, opened an attack upon those who had
fallen away from the faith of their fathers, by the publication
of ninety-five new theses, recalling attention to Luther’s almost
forgotten doctrines. In A.D. 1827 Aug. Hahn in an academical
discussion at Leipzig maintained that the rationalists should
be expelled from the church, and Hengstenberg started his
_Evangelische Kirchenzeitung_. The jurist Von Gerlach in
A.D. 1830 charged Gesenius and Wegscheider of Halle with open
contempt of Christian truth, and called for State interference.
In all parts of Germany, amid the opposition of scientific
theologians and the scorn of philosophers, pietism made way
against rationalism, so that even men of culture regarded it
as a reproach to be reckoned among the rationalists. Unbelief,
however, was widespread among the masses. When Sintenis,
preacher in Magdeburg in A.D. 1840, declared the worship of
Christ superstitious, and was reprimanded by the consistory,
his neighbours, the pastors Uhlich and König, founded the society
of the “Friends of Light,” whose assembly at Köthen then was
attended by thousands of clergymen and laymen. In one of these
assemblies in A.D. 1844, Wislicenus of Halle, by starting the
question, Whether the Scriptures or the reason is to be regarded
as the standard of faith? shattered the illusion that rationalism
still occupied the platform of the church and Scripture. The
left wing of the school of Schleiermacher took offence at the
severe measures demanded by Hengstenberg and his party, and
in 1846 issued in Berlin a manifesto with eighty-eight signatures
against the paper pope of antiquated Reformation confessions and
the inquisitorial proceedings of the _Kirchenzeitung_ party, as
inimical to all liberty of faith and conscience, wishing only to
maintain firm hold of the truth that Jesus Christ is yesterday,
to-day, and for ever the one and only ground of salvation. The
Friends of Light, combining with the German Catholics and the
Young Hegelians, founded Free churches at Halle, Königsberg,
and many other places. Their services and sermons void of
religion, in which the Bible, the living Christ, and latterly
even the personal God, had no place, but only the naked worship
of humanity, had temporary vitality imparted them by the
revolutionary movements of A.D. 1848. This gave the State an
excuse, long wished for, to interfere, and soon scarcely a trace
of their churches was to be found.

§ 176.2. =Pietism= had not been wholly driven out of the
evangelical church during the period of ecclesiastical
impoverishment, but, purified from many eccentric excesses,
and seeking refuge and support for the most part by attaching
itself to the community of the Moravian Brethren, it had, even
in Württemberg, established itself independently and in an
essentially theosophical-chiliastic spirit. There too a kind
of spiritualism was introduced by the physician and poet Justin
Kerner of Weinsberg, and the philosopher Eschenmayer of Tübingen,
with spirit revelations from above and below. Amid the religious
movements of the beginning of the century Pietism gained a
decided advantage. It took the form of a protest against the
rationalism prevailing among the clergy. The earnest and devout
sought spiritual nourishment at conventicles and so-called
_Stunden_ addressed by laymen, mostly of the working class,
well acquainted with Scripture and works in practical divinity.
Persecuted by the irreligious mob, the rationalist clergy,
and sometimes by the authorities, they by-and-by secured
representatives among the younger clergy and in the university
chairs, and carried on vigorous missions at home and abroad.
This pietism was distinctly evangelical and Protestant. It did
not oppose but endeavoured simply to restore the orthodoxy of
the church confession. Yet it had many of the characteristics
of the earlier pietism: over-estimation of the invisible to
the disparagement of the visible church, of sanctification
over justification, a tendency to chiliasm, etc.--Of no less
importance in awakening the religious life throughout Germany,
and especially in Switzerland, was the missionary activity of
Madame de Krüdener of Riga. This lady, after many years of a
gay life, forsook the world, and began in A.D. 1814 her travels
through Europe, preaching repentance, proclaiming the gospel
message in the prisons, the foolishness of the cross to the
wise of this world, and to kings and princes the majesty of
Christ as King of kings. Wherever she went she made careless
sinners tremble, and drew around her crowds of the anxious and
spiritually burdened of every sort and station. Honoured by
some as a saint, prophetess, and wonder-worker, ridiculed by
others as a fool, persecuted as a dangerous fanatic or deceiver,
driven from one country to another, she died in the Crimea in
A.D. 1824.[527]

§ 176.3. =The Königsberg Religious Movement,
A.D. 1835-1842.=--The pious theosophist, J. H. Schönherr of
Königsberg, starting from the two primitive substances, fire
and water, developed a system of theosophy in which he solved
the riddles of the theogony and cosmogony, of sin and redemption,
and harmonized revelation with the results of natural science.
At first influenced by these views, but from A.D. 1819 expressly
dissenting from them, J. W. Ebel, pastor in the same city,
gathered round him a group of earnest Christian men and women,
Counts Kanitz and Finkenstein and their wives, Von Tippelskirch,
afterwards preacher to the embassy at Rome, the theological
professor H. Olshausen, the pastor Dr. Diestel, and the medical
doctor Sachs. After some years Olshausen and Tippelskirch
withdrew, and dissensions arose which gave opportunity to
the ecclesiastical authorities to order an investigation. Ebel
was charged with founding a sect in which impure practices were
encouraged. He was suspended in A.D. 1835, and at the instigation
of the consistory a criminal process was entered upon against him.
Dr. Sachs, who had been expelled from the society, was the chief
and almost only witness, but vague rumours were rife about mystic
rites and midnight orgies. Ebel and Diestel were deposed in
A.D. 1839, and pronounced incapable of holding any public office;
and as a sect founder Ebel was sentenced to imprisonment in the
common jail. On appeal to the court of Berlin, the deposition was
confirmed, but all the rest of the sentence was quashed, and the
parties were pronounced capable of holding any public offices
except those of a spiritual kind. Two reasons were alleged for
deposition:

1. That Ebel, though not from the pulpit or in the public
instruction of the young, yet in private religious teaching,
had inculcated his theosophical views.

2. That both of them as married men had given expression to
opinions injurious to the purity of married life.

In general they were charged with spreading a doctrine which was
in conflict with the principles of Christianity, and making such
use of sexual relations as was fitted to awaken evil thoughts
in the minds of hearers. Ebel was pronounced guiltless of
sectarianism.--Kanitz wrote a book in defence, which represents
Ebel and Diestel as martyrs to their pure Christian piety in
an age hostile to every pietistic movement; whereas Von Wegnern,
followed by Hepworth Dixon, in a romancing and frivolous style,
lightly give currency to evil surmisings without offering any
solid basis of proof. The whole affair still waits for a patient
and unprejudiced investigation.[528]

§ 176.4. =The Bender Controversy.=--At the Luther centenary
festival of A.D. 1883, Prof. Bender of Bonn declared that in
the confessional writings of the Reformation evangelical truth
had been obscured by Romish scholasticism, introduced by subtle
jurists and sophistical theologians. This called forth vigorous
opposition, in which two of his colleagues, 38 theological
students, 59 members of the Rhenish synod, took part.
General-Superintendent Baur, also, in a new year’s address,
inveighed against Bender’s statements. On the other hand,
170 students of Bonn, 32 of these theological students, gave a
grand ovation to the “brave vindicator of academic freedom.”
The Rhenish and Westphalian synods bewailed the offence given by
Bender’s address, and protested against its hard and unfounded
attacks upon the confessional writings. At the Westphalian synod,
Prof. Mangold said that the faculty was as much offended at the
address as the church had been, but that its author, when he
found how his words had created such feeling, sought in every
way to repress the agitation, and had intended only to pass a
scientific judgment on ecclesiastical and theological developments.

§ 177. EVANGELICAL UNION AND LUTHERAN SEPARATION.

From A.D. 1817 Prussia favoured and furthered the scheme for union between the two evangelical churches, and over this question a split arose in the camp of pietism. On the one hand were the confessionalists, determined to maintain what was distinctive in their symbols, and on the other, those who would sacrifice almost anything for union. For the most part both churches cordially seconded the efforts of the royal head of the church; only in Silesia did a Lutheran minority refuse to give way, which still maintains a separate existence.

§ 177.1. =The Evangelical Union.=--Circumstances favoured
this movement. Both in the Lutheran and in the Reformed
church comparatively little stress was laid upon distinctive
confessional doctrines, and pietism and rationalism, for
different reasons, had taught the relative unimportance of dogma.
And so a general accord was given to the king’s proposal, at
the Reformation centenary of A.D. 1817, to fortify the Protestant
church by means of a =Union= of Lutherans and Calvinists. The
new Book of Common Order of A.D. 1822, in the preparation of
which the pious king, Frederick William III., had himself taken
part, was indeed condemned by many as too high-church, even
Catholicizing in its tendency. A revised edition in A.D. 1829,
giving a wider choice of formularies, was legally authorized,
and the union became an accomplished fact. There now existed in
Prussia an evangelical national church with a common government
and liturgy, embracing within it three different sections:
a Lutheran, and a Reformed, which held to their distinctive
doctrines, though not regarding these as a cause of separation,
and a real union party, which completely abandoned the points of
difference. But more and more the union became identified with
doctrinal indifferentism and slighting of all church symbols,
and those in whom the church feeling still prevailed were driven
into opposition to the union (§ 193). The example of Prussia
in sacking the union of the two churches was followed by Nassau,
Baden, Rhenish Bavaria, Anhalt, and to some extent in Hesse
(§§ 194, 196).

§ 177.2. =The Lutheran Separation.=--Though the union denied
that there was any passing over from one church to another, it
practically declared the distinctive doctrines to be unessential,
and so assumed the standpoint of the Reformed church. Steffens
(§ 174, 3), the friend of Scheibel of Breslau, who had been
deprived of his professorship in A.D. 1832 for his determined
opposition to the union, and died in exile in 1843 (§ 195, 2),
headed a reaction in favour of old Lutheranism. Several suspended
clergymen in Silesia held a synod at Breslau in A.D. 1835,
to organize a Lutheran party, but the civil authorities bore
so heavily upon them that most of them emigrated to America
and Australia. Guericke of Halle, secretly ordained pastor,
ministered in his own house to a small company of Lutheran
separatists, was deprived of his professorship in A.D. 1835,
and only restored in A.D. 1840, after he had apologised for his
conduct. From A.D. 1838, the laws were modified by Frederick
William IV., imprisoned clergymen were liberated in A.D. 1840,
and a Lutheran church of Prussia independent of the national
church was constituted by a general synod at Breslau in A.D. 1841,
which received recognition by royal favour in A.D. 1845. The
affairs are administered by a supreme council resident in
Breslau, presided over by the distinguished jurist Huschke. Other
separations were prevented by timely concessions on the part of
the national church. The separatists claim 50,000 members, with
fifty pastors and seven superintendents.

§ 177.3. =The Separation within the Separation.=--Differences
arose among the separate Lutherans, especially over the question
of the visible church. The majority, headed by Huschke, defined
the visible church as an organism of various offices and orders
embracing even unbelievers, which is to be sifted by the divine
judgment. To it belongs the office of church government, which
is a _jus divinum_, and only in respect of outward form a _jus
humanum_. The opposition understood visibility of the preaching
of the word and dispensation of sacraments, and held that
unbelievers belonged as little to the visible as to the invisible
church. The distribution of orders and offices is a merely human
arrangement without divine appointment, individual members are
quite independent of one another, the church recognises no other
government than that of the unfettered preaching of the word, and
each pastor rules in his own congregation. Diedrich of Jabel and
seven other pastors complained of the papistical assumptions of
the supreme council, and at a general synod in A.D. 1860 refused
to recognise the authority of that council, or of a majority of
synods, and in A.D. 1861, along with their congregations, they
formally seceded and constituted the so called Immanuel Synod.

§ 178. EVANGELICAL CONFEDERATION.

The union had only added a third denomination to the two previously existing, and was the means of even further dissension and separation. Thus the interests of Protestantism were endangered in presence of the unbelief within her own borders and the machinations of the ultramontane Catholics without. An attempt was therefore made in A.D. 1840 to combine the scattered Protestant forces, by means of confederation, for common work and conflict with common foes.

§ 178.1. =The Gustavus Adolphus Society.=--In A.D. 1832, on the
two hundredth anniversary of the birth of the saviour of German
Protestantism, on the motion of Superintendent Grossman of
Leipzig, a society was formed for the help of needy Protestant
churches, especially in Catholic districts. At first almost
confined to Saxony, it soon spread over Germany, till only
Bavaria down to A.D. 1849, and Austria down to A.D. 1860, were
excluded by civil enactment from its operations. The masses
were attracted by the simplicity of its basis, which was simply
opposition to Catholicism, and the demagogical Friends of Light
soon found supremacy in its councils. Because of opposition to
the expulsion of Rupp, in A.D. 1846, as an apostate from the
principle of protestantism, great numbers with church leanings
seceded, and attempted to form a rival union in A.D. 1847. After
recovering from the convulsions of A.D. 1848, under the wise
guidance of Zimmermann of Darmstadt, the society regained a solid
position. In A.D. 1883 it had 1,779 branches, besides 392 women’s
and 11 students’ unions, and a revenue for the year of about
£43,000.--The same feeling led to the erection of the =Luther
Monument at Worms=. This work of genius, designed by Rietschel,
and completed after his death in A.D. 1857 by his pupils, and
inaugurated on 25th June, A.D. 1868, represents all the chief
episodes in the Reformation history. It was erected at a cost
of more than £20,000, raised by voluntary contributions, and
the scheme proved so popular that there was a surplus of £2,000,
which was devoted to the founding of bursaries for theological
students.

§ 178.2. =The Eisenach Conference.=--The other German states
borrowed the idea of confederation from Prussia and Württemberg.
It took practical shape in the meetings of deputies at Eisenach,
begun in A.D. 1852, and was held for a time yearly, and
afterwards every second year, to consult together on matters of
worship, discipline and constitution. Beyond ventilating such
questions the conference yielded no result.

§ 178.3. =The Evangelical Alliance.=--An attempt was made in
England, on the motion of Dr. Chalmers (§ 202, 7), at a yet more
comprehensive confederation of all Protestant churches of all
lands against the encroachments of popery and puseyism (§ 202, 2).
After several preliminary meetings the first session of the
=Evangelical Alliance= was held in London in August, A.D. 1846.
Its object was the fraternizing of all evangelical Christians on
the basis of agreement upon the fundamental truths of salvation,
the vindication and spread of this common faith, and contention
for liberty of conscience and religious toleration. Nine articles
were laid down as terms of membership: Belief in the inspiration
of Scripture, in the Trinity, in the divinity of Christ,
in original sin, in justification by faith alone, in the
obligatoriness of the two sacraments, in the resurrection of the
body, in the last judgment, and in the eternal blessedness of the
righteous and the eternal condemnation of the ungodly. It could
thus include Baptists, but not Quakers. In A.D. 1855 it held its
ninth meeting at the great Paris Industrial Exhibition as a sort
of church exhibition, the representatives of different churches
reporting on the condition of their several denominations. The
tenth meeting, of A.D. 1857, was held in Berlin. The council of
the Alliance, presided over by Sir Culling Eardley, presented
an address to King Frederick William IV., in which it was said
that they aimed a blow not only against the sadduceanism, but
also against the pharisaism of the German evangelical church.
The confessional Lutherans, who had opposed the Alliance,
regarded this latter reference as directed against them. The
king, however, received the deputation most graciously, while
declaring that he entertained the brightest hopes for the future
of the church, and urged cordial brotherly love among Christians.
Though many distinguished confessionalists were members of
the Alliance none of them put in an appearance. The members of
the “Protestantenverein” (§ 180) would not take part because
the articles were too orthodox. On the other hand, numerous
representatives of pietism, unionism, Melanchthonianism, as well
as Baptists, Methodists, and Moravians, crowded in from all parts,
and were supported by the leading liberals in church and state.
While there was endless talk about the oneness and differences
of the children of God, about the universal priesthood, about the
superiority of the present meeting over the œcumenical councils
of the ancient church, about the want of spiritual life in
the churches, even where the theology of the confessions was
professed, etc., with denunciations of half-Catholic Lutheranism
and its sacramentarianism and officialism, and many a true
and admirable statement of what the church’s needs are, Merle
d’Aubigné introduced discord by the hearty welcome which
he accorded his friend Bunsen, which was intensified by the
passionate manner in which Krummacher reported upon it. The
gracious royal reception of the members of the Alliance, at which
Krummacher gave expression to his excited feelings in the words,
“Your Majesty, we would all fall not at your feet, but on your
neck!” was described by his brother, Dr. F. W. Krummacher, as a
sensible prelude to the solemn scenes of the last judgment. Sir
Culling Eardley declared, “There is no more the North Sea.” Lord
Shaftesbury said in London that with the Berlin Assembly a new
era had begun in the world’s history; and others who had returned
from it extolled it as a second Pentecost.

§ 178.4. =The Evangelical Church Alliance.=--After the revolution
of A.D. 1848, the most distinguished theologians, clergymen and
laymen well-affected toward the church, sought to bring about
a confederation of the Lutheran, Reformed, United, and Moravian
churches. When they held their second assembly at Wittenberg,
A.D. 1849, many of the strict Lutherans had already withdrawn,
especially those of Silesia. The Lutheran congress, held shortly
before at Leipzig under the presidency of Harless, had pronounced
the confederation unsatisfactory. The political reaction in
favour of the church had also taken away the occasion for such
a confederation. Yet the yearly deliberations of this council
on matters of practical church life did good service. An attempt
made at the Berlin meeting of A.D. 1853 to have the _Augustana_
adopted as the church confession awakened keen opposition. At
the Stuttgart meeting of A.D. 1857 there were violent debates
on foreign missions and evangelical Catholicity between the
representatives of confessional Lutheranism who had hitherto
maintained connection with the confederation and the unionist
majority. The Lutherans now withdrew. The attempt made at
the Berlin October assembly of A.D. 1871, amid the excitement
produced by the glorious issue of the Franco-Prussian War and the
founding of the new German empire with a Protestant prince, to
draw into the confederation confessional Lutherans and adherents
of the “Protestantenverein,” in order to form a grand German
Protestant national church, miscarried, and a meeting of
the confederation in the old style met again at Halle in the
following year. But it was now found that its day was past.

§ 178.5. =The Evangelical League.=--At a meeting of the Prussian
evangelical middle party in autumn, 1886, certain members,
“constrained by grief at the surrender of arms by the Prussian
government in the _Kulturkampf_,” gathered together for private
conference, and resolved in defence of the threatened interests
of the evangelical church to found an “Evangelical League” out
of the various theological and ecclesiastical parties. Prominent
party leaders on both sides being admitted, a number of moderate
representatives of all schools were invited to a consultative
gathering at Erfurt. On January 15th, 1887, a call to join
the membership of the league was issued. It was signed by
distinguished men of the middle party, such as Beyschlag, Riehm
of Halle, etc., moderate representatives of confessionalism and
the positive union, such as Kawerau of Kiel, Fricke of Leipzig,
Witte, Warneck, etc., and liberal theologians like Lipsius and
Nippold of Jena, etc.; and it soon received the addition of
about 250 names. It recognised Jesus Christ, as the only begotten
Son of God, as the only means of salvation, and professed the
fundamental doctrines of the Reformation. It represented the
task of the League as twofold: on the one hand the defending
at all points the interests of the evangelical church against
the advancing pretensions of Rome, and, on the other hand, the
strengthening of the communal consciousness of the Christian
evangelical church against the cramping influence of party,
as well as in opposition to indifferentism and materialism. For
the accomplishment of this task the league organized itself under
the control of a central board with subordinate branches over all
Germany, each having a committee for representing its interests
in the press, and with annual general assemblies of all the
members for common consultation and promulgating of decrees.

§ 179. LUTHERANISM, MELANCHTHONIANISM, AND CALVINISM.

Widespread as the favourable reception of the Prussian union had been, there were still a number of Lutheran states in which the Reformed church had scarcely any adherents, _e.g._ Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, Mecklenburg, and Schleswig-Holstein; and the same might be said of the Baltic Provinces and of the three Scandinavian kingdoms. Also in Austria, France, and Russia the two denominations kept apart; and in Poland, the union of A.D. 1828 was dissolved in A.D. 1849 (§ 206, 3). The Lutheran confessional reaction in Prussia afforded stimulus to those who had thus stood apart. In all lands, amid the conflict with rationalism, the confessional spirit both of Lutheran and Reformed became more and more pronounced.

§ 179.1. =Lutheranism within the Union.=--After the Prussian
State church had been undermined by the revolution of A.D. 1848,
an unsuccessful attempt was made to have a pure Lutheran
confessional church set up in its place. At the October assembly
in Berlin, in A.D. 1871, an ineffectual effort was made by the
United Lutherans to co-operate with those who were unionists
on principle. During the agitation caused by the May Laws
(§ 197, 5) and the Sydow proceedings (§ 180, 4), the first general
evangelical Lutheran conference was held in August, A.D. 1873, in
Berlin. It assumed a moderate conciliatory tone toward the union,
pronounced the efforts of the “Protestantenverein” (§ 180) an
apostasy from the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, bewailed
the issuing of the May Laws, protested against their principles,
but acknowledged the duty of obedience, and concluded an address
to the emperor with a petition on behalf of a democratic church
constitution and civil marriage.--The literary organs of the
United Lutherans are the “_Evang. Kirchenzeitung_,” edited by
Hengstenberg, and now by Zöckler, and the “_Allgem. konserv.
Monatsschrift für die christl. Deutschl._,” by Von Nathusius.

§ 179.2. =Lutheranism outside of the Union.=--A general Lutheran
conference was held under the presidency of Harless, in July,
A.D. 1868, at which the sentiments of Kliefoth, denouncing a union
under a common church government without agreement about doctrine
and sacraments, met with almost universal acceptance. At the
Leipzig gathering of A.D. 1870, Luthardt urged the duty of firmly
maintaining doctrinal unity in the Lutheran church. The assembly
of the following year agreed to recognise the emperor as head
of the church only in so far as he did not interfere with the
dispensation of word and sacrament, admitted the legality of
a merely civil marriage but maintained that despisers of the
ecclesiastical ordinance should be subjected to discipline, that
communion fellowship is to be allowed neither to Reformed nor
unionists if fixed residents, but to unionists faithful to the
confession if temporary residents, even without expressly joining
their party; and also with reference to the October assembly of
the previous year the union of the two Protestant churches of
Germany under a mixed system of church government was condemned.
The third general conference of Nüremburg [Nuremberg], in
A.D. 1879, dealt with the questions: Whether the church should
be under State control or free? Whether the schools should
be denominational or not? and in both cases decided in favour
of the latter alternative.--Its literary organ is Luthardt’s
“_Allg. Luth. Kirchenzeitung_.”

§ 179.3. =Melancthonianism [Melanchthonianism] and
Calvinism.=--The Reformed church of Germany has maintained a
position midway between Lutheranism and Calvinism very similar to
the later Melanchthonianism. Ebrard indeed sought to prove that
strict predestinarianism was only an excrescence of the Reformed
system, whereas Schweitzer, purely in the interests of science
(§ 182, 9, 16), has shown that it is its all-conditioning nerve
and centre, to which it owes its wonderful vitality, force, and
consistency. Heppe of Marburg went still further than Ebrard
in his attempt to combine Lutheranism and Calvinism in a
=Melancthonian [Melanchthonian] church= (§ 182, 16), by seeking
to prove that the original evangelical church of Germany was
Melanchthonian, that after Luther’s death the fanatics, more
Lutheran than Luther, founded the so-called Lutheran church
and completed it by issuing the Formula of Concord; that the
Calvinizing of the Palatinate, Hesse, Brandenburg, Anhalt was
only a reaction against hyper- or pseudo-Lutheranism, and that
the restoration of the original Melanchthonianism, and the modern
union movement were only the completion of that restoration.
Schenkel’s earlier contributions to Reformation history moved
in a similar direction. Ebrard also, in A.D. 1851, founded a
“_Ref. Kirchenzeitung_.”--But even the genuine strict =Calvinism=
had zealous adherents during this century, not only in Scotland
(§ 202, 7) and the Netherlands (§ 200, 2), but also in Germany,
especially in the Wupperthal. G. D. Krummacher, from A.D. 1816
pastor in Elberfeld, and his nephew F. W. Krummacher of Barmen,
were long its chief representatives. When Prussia sought in
A.D. 1835 to force the union in the Wupperthal, and threatened
the opposing Reformed pastors with deposition, the revolt here
proved almost as serious as that of the Lutherans in Silesia. The
pastors, with the majority of their people agreed at last to the
union only in so far as it was in accordance with the Reformed
mode of worship. But a portion, embracing their most important
members, stood apart and refused all conciliation. The royal
Toleration Act of A.D. 1847 allowed them to form an independent
congregation at Elberfeld with Dr. Kohlbrügge as their minister.
This divine, formerly Lutheran pastor at Amsterdam, was driven
out owing to a contest with a rationalising colleague, and
afterwards, through study of Calvin’s writings, became an ardent
Calvinist. This body, under the name of the Dutch Reformed
church, constituted the one anti-unionist, strictly Calvinistic
denomination in Prussia.--The De Cock movement (§ 200, 2), out
of which in A.D. 1830 the separate “Chr. Ref. Church of Holland”
sprang, spread over the German frontiers and led to the founding
there of the “Old Ref. Church of East Frisia and Bentheim,” which
has now nine congregations and seven pastors.--At the meeting
of the Evangelical Alliance in New York in A.D. 1873, the
Presbyterians present resolved to convoke an œcumenical Reformed
council. A conference in London in A.D. 1875 brought to maturity
the idea of a Pan-Presbyterian assembly. The council is to meet
every third year; the members recognise the supreme authority
of the Old and New Testament in matters of faith and practice,
and accept the consensus of all the Reformed confessions.
The first “=General Presbyterian Council=” met in Edinburgh
from 3rd to 10th July, A.D. 1877, about 300 delegates being
present. The proceedings consisted in unmeasured glorification
of presbyterianism “drawn from the whole Scripture, from the
seventy elders of the Pentateuch to the twenty-four elders
of the Apocalypse.” The second council met at Philadelphia in
A.D. 1880, and boasted that it represented forty millions of
Presbyterians. It appointed a committee to draw up a consensus
of the confessions of all Reformed churches. The third council of
305 members met at Belfast in A.D. 1884, and after a long debate
declined, by a great majority, to adopt a strictly formulated
consensus of doctrine as uncalled for and undesirable, and by the
reception of the Cumberland Presbyterians they even surrendered
the Westminster Confession (§ 155, 1) as the only symbol
qualifying for membership of the council. The fourth council met
in London in A.D. 1887.--An œcumenical Methodist congress was
held in London in A.D. 1881, attended by 400 delegates.

§ 180. THE “PROTESTANTENVEREIN.”

Rationalists of all descriptions, adherents of Baur’s school, as well as disciples of Hegel and Schleiermacher of the left wing, kept far off from every evangelical union. But the common negation of the tendencies characterizing the evangelical confederations and the common endeavour after a free, democratic, non-confessional organization of the German Protestant church, awakened in them a sense of the need of combination and co-operation. While in North Germany this feeling was powerfully expressed from A.D. 1854, in the able literary organ the “_Protest. Kirchenzeitung_,” in South Germany, with Heidelberg as a centre and Dean Zittel as chief agitator, local “_Protestantenvereine_” were formed, which combined in a united organization in the Assembly of Frankfort, A.D. 1863. After long debates the northern and southern societies were joined in one. In June, A.D. 1865, the first general Protestant assembly was held at Eisenach, and the nature, motive, and end of the associations were defined. To these assemblies convened from year to year members of the society crowded from all parts of Germany in order to encourage one another to persevere in spreading their views by word and pen, and to take steps towards the founding of branch associations for disseminating among the people a Christianity which renounces the miraculous and sets aside the doctrines of the church.

§ 180.1. =The Protestant Assembly.=--The first general
German Protestant Assembly, composed of 400 clerical and lay
notabilities, met at Eisenach in A.D. 1865, under the presidency
of the jurist Bluntschli of Heidelberg and the chief court
preacher Schwarz of Gotha. A peculiar lustre was given to
the meeting by the presence of Rothe of Heidelberg. Of special
importance was Schwarz’s address on “The Limits of Doctrinal
Freedom in Protestantism,” which he sought not in the confession,
not in the authority of the letter of Scripture, not even
in certain so called fundamental articles, but in the one
religious moral truth of Christianity, the gospel of love
and the divine fatherhood as Christ taught it, expounded it in
his life and sealed it by his death. In Berlin, Osnabrück, and
Leipzig, the churches were refused for services according to the
_Protestantenverein_. In A.D. 1868 fifteen heads of families in
Heidelberg petitioned the ecclesiastical council to grant them
the use of one of the city churches where a believing clergyman
might conduct service in the old orthodox fashion. This request
was refused by fifty votes against four. Baumgarten denounced
this intolerance, and declared that unless repudiated by the
union it would be a most serious stain upon its reputation.
In A.D. 1877 he publicly withdrew from the society.

§ 180.2. =The “_Protestantenverein_” Propaganda.=--The views
of the union were spread by popular lectures and articles in
newspapers and magazines. The “_Protestanten-Bibel_,” edited
by Schmidt and Holtzendorff in A.D. 1872, of which an English
translation has been published, giving the results of New
Testament criticism, “laid the axe at the root of the dogmatics
and confessionalism,” and proved that “we are still Christians
though our conception of Christianity diverges in many points
from that of the second century, and we proclaim a Christianity
without miracles and in accordance with the modern theory of
the universe.” The success of such efforts to spread the broad
theology has been greatly over-estimated. Enthusiastic partisans
of the union claimed to have the whole evangelical world at their
back, while Holtzendorff boasted that they had all thoughtful
Germans with them.

§ 180.3. =Sufferings Endured.=--In many instances members of
the society were disciplined, suspended and deposed. In October,
A.D. 1880, =Beesenmeyer= of Mannheim, on his appointment to
Osnabrück, was examined by the consistory. He confessed an
economic but not an essential Trinity, the sinlessness and
perfect godliness but not the divinity of Christ, the atoning
power of Christ’s death but not the doctrine of vicarious
satisfaction. He was pronounced unorthodox, and so unfit to hold
office. =Schroeder=, a pastor in the consistory of Wiesbaden in
A.D. 1871, on his refusing to use the Apostles’ Creed at baptism
and confirmation, was deposed, but on appealing to the minister
of worship, Dr. Falk, he was restored in the beginning of
A.D. 1874. The Stettin consistory declined to ordain Dr. =Hanne=
on account of his work “_Der ideale u. d. geschichtl. Christus_,”
and an appeal to the superior court and another to the king were
unsuccessful. Several members of the church protested against
the call of Dr. =Ziegler= to Liegnitz in A.D. 1873, on account
of his trial discourse and a previous lecture on the authority
of the Bible, and the consistory refused to sustain the call.
The Supreme Church Council, however, when appealed to, declared
itself satisfied with Ziegler’s promise to take unconditionally
the ordination vow, which requires acceptance of the fundamental
doctrines of the gospel and not the peculiar theological system
of the symbols.

§ 180.4. The conflicts in =Berlin= were specially sharp.
In A.D. 1872 the aged pastor of the so called New Church,
Dr. =Sydow=, delivered a lecture on the miraculous birth of
Jesus, in which he declared that he was the legitimate son
of Joseph and Mary. His colleague, Dr. =Lisco=, son of the
well-known commentator, spoke of legendary elements in the
Apostles’ Creed, and denied its authority. Lisco was reprimanded
and cautioned by the consistory. Sydow was deposed. He appealed,
together with twenty-six clergymen of the province of Brandenburg,
and twelve Berlin pastors, to the Supreme Church Council. The
Jena theologians also presented a largely signed petition to
Dr. Falk against the procedure of the consistory, while the Weimar
and Württemberg clergy sent a petition in favour of maintaining
strict discipline. The superior court reversed the sentence, on
the ground that the lecture was not given in the exercise of his
office, and severely reprimanded Sydow for giving serious offence
by its public delivery. At a Berlin provincial synod in A.D. 1877,
an attack was made by pastor =Rhode= on creed subscription.
=Hossbach=, preaching in a vacant church, declared that he
repudiated the confessional doctrine of the divinity of Christ,
regarded the life of Jesus in the gospels as a congeries of
myths, etc. Some loudly protested and others as eagerly pressed
for his settlement. The consistory accepted Rhode’s retractation
and annulled Hossbach’s call. The Supreme Church Council supported
the consistory, and issued a strict order to its president to
suffer no departure from the confession. The congregation next
chose Dr. =Schramm=, a pronounced adherent of the same party, who
was also rejected. In A.D. 1879 =Werner=, biographer of Boniface,
a more moderate disciple of the same school, holding a sort of
Arian position, received the appointment. When, in A.D. 1880,
the Supreme Church Council demanded of Werner a clear statement
of his belief regarding Scripture, the divinity and resurrection
of Christ, and the Apostles Creed, and on receiving his reply
summoned him to a conference at Berlin, he resigned his office.

§ 180.5. The conflicts in Schleswig Holstein also caused
considerable excitement. Pastor =Kühl= of Oldensworth had
published an article at Easter, A.D. 1880, entitled, “The Lord
is Risen indeed,” in which the resurrection was made purely
spiritual. He was charged with violating his ordination vow,
sectaries pointed to his paper as proof of their theory that
the state church was the apocalyptic Babylon, and petitions from
115 ministers and 2,500 laymen were presented against him to
the consistory of Kiel. The consistory exhorted Kühl to be more
careful and his opponents to be more patient. In the same year,
however, he published a paper in which he denied that the order
of nature was set aside by miracles. He was now advised to give
up writing and confine himself to his pastoral work. A pamphlet
by Decker on “The Old Faith and the New,” was answered by =Lühr=,
and his mode of dealing with the ordination vow was of such a
kind as to lead pastor Paulsen to speak of it as a “chloroforming
of his conscience.”

§ 181. DISPUTES ABOUT FORMS OF WORSHIP.

During the eighteenth century the services of the evangelical church had become thoroughly corrupted and disordered under the influence of the “Illumination,” and were quite incapable of answering to the Christian needs and ecclesiastical tastes of the nineteenth century. Whenever there was a revival in favour of the faith of their fathers, a movement was made in the direction of improved forms of worship. The Rationalists and Friends of Light, however, prevented progress except in a few states. Even the official Eisenach Conference did no more than prepare the way and indicate how action might afterwards be taken.

§ 181.1. =The Hymnbook.=--Traces of the vandalism of the
Illumination were to be seen in all the hymnbooks. The noble poet
Ernst Moritz Arndt was the first to enter the lists as a restorer;
and various attempts were made by Von Elsner, Von Raumer, Bunsen,
Stier, Knapp, Daniel, Harms, etc., to make collections of sacred
songs answerable to the revived Christian sentiment of the people.
These came to be largely used, not in the public services, but
in family worship, and prepared the way for official revisal of
the books for church use. The Eisenach Conference of A.D. 1853
resolved to issue 150 classical hymns with the old melodies as
an appendix to the old collection and a pattern for further work.
Only with difficulty was the resolution passed to make A.D. 1750
the _terminus ad quem_ in the choice of pieces. Wackernagel
insisted on a strict adherence to the original text and retired
from the committee when this was not agreed to. Only in a few
states has the Eisenach collection been introduced; _e.g._ in
Bavaria, where it has been incorporated in its new hymnbook.