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PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 BY 
 
 KERR D. MACMILLAN 
 
 PRESIDENT OF WELLS COLLEGE 
 
 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 PRINCETON 
 
 LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 
 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 1917 
 
 S 
 

 BS 
 
 A 374 ?£t 
 
 Copyright, 1917, by 
 Princeton University Press 
 
 Published November, 1917 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The spectacle of the Protestant nations of the 
 earth engaged in a fratricidal struggle, the issues 
 of which are essentially moral if not religious, is 
 a direct challenge to the student of church his- 
 tory. For, as religion is the most influential 
 factor in the formation of the character of any 
 people, it is important to ascertain how it is 
 possible for nations with the same religious birth- 
 right and presumably with the same religious 
 training to differ so widely in respect to moral 
 ideals and conduct. The following pages are not 
 intended primarily to answer this question but to 
 give some account of the progress of German 
 Protestantism, with especial reference to Luther's 
 ideals on the one hand and to the state control of 
 the churches on the other, and yet no one can read 
 the story without having suggested to him the 
 explanation of many of the phenomena of present 
 day German life and thought. Some of these 
 suggestions I have mentioned in the last chapter, 
 but very briefly, for it would require a much 
 larger volume than this to handle them ade- 
 quately. At all events, the present war cannot 
 be laid at Luther's door, as M. Paquier attempts 
 to do, for the Lutheran church as it developed 
 after Luther's death had no more resemblance 
 
 ill 
 
iv PREFACE 
 
 to his ideals for it than to the church it super- 
 seded. The transference to the civil authority 
 of all the powers, prerogatives and privileges for- 
 merly possessed by the Roman hierarchy, and the 
 investment of the prince with all the authority 
 in both church and state, gave the opportunity 
 to a strong race of rulers to establish, on the basis 
 of both divine and human law, a form of absolute 
 monarchy such as western Christendom has never 
 witnessed elsewhere, and which has for its pre- 
 supposition the essentially Roman Catholic and 
 mediaeval idea of the submission of the individual 
 subject to the prince-bishop in both civil and re- 
 ligious things. 
 
 It must be obvious to those even fairly well 
 informed in the history of Protestantism that 
 there is a remarkable similarity between the 
 mental attitude of the German people in the 
 period of "orthodoxy" and their mental attitude 
 of today. In the seventeenth century their out- 
 look was religious and today it is political, but 
 both then and now there is evident the same self- 
 assurance, the same contempt of criticism, the 
 same claim to something little less than infalli- 
 bility, the same "radiant consciousness of right- 
 eousness," the same arrogance and intolerance, 
 and the same inability to exercise self-criticism 
 or to apprize themselves any less highly than the 
 most flattering adulation suggests. 
 
 One of the problems presented to the historian 
 by the war is how to account for this childish char- 
 
PREFACE v 
 
 acteristic, for such it surely is, dominating a whole 
 people. And one element of the answer will 
 surely be, that however well the Germans have 
 been trained to perform the functions of scholars, 
 soldiers, peasants or what not, they have never 
 had the training requisite to their becoming fair 
 minded, well balanced, mature men. "The insti- 
 tutions of a country educate the people," and the 
 paternalism which has characterized the German 
 states and the German churches during the last 
 four centuries has had the effect of keeping the 
 people, as far as political knowledge and the de- 
 velopment of personal character are concerned, 
 in a condition of perpetual tutelage. To one who 
 has lived among the German people and been 
 fond of them, and has learned to appreciate their 
 industry, simplicity and straightforward good- 
 heartedness under law, there is something splen- 
 did as well as inexpressibly sad in their present 
 mental attitude. The consciousness of virtue 
 shone through their characterization of the 
 Franco-Prussian war as "Our War of Liberty" 
 or "Our Holy War," and the sincere belief that 
 God would use them to punish hypocritical and 
 cruel England for her iniquities used to seem 
 only a healthy moral reaction to the stories they 
 had heard of France's degeneration and Eng- 
 land's sin, and to be merely a transient and some- 
 what amusing phase of the national emotionalism 
 which displays itself so delightfully in the amen- 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 ities of social life. But those who control the 
 political destinies of Germany have not hesitated 
 to utilize this in itself beautiful trait to unite the 
 whole nation and lead it in a holy enthusiasm 
 whither they will, just as equally false guides 
 seven hundred years ago sold into slavery the 
 children that followed them "for the love of God" 
 in the Children's Crusade. 
 
 There is a very large German literature on the 
 origin and development of the territorial system, 
 but I am not aware of any English work cover- 
 ing the same ground. The requirements of the 
 lecture platform have compelled me to restrict 
 myself to the more outstanding features of the 
 subject and to a limited number of references, 
 and to pass over many details of fact and opinion 
 that might have been profitably introduced in a 
 formal history. I have also thought it best to 
 allow German scholars to speak in their own 
 words very frequently lest I might seem to have 
 been guilty of misrepresentation. 
 
 Finally, I wish to thank the Faculty of Prince- 
 ton Theological Seminary for the many kind- 
 nesses I have experienced at their hands, and 
 especially for the high honor they conferred upon 
 me in inviting me in 1916-17 to deliver as lec- 
 tures on the L. P. Stone Foundation the chapters 
 of this volume. 
 
 Kerb D. Macmillan. 
 Wells College, 
 
 October 1, 1917. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter I 
 
 Preface iii 
 
 The Personal Influence of Luther 1 
 
 Chapter II 
 The Early Views of Luther Regarding 
 Church Government 17 
 
 Chapter III 
 The Abandonment of Congregational Self- 
 Government 56 
 
 Chapter IV 
 The Establishment of the Territorial System 88 
 
 Chapter V 
 Theories and Practice 124 
 
 Chapter VI 
 The Nineteenth Century 164 
 
 vii 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter VII 
 The Effects of the Territorial System Upon 
 the Church 218 
 
 Chapter VIII 
 Other Effects of the Territorial System 246 
 
 Index 280 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The Personal Influence oe Luther 
 
 Whoever wishes to understand German Prot- 
 estantism must constantly have in mind the per- 
 son and the writings of Martin Luther. The 
 casual visitor in Germany is amused at the almost 
 infinite number of Luther houses, Luther springs 
 and Luther trees, and if he is familiar with the 
 language, at the solemnity with which the peasant 
 refers to "Doktor Martin Luther," or quotes his 
 words. But only a survey of the literature from 
 the time of the Reformation to the present can 
 convey an adequate conception of how deeply 
 rooted and how influential in the life of the people 
 this reverence has been and still is. 
 
 Calvin's system of doctrine and church govern- 
 ment has been more widely received and more 
 influential than the teaching of Luther, but the 
 person of the Genevan Reformer has never fasci- 
 nated the imagination and dominated the thought 
 of his followers as has that of Luther in Germany. 
 Indeed it is not going too far to say that there 
 is no one in the western European countries or 
 
 1 
 
« PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 America that has occupied such an exalted place 
 in the hearts of his fellow countrymen. As long 
 as he lived he was himself the standard of ortho- 
 doxy, the creed and the supreme court of the 
 churches his revolt had called into existence. He 
 was constantly consulted on matters of theology, 
 morality, church government and politics, and 
 rarely was his advice unheeded. Only among the 
 lower classes after the Peasants' War was he dis- 
 liked. After his death there was no one, there 
 could be no one, to take his place. 
 
 How great his personal influence had been 
 and what a void his death made are indicated in 
 the Preface to the "Book of Concord" where 
 forty-seven princes and thirty-four cities recall 
 the unity that was characteristic of his lif etime, 
 lament the dissensions and dissemination of false 
 doctrine immediately after his death and declare 
 it to be their purpose to adhere without deviation 
 to the Scriptures, the doctrines set forth in the 
 early ecumenical councils and the symbols which 
 had received the stamp of Luther's approval. In 
 this determination the subscribers simply forecast 
 what was to be the attitude of the great majority 
 of German Protestants from that day to this. 
 Luther's successors in the chair of theology in 
 Wittenberg, and Lutheran divines elsewhere, 
 were concerned primarily to conserve what he 
 had taught. The final authority of the Bible was 
 always asserted indeed, and the Lutheran doc- 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 3 
 
 trine based upon its teaching; but until the end 
 of what is called the "orthodox" period the con- 
 trolling factor was the teaching of Luther, which 
 was developed in infinite detail, though not al- 
 ways in line with Luther's real meaning. 
 
 Among the churches and people generally he 
 was portrayed as prophet, apostle, knight, teacher 
 and priest. No one had ever done so much, not 
 only for theology and religion, but also for the 
 cultivation of jurisprudence, philosophy and ora- 
 tory, or for the peasant and military classes. The 
 grammar in use for a hundred years declared 
 that his German was so pure that he must have 
 written by the special assistance of the Holy 
 Spirit. The gift of healing was ascribed to him. 
 Splinters of wood from his house were reported 
 to cure toothache, and the second edition of a 
 work narrating the miraculous preservation of 
 his portraits in fire was printed as late as 1765. 
 His translation of the Bible was said to be in- 
 spired and many were in favor of raising his pri- 
 vate writings to symbolical rank. 
 
 He was placed in the circle of the prophets 
 also. As John the Baptist had been the second 
 Elias, Luther was the third, who prepared the 
 way for the return of the Lord to judgment. Or 
 he was the angel of the fourteenth chapter of 
 Revelation flying in mid heaven and proclaiming 
 the Gospel to all peoples, which could be proved 
 to the incredulous by reconstructing the letters 
 
4 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 of Rev. xiv, 6, according to their numerical value, 
 with the result that they formed the words "Mar- 
 tin Luther, Doctor of the Holy Scriptures, born 
 in Eisleben, baptized on St. Martin's day." 
 
 In short, the Lutherans of this period trans- 
 ferred to their founder as many of the character- 
 istics of the saint, and came as near to worship- 
 ping him, as their creed would permit. One of 
 the first critics of this attitude, the Pietist and 
 church historian G. Arnold, was quite right in 
 characterizing it as a subtle idolatry. 1 
 
 The extreme form of this superstitious rever- 
 ence had to yield before the advance in knowledge 
 in the latter part of the seventeenth and the eigh- 
 teenth centuries. The quarrels between Pietism 
 and orthodoxy, between rationalism and the 
 church at large, and the ensuing critical study 
 of history partly dispelled the mists obscuring 
 the real figure of the Reformer, but the under- 
 lying respect and reverence for him were not 
 changed thereby. The old portrait was destroyed, 
 or rather, instead of the single orthodox one there 
 were as many as there were schools of thought. 
 There might be some difficulty in knowing which 
 was the true one, but at all events Luther himself 
 remained to them. 
 
 The Pietists were among the first to criticize 
 the extreme devotion of the people to Luther, 
 
 1 G. Arnold, Unparteiische Kirchen und Ketser Historie, 
 ii, 659 ff. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 5 
 
 for it interfered, they felt, with the supreme 
 authority of the Scriptures and the direct access 
 of the soul to God. Moreover, they found much 
 in Luther himself of which they could not ap- 
 prove, particularly his lightheadedness and jo- 
 cosity on the one hand and his vehemence on the 
 other. In general they denied the correctness of 
 the picture that represented him as the hero of 
 orthodoxy, and claimed him as their own. They 
 pointed out that the Pietistic teaching concerning 
 the necessity of personal religious experience and 
 the struggle against sin corresponded with his 
 religious life, and they justified out of his writings 
 their holding of conventicles and their distrust of 
 philosophy. But in the discussion that ensued 
 they were forced to draw a distinction between 
 the earlier and later teachings of the Reformer 
 and to attach themselves to the former. 
 
 It might be expected that the intensely human- 
 istic period of the Enlightenment would have 
 little sympathy with the Reformer who had 
 spoken of the human reason as the product of 
 the devil which the would-be Christian must tear 
 out as the Scripture bids us tear out an offending 
 eye. And some few were indeed found to be- 
 little his services and give all the credit for the 
 Reformation to the secular princes. But the 
 stream of national devotion to the great hero was 
 too strong to be either diverted or dammed. The 
 general feeling and belief of the "Enlightened" 
 
6 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 was that Luther was one of themselves. They 
 recognized him as the conqueror of the Church 
 of Rome which they too hated as he had, as a 
 man of independent spirit who had emphasized 
 the practical side of religion and the duties of the 
 citizen — just as they did. 
 
 The essential parts of his work and teaching 
 were forgotten or neglected, and in place of 
 Luther the prophet and the theologian appeared 
 in almost endless variety Luther the father, the 
 teacher, the citizen, the eager searcher after truth, 
 the champion of freedom of conscience, the Bib- 
 lical critic, the rationalist, and of course, in con- 
 trast to the Pietists, Luther the jocular and 
 jovial, who enjoyed all that life could offer. 2 If 
 he had lived in the time of the Enlightenment he 
 would undoubtedly have been one of its leaders. 
 He was unfortunately limited by his environ- 
 ment. "Only a little longer," says one writer, 
 "and the heavenly light, that Luther could see 
 only as in a vision, will shine upon us with all its 
 brilliance." 
 
 Another, speaking more particularly, thinks 
 he has reached the heart of Luther's work when 
 he reduces it to brotherly love. "It was genuine 
 brotherly love," he says, "that moved Luther to 
 
 2 One of the verses popularly ascribed to him was, 
 "Who loves not woman, wine and song 
 Remains a fool his whole life long." 
 There is no proof that Luther said this. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 1 
 
 take his courageous stand against the abomina- 
 tions and errors of the Roman Church and allowed 
 him to shirk no danger in furthering the good 
 work. Filled with the sense of human worth he 
 saw with sympathetic disapproval the oppression 
 of the people by the papacy, and the noble deter- 
 mination that formed itself in his soul at the same 
 time, to bring back the misguided people to the 
 original dignity of rational beings, was one of the 
 mightiest motives of the Reformation. It ap- 
 peared to him impossible to succeed in this unless 
 he could establish a firm and solid intellectual 
 basis for religious truths, a basis that should be 
 comprehensible to everyone and subject to the 
 least possible misunderstanding. This he found 
 in the Holy Scriptures." The modern German 
 author from whom the quotation is taken adds 
 simply "Could the real state of affairs be worse 
 represented," a judgment with which we may 
 well agree. 8 
 
 The Romanticism of the early nineteenth cen- 
 tury had little sympathy for the struggles of the 
 Reformation and yet the first dramatic portrayal 
 of Luther's life, that of Werner, comes from this 
 period and circle. But in the troublous times 
 that succeeded the French wars, when Germany 
 was still smarting from her defeats, waking to 
 
 3 H. Stephan, Luther in den Wandlungen seiner Kirche, 
 Giessen, 1907. 63 f. I am dependent upon Stephan for 
 other quotations in this chapter also. 
 
8 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 a consciousness of the shallowness of the funda- 
 mental principles of the Enlightenment and feel- 
 ing about for solid ground upon which to rear a 
 new political, moral and religious Germany, all 
 turned again as if by instinct to the great hero 
 of the Reformation. Such words as those of the 
 philosopher Fichte ran from mouth to mouth, 
 kindling the fire of religious patriotism: 
 
 "In fine classical culture, in scholarship and 
 other accomplishments, he was surpassed not 
 only by foreigners but also by many of his own 
 nation. But an all powerful motive impelled 
 him, the desire for eternal salvation. This was 
 the life in his fife. It threw everything into the 
 balance, and gave him the power and the ability 
 which have astounded succeeding generations. 
 Others may have had earthly motives in the 
 Reformation, but they would never have been 
 victorious had there not been at their head a 
 leader who was inspired by the Eternal. That 
 he who constantly had before his eyes the picture 
 of immortal souls in danger of destruction fear- 
 lessly advanced to meet all the devils in hell is 
 simply natural and not to be wondered at. That 
 is an example of German high mindedness and 
 courage." 4 
 
 The historical spirit of the nineteenth century 
 could not accept the uncritical, partly erroneous 
 and partly naive picture of the Reformer that 
 
 4 Stephan, 91 f. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 9 
 
 had satisfied earlier generations. It made dili- 
 gent search for the truth, trimming away the 
 legends that had accumulated about his name, 
 exploring every possible hiding place for a frag- 
 ment from his pen or anything that would throw 
 light upon his life, character or work. A defini- 
 tive edition of his works began to appear in 1883 
 and is not yet completed. All schools of thought, 
 even the Roman Catholic, have contributed to- 
 ward the attempt at a better understanding of 
 the man. His relation to literature, philosophy, 
 education, even to socialism, as well as his services 
 in religion and theology have been examined 
 afresh. And the result is that he appears to hold 
 as high or, if possible, a higher position in the 
 German consciousness than ever before. Not 
 that he is so unreservedly admired as was once 
 the case, but the general impression seems to be 
 that in spite of his mistakes, or shortcomings, or 
 the limitations imposed by his historical environ- 
 ment, there is something almost superhuman 
 about him. As one writer says, "The genius of 
 Luther is so much richer and many sided than 
 that of the average man that each age or indi- 
 vidual is capable of understanding and appro- 
 priating only a part." 5 
 
 Stuart Chamberlain, the English born cham- 
 
 B Stephan, 181; with which may be compared the esti- 
 mate in H. Boehmer, Luther im Lichte der neueren Forsch- 
 ung, 2nd edition, Leipzig, 1909. 
 
10 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 pion of Pan-Germanism, declares him to be the 
 genuine German, true to the primitive type 
 ("Urgerman") and contrasts him with Ignatius 
 Loyola, the incarnation of anti-Germanic char- 
 acteristics. 6 Even Nietzsche is compelled to give 
 him considerable space. His opposition to Chris- 
 tianity and everything that savors of it shows it- 
 self in his hatred for the positive side of Luther's 
 work, but he praises him for having taken the 
 first step in loosing Germany from the fatal 
 bonds of the Christian religion. Luther was a 
 peasant, he says, and remained a peasant his life 
 long, but he was successful in leading a spiritual 
 peasants' revolt against the exotic southern Ro- 
 man gentlemen's club called the Church. Like 
 a peasant he hit out right and left without know- 
 ing or caring much what he destroyed. He must 
 be credited, therefore, with some good, but also 
 with having prepared the way for the miserable 
 pusillanimity of modern democracy. 7 
 
 Indeed it is safe to say that no writer on re- 
 ligious, historical or political subjects dares to 
 omit Luther from his program or fails to relate 
 his ideas to the work of the Reformer, with the 
 usual result that the two are found to be in agree- 
 ment except in so far as Luther is said to have 
 been handicapped by the political, psychological 
 or religious views of his age. The orthodox evan- 
 
 6 Grundlagen des 19ten Jahrhunderts, 1899, 502. 
 
 7 Frohliche Wissenschaft. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 11 
 
 gelical party of the Lutheran church is satisfied 
 with him with little or no change. The liberals on 
 the other hand emphasize his freedom of thought 
 and claim to be his real successors. The mystics 
 assert that his real work was done in the early 
 years of his activity, while he was still under the 
 influence of the mystical theology. Herrmann 
 bases his "Communion of the Christian with 
 God" on Luther. Bitschl was sure his concep- 
 tion of Christianity was essentially one with the 
 Reformer's, and even such an emancipated Prot- 
 estant as Troeltsch, who believes that Luther 
 turned back the hands on the clock of progress, 
 and that the real Reformation did not begin until 
 the eighteenth century, nevertheless concludes his 
 volume on "Protestantism and Progress" with a 
 fine eulogy of Luther's "new way," meaning 
 thereby salvation, or rather, the assurance of sal- 
 vation by faith alone, and identifies it, mutatis 
 mutandis, with his own position. 
 
 The advantage of inculcating religious and 
 moral truth or arousing patriotic feeling by the 
 concrete example of outstanding personalities is 
 of course universally recognized. But the un- 
 restricted and general admiration of any fallible 
 being, however great, must always be attended 
 by the dangerous tendency to confuse the best 
 in him with the worst, to justify all that he did 
 because he did one thing well, to shut out from 
 the range of vision of his admirers those things 
 
12 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 which he did not see, and from their life the 
 things he did not do, or to ascribe to him those 
 characteristics of their own for which they seek 
 justification. In short, while hero worship is an 
 excellent tonic for a person or a nation, it is likely, 
 if taken in large doses, to interfere with one's own 
 best development by imposing an external, un- 
 changeable standard that blocks the way of 
 progress. 
 
 Something of this sort has gone on in Ger- 
 many. A flagrant example of it is to be seen in 
 the German Bible. This translation, the work 
 of Luther mainly, was constantly revised during 
 his lifetime, no one being more cognizant of its 
 shortcomings than he. After his death there was 
 no attempt at carrying on the work of improve- 
 ment. The name "Luther's Bible" crowned it 
 with a halo of sanctity which protected it from 
 profanation by emendators. Even in the middle 
 of the nineteenth century when the progress in 
 textual criticism and the better knowledge of the 
 Biblical languages compelled the united churches 
 to action, so great was the opposition that only 
 such changes as were "necessary and unobjection- 
 able" were made, with the result that many of 
 the results of recent scholarship which have been 
 incorporated in the English and the Swiss re- 
 visions are lacking in the German. 
 
 But the deleterious effects of this hero worship 
 are to be observed in a still larger field and in 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 13 
 
 greater measure in the constitution of the Luth- 
 eran churches with which we shall be concerned 
 in these pages. For their subjection to the secu- 
 lar authority deprived them of both the oversight 
 of spiritual and ecclesiastical affairs which rightly 
 belonged to them, and the religious and moral 
 discipline which has been so beneficial in non- 
 Lutheran Protestant churches, and at the same 
 time contributed to the establishment of that ab- 
 solute monarchy which has resisted the establish- 
 ment of democratic institutions more strenuously 
 than any other government in western Europe. 
 
 The principles of Luther's revolt demanded 
 freedom of conscience and spiritual liberty. 
 None of the Reformers was able to rise above the 
 universal opinions of their time regarding the 
 union of church and state. But they all did see, 
 Luther quite as clearly as any, that the faith 
 upon which the new church was founded could 
 not, in the nature of the case, be forced, and that 
 the church, that is to say, a congregation of be- 
 lieving Christians, having for its end the cultiva- 
 tion of the spiritual life and the administration 
 of the sacraments, should be free from every kind 
 of external control. 
 
 When Luther tore down the structure of the 
 hierarchy and put in its place the priesthood of 
 all believers the logical consequence was, and the 
 actual result should have been, that those proper 
 functions of the church which had previously been 
 
14 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 performed by the hierarchy passed into the hands 
 of Christian believers. The so-called Anabap- 
 tists perceived this and organized along most 
 democratic lines, or at least pretended to do so. 
 The peasants who rose in semi-economic religious 
 revolt at this time perceived it, for their first de- 
 mand was that they should have pastors of their 
 own choice. Calvin perceived it and enforced it, 
 with the result that Calvinistic churches have 
 been notorious for their resistance to external 
 control. But the Lutheran churches in Germany 
 have never been free, nor made any serious at- 
 tempt to become free from the supervision, direc- 
 tion and control of the state. 
 
 This is a matter over which there has been much 
 argument in Germany, some scholars contending 
 that Luther and his companions favored an in- 
 dependent church with graduated courts sim- 
 ilar to the system common among Calvinistic 
 churches, 8 others that they wished to retain the 
 Episcopal system, 9 others again that the union 
 of church and state with the subordination of the 
 former to the latter was their ideal. 10 Incidentally 
 
 8 E. g. Richter, Geschichte der evangelischen Kirchen- 
 verfassung, 1851. Sohm, Kirchenrecht. 
 
 * E. g. Stahl, Kirchenverfassung nach Lehre und Recht 
 der Protestanten, 1862. 
 
 10 E. g. K. Rieker, Die rechtliche Stellung der evan- 
 gelischen Kirche Deutschlands, Leipzig, 1 893 ; E. Foerster, 
 Die Entstehung der preuszischen Landeskirche unter der 
 Regierung Konig Friedrich TVilhelms des Dritten, Tubin- 
 gen, 1905. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 15 
 
 it may be remarked that each of these writers 
 finds his own views corroborated by those of the 
 great Reformer. 
 
 One of the latest and most painstaking stu- 
 dents of the constitutional history of the German 
 churches recognizes and condemns this prevailing 
 tendency in the following words: "Considering 
 the excessive authority enjoyed by Luther in the 
 churches that bear his name it is comprehensible 
 that the parties and elements striving for the 
 highest expression of church life endeavor to ac- 
 commodate themselves to his views, and to realize 
 his ideals, although without doubt Luther was 
 very far from regarding his thoughts on constitu- 
 tional matters as normative for all time." " That 
 there should be so great diversity of opinion in 
 the settlement of this historical problem is not 
 to be explained by Luther's discursive and un- 
 systematic manner of writing, however difficult 
 this may make any attempt to formulate his 
 views. The real reason for it is that some of 
 these writers, like their predecessors in earlier 
 centuries, have seen Luther through glasses col- 
 ored by their own desires, and read into his say- 
 ings their own ideals of church organization and 
 of the relation of church and state. Professor 
 Seeberg has said somewhere that Calvin left no 
 questionable coins as did Melanchthon, and no 
 
 11 E. Sehling, Geschichte der protestantischen Kirchefir 
 verfassung, 2nd edition, Leipzig, 1914, 5. 
 
16 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 unminted gold as did Luther. The writings of 
 Luther are indeed a wonderful treasure house 
 from which much may yet be drawn, but it is 
 hoped that future German scholars will not fall 
 into the same errors as did earlier ones, namely, 
 to fail to recognize the gold when they find it, or, 
 worse still, to bring out the baser metals and de- 
 clare them to be pure gold. Herder's warning 
 against the use of Luther's works by the ration- 
 alism of the eighteenth century is just as neces- 
 sary today as a hundred years ago: 12 "O Luther, 
 would that thou wert alive to save thy books from 
 the reproaches they now endure, and to see the 
 plans and samples of our new unbiblical religion. 
 'Tis no sprout from thy root that now blooms." 
 
 12 Quoted in Herzog, Realencyclopaedie fur protestant- 
 ische Kirche und Theologie, 3rd edition, vii, 699. Refer- 
 ences to this encyclopaedia are hereafter given under the 
 abbreviation RE. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 The Early Views of Luther Regarding 
 Church Government 
 
 After the prevalence of other views looking 
 toward the introduction of self-government into 
 the Protestant churches of Germany, it has re- 
 cently been argued by those who favor the pres- 
 ent establishment that Luther's doctrine of the 
 universal priesthood of believers was a purely re- 
 ligious conception, aimed solely at the arrogant 
 claims and actual power of the Roman hierarchy, 
 and therefore without relation to such matters as 
 the constitution of the church, the organization 
 of the congregational lif e or the relation of church 
 to state, and that its application to such matters 
 is of purely modern origin, and wrong. To quote 
 Rieker: 1 
 
 "The Protestant principle of the universal 
 priesthood is a religious and not a constitutional 
 principle. It has reference to the relation of a 
 
 1 P. 79. Perhaps the clearest proof of the great influence 
 exercised by Rieker's work is that the articles in the third 
 edition of the Herzog Realencyclopaedie on the organiza- 
 tion and legal position of the church almost all adopt his 
 conclusions. The article on Stoat und Kirche is a notable 
 exception. 
 
 17 
 
18 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 Christian to God and not to his position in the 
 legal organism of the church. The application 
 of the universal priesthood to the constitution of 
 the evangelical church is a thoroughly modern 
 idea. Just as the attempt is made to base the 
 state on an abstract universal citizenship, so also 
 it is attempted to base the church on the principle 
 of equality, upon an abstract universal priest- 
 hood, and to regard this as genuinely Prertestant. 
 The principles of the Reformation, however, and 
 especially the view of Luther, afford another 
 basis for the constitution of the church, namely 
 the doctrine of the two or three estates or regi- 
 ments. Luther did not at all regard the indi- 
 vidual Christians as having equal rights in the 
 conduct of church affairs, but as differing accord- 
 ing to the estate in which God has placed them. 
 He who exercises civil authority has other duties 
 in the matter of church government than one that 
 teaches, and in the same way the members of the 
 third estate, the heads of households, are con- 
 cerned in ecclesiastical affairs in still another 
 fashion than the civil rulers and the teachers. 
 
 "According to the Protestant view therefore, in 
 matters pertaining to the constitution and gov- 
 ernment of the church, individual members of the 
 church, i.e., the baptized Christians, are not con- 
 sidered as such, but their part is conditioned by 
 and graduated according to the position they oc- 
 cupy and the work they do. For consider whither 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 19 
 
 this principle of the universal priesthood would 
 lead if consistently applied! It would result in 
 the dissolution, not the establishment of congre- 
 gations, in the complete isolating of the individual 
 Christians, in the grossest form of independency. 
 The universal priesthood so far from furnishing 
 a basis upon which a church may be erected ac- 
 cording to Protestant principles is in reality the 
 negation of all organization." 
 
 It is hard to know whether to admire the au- 
 dacity or deplore the narrow vision exhibited in 
 this passage; but whether we admire or not, there 
 is no denying that in it we have the interpretation 
 of the principles of the Reformation and the pro- 
 gram for the evangelical churches in Germany by 
 which a number of German scholars endeavor to 
 perpetuate the subjection of the church to the 
 state which has been characteristic of German 
 Protestantism from the beginning. In a sense 
 every word of the passage is true, and neverthe- 
 less it is altogether misleading. It is true that 
 the doctrine of the universal priesthood was with 
 Luther a religious conception and aimed at the 
 Roman hierarchy, but it is false to imagine that 
 its operation should be or could be restricted to 
 man's relation to God, or that Luther wished so 
 to confine it. The subjection of the individual 
 will and individual conscience to the Roman 
 church was not only a religious principle in the 
 narrower sense of the term, but also a normative 
 
20 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 principle for all religious, political and social life 
 and thought. The history of the Middle Ages 
 can be written around it. The mechanism of the 
 Roman church in all parts of the world existed 
 because of it and was dependent upon its con- 
 tinuance. It is therefore extremely shortsighted, 
 to say the least, to maintain that the idea that 
 overthrew the colossal ecclesiastical and political 
 system of the Middle Ages should have no part 
 in building up its successor. The doctrine of the 
 universal priesthood of believers, having both a 
 negative and a positive side, was bound, if unim- 
 peded in its application, both to destroy the exist- 
 ing order and to create a new religious, political, 
 social and scientific world. Indeed much of the 
 history of Protestantism is concerned with the 
 struggle of this principle to assert itself, for it 
 has not been everywhere equally successful nor 
 has it as yet spent its strength. 
 
 It is true also that as a rule the individual 
 Christian was not as such allowed any share in 
 the management or government of the Protestant 
 churches in Germany. But this is only a state- 
 ment of fact, and does not take into account the 
 early struggles for expression by the individ- 
 ual Christians and individual congregations, or 
 Luther's early endeavors, or the ideals which he 
 felt compelled to put behind him for a time, and 
 which his church has never realized. 
 
 And it is true also that, taken by itself and 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 21 
 
 applied consistently by itself, the principle of 
 the universal priesthood of believers would logi- 
 cally lead to independency and even to individ- 
 ualism. But this leaves out of account Christian 
 love and Christian brotherhood, and the corre- 
 sponding movement toward cooperation and mu- 
 tual helpfulness that has always been character- 
 istic of true Christians, whether in Roman or 
 Protestantism times ; and it passes over the great 
 outstanding historical fact that when allowed free 
 play the doctrine of the universal priesthood has 
 led, except in rare instances, not to independency, 
 but to the establishment of well organized and 
 well governed churches covering a territory as 
 large as linguistic, racial and political conditions 
 would permit. 
 
 The statement that Luther regarded the priest- 
 hood of all believers as a doctrine affecting only 
 the religious life in the narrower sense of the 
 word is easily and sufficiently refuted by his own 
 life, for it was the compelling power of this new 
 conception that led him not only to break with 
 the Roman Church and demand its reformation, 
 but also to champion the cause of righteousness 
 everywhere, in the family, society and politics. 
 That he demanded the same interest and effort 
 of all Christians is everywhere evident in his 
 writings and nowhere more so than in his "Ad- 
 dress to the Nobility" which has been perversely 
 used by Rieker in defence of the subjection of 
 
%<H PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 the church to the state. For the argument in this 
 remarkable appeal to the German rulers is not 
 that they, as rulers, have the right to govern the 
 church, but that as divinely ordained rulers they 
 are free from subjection to the Roman hierarchy, 
 and that as Christians, and therefore priests, like 
 all other Christians, they should be guided by 
 Christian ideals and actuated by Christian mo- 
 tives in the conduct of government. It is an 
 attempt to show one class how the doctrine of 
 the universal priesthood affects their lives and by 
 implication teaches that all who accept the new 
 teaching are to be controlled by the same high 
 considerations in all they do. That this is so and 
 that Luther tried to arouse in his fellow country- 
 men a sense of their new freedom and personal 
 responsibibty will be made clear by a brief survey 
 of his teaching and his endeavor to establish con- 
 gregations on a democratic basis. 
 
 Luther's Reformation began with his discov- 
 ery that salvation is the free gift of God to men 
 through Jesus Christ, and that this gift is ap- 
 propriated directly by faith and not through any 
 human mediator. That is to say, that each in- 
 dividual stands immediately in the presence of 
 God, is directly responsible to him and receives 
 directly from him the blessings of salvation. 
 This is the fact which expressed as doctrine be- 
 comes the universal priesthood of believers. 
 
 In this Luther found assurance of his own 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 28 
 
 salvation after failing to find it in the sacraments 
 and ministrations of the Roman church; and in 
 it he found too, as St. Paul had found "before, a 
 greater incentive to pure, holy and charitable 
 living than was afforded by the legalism or semi- 
 legalism of the Roman church. This is the heart 
 and core of Protestantism and to it Luther al- 
 ways remained true. It is, in the first instance, 
 a purely religious conception and theoretically 
 may be dissociated from any and all ecclesiastical, 
 social and political forms. Luther himself at first 
 saw no necessity of parting with the Roman 
 church, nor indeed after the break was he much 
 concerned over forms and ceremonies. He dis- 
 claimed any desire to tie the new churches down 
 to one form of government, said that uniformity 
 was not essential, 2 and generally held the view 
 that "ceremonies must not be our masters as 
 though it were a sin to do otherwise. For we 
 Christians will and must be masters of such cere- 
 monies, so that they do not grow over our heads 
 and become articles of faith, but must be sub- 
 jected to us and serve us when, where and as long 
 as we please." In other words, Luther was con- 
 cerned from first to last that the attitude of the 
 individual Christian toward God and his fellow 
 
 2 Luthers Werke, Weimar Edition (hereafter cited as 
 WA), xix, 72. 118. Similar passages have been collected 
 by Sehling, Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des sechs- 
 zehnten Jahrhunderts, i, p. v. 
 
24 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 man be correct, believing if this condition pre- 
 vailed all other reforms would follow. 
 
 It is important, however, to note that this is 
 not the same as saying that the new Protestant- 
 ism was indifferent to outward forms and cere- 
 monies, or that it could exist under any and every 
 form of organization. Indeed, this is the very 
 opposite of Luther's meaning. What he desired 
 and what he attempted to bring into existence 
 was an organization and a set of forms that 
 sprang from and gave expression to the new 
 ideas. He soon discovered for himself that the 
 new conception of his direct responsibility to 
 God was incompatible with a passive attitude 
 toward the evils of his time. His protest against 
 trifling with sin and forgiveness in the sale of 
 indulgences led to the larger perception that the 
 freedom of the Christian was incompatible with 
 submission to Rome, or any other human author- 
 ity. By the year 1520 the issue was perfectly 
 plain. He burned the papal bull of excommuni- 
 cation and the Canon Law, told his students that 
 they could not hope for salvation unless they dis- 
 sented with their whole heart from the papal sys- 
 tem, and committed himself to the destruction of 
 the old order. 
 
 His writings of the year 1520 show that he had 
 already given the matter of reformation consid- 
 erable thought and that he pictured to himself a 
 condition of affairs in which the individual Chris- 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 25 
 
 tians should share in the responsibilty for the 
 spiritual welfare, the organization and mainte- 
 nance of the congregation. Indeed, he had al- 
 ready perceived the possible danger of individual- 
 ism and was prepared with an answer. 
 
 The treatise on "Christian Freedom" gives us 
 a clear revelation .of Luther's conception of the 
 Christian life in general, as the foundation upon 
 which he built or attempted to build a new Ger- 
 man church and German nation. It is the posi- 
 tive apologia of his Reformation, the description 
 of what he found within himself and wished to 
 find in every Christian. Its theme is the paradox 
 that the Christian is the freest of all men and 
 subject to none, and at the same time the servant 
 of all men and subject to all. Spiritually the 
 Christian is free from all bonds and prescriptions, 
 for piety has nothing to do with outward forms, 
 dress, churches, services, fasts, holy days or law 
 of any kind. The word of God is all sufficient 
 for the life of the soul for in it are found abun- 
 dantly life, truth, light, peace, righteousness, sal- 
 vation, joy, liberty, wisdom, courage, grace, glory 
 and every good thing. All these may be appro- 
 priated by faith, but the law cannot give them 
 as it is only a means to teach men the uselessness 
 of their own efforts to attain righteousness. By 
 faith Christians become sons of God and united 
 with Christ. As the bridegroom shares all with 
 his bride, so Christ gives His spiritual treasures 
 
86 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 to those that believe on Him. As He is spirit- 
 ually king and priest, so are they. They are lord 
 of all things, for all things work together for 
 their good, and instead of being dependent upon 
 the offices of others they have immediate access 
 to God and the priestly right to intercede for 
 others. A great injustice has been done by the 
 use of the terms "clergy" and "laity," for all 
 Christians are equally priests, and none may 
 claim the right to exercise authority over others 
 in spiritual things. Those that have been called 
 popes, bishops and lords are only ministers, ser- 
 vants and stewards for teaching the faith of 
 Christ and the liberty of believers. 
 
 But although spiritually free from all law the 
 Christian is bound by a double bondage, to God 
 by faith and to his fellow man by love. The 
 Christian's life is not altogether spiritual, nor 
 does he live to himself alone. He must control 
 his own fleshly appetites and live his earthly life 
 among men. He must endeavor to bring his 
 actions into conformity with his spiritual life. 
 This endeavor is not piety but the result of it. 
 Good works are the natural and inevitable pro- 
 duct of faith as good fruits are the inevitable 
 product of good trees. 
 
 "Who then can comprehend the riches and 
 glory of the Christian life? It can do all things, 
 has all things, and is in want of nothing; is lord 
 over sin, death and hell, and at the same time 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 27 
 
 is the obedient and useful servant of all." "From 
 faith flow forth love and joy in the Lord; and 
 from love a cheerful, willing, free spirit, disposed 
 to serve our neighbor voluntarily, without taking 
 any account of gratitude or ingratitude, praise 
 or blame, gain or loss. Its object is not to lay 
 men under obligations; nor does it distinguish 
 between friends and enemies, or look to grati- 
 tude or ingratitude ; but most freely and willingly 
 it spends itself and its goods, whether it loses 
 them through ingratitude, or gains good will. 
 For thus did its Father, distributing all things 
 to all men abundantly and freely, making His sun 
 to rise upon the just and the unjust. Thus too 
 the child does and endures nothing except from 
 the free joy with which it delights through Christ 
 in God the giver of such great gifts." 3 
 
 It was with this ideal of the Christian life which 
 he hoped the preaching of the pure Gospel would 
 soon make the common property of very many 
 that Luther planned the reformation of the 
 church. He was quite conscious of the great 
 number of hypocrites and unworthy members, 
 but appears to have been so saturated with the 
 joy of his new discovery of the Gospel that he 
 did not doubt that great numbers would be as 
 much enraptured as himself, and lead such self- 
 sacrificing lives as he here pictures. Even three 
 years later he was so persuaded of this that he 
 
 3 WA, vii, 66. Translation by Dr. Schaff. 
 
28 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 advised civil rulers that Christians would not go 
 to law even to defend their rights. For example, 
 in cases involving restitution, if both parties are 
 Christians there would be no need for the civil 
 authority to intervene, for "neither will wish to 
 deprive the other of his property or even to dis- 
 pute the matter. If one is a Christian, namely 
 the one that has been defrauded, the matter is 
 equally easy of solution, for he will lay no com- 
 plaint, even though he never receive his property 
 again. And if it be a Christian that has done 
 the wrong he will wish to make restitution." 4 
 The young convent bred monk was an eloquent 
 preacher of the ideal righteousness of the king- 
 dom of God, and of the love that should charac- 
 terize its citizens, but he had neither the training 
 nor the wisdom requisite for the regulation of a 
 complex society in which selfish interests and pas- 
 sions are inextricably interwoven with high ideals 
 and aspirations in all the activities of life. 
 
 In his "Address to the German Nobility" we 
 have Luther's first attempt to apply the doctrine 
 of the universal priesthood of believers to a spe- 
 cific problem of conduct. A reform of the church 
 in head and members was generally recognized 
 to be necessary, but after the failure of the coun- 
 cils of Pisa, Constance and Basle in the preceding 
 century to make any breach in the entrenchments 
 of the papacy, nothing had been done. The 
 
 4 WA, xi, 278 f. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 29 
 
 papacy seemed more securely established and 
 more immune from successful assault than ever 
 before. In the meantime, Germany was suffer- 
 ing religiously and morally from the neglect and 
 the positive abuses connected with the papal sys- 
 tem. This is the problem which Luther faces in 
 the "Address." His solution is that all Chris- 
 tians, being equally members of the body of 
 Christ, that is of the church, should do what they 
 severally can for the other members; and espe- 
 cially that the emperor and ruling classes, being 
 ordained of God for the punishment of evil and 
 the promotion of good, should carry their Chris- 
 tianity into the government, and purify the 
 church and society in accordance with the re- 
 quirements of the Gospel. 
 
 There are three walls, he says, behind which 
 the Roman church takes refuge. The first is the 
 distinction between spiritual and secular with the 
 subordination of the latter to the former in mat- 
 ters pertaining to private life and to government. 
 This distinction has no satisfactory basis. All 
 Christians are equally holy, equally consecrated, 
 "belong truly to the spiritual estate and there is 
 no difference between them save that of office." 5 
 "For whatever has crept out of the baptismal 
 font may boast of having been consecrated priest, 
 bishop and pope, though it is not seemly for every 
 one to exercise such office." 8 The office of priest, 
 
 5 WA, vi, 407. 
 a WA, vi, 408. 
 
30 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 bishop and pope is to preach the word of God 
 and dispense the sacraments; that of the secular 
 authority is to punish the evil and protect the 
 good; that of other members of the church, shoe- 
 makers, smiths, peasants and so forth, is to serve 
 the other members of the community with their 
 office and work, all members being equally conse- 
 crated priests and bishops. It follows, therefore, 
 that the so-called spiritual authorities have no 
 authority over the secular authorities, but on the 
 contrary the secular ruler has to perform the 
 same duty toward so-called spiritual persons as 
 toward others. And "As the secular ruler is a 
 member of the Christian body, and although 
 having material duties, belongs to the spiritual 
 estate, therefore his authority ['werck'] should 
 extend unhindered over all members of the body, 
 punishing and constraining where guilt requires 
 or necessity demands, irrespective of pope, bishop 
 and priests, let them threaten and anathematize 
 as they will." 7 
 
 The second wall, which is the papal claim to 
 the exclusive right of interpretation of the Scrip- 
 tures, goes down before a similar argument. 
 Every Christian is equally entitled to interpret 
 the Scripture and to judge of doctrine. "As we 
 are all priests, all have one faith, one Gospel, the 
 same sacraments, why should we not have the 
 power of testing and judging what is right and 
 
 7 WA, vi, 410. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 31 
 
 wrong in the matter of faith?" "Therefore it be- 
 hooves every individual Christian to take an in- 
 terest in his faith, to understand it and fight for 
 it, and to condemn all error." 8 
 
 The third wall, namely the papal claim to the 
 exclusive right of calling general councils, is de- 
 molished in the same way. As the Scriptures 
 order the individual Christian to bring a sinning 
 brother before the congregation (Matt, xviii, 15) 
 much more should we endeavor to bring an erring 
 officer before a council. "Every one should do 
 what he best can as a true member of the whole 
 body to bring about a really free council, and no 
 one is so well able to do this as the secular rulers, 
 especially as they are now fellow Christians, fel- 
 low priests, fellow clergy, equally powerful in all 
 things, and should exercise their authority and 
 office, which they have received from God, over 
 everyone." 9 
 
 The range of thought in the "Address to the 
 German Nobility" is limited of course by the 
 matter in hand. We should not look here for any 
 program of reconstruction for the church. Re- 
 construction was far from Luther's mind. 
 Priests, bishops and pope might all remain if 
 only they would keep within the bounds set by 
 the Gospel. All that he wished was reformation. 
 Nor may we expect to find a reasoned definition 
 
 8 WA, vi, 412. 
 9 WA, vi, 413. 
 
82 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 of the universal priesthood, and the methods of 
 its application to every phase of life. What we 
 have is a considered statement of what its effect 
 should be upon one class of Christians, the secular 
 rulers, and some general intimations of its ef- 
 fects upon all. 
 
 The rulers as rulers were ordained by God ac- 
 cording to the Scriptures and had as their duty 
 to punish the evil and protect the good. But 
 when in addition to being rulers they were also 
 Christians and therefore shared equally, neither 
 more nor less, with all other Christians the re- 
 sponsibility for the welfare for the whole body, 
 their conduct as rulers was to be dominated by 
 their Christian duties, and their action in particu- 
 lar events to be guided by the needs of the church. 
 In their case certainly, and in the case of all 
 Christians by implication, Luther asserts that 
 the universal priesthood of believers shall not be 
 a purely religious concept having reference only 
 to man's relation to God, but shall be carried into 
 all the activities of life. 
 
 Just what share in the church life should be 
 accorded to other members Luther does not tell 
 us here, for the matter was not in his mind. As 
 we have just said, he was not planning to erect 
 a new church but to alter the old one, and to alter 
 it, we may add, no more than was absolutely re- 
 quired. But from intimations here and in other 
 of his writings of this period we can gather what 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY S3 
 
 seems to have been in his mind in a more or less 
 unformed state, namely, that normally and prop- 
 erly the members of a congregation were bound 
 to judge of doctrine, had the right and the duty 
 to call and dismiss their pastors, exercise disci- 
 pline as enjoined in the Gospel (Matt, xviii), 
 and generally to control and manage their own 
 congregational affairs, and if circumstances ren- 
 dered this impossible any organization or form 
 of government might be accepted provided the 
 Gospel was preached in its purity. It does not 
 seem to have occurred to him that there was any 
 inconsistency in calling upon the secular rulers 
 to reform religion and manners and committing 
 the same task to the individual congregations. 
 He did not picture to himself a church in which 
 the members would quarrel about their several 
 rights, but one in which all would be moved by 
 a common Christian love and sense of duty. 
 
 In the "Address to the Nobility" we find the 
 statement "and so we learn definitely from the 
 Apostle [Paul] that the procedure in Christen- 
 dom should be that every town choose from the 
 congregation a pious and learned citizen, to whom 
 the pastoral office is committed, who is supported 
 by the congregation, and at liberty to marry or 
 remain single as he will, also that he shall have 
 associated with him several priests or deacons, 
 married or single as they will, to assist in the 
 government of the masses and the congregation 
 
34 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 by preaching and administering the sacrament." 10 
 In the "Exposition of Psalm CX" he expresses 
 the same idea: 
 
 "So you see each individual Christian possesses 
 and exercises such priestly offices. But apart 
 from this there is also the communal office which 
 cares for the furtherance and advancement of 
 teaching. For this pastors and preachers are 
 necessary. For it is impossible for everyone in 
 a congregation to expect to exercise this office, 
 just as it is not convenient to baptize and dispense 
 the sacrament of the Supper in any and every 
 house. For this reason a few must be chosen and 
 ordained to preach well and to busy themselves 
 with the Holy Scriptures so that they may prop- 
 erly exercise the office of teacher and defend the 
 doctrines, as well as dispense the sacraments for 
 the congregation." 11 
 
 In the treatise on the "Babylonian Captivity" 
 of the same year we read: "They [the priests] 
 have no right of government over us except in so 
 far as we allow it of our own free will. . . . And 
 therefore as many as are Christians are also 
 priests, and those whom we call priests are min- 
 isters chosen by us who do all things in our name 
 and whose priesthood is nothing but a minis- 
 try." 12 "And therefore, everyone that calls him- 
 
 10 WA, vi, 440. 
 
 11 Quoted from Richter, Geschichte der evangelischen 
 Kirchenverfassung, 14. 
 
 12 WA, vi, 564. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 35 
 
 self a Christian should be assured, and should 
 consider the matter very seriousfy, that we are 
 all equally priests, that is to say, that we have 
 equal authority in the matter of the word of God 
 and of the several sacraments. At the same time 
 it is behooving that individuals do not exercise 
 this authority except with the approval of the 
 congregation or the call of superiors. For what 
 belongs to all in common cannot be appropriated 
 to himself by anyone until he has been called 
 thereto." 13 Other passages of similar import 
 may be found scattered through Luther's ser- 
 mons and other writings of this period. 
 
 In the year 1523 he published two well con- 
 sidered treatises dealing with the limitations of 
 the power of the secular authority on the one 
 hand and the rights of congregations on the 
 other. The first bears the title "Concerning Sec- 
 ular Authority, How Far Should It Be Obeyed." 
 Christians, Luther tells us, that is to say, rightly 
 believing Christians, for many that have been 
 baptized do not deserve the name and are not to 
 be included, do not require the supervision of the 
 secular authority, but are governed by the law 
 of Christ. If all were truly Christian there would 
 be no need of civil government at all. Neverthe- 
 less the Christian is to submit to it as a work of 
 love, and for the sake of the others among whom 
 he lives and for whom the secular authority exists. 
 
 13 WA, vi, 566. 
 
36 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 But there is one department of life in which the 
 civil ruler should not interfere, and where he 
 should not be obeyed if he does, namely the 
 spiritual. Secular authority does not extend to 
 the hearts and souls of its subjects. "That be- 
 longs to God alone; therefore, in matters per- 
 taining to the soul's salvation nothing should be 
 taught or received except God's Word." 14 
 
 Faith is the affair of the individual, "And there- 
 fore every one is responsible for his own faith, 
 and must himself see to it that he believes aright." 
 The secular authority should not interfere, for it 
 has no power in such matters, but should allow 
 every one "to believe this or that, as he can or 
 will, and force no one. For faith is free and no 
 one can be forced to it." 15 For the same reason 
 rulers should not attempt to suppress heresy for 
 it is also a spiritual thing and must be fought 
 with spiritual weapons alone. If, however, the 
 secular authority does attempt to interfere in the 
 religious life, and, for instance, demands the sur- 
 render of the Bible, as some Catholic princes were 
 doing, they are not to be obeyed, but to be told 
 "It behooves not Lucifer to sit beside God. Sire, 
 I owe you obedience with body and goods, com- 
 mand me according to the measure of your 
 earthly power and I will obey. But if you com- 
 mand my faith and demand my books I will not 
 
 14 WA, xi, 263. 
 
 15 WA, xi, 264. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 87 
 
 obey, for then you are a tyrant, and demand too 
 much, and command what you have not the right 
 or power to command." If after this the prince 
 uses force, the Christian is to suffer in patience, 
 thanking God that he has been found worthy of 
 suffering for the Word. Moreover, "if thou dost 
 not withstand him, or if thou dost give him lib- 
 erty to take thy faith or thy books, then truly 
 thou hast denied God." "Not a leaf, not a letter 
 is to be surrendered." 16 
 
 This definite reference to his translation of the 
 Bible is particularly illuminating, for it tells us 
 at once that Luther did not fall into the mistake 
 of thinking that a man might exercise his faith 
 in God without obtruding it upon the world about 
 him. On the contrary, he recognized that the ac- 
 ceptance of the Gospel would necessarily bring in 
 its train outward acts which might be in conflict 
 with secular laws, and demanded with no uncer- 
 tain voice that the rulers refrain from interfer- 
 ence in such matters and that their Christian 
 subjects refuse obedience if they interfere. 
 
 Rieker 17 endeavors to weaken the force of the 
 statements in this treatise by saying that it was 
 written by Luther in view of the suppression of 
 his translation of the Bible by some Catholic 
 princes, and that we are not justified, therefore, 
 in applying its arguments to a condition of affairs 
 
 18 WA, xi, 267. 
 17 P. 60. 
 
38 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 where the prince and the congregation were both 
 of the reformed faith. It is true that the treatise 
 was called forth by just this condition of affairs, 
 but the advocacy of the rights and duties of con- 
 gregations is so consistent with Luther's funda- 
 mental principle of the universal priesthood of 
 all believers and so consonant with what he says 
 on the same subject when there was no such par- 
 ticular occasion that it is impossible to follow 
 Rieker in the conclusions he draws. Rieker bases 
 the argument of his own scholarly work on 
 Luther's "Address to the German Nobility," but 
 he neglects to point out that this too was an oc- 
 casional work called forth by the necessity &f. find- 
 ing some one to undertake the task of reforma- 
 tion which the Roman hierarchy refused. All of 
 Luther's writings could be discounted in the same 
 way and for the same reason. 
 
 The fact that Luther, in the book "On Secular 
 Authority," denies to civil rulers any part in the 
 suppression of heresy shows that he had done 
 what the tone of the whole work implies, namely, 
 raised himself above the single problem afforded 
 by the opposition to the use of his Bible, and, as 
 far as possible, dealt with the larger problem of 
 the limitations of the civil ruler in respect to re- 
 ligious matters objectively. Rieker's further dis- 
 paraging remark to the effect that the treatise 
 contains none of the great reformatory ideas 
 simply shows that he does not appreciate it. Nor 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 39 
 
 is this surprising, for his whole book is a defence 
 of the system in which the church is subordinated 
 and subjected to the state. But it is important 
 for several reasons to note that what Luther is 
 arguing for is nothing less than religious liberty. 
 We dare not say the separation of church and 
 state, for Luther had no conception of the state 
 as we know it. His statement that there would 
 be no need of civil government if all were Chris- 
 tians is sufficient to prove this. But he did see 
 that religion pertains to the individual and that 
 no power has any right or should claim any right 
 forcibly to interfere with it. 
 
 The other treatise of this year enlightens us 
 still further concerning what Christians may 
 rightly claim to be within their own jurisdiction. 
 It bears the very descriptive title, "Proof and 
 Reason from the Scriptures that a Christian As- 
 sembly or Congregation Has the Right and 
 Power to Judge All Doctrines, to Call, Install 
 and Dismiss Teachers." It was occasioned by a 
 request from the little town of Leisnig that 
 Luther aid them in their work of reform by "for- 
 tifying the pastoral office with a writing." It is 
 therefore, as its editor in the Weimar Edition of 
 Luther's works reminds us, "A tentative sketch 
 for the constitution of a congregation not of the 
 church. The inalienable rights of the congrega- 
 tion are opposed to the historic rights of the 
 patron." 18 
 
 18 WA, xi, 401. 
 
40 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 In it he defines a Christian congregation as an 
 assembly in which the pure Gospel is preached. 
 No bishop, abbot, priest, emperor or other author- 
 ity is necessary to its existence or continuance. 
 On the contrary, in the congregation itself is 
 vested the right, and upon it lies the duty, of 
 judging doctrine and of supplying proper 
 preaching and the administration of the sacra- 
 ments. The persons chosen for this office act in 
 the name of and for the congregation, every 
 member of which has an equal right and duty to 
 care for the spiritual well being. 
 
 This Luther considers the normal or, perhaps 
 we should say, the ideal condition. But he con- 
 templates also congregations and individual 
 Christians in other circumstances. For instance, 
 if bishops were genuine, Christian bishops, sit- 
 ting in the places of the Apostles and not that 
 of the devil, they might induct pastors, but even 
 then only after these had been chosen and called 
 by the congregation. Again, where there is need, 
 no call or appointment is necessary. The indi- 
 vidual Christian amid heathen and unbelievers is 
 inwardly called and anointed by God to teach 
 the truth; and even among Christians he may, 
 uncalled by men, step forward and teach where 
 he sees that the preacher is in error, provided all 
 is done decently and in order. "For in time of 
 such need (when souls are in danger through 
 being denied God's Word), each and every one 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 41 
 
 may not only procure a preacher either by peti- 
 tion or the authority of the civil authority, but 
 is himself bound to run to the front and teach. 
 For need is need and knows no law, just as when 
 there is a fire in a town every one ought to run 
 and do what he can without waiting for an in- 
 vitation." 19 
 
 In a letter to the Senate and people of Prague 
 of the same year Luther again argues that every 
 Christian has an equal right to preach and ad- 
 minister the sacraments and may do so in case 
 of necessity, but for the sake of order and con- 
 venience in every community one or more should 
 be "chosen or accepted to exercise this right in 
 the name and place of all, who nevertheless have 
 the same right." For this reason the serious 
 minded Christians, those "whose hearts God has 
 touched," even though they form only a minority, 
 should come together voluntarily and elect their 
 pastors and bishops, and these in turn may also 
 come together and elect one or more of their 
 number to be archbishops whose duty shall be 
 "to serve and visit them as Peter visited the 
 churches in the Acts of the Apostles. In this 
 way Bohemia may return again to the evangelical 
 archiepiscopate which is rich, not in rents and 
 property, but in much service and visiting the 
 churches." 30 
 
 1B WA, xi, 414. 
 20 WA, xii, 198 f. 
 
42 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 It is obvious from these references, which could 
 easily be multiplied, that Luther was quite alive 
 to the far reaching effect of the doctrine of the 
 priesthood of all believers upon the organization 
 of the church. Instead of an authority all but 
 absolute exercised by one man, the pope, through 
 the bishops and priests over all Christians in re- 
 ligious matters, there should be no authority 
 whatever, or rather there can be no authority but 
 Christ. 21 Priests and bishops are not to be re- 
 garded as superiors, but as servants and officials, 
 for they are no higher or better than other Chris- 
 tians and therefore may not make laws or "lay 
 commands upon others without their will and per- 
 mission." 22 This is fundamental. Any rule or 
 regiment in the church, to use Luther's own word, 
 must be based upon the consent of those ruled. 
 They had the right to choose their own pastor 
 and preacher, and to dismiss him ; or if he came 
 to them through a patron they had the right to 
 refuse to receive him. The church was to be or- 
 ganized from the bottom up. 
 
 What Luther said in words was soon translated 
 into fact. Individual congregations began to or- 
 ganize along these lines. In Wittenberg itself 
 the congregation and council united in calling 
 Bugenhagen. In Hamburg the congregation 
 acted without the council. In Orlamund, coun- 
 
 21 WA, xi, 270. 
 22 WA, xi, 271. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 43 
 
 cil and congregation called Carlstadt without the 
 previous consent of the patron. Examples might 
 be multiplied. One of the most interesting of 
 these experiments was that of the little town of 
 Leisnig, for its constitution was approved by the 
 Reformer and commended to others as a model. 23 
 Here men and women bound themselves together 
 by a vow to lead Christian lives and to establish 
 a system of church discipline which was to be 
 enforced by the congregation and the civil magis- 
 trate. They announced their freedom to call, 
 install and depose their own pastors, and ordered 
 a common treasury to be under the control of ten 
 men elected at an annual meeting, "two of whom 
 were to be noblemen, two from the ruling council, 
 three from the common citizens of the town, and 
 three from the peasants on the land," 24 a truly 
 representative body. 
 
 In Magdeburg similar action was taken in the 
 following year, 1524. The congregation did not 
 wish to undertake the duties of self-government, 
 and so asked the council for its aid, with the re- 
 sult that elders were appointed from the council 
 and a committee from the congregation, upon 
 whom, acting together, was laid the duty of judg- 
 ing doctrine, calling pastors and otherwise gov- 
 erning the congregation. 25 In the first church 
 
 23 DeWette, Luthers Brief e, ii, 379. 
 M Sehling, Kirchenordnungen, i, 598. 
 25 Sehling, Kirchenordnungen, ii, 448 f. 
 
44 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 order of Prussia, 1525, 26 discipline was placed in 
 the hands of the congregation, and in the Land 
 Law 27 of the same year the congregation was 
 given a considerable share in the calling of pas- 
 tors. But by far the most pretentious and famous 
 of all such attempts was that undertaken in the 
 Duchy of Hesse. 
 
 After the Diet of Spires, 1526, at which the 
 regulation of religion in the several German prin- 
 cipalities had been left in the hands of the princes, 
 and so all obstructions to the reorganization of 
 the church removed, steps were taken to apply 
 Protestant principles on a larger scale. Philip 
 of Hesse, infamous on account of his bigamy, but 
 nevertheless one of the truest friends of Protes- 
 tantism and one of the wisest rulers of his day, 
 was the first to make the attempt. A council 
 was called, modelled, it was claimed, upon the 
 New Testament practice. Not only the clergy 
 but also representatives of the nobility and towns 
 were summoned and full liberty of speech guar- 
 anteed. After debate it was decided to adopt the 
 Protestant faith and a constitution for the new 
 church was prepared reflecting the spirit of its 
 doctrines. The cornerstone of the new structure 
 was to be the congregation of true believers, that 
 is to say, of those who, after the preaching of the 
 true Gospel for a considerable period, should show 
 
 28 Sehling, Kirchenordnungen, iv, SO ff. 
 27 Sehling, Kirchenordnungen, iv, 88. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 45 
 
 by confession and manner of life that they were 
 serious in their profession. 
 
 To this conventus fidelium, to which women 
 also were admitted, was committed the manage- 
 ment of the church in general. Acting as a body 
 or through officials appointed by them, pastor, 
 elders and deacons, they were to have charge of 
 the teaching, church discipline, care of the poor, 
 reception of persecuted fugitives from other 
 lands, the material property of the church, etc. 
 These congregations were then to be united in 
 one national church by the establishment of a 
 general synod which was to meet annually and 
 be composed of the pastors, one delegate from 
 each congregation and the nobility. To this body 
 was committed the general administration of the 
 church with the proviso that the Scriptures were 
 to be the only law and norm. A committee of 
 the synod should have power to act for it between 
 its sessions, and three visitors were charged with 
 the duty of examining pastors and inspecting the 
 churches. Provision was also made for the erec- 
 tion of a Protestant university at Marburg and 
 of junior schools in every town and village. And 
 finally, recognizing that the constitution could 
 not be put into operation until the congregations 
 were instructed in the Word of God, it was de- 
 cided to leave the appointment of pastors in the 
 hands of the reigning prince and the visitors for 
 one year, by which time the congregations would 
 
46 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 be sufficiently trained in the Gospel to take over 
 the duty themselves. 
 
 This plan, for it was only a plan, is obviously 
 in accord with the principles advocated by 
 Luther, and as his "German Mass" had been 
 published a few months earlier a direct connec- 
 tion between them cannot be doubted. Other in- 
 fluences have been sought, and perhaps cannot 
 be denied. Francis Lambert, one of the most 
 'influential members of the council, was a French- 
 man, a Franciscan and acquainted with both the 
 Zwinglian and Lutheran movements. Phihp 
 himself was also in touch with movements in the 
 south and west. 28 But this simply shows that as 
 the religious conceptions of Protestants were 
 everywhere fundamentally the same, so also their 
 application to the organization of congregations 
 and churches was practically identical. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, the plan was not 
 to be put into operation. For Philip of Hesse, 
 before publishing the draft or giving it his 
 sanction, which of course was requisite under 
 the terms of the Diet of Spires, asked the 
 opinion of Luther and received in reply the 
 advice that he should neither sanction the plan 
 nor allow it to be printed. As might be ex- 
 
 28 German scholars differ widely in attempting to explain 
 the origin of the plan, ascribing it to the influence of Luther, 
 the Spiritual Franciscans, the Waldenses, Wycliff, the Bo- 
 hemian Brethren, the Swiss Reformation and others, RE, 
 viii, 294. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 47 
 
 pected, Luther does not object either to the 
 principles of the plan or to the plan itself, but 
 he thinks it is not suitable to the present condition 
 of affairs. He commends to the Landgraf the 
 laws of Moses of which almost the majority were 
 derived from custom, and urges that a beginning 
 be made in a small way by training a few pastors 
 and small groups of individuals with the aid of 
 simple means or "a little book," such as was used 
 in connection with the Visitation in Saxony, in 
 the expectation that the movement so begun 
 should of itself call into being the institutions 
 provided for in the plan. 29 
 
 The result was that the plan was never put 
 into operation nor even published until modem 
 times. The organization of the church in Hesse 
 followed the line laid down by Electoral Saxony 
 for the most part. The University of Marburg 
 came into being almost immediately as the first 
 Protestant university of Germany, and a few 
 years later the congregations were given a pres- 
 byterial organization, which though falling short 
 of the ideal of the plan served to keep alive the 
 ideals of Luther and the Reformation generally, 
 and had considerable influence upon other Ger- 
 man churches. 
 
 But how did it come about that Luther appar- 
 ently changed front and gave up his earlier ideals 
 as soon as an attempt was made to put them into 
 
 29 Letter of Jan. 7, 1527. 
 
48 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 actual practice? To this the answer is not hard 
 to find. In the first place Luther did not give 
 up his ideals, but, as his letter to the Landgraf 
 Philip shows, only doubted their applicability to 
 the Germany of that time. The introduction to 
 his "Deutsche Messe" (1526) is particularly in- 
 structive at this point, for it shows both that he 
 still adhered to his former ideals and that he had 
 given up hope of seeing them realized at present. 
 It was in this year that the Recess of Spires 
 made it legally possible for princes of the Empire 
 to organize state churches on other than Roman 
 Catholic lines and therefore any statement of the 
 champion of the new faith on this subject might 
 be expected to exercise a particular and imme- 
 diate influence. Moreover, there was real need 
 for some authoritative statement on the subject 
 of the services and liturgy of the new churches. 
 The greatest variety was noticeable in the de- 
 grees of variation from the Roman mass, in 
 respect to language, vestments, singing, the ad- 
 ministration of the sacraments and indeed in al- 
 most everything. 
 
 Luther's "Deutsche Messe" was his answer to 
 numerous appeals for advice in the matter. He 
 disclaims any desire to dictate, declares as often 
 elsewhere that most of the matters in dispute are 
 unimportant, and that uniformity is by no means 
 necessary, though it is advisable for the churches 
 in each state to observe uniform usages; and he 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 49 
 
 then proceeds to describe the services appropriate 
 for the new faith. In the first place he would 
 retain the Latin service, for, Latin being the 
 language of students and of international com- 
 munications, many would profit from it who 
 could not understand the vernacular. In the sec- 
 ond place there should be a German mass mod- 
 elled on the old Latin service. In this he advises 
 the retention, for the present, of the vestments, 
 altar, altar fights, the elevation of the host and 
 many other characteristics of the old church, 
 among them the singing of the Epistle, the Gos- 
 pel and the Collects, though to new melodies. 
 "These services," he says, "are for the edification 
 of the youth and the incitement of the simple 
 and careless who are to be found in the majority 
 everywhere. They should, therefore, be as public 
 as possible. For this is not an ordered and con- 
 stant assembly wherein Christians may be gov- 
 erned according to the Gospel; but is a public 
 incitement to faith and to Christianity." 30 In 
 other words, these services had as their sole pur- 
 pose the proclamation of the Gospel, and had 
 nothing to do with the mutual edification of 
 Christians, with church discipline or with church 
 government. 
 
 But Luther by no means lost sight of these 
 matters, for he proceeds immediately to say: 
 "But the third form, which a proper kind of 
 
 80 WA, six, 74. 
 
50 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 evangelical order should have, ought not to be 
 held in public before all kinds of people; but 
 those who earnestly desire to be Christians and 
 confess the Gospel in word and deed should enrol 
 themselves by name and gather together by 
 themselves somewhere or other in a house, to 
 pray, read, baptize, receive the sacrament and 
 perform other Christian duties. By means of 
 this order it would be possible to find out, punish, 
 correct, expel and excommunicate those that did 
 not behave as Christians, according to the law 
 of Christ, Matt, xviii. A common fund also could 
 be raised by levy here among the Christians for 
 distribution among the poor, after the example 
 of St. Paul, II Cor. ix. In this service not so 
 much emphasis need be laid upon the singing, 
 but baptism and the sacrament [of the Lord's 
 Supper] could be celebrated with brief, graceful 
 ['feine'] ceremony, and all be directed toward 
 the Word, prayer and love. There should be a 
 good short Catechism dealing with the Creed, 
 the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer. 
 In short, if one only had the people and the in- 
 dividuals that desired earnestly to be Christians 
 the order and forms could soon be prepared. But 
 I have not been able to institute or organize such 
 a congregation or assembly as yet, for I have 
 not suitable people or individuals for it, nor do 
 I see many anxious for it. 
 
 "If, however, the time comes that I ought to 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 51 
 
 do it and am so forced thereto that I cannot con- 
 scientiously refrain, I will willingly play my part 
 and help to the best of my ability. But just now 
 I will abide by the two forms given above and 
 help to promote publicly among the people such 
 a form of service as will edify the youth, and call 
 and incite the others to faith, as well as the 
 preaching, until such time as those Christians 
 who are serious in their profession assume this 
 of themselves and govern themselves in such 
 manner that the result will not be such discord 
 ['Rotterei'] as I would like to be able to forget. 
 For we Germans are a wild, rough, restless peo- 
 ple among whom it is not easy to introduce any- 
 thing new even in case of the gravest need." 
 
 What Luther outlines here is identical, as far 
 as it goes, with the constitution proposed for the 
 church in Hesse, and as the "German Mass" was 
 published before the Synod of Homberg met it 
 must be regarded as one of the influences that 
 guided that assembly. It is also clearly quite 
 consistent with his earlier writings. The distinc- 
 tion between those that take their Christian pro- 
 fession seriously and the other baptized members 
 of the church is not new, for his earlier writings 
 abound with passages in which the "rightly be- 
 lieving" are contrasted with the masses. The 
 proposed commission of discipline and the inner 
 government of the church generally to the former 
 is therefore only a more formal and definite state- 
 
52 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 ment of the principle enunciated in the church 
 ordinance of Leisnig and elsewhere. 31 It is sim- 
 ply a more exact definition of the congregation, 
 and it deserves all the more consideration because 
 of this, and also because it was Luther's last and 
 best considered attempt to provide his church 
 with a constitution in keeping with its religious 
 principles. 
 
 It is only another indication of Rieker's in- 
 ability to appreciate Luther's vision of a church 
 in whch every serious minded Christian, actuated 
 by a high sense of his direct responsibility to 
 God, should share equally with all other Chris- 
 tians in its care and government, when he says 32 
 that this proposed third order is not really ex- 
 pressive of Luther's views but rather sectarian, 
 temporary and fleeting, and in particular that 
 it is borrowed from the Anabaptists, who ex- 
 cluded from their fellowship all except the faith- 
 ful. On the contrary, if there is any place where 
 we may hope to find Luther's mature thought 
 on the matter it is in his "German Mass." The 
 subject matter, both as regards the organization 
 of the congregation and the liturgical form of 
 
 31 So also Boehmer, Luther im Lichte der neueren Forsch- 
 ung, 169, who, however, thinks that Luther did not insist 
 upon the organization of the churches on these lines be- 
 cause he believed the end of the world was at hand. Luther's 
 own explanation, namely, that he could not find suitable 
 people, is simpler and quite adequate. 
 
 32 P. 76 ff. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 53 
 
 the services, had been in his mind for years, 33 and 
 what he here presented to his church, he wrote 
 with full realization of the importance that would 
 attach to it. Moreover, the Peasants' War was 
 over and the Anabaptists suppressed for the pres- 
 ent. Their doctrines and practices were well 
 known and had been roundly condemned by 
 Luther, so that if he here enjoins a form of con- 
 gregational government which in some points re- 
 sembles that of the Anabaptists it cannot be be- 
 cause he is under their influence, but rather be- 
 cause he considers it too important for his own 
 reform to be surrendered to the enemy. 
 
 So far, therefore, from regarding this as be- 
 low the level of Lutheran thought and as 
 containing no principle of genuine evangelical 
 church government, it should be looked upon, as 
 Richter says, 34 as a melancholy reminiscence of 
 what might have been. In other words, this is 
 a sad confession by Luther that he has found it 
 impossible to carry through his reform as he 
 thinks it should be done, and at the same time 
 a word of direction to the church which he has 
 called into being pointing it to the path it should 
 follow when it has gathered strength for the task. 
 But on the other hand, Rieker's estimate of the 
 passage expresses the real thought of the Luth- 
 eran church. For the Lutheran church has re- 
 
 83 Sec the Introduction in WA, xix, 44 ff. 
 
 84 P. 26. 
 
54 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 mained in the unfinished condition outlined in the 
 "German Mass," a teaching church, proclaiming 
 the gospel of salvation to all, but without congre- 
 gational self-government or congregational life. 
 As Von Zezschwitz analyzes it, "It is funda- 
 mental to the Lutheran idea of church and doc- 
 trine that in any community, the larger the better, 
 greater weight is laid upon proffering the pure 
 word of God and the sacrament as means of eter- 
 nal salvation even though much weakness, sin and 
 error on the part of the members must thereby 
 v be endured, rather than that all the members of 
 the community should be conscious and approved 
 members of the confessional church." 35 Such a 
 state of affairs is of course quite well known else- 
 where, but it is contrary to the ideals of the 
 Calvinistic churches, which, along with the proc- 
 lamation of the Gospel, regard it as of prime 
 importance to care for the edification and con- 
 stant growth of all the members. 
 
 As Professor Sehling puts it, "The idea of the 
 church among Calvinists differs from that among 
 Lutherans in the first place in this, that the Luth- 
 eran church is an institution for the proclamation 
 of the Gospel, the Calvinistic church is a school 
 of the saints ['Heiligunganstalt']." 36 That 
 Luther had this latter also in mind for his church 
 is obvious from the "German Mass," and that 
 
 36 Quoted by Rieker, 77. 
 
 36 Geschichte der protestantischen Kirchenverfassung, 40. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 55 
 
 he despaired of introducing it for a time does 
 not detract from its importance in estimating his 
 ideals. But that the churches called after his 
 name allowed four centuries to elapse without 
 answering his challenge to a higher and freer 
 congregational life, and that some of their dis- 
 tinguished memhers deny that it really embodies 
 his thought is indeed a cause for wonder. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The Abandonment of Congregational Self- 
 Government 
 
 As has been said, in consenting to and advising 
 the organization of churches on a basis other than 
 that advocated in his writings, where the rights 
 and duties of the individual Christian had been 
 recognized, Luther did not give up his earlier 
 ideal, but only confessed that it could not be put 
 into practice immediately. This, however, in it- 
 self, is a change of so much importance in the 
 history of the Lutheran church and of Germany 
 in general that it is worth while to point out what 
 forces were at work, and what events occurred 
 to bring it about. 
 
 First of all there was the great outstanding 
 fact of the existing union of church and state. 
 Since the days of Constantine, and more par- 
 ticularly after Charlemagne, there had been 
 going on a process of blending which by the six- 
 teenth century was so nearly complete that the 
 idea of a separation of the two as it had existed 
 in the earliest Christian centuries, or exists today, 
 occurred to no one either Protestant or Catholic. 
 Each had its own organization and officials and 
 
 56 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 57 
 
 its own sphere of activity, but the people over 
 whom they ruled were the same in either case, 
 and the two jurisdictions complemented each 
 other in such fashion that the suppression of 
 either would have affected seriously the social 
 organism. The church claimed, and as a rule 
 exercised, full power over a certain class of peo- 
 ple in all matters, and over all people in some 
 matters. The state, at least in theory, was in- 
 ferior to and subordinate to the church from 
 which it derived its power, recognized its juris- 
 diction and enforced its judgments. 
 
 At the same time the changes of the preceding 
 century had all been in favor of the state as 
 against the church. The church was believed to 
 be rotten in head and members and badly in need 
 of reform. Its courts were corrupt and its laws 
 actuated by selfish and material motives. At- 
 tempts to reform it by conciliar action had failed, 
 leaving the papacy apparently in a stronger posi- 
 tion than ever; but in reality the dissatisfaction 
 was only increased, and the individual nations 
 forced to defend what they considered their lib- 
 erties and rights. 
 
 Coincident with this came a development of 
 national sentiment and of national organization. 
 The standard of intelligence and education was 
 rising. Vernacular literatures appeared. People 
 became more vividly conscious of the homeland 
 and proportionately careless of the international 
 
58 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 states called the church and the empire. A new 
 theory of the state was growing up, and with it 
 more adequate machinery for accomplishing its 
 purposes. The loose bond of feudal times with 
 its mutual personal obligations was giving way 
 to a conception of the civil government which 
 laid upon rulers the duty of caring for the life 
 and welfare of their subjects and the right of 
 interfering wherever they thought necessary. 
 Machiavelli had already pictured the state com- 
 plete in itself, in which the individual disappears 
 in the political whole, the national army ensures 
 peace at home and victory abroad, and morality 
 is subordinated to political expediency. 
 
 These influences did not make themselves felt 
 in Germany to the- same extent as in some other 
 countries, but their presence is evident in the 
 gradual loosening of the imperial authority and 
 the corresponding strengthening of the individual 
 princes and states. Engaged as he was in avoid- 
 ing conflicts or repelling attacks by the Turks, 
 the French and the papacy, the emperor was less 
 able than ever to keep his German vassals in 
 check. On the contrary, it was necessary for 
 him to have their undivided support for the suc- 
 cessful propagation of his foreign policy ; and for 
 this reason he was forced to close his eyes to the 
 many indications of a growing independence, 
 among which is to be reckoned the ardent support 
 of Luther and the Lutheran teachings. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 59 
 
 As for the German princes themselves, they 
 were conscious of their own power, and prepared 
 by experience to interfere in matters which, ac- 
 cording to Canon Law, pertained solely to the 
 church. As advocates of the church (advocati 
 ecclesiae) and patrons of ecclesiastical founda- 
 tions they had considerable to do with the con- 
 duct of ecclesiastical matters and particularly 
 with the appointment of bishops and other offi- 
 cials. As territorial sovereigns they did not hesi- 
 tate at times to restrict the jurisdiction of the 
 church courts and the activity of the clergy gen- 
 erally. Frederick the Wise had forbidden the 
 sale of indulgences before Luther published his 
 theses, and a little later the nobility presented 
 to the pope a list of one hundred grievances with 
 the threat that if he did not remedy them they 
 themselves would take the matter in hand. In 
 this way the path was prepared for the peculiar 
 course the Reformation followed in Germany, a 
 church that had lost the confidence of all classes 
 and would do nothing to improve conditions, an 
 emperor compelled by political expediency to 
 acquiesce in the practical independence of his 
 princely vassals, and a group of territorial rulers 
 whose position was becoming constantly stronger, 
 determined to have a reform of ecclesiastical mat- 
 ters even though they themselves had to bring 
 it about. 
 
 To this must be added Luther's fiery "Address 
 
60 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 to the Nobility," in which he demolished the wall 
 behind which the ecclesiastics had taken shelter 
 and which no one hitherto had dared to storm, 
 namely, the divine right of the church. The 
 nobles were told that they were equally priests 
 with the popes and bishops, and equally responsi- 
 ble as Christians for the welfare of the church. 
 Nay, more, the divine right which Luther took 
 from the church he transferred to the civil rulers, 
 telling them and their subjects, in the words of 
 St. Paul, that the powers that be are ordained 
 of God and that opposition to the rulers, even 
 though they be tyrannical and unjust, is both 
 crime against the state and sin against God. 
 
 This explains, therefore, how it could happen 
 when Luther's case came before the Imperial 
 Diet that the German princes refused simply to 
 execute the papal judgment, as they were re- 
 quired to do by Canon Law, and insisted upon 
 looking into the matter themselves, and that when 
 the imperial ban had been added to that of the 
 pope, it was not and could not be enforced in 
 many of the states. The princes were conscious 
 of their independent strength and exercised it, 
 with the result that Germany was on the verge 
 of civil war when its united energy was necessary 
 to repel foreign foes. It was in the midst of such 
 circumstances, and because of them, that at the 
 Diet of Spires in 1526 it was unanimously agreed 
 that "every state shall so live, rule and believe 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 61 
 
 as it may hope and trust to answer before God 
 and his imperial majesty," until such time as the 
 whole religious situation should be reviewed by 
 a general council. From the standpoint of the 
 empire and the church this was only a temporary 
 measure, a makeshift to tide things over until a 
 more favorable opportunity for suppressing the 
 new doctrines, and by no means an annulment of 
 the edict of Worms. But to the Lutheran princes 
 and cities it was their legal justification for the 
 recognition and establishment of the Protestant 
 faith. To them, and to them alone, had been 
 committed the jus reformandi religionem, a right 
 which they have never surrendered, and which 
 led to the formulation of the historic principle 
 cujus regio, ejus religio. 
 
 Within a few months Philip of Hesse called 
 together the Council of Homberg of which we 
 have just heard; and a little later the Elector, 
 John of Saxony, ordered a visitation of the 
 churches in his territory, thereby laying the 
 foundations of a church organization that became 
 normative for other Protestant states. Looked 
 at from the political standpoint, therefore, it is 
 easy to see by what gradual steps German Prot- 
 estantism fell into the hands of the secular 
 authorities, especially as the sporadic attempts 
 of the Protestant churches to organize on a demo- 
 cratic basis had been, in the opinion of Luther 
 and other reformers, productive of evil. 
 
62 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 It is impossible to tell in detail how each church 
 fared that had been organized on a congrega- 
 tional basis. Many of these more democratic 
 constitutions disappeared almost immediately and 
 were entirely forgotten, being unearthed only 
 within recent years. But sufficient information 
 has come down to us, concerning the difficulties 
 and the excesses unavoidably connected with the 
 quick transition from a despotic to a popular 
 form of church government, to enable us to see 
 why Luther rightly or wrongly after five years 
 experience deemed it expedient to leave that por- 
 tion of the reform to a later and more enlight- 
 ened time. 
 
 No sooner had he denounced the Romish 
 claims to spiritual authority and summoned all 
 Christians as equally entitled to interpret the 
 Word and administer the sacraments to the work 
 of reform, than there came from all quarters, 
 seemingly in obedience to his call, preachers with 
 other and strange ideas which they defended out 
 of his writings, and wished to put into operation 
 immediately. Moreover, it was a grave and le- 
 gitimate question just where the outward reform 
 should begin and with what speed it should be 
 carried through. Many were of the opinion that 
 a clean sweep of all evils and abuses should be 
 made at once. Luther held, on the contrary, that 
 only such changes as were absolutely necessary 
 should be made at the beginning, and that other 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 63 
 
 reformsjwould follow naturally after the preach- 
 ing of the pure~GospeT He roundly condemned 
 the riotous destruction of church property as the 
 work of the devil, 1 and feared that the haste of 
 many to throw off the Romish law was due to 
 love of the belly and material goods. 2 
 
 Luther's own town of Wittenberg with the 
 neighboring villages was the_§cene of one .of the 
 first of these conflicts. It was exceedingly un- 
 fortunate that the first attempt at reconstruction 
 should have taken place during the period of his 
 retreat 4nJiie-W_artbjirg, for no one else under- 
 stood the principles of the new movement so well 
 as he, nor was there any one so well qualified for 
 the role of leader or of mediator between the 
 government and the people. What would have 
 happened had he been at home it is of course im- 
 possible to say, but his absence compelled smaller 
 men to undertake the application of the new 
 principles, and allowed entrance to strange and 
 dangerous teachings. There were many groups 
 of individuals and several bodies vested with 
 some authority, but the only person with any 
 semblance of legal authority over students, citi- 
 zens, guilds, church pastors, university professors 
 and monks was the Elector, and he was very 
 loath to act. 
 
 1 Letters to Melanchthon and Spalatin, DeWette, Luthers 
 Brief e, ii, 7 f., 31. 
 
 2 Letter to Lange, DeWette, ii, 175. 
 
64 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 The result was confusion. Reforms were in- 
 troduced, but too slowly to suit many of the peo- 
 ple. Interruptions of the church services, riotous 
 and destructive demonstrations, and finally a per- 
 emptory demand caused the town council and the 
 religious leaders to lay aside their differences and 
 hasten the outward reforms. Among other 
 things the service of the mass was completely 
 altered, the cup given to the laity, aural confes- 
 sion abolished and images forcibly removed from 
 the churches. This in turn gave offence to the 
 Elector, who had not been consulted. He called 
 the leaders before him, including Melanchthon 
 and Carlstadt, charged them with being the fo- 
 menters of the iconoclastic riots and obtained 
 from them a promise to refrain from such action 
 in the future. This done, he ordered the restora- 
 tion of the Roman mass in its entirety. The 
 leaders felt themselves blocked and unable to 
 cope with the situation any further. They sent 
 an urgent message to Luther telling him what 
 had happened and asking him to return. In spite 
 of the protestations of the Elector, Luther came ~ 
 immediately and threw himself into the struggle 
 with all his strength. A series of vigorous ser- 
 mons preached on successive days soon restored 
 order. He condemned the innovations and the 
 violence of the people on several grounds. In 
 the first place, force should never have been used; 
 the individual citizen has no right to take the law 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 65 
 
 into his own hands. Secondly, the civil author- 
 ity, that is to say, the Elector, should have been 
 consulted and his approval obtained. And 
 thirdly, the proceedings had been too hasty and 
 therefore had given offence to weaker brethren. 
 The last point is the one upon which he dwells. 
 
 Reform was necessary and the changes must 
 come in time. But the way to bring them about 
 was not by violence or force, but by instructing 
 the people in the pure Gospel, after which they 
 would come quietly and of course. Very little 
 was said of obedience to the civil authority. 
 Luther's action on this occasion corresponds en- 
 tirely with his teaching. He abolished most of 
 the innovations made during his absence and gave 
 himself up to instructing the people. After hear- 
 ing him a few days most of the townspeople and 
 others acquiesced in the new arrangement. All 
 the leaders too were apparently content, with the 
 exception of Carlstadt who kept aloof and after 
 a little while withdrew to his farm in the neigh- 
 borhood, where he continued his studies, develop- 
 ing in particular the doctrine of the equality of 
 all Christians, a mystical theory of the interpreta- 
 tion of Scriptures and a view of the Lord's Sup- 
 per with which Luther could not agree. But 
 Luther's plan was not successful. The inhab- 
 itants of Wittenberg never again attempted to 
 take the matter of reform into their own hands, 
 and in 1524 3 he bitterly complains of their con- 
 
 8 Sermon of November 13, WA, xv, 737 f. 
 
66 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 tempt for the Word of God and their lack of 
 Christian love and charity. Whether the apathy 
 was in any way the result of the repression of 
 the first popular movement may remain forever 
 unsettled. 4 The outstanding fact is that Luther 
 refused to lead the people the way they wished 
 to go, and failed to induce them to follow the 
 path he marked out for them. 
 
 With this was closely connected what has been 
 called the Tragedy of Orlamund. The council 
 and congregation of this little town, acting on 
 the principle laid down by Luther, admitted to 
 church meetings all members irrespective of rank, 
 and chose Carlstadt as their pastor, the man who 
 was suspected of developing ideas contrary to the 
 Gospel. This was done with the knowledge and 
 consent of the Elector, but without the consent of 
 the patron, the University of Wittenberg, which, 
 however, was duly notified. They then altered 
 the form of the service and destroyed the images 
 in their church. This whole proceeding was dis- 
 pleasing to Luther, who, in his sermons and writ- 
 ings, let it be clearly seen that he classed the 
 
 4 H. Barge, Andreas Bodenstein von Karhtadt, 1905, de- 
 fends the affirmative, and thinks Carlstadt is to be re- 
 garded as the hero of a movement among the laity com- 
 parable to that in Calvinistic churches j.nd lands and that 
 Luther really blocked the path of progress. Boehmer, 
 Luther im Lichte der neueren Forschung, cannot find any 
 sign of "lay Christianity," but admires the wisdom and abil- 
 ity Luther displayed in bringing order out of confusion and 
 retaining all that was worth while of the recent innovations. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 67 
 
 events at Orlamund with the more violent pro- 
 ceedings of the Anabaptists in the neighboring 
 town of Alstedt. Both were guided, he said, by 
 an evil spirit. "Christ and His Apostles neither 
 broke down churches nor destroyed images, but 
 won the hearts of men with God's Word, and 
 when this was done churches and images fell of 
 themselves." 6 Fortunately there has been pre- 
 served a very dramatic account of the further 
 proceedings from the pen of one of Carlstadt's 
 friends, 6 which tells the story from the stand- 
 point of the Orlamundians and enables us to 
 understand better both the temper of the inde- 
 pendent congregation and Luther's attitude to- 
 ward it. 
 
 As the Orlamundians felt they had nothing in 
 common with the Anabaptists, and had even ex- 
 pressed their disapproval of the proceedings in 
 Alstedt by formally breaking off all connection 
 with that congregation, they naturally felt ag- 
 grieved at Luther's grouping them together, and 
 wrote him just such a letter as might be expected 
 from simple and serious people. They greet him, 
 in the first place, as Christian teacher and brother 
 in Christ, then after stating their grievance de- 
 clare, "You despise all persons who at the com- 
 mand of God destroy dumb idols and heathenish 
 images. You oppose to them a powerless worldly- 
 
 5 WA, xv, 219. 
 6 WA, xv, 341 ff. 
 
68 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 wise and inconsistent argument drawn from your 
 own brain, and not founded upon Scripture. But 
 the fact that you so publicly censure and revile 
 us, who are members of Christ adopted by the 
 Father, unheard and unconvicted, proves that 
 you yourself are no member of this true Christ 
 the Son of God." They then invite him to visit 
 them in order to hear their explanations, and con- 
 clude with a fraternal greeting. 
 
 Luther, who was in the neighboring city of 
 Weimar when the letter reached him, sent word 
 by the messenger that he would come shortly, 
 with the result that the villagers, understanding 
 him to mean the next day, prepared food and 
 drink, and made ready a cordial welcome. 
 Luther, however, did not arrive until a few days 
 later, and coming unexpectedly found the people 
 at work in the fields. As many as possible of the 
 council and the congregation were summoned, 
 however, and did him what honor they could. 
 They greeted him in their best manner, but the 
 writer notes that Luther retained his bonnet on 
 his head and did not return the courtesy. He 
 informed them curtly that he must soon be off 
 again but wished to speak to them indoors. So 
 they went inside and sat and drank while more 
 of the congregation gathered. After a little while 
 the burgomaster invited him to preach to them, 
 on the points in which he said they were wrong, 
 after which they would state their position. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 69 
 
 Luther refused, saying that he had come to speak 
 of the letter, that they were simple people who 
 could not have written it, and asking if Carlstadt 
 were not the real author. This they denied, say- 
 ing he had had nothing whatever to do with it. 
 Thereupon Luther read it and they began to dis- 
 cuss it sentence by sentence, the individual mem- 
 bers of the congregation answering freely and 
 to the point. When Luther objected to their 
 having chosen Carlstadt without the consent of 
 their superiors the treasurer answered, "If Carl- 
 stadt is not our pastor then Paul teaches wrongly 
 and your books must also be wrong." At this 
 point Carlstadt himself entered the room and an 
 interchange of words between him and Luther 
 followed, which led to Luther's declaring that he 
 would leave immediately if Carlstadt did not go. 
 Carlstadt yielded, left the room and the discus- 
 sion was continued. 
 
 Luther denied that he had ever mentioned the 
 congregation of Orlamund in his sermons or 
 writings, to which the secretary answered that 
 he had lumped them together with the fanatics 
 of Alstedt, in his condemnation of all those that 
 destroy images. And to Luther's rejoinder that 
 he had spoken generally and could not help hit- 
 ting them, the secretary added: "Then you have 
 hit us unjustly when you compare us to the fanat- 
 ics." Luther then turned to the general form of 
 the letter, calling it an inimical letter for they had 
 
70 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 omitted his proper title, and after greeting him 
 as a Christian teacher at first, damned him in the 
 middle. On their showing surprise at his so inter- 
 preting it he burst out with "If I had not known 
 before that you were fanatics I do now, for you 
 burn before my eyes like fire. You are not going 
 to eat me, are you?" Then turning to the main 
 point of the dispute he asked where the Bible 
 ordered the destruction of images. This was an- 
 swered with assurance by one of the members 
 of the council: "You will admit, Doctor and 
 Brother, that Moses is an exponent of the ten 
 commandments." "Yes," said Luther. "Well, 
 it is written in the ten commandments Thou shalt 
 have no strange gods, and in the exposition which 
 follows Thou shalt do away with all images and 
 have none." 
 
 The rest of the discussion turned on this point, 
 Luther arguing that only images used for idol- 
 atrous purposes were meant, the villagers that 
 all images were included. A copy of the Bible 
 was brought and appropriate passages found and 
 read. Luther asked for the passage Deut. iv, 19, 
 "And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven 
 and when thou seest the sun and the moon and 
 the stars, even all the host of heaven, thou be 
 drawn away and worship them," and then in- 
 quired, "Why don't you remove them, too?" But 
 the shoemaker was ready with an answer, "Be- 
 cause the stars of heaven are not made by our 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 71 
 
 hands, and hence God has not given them into 
 our power. God has commanded us to remove 
 only images and therefore we should not attempt 
 to do it." 
 
 As no agreement could be reached the meeting 
 broke up in disorder, Luther again complaining 
 "You have damned me" and the shoemaker an- 
 swering "Yes, and you will be damned, I hold 
 you and any one like you to be damned so long 
 as he speaks against God and God's truth." As 
 Luther hastened to his carriage they called after 
 him to explain his doctrine of the sacraments, for 
 they had not found his writings satisfactory. 
 Later he said he was glad to have escaped with- 
 out a shower of stones and mud. 
 
 One gets the impression in reading the story 
 that these villagers were serious minded, deter- 
 mined men, eager for instruction and capable of 
 learning, excellent material altogether for a coun- 
 try church; and that Luther showed little or no 
 tact in handling a delicate situation. If there 
 had been any chance of reconciliation before, it 
 was shattered by Luther's analysis of the situa- 
 tion in his work "Against the Heavenly Proph- 
 ets," 7 in which, not altogether in keeping with 
 the facts, he accuses Carlstadt of forcing himself 
 upon the congregation of Orlamund 8 and inciting 
 rebellion against the prince in whose territory he 
 
 7 WA, xviii, 62. 
 
 8 RE, x, 73 ; xxiii, 738. 
 
72 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 lived and by whom he was paid. As for the Orla- 
 mundians themselves he condemns their election 
 of their pastor because they were moved thereto 
 by Carlstadt, and also because the pastor's salary 
 came from another whom they therefore should 
 have petitioned in the first place. The end of it 
 all was that Carlstadt was banished from the 
 Elector's dominions and Orlamund received a 
 pastor in the ordinary way of patronage. 
 
 Still more alarming was the Anabaptist move- 
 ment, a name that it is convenient to retain 
 though not entirely appropriate. As early as 
 1520, Thomas Miinzer, whom Luther himself 
 had recommended as preacher for the town of 
 Zwickau, began to develop ideas that threatened 
 the common peace. When he was transferred 
 a little later to Alstedt he continued in the same 
 way. It was necessary, he said, to separate the 
 truly faithful from the mass of so-called Chris- 
 tians and to establish them, by force if necessary, 
 as the true church of Christ. He claimed for his 
 speaking and teaching the direct inspiration of 
 the Holy Spirit, and his violence in the pulpit 
 bore witness to his own faith in his teachings and 
 claims. This faith in himself and a crassly literal 
 interpretation of the Scriptures united to open 
 the door to many strange doctrines and strength- 
 ened his adherents in their efforts to enforce them. 
 Infant baptism was condemned, as was all learn- 
 ing, for God reveals His truth to the simple and 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 73 
 
 not to the wise. "The laity must be our prelates 
 and pastors," said Miinzer, 9 commending at the 
 same time a certain weaver as an especially in- 
 spired interpreter of the Scriptures. The truly 
 faithful were gathered into bands and prepared 
 to meet force with force. The civil authorities 
 were condemned and defied. A neighboring 
 shrine and cloister was pillaged and burned. 
 
 Altogether it was a serious state of affairs, and 
 the non-interference of the Elector and the Duke 
 of Saxony is at once a testimony to their unwill- 
 ingness to interfere with preaching, and an indi- 
 cation of the power of the new movement. For 
 it was Luther that felt himself compelled to inter- 
 vene and whose advice was followed in the mat- 
 ter. In a letter addressed to the Elector and the 
 Duke John 10 he shows the difference between his 
 own spirit and that of the fanatics. The true 
 Gospel is to be sped only by the preaching of 
 the Word and with this the civil authorities 
 should not interfere. "Your grace should not 
 interfere with the preaching of the Word. Let 
 them preach as boldly and freely as they will, 
 whatever they can, and against whom they will. 
 For as I have said, there must be sects and the 
 word of God must go to war and fight ... if 
 they have the right spirit, he will not fear us and 
 remain the victor. If we have the right spirit 
 
 9 RE, xiii, 558. 
 
 10 WA, xv, 210. 
 
74 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 he will not fear them or any one else. Let the 
 spirits fight it out together. If some are led 
 astray thereby, that's all right. That is the way 
 with all battles — some must be wounded and 
 fall." But when it comes to blows or even the 
 threat of force, then beyond doubt it is the work 
 of the devil and should be suppressed by the civil 
 /authorities who are appointed by God to keep 
 peace and suppress the rebellious. 
 
 Accordingly the Elector did intervene, with the 
 result that Miinzer saved himself for the present 
 by flight to Muhlhausen where he continued his 
 activity and later joined hands with the peasants 
 in their rebellion. How great his following was 
 at the time it is impossible to say. But as his 
 hearers sometimes numbered as many as two 
 thousand, as the town council of Alstedt and even 
 the Elector's representatives were among his fol- 
 lowers, and as he was reputed to have organized 
 bands of the faithful in some thirty neighboring 
 places with which he was in contact through mes- 
 sengers, the fear of serious trouble was well 
 grounded. 
 
 More portentous, however, than the defection 
 of either Carlstadt or Miinzer was the uprising of 
 the laboring classes known as the. Peasants' War. 
 These poor people believed they had just ground 
 of complaints against the land owners. Luther 
 agreed with them and history confirms his verdict. 
 They also believed, and what was still more im- 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 75 
 
 portant, others believed and proclaimed that their 
 revolt was in keeping with the principles of 
 Luther's reform and indeed one of its direct re- 
 sults. We can almost picture to ourselves Luther 
 himself writing their first petition: 
 
 "First it is our humble petition and desire, and 
 also our unanimous will and resolve that in the 
 future we should have power and authority so 
 that a whole community should itself choose and 
 appoint a pastor; and also power to dismiss him 
 when he conducts himself improperly. The pastor 
 thus chosen should teach us the Gospel purely and 
 simply without any human addition, doctrine or 
 command. For by constantly preaching the true 
 faith we will be led to beseech God for His grace, 
 that this true faith may be planted and confirmed 
 within us. For if His grace be not planted within 
 us we remain flesh and blood which availeth noth- 
 ing; for the Scriptures plainly teach, that we can 
 come to God only through the true faith, and only 
 through His mercy can we be saved. For this rea- 
 son such a guide and pastor is necessary, and in 
 this fashion grounded upon the Scriptures." 
 
 It was only natural that they should turn to 
 Wittenberg for aid and that Luther should adopt 
 their cause in principle and denounce the selfish 
 arrogance of the landlords. In an "Admonition 
 to Peace" 11 he warns the nobility that the demands 
 of the peasants are just and should be granted, 
 
 11 WA, xviii, 279. 
 
76 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 otherwise the wrath of God will fall upon them 
 either at the hands of the peasants or in some 
 other way. Similarly he warns the peasants that 
 though their demands are just they must be sub- 
 missive to the authority ordained by God and not 
 use force, however unjustly abused they may be. 
 Both nobility and peasants, he adds, are acting in 
 an unchristian manner and for selfish, unchristian 
 ends, and both are advised to change their ways 
 and come to an agreement. But when this advice 
 was unheeded and the movement grew to huge 
 proportions threatening to sweep destructively 
 over all Germany, Luther definitely took sides 
 with the civil authorities as those appointed by 
 God to maintain order, and urged all who could 
 to prevent the spread of the conflagration. 
 
 The peasants, he said, many times over deserve 
 death of body and soul. Not a devil is left in hell, 
 but all are in the peasants, who have broken their 
 oath of allegiance, rob and plunder where and 
 what they will, and endeavor to cover their sins 
 with the mantle of the Gospel. Therefore "stab, 
 beat and strangle them, whoever can. Dost thou 
 die thyself in the struggle, happy art thou, thou 
 couldst never find a more blessed death. For thou 
 diest in obedience to God's word and command 
 (Rom. xiii) and in the service of love, saving thy 
 neighbor from hell and the devil's hands." 12 The 
 result was that the peasants were suppressed by 
 
 12 WA, xviii, 861. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 77 
 
 arms and their economic and legal position made 
 even worse than before. 
 
 These incidents may serve to indicate how it 
 was that Luther did not feel the people were suffi- 
 ciently serious with their Christianity to be charged 
 with the duties of church discipline and congrega- 
 tional management. False teachers easily led 
 them astray, selfish and material desires domi- 
 nated their religious views and they could not be 
 controlled except by force. Luther's faith in "the 
 common man" had been greatly shaken by the 
 uprising. He feared unless necessary reforms 
 were made that another such rebellion would 
 break out or God visit them with plague for their 
 sins. 13 At the same time there was no one with 
 the necessary ecclesiastical authority to under- 
 take the work. The Roman bishops showed no 
 inclination to do so, and the congregations them- 
 selves were unfitted for the task. "From the 
 peasants nothing is to be expected," he writes, 
 "and there is such a lack of thankfulness among 
 the people for the Holy Scriptures that undoubt- 
 edly God will punish us with a plague before 
 long. If I could do so with a good conscience I 
 would let them remain without pastor or preacher 
 to live like the pigs, as indeed they do. There is 
 no fear of God nor discipline any more, and 
 everyone does as he pleases since the pope's ban 
 has been published." 14 
 
 13 WA, xix, 436 ff. 
 
 14 Letter to the Elector, BeWette, iii, 135. 
 
78 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 Matters indeed were in a very serious condi- 
 tion. The old sanctions and restraints had been 
 removed and no new ones had taken their place. 
 The new Gospel had caused much commotion but 
 had brought no improvement in life and manners. 
 Its opponents, including Erasmus, could point to 
 it as the source from which had sprung the ex- 
 cesses of the Anabaptists, the terrors of the Peas- 
 ants' War and the general immorality. In these 
 circumstances Luther turned to the civil authori- 
 ties though not without again reminding himself 
 and them that the rights and duties of the civil 
 ruler in respect to the church are limited. 
 
 Reviewing the whole matter, if we were asked 
 what Luther's views of church government and of 
 the relation of church and state were during these 
 early years, we should have to say that he had no 
 definite and fixed opinions on the subject. That 
 is to say, there was no one form of church govern- 
 ment that appeared to him to be either essential 
 to the existence of the church or exclusively 
 proper to it. All his thought was dominated by 
 the idea of salvation through faith in Christ and 
 the desire to proclaim it to his fellow countrymen. 
 To this end he worked unweariedly on the trans- 
 lation of the Bible, the preparation of a catechism 
 and preaching the Word. 15 If these were allowed 
 
 15 Luther described his own attitude in a sermon delivered 
 on December 8, 1523. As reported by RSrer he said: 
 "Quare nee ego bin keck quicquam in der Christenheit an- 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 79 
 
 free play he believed everything else would fall 
 into line. Anything that obstructed the Gospel, 
 no matter whence it came, was reprehensible and 
 unlawful and not to be tolerated; but disobe- 
 dience to secular authority should never take the 
 form of forceful opposition. And similarly any 
 one that could further the cause of the Gospel in 
 any way was bound by the law of God to do so, 
 by all the means in his power, but in this case also 
 force might not be used. 
 
 It was a reformation of doctrine that he desired 
 and not a reconstruction of the church. He con- 
 templates without disapproval a reform within 
 the church which shall not disturb the existing 
 organization with its pope, bishops and priests; 
 he calls on secular rulers to use their authority in 
 purging the church and society and in providing 
 suitable preachers; and he defends the right of 
 individual Christians to associate themselves in 
 congregation having power to judge doctrine, 
 appoint and dismiss preachers and other officers, 
 exercise discipline and generally to conduct the 
 affairs of the congregation. He seems to have 
 held the view that these three, the ecclesiastical 
 hierarchy, stripped of course of its priestly char- 
 acter, the civil rulers and the individual con- 
 gregations and Christians might cooperate in 
 
 zurichten. Certus sum me dei verbum habere et praedicare 
 et vocatum esse, sed quicquam statuere formido," etc. WA, 
 xi, 210. 
 
80 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 Christian love and harmony, as indeed they might 
 in heaven but nowhere else. All of which is sim- 
 ply saying in other words that Luther was a 
 preacher of the Kingdom of God and not an 
 ecclesiastical statesman. He regarded organiza- 
 tion and forms as necessary, but he did not think 
 them of primary importance. Moreover, he was 
 not a systematic thinker. He attacked each prob- 
 lem by itself as it was presented to him. All his 
 writings are occasional. He did not attempt to 
 formulate even his theology, but wondered at 
 Melancthon's superior ability at this kind of work. 
 And in matters pertaining to the outward form 
 and government of the church, his utterances are 
 scattered, unrelated and, contemplated from the 
 vantage ground of four centuries, not entirely 
 consistent either with one another or with his 
 actions. 16 
 
 16 Professor Drews, Entsprach das StaatsMrchentum dem 
 Ideale Luthers, 1908, in combatting Bieker's thesis en- 
 deavors to show that Luther, although he did at first appeal 
 to the princes to reform the church, did so with the as- 
 sumption that the princes were, or would be, serious minded, 
 faithful Christians, and that when he was enlightened as 
 to their character he turned to the individual faithful Chris- 
 tians and congregations of true believers, as in the case of 
 Leisnig. In this Professor Drews has not been successful. 
 It is comparatively easy to show that Luther from the be- 
 ginning was aware of the great number of hypocrites or 
 false Christians among the nominal church me-jibers, and 
 that in planning reformation and reconstruction he expected 
 assistance from only the true believers, whether prince or 
 peasant. But to say that he looked first to the rulers and 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 81 
 
 It is therefore quite true, as is frequently said, 
 that Luther committed his church to no one 
 theory of organization or government, but laid 
 its foundation so broadly that it can accommodate 
 itself in accordance with its principles to every 
 system. At the same time, this is not the whole 
 truth, for besides those passages in Luther's 
 writings which free his church from slavery to 
 form there is a steady current of thought running 
 through his writings and becoming more defined 
 as we approach the decisive year of 1526, and con- 
 tinuing later, to the effect that the doctrine of the 
 priesthood of believers should find expression in 
 the outward organization of the church. In mat- 
 ters pertaining to doctrine, preaching and the ad- 
 ministration of the sacraments, to faith and 
 Christian love, all true Christians have inalienable 
 and indefeasible rights and duties, which they 
 share equally. They are the source of all author- 
 ity. Preachers and other officers are to be elected, 
 and possess power only because and so far as it is 
 
 afterward to the people is to misunderstand him funda- 
 mentally. At the same time, and in the same writing in 
 which he appealed to the nobility, he showed that he had 
 the self-governing congregation in mind, and a few years 
 later when he was bending every effort to convert the minds 
 of the people and monks of Wittenberg from the sacrificial 
 mass he also appealed to the Elector to prohibit it, a fact 
 which Drews has difficulty in reconciling with his views 
 (p. 88). The simple fact is that Luther did not see any 
 inconsistency in appealing to both prince and people at the 
 same time to purge and reform the church. 
 
82 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 delegated to them, and they should exercise it only 
 with the consent and approval of the congrega- 
 tion. Within the congregation a line should be 
 drawn between the young and careless on the one 
 hand and the serious minded Christians on the 
 other — as we say between adherents and mem- 
 bers. The latter should be enrolled in a separate 
 register and should charge themselves or' be 
 charged with the oversight of the welfare of the 
 congregation, the education of the young, the 
 disciplining of the careless, the relief of poverty 
 and their own spiritual growth. 
 
 Luther regarded this as the form of church 
 government which was the natural outgrowth of 
 his principles and said so in all seriousness, though 
 at the same time confessing that it was impracti- 
 cable then on account of the lack of serious minded 
 Christians, and therefore postponing its establish- 
 ment until the people were ready for it. 17 In this 
 
 17 His conversation with Schwenckfeld in 1525 reveals 
 his embarrassment. Being pressed for his views regarding 
 the establishment of discipline in the churches he answered: 
 "Yes, my dear Caspar, the genuine Christians are none too 
 common, I would like to see two of them together. I don't 
 know a single one." Zeitschrift filr Kirchengeschichte, xiii, 
 554, quoted by Drews, 63. Two years later he thinks that 
 the church visitation ordered by the Elector will lead to 
 the establishment of such congregations. In a letter to 
 Nicolaus Hausmann he writes that the Elector "velle matu- 
 rtre visitationem parochiarum quod ubi factum fuerit, turn 
 constitutis ecclesiis poterit usus excommunicationis prae- 
 sumi: laceris autem ita rebus quid praesumas?" Quoted 
 by Drews, 66, from DeWette, iii, 154; Enders, vi, 10. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 83 
 
 he proceeded in the same manner and on the same 
 principle as in the abolition of the elevation of the 
 host, the use of the Latin mass, the removal of 
 images and other things, some of which disap- 
 peared during his life time and some later. But 
 there have been few and unsuccessful attempts to 
 give to the individual Christians their due share 
 in the government of his church or to the congre- 
 gation the management of its own affairs. This 
 is one of the matters in which Lutheranism parts 
 company with Calvinism, for it cannot have es- 
 caped notice that what Luther despaired of estab- 
 lishing in Germany, John Calvin did establish in 
 Geneva, and his followers carried to France, Hol- 
 land, England, Scotland and America. 
 
 It is perhaps a thankless task to inquire whether 
 Luther could have carried through this part of 
 his reform. But though no definite answer may 
 be given and Von Bezold assures us that not even 
 Calvin himself could have withstood successfully 
 the current moving in the direction of absolutism 
 in the German states, 18 there are several things 
 that ought to be said. First of all there is the 
 universal truth enshrined in the proverb "strike 
 when the iron is hot." There is no doubt that 
 much more could have been accomplished when 
 the glow of the early enthusiasm of the Re- 
 formation was upon Germany than afterward. 
 Luther came slowly to the realization of the 
 
 ls Kultur der Gegenwart, Teil II, Abteilung V, 1, p. 71. 
 
84 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 revolutionary nature of the idea he threw broad- 
 cast to the people but others were not so tardy. 
 Princes and people stood ready, more ready 
 than he seems to have recognized, to put it 
 into application at once. Whatever criticism we 
 may level at Carlstadt and the congregation at 
 Orlamund they were certainly right in thinking 
 that those things which they knew by experience 
 to be tainted with idolatry should be removed 
 from their worship. And however we may con- 
 demn the excesses of the Anabaptists, they were 
 certainly justified in making some distinction in 
 their organization between the serious minded 
 Christians and the mass of baptized members of 
 the church. And as for the miserable and misused 
 peasants, when they quietly dispersed in Switzer- 
 land upon some concessions being made, and when 
 those on Philip of Hesse's lands swore willing al- 
 legiance to him at the same' time as their brothers 
 elsewhere were in rebellion, it is to be regretted 
 Luther should have taken such a definite stand 
 with the princes whom he rightly condemned as 
 cruel and unjust, and thereby have lost the confi- 
 dence of the lower classes and his own faith in 
 them. The same qualities which made it impossi- 
 ble for Luther to cooperate with other leaders like 
 Carlstadt, Zwingli and Schwenckfeld, and later 
 drove all but Melancthon from his side, prevented 
 him also from recognizing the good characteristics 
 of the common people and entrusting them with 
 self-government. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 85 
 
 As for the Protestant princes themselves, it 
 seems more than likely that they would have al- 
 lowed themselves to be guided by Luther had he 
 wished to reconstruct the church on democratic 
 lines. As Von Bezold says "With all his caution 
 he [Frederick the Wise] would perhaps have fol- 
 lowed his Doctor Martin on the way of a radical 
 ecclesiastical transformation, but the Reformer, 
 filled with a deep seated distrust of 'Herr Omnes,' 
 which was intensified by his experiences with the 
 evangelical radicalism, soon turned from his orig- 
 inal thoughts of congregational self govern- 
 ment." 19 Something of the same sort may be said 
 of Duke John of Saxony, whose long forbearance 
 toward the Anabaptists testified to his desire not 
 to interfere in matters of the church, and whose 
 organization of the church of Saxony which be- 
 came normative for the other states followed the 
 lines suggested by Luther. The fact is that the 
 German princes, though willing to interfere in 
 ecclesiastical matters when need demanded it, 
 were accustomed by long training to leave such 
 things alone, especially those that related to the 
 religious side of the church's activities. Albrecht 
 of Brandburg undertook the control of the church 
 in his lands with the words "We have been forced 
 to take upon us a strange office, namely, that of 
 bishop." The attitude of Philip of Hesse is even 
 more enlightening. This prince, who appears to 
 
 19 Kultur der Gegenwart, Teil II, Abteilung v, 1, p. 70. 
 
86 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 have understood his subjects and to have enjoyed 
 their confidence to a degree unusual at that time, 
 not only thought a democratic form of govern- 
 ment for the church feasible, but also took steps to 
 inaugurate it at the first opportunity, being dis- 
 suaded from putting the plan into operation only 
 by Luther himself. When in addition to this it is 
 remembered that the Germans were not unfitted 
 for self government, that the free cities had long 
 been accustomed to manage their own affairs, and 
 that even smaller cities and towns enjoyed at that 
 time a greater degree of self govrnment than they 
 did later, we may well ponder what might have 
 been the result had Luther retained his faith in the 
 common man and insisted upon the immediate 
 application of his principles to the organization 
 of his church. 
 
 The principle of local self-government either in 
 church or state is not easy to defend in face of the 
 frequent ludicrous and sometimes serious blunders 
 of the common man. But it is correct theoreti- 
 cally to say that those who have committed the 
 blunder and must feel the consequences in their 
 own lives are most apt to correct it and to avoid 
 similar mistakes thereafter; and experience has 
 shown that when men have approached these 
 duties with a sense of responsibility to God and 
 their fellow men, they have soon fought their way 
 through the first difficulties and established 
 churches, municipalities and even states on solid 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 8? 
 
 foundations, and arranged for their continuance 
 by a proper training of their children. Luther 
 knew that the "spirits" must be given liberty to 
 fight, but by postponing organization until the 
 battle should be over he forfeited for his church 
 the most effective weapon of defence and offence 
 and the only proper school of discipline. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Establishment of the Territorial 
 System 
 
 When Luther definitely put behind him the 
 hope of establishing the church on the basis of 
 the universal priesthood of believers and their 
 equality of rights in the new organization, he 
 turned, though reluctantly, to the- only other au- 
 thority whose divine ordination he recognized, 
 namely the civil ruler. This does not mean of 
 course that the secular authorities had been ex- 
 cluded from his thought before this, nor on the 
 other hand that it was his intention to create a 
 caesaropapacy. , To imagine either of these would 
 be to ascribe to Luther a conception of church and 
 of state respectively foreign to his time. His pro- 
 gram from the beginning called for the coopera- 
 tion of the civil authorities, and in all he did he 
 sought their sanction and consent. In summoning 
 the princes now to do what the mass of the people 
 could not be trusted to do, he was merely calling 
 upon one section of the church to act for the whole. 
 This conception of the rulers' position is one of 
 the peculiarities of the legal position of the Lu- 
 theran church, and has given rise to much legal 
 
 88 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 89 
 
 quibbling. For, as the civil ruler was not called 
 upon to govern the church in virtue of his civil 
 position, but as a Christian, as a conspicuous mem- 
 ber of the church, "praecipuum membrum," was 
 bound to use and actually did use his secular au- 
 thority in its service, it is still debated whether 
 his authority in respect to the church belongs to 
 him as territorial sovereign or is part of the per- 
 sonal regalia. Luther's view was that the prince 
 had duties toward the church but no rights over it. 
 Of course there was no concealing the fact that 
 the princes had actually stepped into the position 
 of the bishops and exercised episcopal functions, 
 and the name "emergency bishops" given to them 
 by Luther is both a recognition of the actual state 
 of affairs and another indication that he regarded 
 it as only a temporary arrangement. 
 
 It would be tedious and unprofitable to trace in 
 detail the organization of the church and its sub- 
 ordination to the state in Germany, and to follow 
 all the ramifications of the system in the several 
 principalities and towns. The following broad 
 outline will be sufficient to show under what con- 
 ditions the Lutheran church was called upon to 
 do its work. The steps in the organization of the 
 church were, as a rule, "(1) a visitation of the 
 churches, (2.) the appointment of superintend- 
 ents, (3) the appointment of a consistory or con- 
 sistories. 
 
 The first definite steps toward a general visi- 
 
90 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 tation of the churches in Saxony were taken only 
 after it was evident that nothing in the way of 
 reform was to be expected from the Roman au- 
 thorities, after the peasants' uprising had exposed 
 the deep rooted unrest among the lower classes, 
 and its suppression had rendered them antipathe- 
 tic to Luther's ideas, after sufficient evidence was 
 at hand to show the material dilapidation of the 
 church and the moral degradation of the people, 
 and after the Recess of Spires (1526) had given 
 the princes some legal justification for interfer- 
 ence. Luther saw that some action was necessary 
 to preserve society from a repetition of the hor- 
 rors it had just experienced, to bring the Gospel 
 to the people and particularly to provide the 
 means whereby the rising generation might be 
 trained and disciplined whatever their elders 
 might do. "The parishes are suffering griev- 
 ously," he says. "Nobody gives; nobody pays; 
 offerings and altar dues have fallen off, tithes 
 are either not paid or too small. The common 
 man respects neither preacher nor pastor, so 
 that unless some bold regulation is made for the 
 suitable maintenance of the parishes, there will 
 soon be no parsonages, schools nor scholars and 
 God's Word and worship will disappear." 1 
 
 In this distress, as "necessity demands it," he 
 turned to the civil authoriy because, as he says, 
 "it is the duty of all of us, but especially of the 
 
 1 DeWette, iii, 89. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 91 
 
 secular authority, above all things ['fur alien 
 Dingen'] to educate the poor children that are 
 daily being born and always growing, and to hold 
 them to the fear of God and discipline, for which 
 schools and preachers and pastors are necessary. 
 If the older people will not have it, let them con- 
 tinue to go to the devil. But the secular authority 
 is at fault if the youth are neglected and undisci- 
 plined." 2 "To be sure it is not the duty of the 
 civil ruler to preach or to govern in spiritual mat- 
 ters" but as none of the reformers had the right 
 to undertake it and the Roman authorities would 
 not, therefore the secular authority, out of Chris- 
 tian love, for God's sake, for the good of the Gos- 
 pel and the welfare of his Christian subjects and 
 to prevent dissension and rebellion should appoint 
 a commission to visit the churches and regulate 
 their affairs. The example of Constantine in call- 
 ing the Council of ISTicea to dispose of the Arian 
 question is cited to prove that it is the duty of 
 rulers to take care that dissension, conspiracy and 
 rebellion do not find a lodgment among their 
 subjects. 8 
 
 Nothing can be plainer than that Luther and 
 his associates regarded such action of the civil 
 ruler as extraordinary, exceptional and beyond his 
 ordinary jurisdiction. Even Rieker, though he 
 
 "DeWette, iii, 185 f. 
 
 8 Luther's fullest discussion of the matter is found in his 
 preface to the Visitationsbuch, 1528. 
 
92 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 seeks vainly, here as elsewhere, to draw a line be- 
 tween the purely spiritual offices of the church, 
 preaching and the administration of the sacra- 
 ments, and its other interests, is forced to admit 
 this. Indeed it would be hard to find a better 
 summary of the situation than he gives : "Accord- 
 ing to the reformers' ideas and thought visitation 
 is an episcopal duty and does not pertain to the 
 civil authority. But as the civil ruler is a member 
 of the Christian body, in case of neglect of duty 
 on the part of the . . . bishops, he may interfere 
 in an extraordinary and representative manner, 
 and do that which he is not ordinarily and prop- 
 erly competent to do. His legal justification is 
 given by 'the office of love which is equally im- 
 posed upon all Christians' and he is the more 
 called upon to exercise it because as 'the un- 
 doubted civil authority ordained by God' he is in 
 duty bound more than all other Christians to 
 uphold what is best and to ward off trouble. In 
 this way is explained the apparent contradiction 
 that the secular authority is not competent to 
 order a visitation and yet the Elector is asked to 
 do so, that as civil ruler the Elector is not bound 
 to visit the churches and yet is summoned thereto 
 by Luther as 'our undoubted secular authority 
 ordained by God.' " 4 
 
 The explanation, of course, is to be found in 
 Luther's own phrase "Need is need and knows no 
 
 *P. 157. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 93 
 
 law." Luther, as we have seen, looked forward 
 to a time when the members of the chinch should 
 take their Christianity seriously and assume, of 
 their own volition, the burdens of the church. In 
 the meantime, however, as the Roman authorities 
 refused to move, as he could not find the proper 
 persons within the congregations to undertake the 
 task, as the older people were living like pigs and 
 must be left to go their way to hell, something 
 strenuous must be done to train the rising genera- 
 tion for the task. For this purpose the civil ruler 
 was called upon to act temporarily, but only tem- 
 porarily, as bishop, as emergency bishop to use 
 his own word, until such time as the people would 
 be willing to assume their duties. 
 
 The first visitation was undertaken by Duke 
 John in 1527 and carried through by commissions 
 composed partly of divines and partly of civil 
 lawyers, who kept in touch with the Duke on the 
 one hand and the reformers in Wittenberg on the 
 other. The condition of affairs exposed by their 
 inspection could hardly have been worse. A few 
 pastors were properly housed and cared for, a 
 few were preaching the Gospel intelligently and 
 seriously. But generally speaking they were un- 
 educated and immoral, living in almost abject 
 poverty and supplementing the slender income 
 they received from the church by keeping taverns, 
 exorcising evil spirits or other means. They were 
 unable to give proper instruction, and their flocks 
 
94 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 suffered. The people had no respect for their 
 pastors, and little or no knowledge of religion. Of 
 the new doctrine they had only the vaguest no- 
 tions. The buildings, churches, vicarages and 
 schools were commonly neglected and badly in 
 need of repair, and there were no funds available 
 for rebuilding. 
 
 Altogether, the situation was so bad that it 
 demanded not only an occasional visitation but 
 permanent supervision. For this reason the com- 
 missions were not everywhere dissolved, but con- 
 tinued as a sort of general council for ecclesiastical 
 affairs, and tried men were appointed under the 
 name of superintendents, to have oversight over 
 local districts. With this loose organization mat- 
 ters ran on for several years. Melanchthon pre- 
 pared a set of Instructions for Visitors 6 which 
 provided materials for the reformation of the 
 church services, and so facilitated the work of 
 superintendents and pastors alike. Luther was 
 frequently called upon for advice, and the Elector 
 in whose name and by whose authority everything 
 was done was the court of final resort. 
 
 Before long, however, it became evident that 
 the many things included in ecclesiastical affairs 
 at that time could not be properly handled without 
 a permanent standing court for the purpose. 
 The matter of marriage may illustrate this, for 
 it contributed as much as any one thing to the 
 
 B Sehling, Kirchenordnungen, i, 149 ff. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 95 
 
 next step in the organization. According to the 
 Roman theory marriage was a sacrament and 
 everything pertaining to it was brought into the 
 church courts. The reformers denied the sacra- 
 mental character of the bond and criticized the 
 Roman regulations concerning it, but continued 
 to treat it and all relating to it as a church affair, 
 following the Canon Law in this as in other 
 things. Obviously difficulties would arise, as they 
 did arise, far beyond the power of the local pastor 
 to resolve and calling for adequate legislation and 
 tribunals. 
 
 This and other similar matters led to the estab- 
 lishment, in 1539, of a consistorial court, modelled 
 after the Roman Catholic episcopal court and 
 composed, as were the boards of visitors, of di- 
 vines and civil lawyers. It was appointed of 
 course by the Elector, and immediately respon- 
 sible to him; and although it was not at first in- 
 tended to do so, it soon supplanted the boards of 
 visitors and became the supreme court of the 
 church in the district assigned to it. 6 
 
 It goes without saying that where there were 
 so many political units each of which, was com- 
 pletely independent of the others in ecclesiastical 
 matters, the development was not everywhere uni- 
 form, nor the machinery of church government 
 the same. The Wittenberg consistory was cre- 
 ated in 1539, that of Hesse in 1610 and the one in 
 
 8 Sehling, Kirchenordnungen, i, 55 ff, 200 ff. 
 
96 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 Waldeck as late as 1676. But the underlying 
 general principles were everywhere the same, 
 namely, the supremacy of the prince in all theo- 
 logical and ecclesiastical matters. With this 
 definitely settled it was of lesser importance that 
 at one time and place he acted through consis- 
 tories, at another through the superintendents, at 
 another through special commissions or the regu- 
 lar political channels. 
 
 It is true that sporadic attempts were made to 
 preserve the Lutheran principle of the equality 
 of all Christians, and to erect churches on the 
 broad foundations it laid. The right of a con- 
 gregation to call its own pastor was not forgotten, 
 nor indeed could it be, for it had been incorporated 
 in the creeds of the church, 7 but save in very rare 
 instances the people were allowed neither a posi- 
 tive part in the choice, nor even the veto. Patron- 
 age continued as in earlier times subject only to 
 the will of the prince or his subordinate officials. 
 The same is true of church discipline which was 
 constantly mentioned by the reformers, quoting 
 the Gospels, Matt, xviii, and St. Paul, 1 Cor. v, 
 as belonging to the whole congregation, but which 
 in the new order fell to the local pastor, or more 
 generally was reserved for the superintendent or 
 other officials, even for the prince himself. 
 
 In the towns, both the free imperial cities and 
 
 T E. g. in the Appendix to the Smalcald Articles, Part II. 
 Book of Concord, p. 841. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 97 
 
 the lesser municipalities, there was more liberty. 
 The town fathers occupied the place of civil au- 
 thority, and carried their political ideas into 
 church matters. But here too the tendency was 
 to place the authority in the hands of the council 
 rather than to organize the people into a congre- 
 gation with power over its own affairs. 
 
 In 1526 Johann Brenz, who later became fa- 
 mous in Lutheran theological circles, prepared for 
 the town of Hall a constitution of the church 
 which made the congregation completely inde- 
 pendent of the city fathers. A number of honor- 
 able men were to be elected elders (presbyters), 
 and one of them pastor (episcopus) . These act- 
 ing for and with the congregation were charged 
 with the duty of caring for preaching, the admin- 
 istration of the sacraments, and church discipline, 
 which was to be patterned after Christ's directions 
 in Matt, xviii. Cooperation with other congrega- 
 tions was to be effected by delegates meeting to- 
 gether in council. Unfortunately, however, we 
 do not know that this plan was even tried, and a 
 little later we find Brenz himself opposing the 
 establishment of a like system in Wiirttemberg. 8 
 Something similar was attempted in Stralsund in 
 1525 and in Reutlingen in 1526. 9 In the city of 
 Ulm, according to the Ordinance of 1531, there 
 
 8 Richter, Geschichte der evangelischen Kirchenv erf as- 
 sung, 32, 48 ff. 
 
 • Sehling, Geschichte der protestantischen Kirchenver- 
 fassung, 80 f ; Kirchenordnungen, iv, 540. 
 
98 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 were to be periodical gatherings of the pastors of 
 the several churches for the purpose of counsel 
 and mutual improvement, also synods to which 
 clergy and laymen were admited, while discipline 
 was committed to a body composed of four mem- 
 bers of the council, two of the clergy and two from 
 the congregation. 10 
 
 A very good example of the conflict of the two 
 ideals is to be found in the duchy of Hesse. This 
 little principality, as we have seen, was prevented 
 only by the intervention of Luther himself from 
 putting into operation the liberal and democratic 
 constitution prepared at the Council of Homberg 
 in 1526. Following this the welfare of the church 
 was committeed for a time to six superintendents 
 with large episcopal powers. But in the year 
 1539 the former ideas again came to the front 
 with a law requiring the election of elders in every 
 congregation. Honorable and respected mem- 
 bers were to be chosen for the office, some by the 
 council and some by the congregation, and all 
 were to be accepted by the congregation. They 
 were to be charged with the oversight of all things 
 pertaining to the congregational life, with the 
 proviso that in exercising discipline they should 
 excommunicate no one without the consent of the 
 superintendent. This was evidently a step toward 
 transferring the power from the civil ruler to the 
 people as Luther had outlined it in his "German 
 
 "Richter, 157. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 99 
 
 Mass." It was therefore only natural that he 
 should approve it and commend it to other 
 churches, urging "that we again establish among 
 us the ancient ordinance of the Holy Spirit, which 
 is given us in the apostolic writings, and prescribe 
 for the ministers of the Word in every church, 
 corresponding to the number of its members be 
 they many or few, certain presbyters, that is el- 
 ders — the wisest, most modest, most zealous and 
 most pious in the Lord." 11 The clergy of Alber- 
 tine Saxony too were encouraged to demand 
 the establishment of such a council of elders in 
 every municipal church (not in country churches) , 
 basing their contention as did Luther before 
 them upon the example of the early Christian 
 congregations. 12 
 
 But neither in Saxony nor in Hesse could the 
 two incompatible regimes exist together. In 
 Saxony where they were opposed by George of 
 Anhalt, who was at once bishop and prince, the 
 clergy were content to drop the matter "for 
 the present" as they said, and in Hesse, although 
 the elders were retained and even divided after 
 the Calvinistic manner into "teaching" and "rul- 
 
 11 Quoted RE, xvi, 9. See also Luther's letter to Anton 
 Lauterbach, April 2, 1543, DeWette, v, 551, "You would 
 do a good thing and give me much pleasure, if you could 
 again introduce the ban (discipline), after the manner 
 and example of the earliest churches. But the undertaking 
 would give great offence and annoyance to the young gen- 
 tlemen of the court for Ihey are unaccustomed to discipline." 
 
 12 Sehling, Geschichte, 81 f. 
 
100 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 ing" elders in 1566, the synod of 1568 composed 
 of the superintendents, representatives of the 
 clergy and of Marburg University, and delegates 
 of the civil authorities had little resemblance to a 
 representative body of the whole church, and by 
 1610 the popular element had disappeared to such 
 an extent that the consistorial system was estab- 
 lished. The only element of popular control that 
 remained was the right of the congregations in 
 one section of the country to a share in the exer- 
 cise of discipline. 13 
 
 From these examples there can be no doubt 
 that "the introduction of the lay element into the 
 organism of the church and indeed its elevation 
 to a controlling position [is a] genuinely Lu- 
 theran idea," 14 and did not yield without a strug- 
 gle. The writings of the reformers themselves, 
 the early church constitutions, and the later con- 
 flicts with the civil authorities all bear witness to 
 this effect. But there was also another source, 
 from which the same principles were derived and 
 from which they spread in all directions, clashing 
 with the hierarchical church of Rome on the one 
 hand and with the state establishment of Luther- 
 anism on the other. This of course was Switzer- 
 land, where the implications of the doctrine of the 
 universal priesthood were as clearly recognized as 
 in Wittenberg and where the representative char- 
 
 "Richter, Geschichte, 183 ff. 
 14 Sehling, Geschichte, 82. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 101 
 
 acter of the political institutions made its appli- 
 cation, if not inevitable, at least much less difficult 
 than in imperial Germany. It is true that at first 
 there was the same commingling of the political 
 and the ecclesiastical that we have observed in 
 some German towns, but it was never forgotten 
 in Switzerland that the town councillors derived 
 their authority in ecclesiastical matters from their 
 election by members of the Christian community. 
 Moreover, as the work of the Reformation devel- 
 oped and the issue became more clear, John 
 Calvin vindicated for the church in Geneva, and 
 for all the churches that came under his influence 
 later, the right of the church as distinct from the 
 civil authority to exercise its own spiritual disci- 
 pline and to debar sinners from its communion, 
 and at the same time gave it a constitution accord- 
 ing to which the ultimate authority was vested in 
 the people, the government entrusted to a com- 
 mittee of the best of them, and in which the church 
 courts were composed of peers who took counsel 
 together on equal terms and without the admis- 
 sion of any external authority either ecclesiastical 
 or political. 
 
 The influence of the Swiss Reformation was 
 felt in the southwestern part of Germany, the 
 valley of the Rhine, and also farther east, but so 
 similar are the fundamental principles of the two 
 movements in respect to the liberty of Christians 
 and their position in the church that it is fre- 
 
102 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 quently difficult if not impossible to say whether 
 this or that constitution in the earlier years sprang 
 from a Lutheran or a Swiss source. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, the theological differ- 
 ences that soon parted Luther from Zwingli and 
 were continued after their death as between Lu- 
 therans and Calvinists were carried over into the 
 sphere of church government, with the result that 
 anything partaking of the nature of a democratic 
 organization was dubbed Calvinism and thereby 
 condemned; and on the other hand the consistorial 
 system with its subordination to the civil authority 
 obtained a new commendation as being the gen- 
 uine and truly Lutheran form. Accordingly 
 when in Wurttemberg, after a vain attempt to or- 
 ganize the lower orders after the Calvinistic man- 
 ner in 1547, the consistorial system was carried 
 to completion in the graduated courts of superin- 
 tendents, general superintendents, church council 
 and sovereign in 1559, ardent Lutheran divines 
 like Jacob Andrea successfully advocated the 
 establishment of a similar system in Brunswick 
 (1569), Electoral Saxony (1580) and elsewhere 
 in the interests of orthodox Lutheranism. 15 
 Thus a new, unwarranted and factitious argu- 
 ment was added to the forces already making for 
 the absolute supremacy of the prince in religious 
 and ecclesiastical affairs. 
 
 1B Richter, Geschichte, 121 ff ; Sehling, Kirchenordnungen, 
 130 S, 859 ff. Geschichte, 32. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 103 
 
 With this step was concluded the organization 
 of the Lutheran church; and we may pause to see 
 what it meant. In the first place it is to be 
 remembered that although the consistory was 
 regarded as an ecclesiastical court, that is to say, 
 as belonging to the church and acting in the ser- 
 vice of the church, it was entirely the creature of 
 the civil ruler. As Sehling says, 16 "What was 
 the real position of this body? Whose will called 
 it into existence? Whose will was normative for 
 it? Who nominated and removed its members? 
 Who issued the instructions and the ordinances 
 governing it? The territorial ruler. Is it then 
 amiss to characterize the consistory as his judi- 
 catory from the beginning? To be sure he occu- 
 pies the place not because of hierarchical superi- 
 ority but because of his duty, as chief member of 
 the church, to care for the purity of doctrine ; but 
 this explanation is unable to alter the naked 
 facts." In other words, the Lutheran church was 
 surrendered into the hand of the civil government 
 and as Zorn says, 17 "The very thing that the re- 
 formers emphasized so strongly in opposition to 
 Catholic church, namely, that the centralization 
 of ecclesiastical authority in one person was un- 
 allowable, and that moreover spiritual and secular 
 matters must be kept separate at all costs — this 
 
 18 Geschichte, 18. 
 
 17 Zeitschrift fur Kirchenrecht, vol. xii, 143, quoted by 
 Rieker, 167. 
 
104 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 very thing was soon forgotten and in the estab- 
 lishment of the territorial church government the 
 place of the pope was occupied by the prince, 
 whose administrative organ was the consistory, 
 and instead of spontaneous activity in the church 
 a church government was established which was 
 centralized in his court." 
 
 It is true that something was gained by the 
 creation of a special court for ecclesiastical 
 matters instead of referring them to the ordi- 
 nary departments of government. Rieker 18 
 makes much of this, endeavoring to show that 
 this and nothing more than this was demanded 
 by the reformers, and that it actually realized 
 their desire for a separation of the spiritual 
 and secular governments. To this it is only 
 necessary to answer that the consistory cannot be 
 regarded separately from the prince who called 
 it into being and upon whose pleasure its existence 
 depended, and that in him, if not in the consistory, 
 was to be found that commingling of the two regi- 
 ments which Luther so strongly condemned. The 
 only way in which the consistories could have been 
 made conformable to Luther's teaching on the 
 one hand and to civil establishment of the church 
 on the other would have been an arrangement 
 whereby the church courts derived their authority 
 from and were responsible to the whole body of 
 Christians and were then recognized or acknowl- 
 
 18 P. 168. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 105 
 
 edged by the civil authority in some such way as 
 the appointees of Rome had been recognized be- 
 fore the Reformation, or a responsible minister is 
 recognized by a constitutional monarch. But for 
 a German prince to play such an impersonal part 
 in the government was impossible according to 
 both the theological and political theories of the 
 sixteenth century. 
 
 It has also been argued that the independence 
 of the consistory was safeguarded by the circum- 
 stance that the Bible and the confessions were its 
 ultimate authorities and that over these the prince 
 had no control. 19 And of course there is some 
 truth in this. The recognition of the Bible as the 
 undoubted word of God, and of the Confessions 
 as the faithful expressions of the truth therein 
 contained, prevented much arbitrary legislation 
 and helped to ensure to the people such doctrines 
 and practices as were unequivocally stated. But 
 besides these there were many questions of inter- 
 pretation involving both doctrine and usage 
 which required settlement. Indeed it was because 
 of this that the consistories had been created ; and 
 to say that they were independent of the prince 
 in their investigations or in the making and appli- 
 cation of laws is to deny the plain facts of history. 
 Not only did he control their action indirectly by 
 his appointments and dismissals, but he person- 
 ally cooperated with them. Nor indeed could it be 
 
 19 Bieker, 70. 
 
106 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 otherwise, according to the legal conception of 
 his position. The imperial diet had committed 
 to him the right of reforming religion, the church 
 had taught that it was his duty to guard the two 
 tables of the law and to provide true doctrine for 
 his subjects. Looked at from either the political 
 or the ecclesiastical standpoint he was the final 
 authority, and he had no rival. He was as truly 
 head of the church as of the state, and that he 
 himself had no doubts on the matter is evident 
 from his reserving for his own consideration the 
 most weighty questions and sometimes at least 
 presiding in the consistorial court. 20 
 
 There were three quarters from which effective 
 opposition to this monarchical government of the 
 church might have been expected: from the 
 people first of all, who had been called to the 
 leadership by Luther and the principles of 
 Protestantism; from the clergy, who were accus- 
 tomed in Roman times to dictate alike to people 
 and prince, and from the nobility, who in the 
 local diets shared in the political government of 
 the principality. But from the people, after the 
 suppression of the Anabaptists and the peasants 
 and their rejection by Luther, nothing was to be 
 expected, and nothing was heard for two cen- 
 turies. The clergy and the nobility did not yield 
 without a struggle. 
 
 As long as Luther and his great associates 
 
 20 Sehling, Kirchenordnungen, i, 280. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 107 
 
 lived and as long as the traditions of Roman 
 Catholic times retained their force, the new power 
 of the prince was neither exercised nor felt. The 
 clergy advised and the prince published their 
 advice, in the form of enactments. But when 
 Luther and Melanchthon were dead and the 
 smaller men that succeeded them, not being able 
 to agree, gave themselves up to theological dis- 
 putes which they conducted in such an unchar- 
 itable fashion as to forfeit much of the respect 
 due to their position, the prince was forced to 
 form his own judgment and to realize his new 
 responsibility and power. It was only by his 
 word that controverted points could be decided, 
 the disputants silenced, imprisoned or banished, 
 and peace maintained in the church. Much de- 
 pended of course upon his personality and his 
 disposition toward the church and religion. The 
 Count of Henneberg, for instance, was very much 
 averse at first to setting himself, a single member 
 of the church, above the consistory, and allowed 
 his superintendent to dispute his right to make 
 any changes in church ordinances and ceremon- 
 ies. 21 But such examples are rare. Even the 
 Count of Henneberg soon changed his mind. 
 The claims of the clergy to an authoritative place 
 in the church gradually disappeared, being com- 
 pletely overshadowed by the better grounded and 
 materially defended claims of the princes. 
 
 21 Sehling, Kirchenordnungen, ii, 276 ff. 
 
108 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 In Pomerania their influence had the most last- 
 ing effect. Here the clergy were charged by their 
 Duke with the reformation of doctrine, ceremonial 
 ond other matters and a visitation instituted. In 
 1543 they declared their independence of him by 
 demanding that "the powers of the Synod be pre- 
 scribed, that only clergy be admitted thereto, and 
 that if the Duke send delegates to the Synod the 
 conclusions shall be handed them at the end of 
 the sitting with the request that they be en- 
 forced." The idea behind this was evidently that 
 of the Canon Law of earlier times, according to 
 which the civil authority as advocatus ecclesiae 
 was required to execute the decrees of the church 
 without examining or formally approving them. 
 The same attempt to retain the former practice 
 appears in the request of 1556 that preachers 
 and servants of the church be tried in clerical 
 courts for both ecclesiastical and civil offences. 
 The clergy were not able, however, to maintain 
 their independence. By 1563 they were com- 
 plaining of the prince's unwarranted interfer- 
 ence with spiritual matters and shortly after the 
 end of the century their power passed into the 
 hands of the consistory and its master, the civil 
 ruler. 22 
 
 The failure of this and other attempts to con- 
 
 22 Balthasar, Sammlung einiger Urkunden zur Pom- 
 merschen Kirchenhistorie as quoted by Richter, Geschichte, 
 123 ff. Sehling, Kirchenordnungen, iv, 317 f. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 109 
 
 tinue or restore the hierarchical system of Roman 
 Catholic times is to be accredited partly to the 
 impossibility of the clergy competing with the 
 civil ruler, but largely also to the fact that their 
 claims to authority had no legal basis either ec- 
 clesiastical or political and were moreover in 
 direct contradiction to the principles of Protest- 
 antism. 
 
 As the Lutheran church, both at home and 
 abroad, has occasionally suffered from such high- 
 churchism it is worth while to quote what Pro- 
 fessor Richter says of this incident. 23 "It is a 
 universal fact that government by the clergy, 
 whenever and wherever it has developed, has 
 been able to persist for only a short time and in 
 the face of great and serious objections. This 
 phenomenon is not to be explained, as some even 
 outside the church have attempted, by the lack 
 of faith, of the time, but its real reason is that 
 government by the clergy is itself in contradic- 
 tion with the principles of the church. In the 
 Roman church it is an article of faith that the 
 power has been divinely conferred upon a cer- 
 tain class, and hence the government will remain 
 as long as there are believers. In the evangelical 
 church, on the contrary, faith has nothing to do 
 with clerical government, and hence opposition 
 has always broken out against such claims by the 
 clergy. ... So it was in Pomerania, where 
 
 28 Getchichte, 127 f. 
 
110 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 there appeared earlier than anywhere else in 
 Lutheran circles, as far as I know, an opposition 
 based upon the rights of the church, and directed 
 against the clergy in the first instance, but also 
 against the prince. In 1573 Pastor Cruse of 
 Stralsund published a number of theses in which 
 he declared the Pomeranian church's organiza- 
 tion and form of government to be unchristian, 
 papistical and devilish. He denied that the office 
 of the general superintendent existed as of di- 
 vine right. Indeed, he went so far as to say that 
 tenancy of the office or obedience to it was incom- 
 patible with salvation. The right to call pastors 
 belonged to all the churches, the right to ordain 
 belonged to the civil ruler. The establishment of 
 consistories robbed the churches of their freedom 
 and the civil government of its authority over 
 pastors and matrimonial matters. Finally he re- 
 garded it as idolatrous to say that it was well 
 pleasing to God to have uniform usages in the 
 churches. No authority has any right to speak in 
 such matters, and the prince may not do more than 
 any other common Christian. Indeed, as the Son 
 of God is the sole ruler, Christian princes have 
 no right to give orders to their subjects in eccles-. 
 iastical affairs. In the end he appeals to the 
 nobles by whom he expected an alteration would 
 be effected. These sentences, in which are to be 
 found so many things which are usually ascribed 
 to a much later time, gave the synod occasion for 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 111 
 
 earnest deliberation and anxiety, and were finally 
 solemnly condemned in 1583. It was character- 
 istic that the clergy in doing so did not appeal to 
 their own divine right but characterized the false 
 teaching of the accused pastor concerning con- 
 sistories, visitation and ceremonies as an injury 
 to the office and authority of the Christian prince 
 and the Christian ruler." 
 
 That the clergy should rest content with their 
 subordinated position was not to be expected. 
 And especially in the period of strife between 
 Lutheranism and Calvinism, and among the sev- 
 eral factions of the Lutheran church, there was 
 frequent criticism of what was called the unjusti- 
 fiable interference of the prince in matters of 
 doctrine. His right to govern the church in ex- 
 ternis was freely recognized but over against it 
 was erected the claim of the clergy to jurisdiction 
 in matters pertaining to the inner life of the 
 church. The memorial of the clergy of Helm- 
 stadt in the following century may serve as an 
 example of this. This raises the question 24 
 "whether the civil ruler has power, by virtue of 
 his position as ecclesiastical or political magis- 
 trate, to prescribe of himself to ministers of the 
 Word of God, in general or particular, how they 
 shall conduct themselves or declare their opin- 
 ions in the pulpit in regard to the content or form 
 of debated points of theology, or how they shall 
 
 "Eichter, Geschichte, 197. 
 
112 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 punish sinners." To this the memorial gave a 
 negative answer on the ground that the position 
 of the minister is of equally divine authority with 
 that of the prince. "As you are commanded to 
 bear the sword and exercise political government 
 in the place of God, so also the ministers of 
 God's Word are in the place of Christ, and in his 
 place preach, teach, punish, comfort and rebuke." 
 For this reason the civil ruler ought to submit to 
 the minister of the Word just as does any other 
 common Christian, and exercise his authority 
 over the church, not in his own person but 
 through superintendents and consistories, as was 
 done in the Calvinistic churches and was required 
 by the terms of the treaty of peace. Such remon- 
 strances serve to illuminate the conditions in 
 which the clergy lived, but they failed to have any 
 effect upon the prevailing system. 
 
 The only other potential rivals of the princes 
 were the nobles who, as might be expected, con- 
 tended for a share of the powers inherited by the 
 civil authority from the Roman church. Organ- 
 ized as local diets they were better prepared to 
 withstand the absolutistic claims of the prince, 
 both because custom allowed them a voice in the 
 government and particularly because their con- 
 sent was necessary to the imposition of taxes. 
 Accordingly, it is not surprising to learn that 
 during the sixteenth century their influence in 
 church affairs was considerable, though of course 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 113 
 
 not everywhere equally great. They ordered 
 visitations of the churches, demanded the estab- 
 lishment of consistories, criticized the ecclesias- 
 tical regulations of the prince and the consis- 
 tories, were consulted in regard to new ordi- 
 nances, and had a voice in the election of bishops. 
 Pastor Cruse's appeal to them indicates that in 
 his estimation they would be found willing to 
 uphold the .genuine Protestantism of Luther 
 against both prince and clergy, and indeed their 
 action elsewhere might justify him in so thinking, 
 for in Anhalt, Wurttemberg, Prussia and else- 
 where they successfully resisted innovations sa- 
 voring of Calvinism. 25 
 
 The struggle in Prussia particularly is worthy 
 of more than passing remark because out of it 
 came the conciliatory ecclesiastical policy of the 
 Hohenzollerns, which was destined to play a 
 large part in German lands after Saxony had 
 been succeeded by her northern neighbor as the 
 champion of Protestantism. Prussia had been 
 
 26 Sehling, Geschichte, 20, and literature cited there. 
 Also the article Verbesserungspuncte, die hessische, in RE, 
 xx, 493. The following incident reveals the part played 
 by prince and nobles respectively in Pomerania. When 
 the diet met in 1534 to consider the introduction of Prot- 
 estantism, the nobles demanded that the property of the 
 church should be used for the support of indigent and aged 
 nobles. The prince insisted that it should be used for the 
 establishment of schools. The nobles failing to gain their 
 point withdrew from the diet. Sehling, Kirchenordnungen, 
 iv, 35. 
 
114 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 converted to Protestantism by the efforts of Al- 
 brecht of Hohenzollem, grand-master of the 
 Order of Teutonic Knights. This chivalrous or- 
 der, composed entirely of nobles of German birth, 
 after serving its purpose as guardian of pilgrims 
 to the Holy Land in the time of the Crusades, 
 transferred its activity to the northeastern boun- 
 daries of Germany which had remained as yet 
 outside the bounds of Christendom. The work 
 of conversion or rather of subjugation was suc- 
 cessfully carried out, German settlers introduced 
 to mix with the older inhabitants and a flourish- 
 ing state called into being. In the beginning of 
 the sixteenth century, however, the glory of the 
 Order had departed, its rules were no longer en- 
 forced, and it had to acknowledge the sovereignty 
 of the King of Poland. Success had paved the 
 way to wealth, and wealth to degeneration. So 
 notorious was its condition that the pope ordered 
 the grand master to cleanse it and bring it to a 
 proper regard for its laws. 
 
 It was while he was pondering the perplexities 
 of his problem that the grand master first met 
 Luther whose name and fame were being carried 
 over all Germany. To his request for advice Lu- 
 ther replied that he should give up Roman Cath- 
 olicism, transform the lands of the Order into a 
 duchy, proclaim himself duke and marry a wife. 
 The grand master is said only to have smiled at 
 the time, but a little later he adopted the advice 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 115 
 
 to the letter. Most of the other knights followed 
 his example, at least in the matter of taking lands 
 and wives, and so became the ancestors of the 
 Prussian nobility of later times, to whom they 
 committed the traditions of the military order 
 from which they sprang. 
 
 Told in this bald fashion it might appear that 
 religion had little to do with the Protestantizing 
 of Prussia, but such is not the case. There is no 
 reason to doubt the seriousness of Albrecht's 
 conversion to the Lutheran faith. His actions 
 show that he was concerned to have all his sub- 
 jects enlightened in regard to it. His first 
 church ordinance of 1525 recognized the right of 
 the congregations to exercise discipline and share 
 in calling their pastors. He ordered church visi- 
 tations and took part in them himself. He co- 
 operated with the local bishops, who had accepted 
 Protestantism and surrendered their civil powers 
 into his hands. In 1530 he announced in the 
 preface to a new church ordinance that he was 
 forced by the neglected condition of the churches 
 to assume "a new office namely, the episcopal." 
 He provided preachers to instruct the people in 
 the "pure Gospel," and used other means only as 
 supplementary. He established secular and re- 
 ligious schools throughout his territories and 
 crowned the educational system with the Univer- 
 sity of Konigsberg which bears his name (Al- 
 bertina) to this day. In the year 1587 the two 
 
116 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 episcopates which had persisted until then gave 
 way to consistories, and so the last step was taken 
 in bringing the duchy into line with the other gen- 
 uinely Lutheran lands. In this way Prussia was 
 won for Lutheranism as it never had been won 
 for the Roman Catholic church, and it has repaid 
 the debt by always remaining true to the great 
 Reformer. 
 
 The sister state of Brandenburg had adopted 
 the principles of the Lutheran Reformation only 
 after considerable hesitation and even then had 
 retained many of the ecclesiastical earmarks of the 
 Roman church. As the bitter antagonism toward 
 Calvinism which characterized the Lutheran 
 church of the sixteenth century developed, how- 
 ever, it became thoroughly imbued with the prin- 
 ciples of the new church, being hardly behind 
 Saxony in its condemnation of the sister Protes- 
 tant church and of Lutheran heresies. Osian- 
 drianism and Philipism were suppressed, the 
 importation of Calvinistic books was forbidden, a 
 body of doctrine ( Corpus doctrinae Brandenbur- 
 gicum, 1572) published which gave special prom- 
 inence to Luther's statement that Zwingli and all 
 his teachings were unchristian, and the heirs to 
 the throne were pledged to make no innovations 
 in the matter of dogma. The zeal behind all these 
 measures may be judged by the prayer of the 
 Chancellor Distelmeyer: "Fill us, O God, with 
 the hatred of Calvinism." 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 117 
 
 While matters were going on in this way two 
 things of prime importance occurred early in the 
 seventeenth century. By a failure of the Prus- 
 sian line, Brandenburg and Prussia were united 
 under one prince — and this prince attempted to 
 impose upon his subjects the Calvinistic faith. 
 John Sigismund when a child had been trained 
 in the strictest Lutheranism, and pledged by his 
 grandfather to maintain it as then established in 
 the schools and churches of Brandenburg. Un- 
 der the more liberal direction of his father his 
 education was continued in Strassburg and Hei- 
 delberg where he had an opportunity of becom- 
 ing acquainted with the Calvinistic church and 
 observing its effects in the upper Rhine country. 
 He was there convinced that Lutheranism was 
 only a halting place between Roman Catholicism 
 and true Christianity, and that in Calvinism were 
 to be found both correct doctrine and a cultural 
 power lacking in the religion and church of his 
 home. Accordingly soon after his accession to 
 the throne he allowed his preference to be known, 
 at first quietly and almost secretly, and then with 
 more boldness. He found, however, little sup- 
 port among his people, for the clergy, nobility 
 and even the members of his own family, at least 
 his own wife and daughters, were resolved to be 
 true to their own church and to prevent if possi- 
 ble his defection from it. This did not prevent 
 him from taking steps toward making Calvinism 
 
118 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 the faith of his subjects. Acting within what was 
 generally regarded as his legal right and duty, 
 the jus reformandi religionem, he invited Cal- 
 vinistic divines from the Palatinate, and ap- 
 pointed a church council to which was committed 
 the oversight of preaching, teaching and the 
 training and licensing of preachers. At the 
 same time he declared almost in the words of 
 Luther that the conscience could not be forced 
 and that he had no intention of coercing his sub- 
 jects until they had had an opportunity of ac- 
 quainting themselves with what he called "Lu- 
 theranism purged of Papacy." To assist them 
 to a better knowledge he himself prepared a con- 
 fession of faith dealing with the controverted 
 points of doctrine. 
 
 The first to oppose this program were Lu- 
 theran ministers who in the pulpit and press 
 loudly denounced Calvinism in general and the 
 new regulations in particular. The Elector 
 answered by taking steps to have the chief of- 
 fenders arrested, and they escaped this humilia- 
 tion only by the assistance of the Electress Anna. 
 True to his expressed wish that the differences be 
 debated freely the Elector also invited the Lu- 
 theran clergy to meet the Calvinistic divines. This 
 the former endeavored in every way to avoid, and 
 when brought to the debating hall almost by 
 force, excused themselves from speaking on the 
 ground that the subject matter was not suitable 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 119 
 
 for discussion in the vernacular, and that as the 
 Elector had imported Calvinistic divines he 
 should also allow foreign Lutheran scholars to 
 be summoned. From which it is evident that the 
 clergy did not feel equal to the task of opposing 
 the prince. 
 
 With the nobility, however, it was otherwise. 
 Using the same weapon that has been found 
 effective elsewhere in subjugating recalcitrant 
 rulers they refused to vote supplies until the old 
 order was established. In Prussia they added the 
 accusation that any alteration in the faith of the 
 country was a violation of the fundamental law 
 of the duchy. In the end the Elector was forced 
 to yield, contenting himself with the declaration 
 that he would neither interfere with the religious 
 beliefs of his subjects nor allow them to interfere 
 with his. The cathedral church of Berlin re- 
 mained Calvinistic and a few other churches of 
 the same faith appeared in the neighborhood of 
 the court, but the country generally remained 
 solidly Lutheran. As for the Electress Anna, 
 she died protesting her hatred of Calvinism, but 
 a minister of the detested faith pronounced 
 the funeral oration and utilized the occasion to 
 prove that Calvinism is the only true form of 
 Christianity. 
 
 In this way a form of toleration was intro- 
 duced into, or rather forced upon Brandenburg 
 and Prussia early in the seventeenth century. In 
 
120 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 this way too the Hohenzollerns were directed to 
 an ecclesiastical policy of conciliation of the two 
 great branches of Protestantism, which brought 
 them into contact with the reformed states in the 
 valley of the Rhine and beyond, as well as the 
 Lutheran states lying at their doors, and so pre- 
 pared the way for Prussia to become the conti- 
 nental champion of Protestantism. Nor should 
 we neglect another result, namely, that by John 
 Sigismund's conversion to Calvinism the Lu- 
 theran churches of Brandenburg and Prussia 
 were forced to accept as their supreme ruler a 
 prince of another faith. The Lutheran theory of 
 the prince's right to rule in virtue of his being an 
 eminent member of the church therefore fell to 
 the ground. 
 
 It would be wrong to conclude from this and 
 similar conflicts in which the prince failed to gain 
 his ends that the nobility were capable in them- 
 selves of offering an effective opposition. John 
 Sigismund was not restrained by them but by 
 the power of Luther's name. They merely gave 
 expression to the universal will against which the 
 prince in spite of his position and power was un- 
 able to make headway. As spokesman for the 
 people's rights they were able to gain their ends, 
 but not when acting for themselves. They had 
 no adequate grounds upon which to base their 
 own claims nor the material means wherewith to 
 support them. Hence they too, like the clergy, 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 121 
 
 disappeared as a factor in the government of 
 the church by the end of the sixteenth century; 
 and the Thirty Years War deprived them of any 
 remnants of power, political or ecclesiastical. 
 
 The elimination of the clergy and lesser nobles 
 on the one hand and the harsh repression of the 
 masses of the people on the other left the terri- 
 torial ruler without a rival at the head of the 
 church. As 'Sehling truly says, 26 "The territorial 
 prince was absolute ruler. He issued the ordi- 
 nances for the church as his own regulations, 
 ordinances that affected every branch of the 
 church life, organization, liturgies and doctrine. 
 He named the church officials down to the pas- 
 tors. He appointed the officials and held them 
 to their work. Visitations were made in his 
 name, their results reported to him and the cor- 
 responding necessary orders imparted by him 
 and enforced by his own commission, the next 
 board of visitors or the lower officials. All com- 
 plaints were laid before him and decided by him. 
 In places where he had appointed consistorial 
 courts appeals were sometimes made to them, and 
 sometimes over their heads directly to him, even 
 in questions relating to marriage. The whole 
 finance system of the church was conducted in 
 the same way. All petitions for improvement 
 came to him either through the boards of visita- 
 tion, or, more rarely and regularly, through the 
 
 26 Geschichte, 20. 
 
122 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 superintendents, and were decided by him. He 
 too had to supply the requisite moneys. The 
 disciplinary power over the preachers lay also 
 with him. In a word, the whole legal life of the 
 church was in his hands." 
 
 Even in matters of doctrine and church disci- 
 pline, which were frequently associated in the 
 period of controversy after Luther's death, the 
 prince freely interfered. He was the guardian 
 of true doctrine, and this could not be protected 
 except by physical means. But as he had little 
 or no knowledge of theology himself, his inter- 
 vention was often hasty, ill judged or subject to 
 a later change of opinion. An excellent illustra- 
 tion is afforded by the action of the Duke in Ern- 
 estine Saxony, who under the influence of Flacius 
 issued as authoritative for the churches of his 
 territory a condemnation of nine new heresies, 
 1556. A little later, falling under the influence 
 of those imprisoned for heresy, he allied himself 
 with them and when Flacius and his associates 
 complained, as they did quite forcibly and incon- 
 sistently, of his usurping the place of Christ in 
 the church, banished them, forty altogether, from 
 the country. To add to the confusion a change 
 of rulers a few years later restored the strict 
 Lutheranism of Flacius to the authoritative place 
 and most of the exiles to their former positions. 
 In the confusion necessarily attendant upon such 
 measures and counter measures, when a man 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 123 
 
 might be orthodox today and a heretic tomorrow, 
 it is no wonder that the defender of true doctrine 
 should find it necessary to instruct his superin- 
 tendent that no one was to be excommunicated 
 without his consent. 27 Luther had protested vig- 
 orously a few years before (1543) when Maurice 
 of Saxony had interfered with church discipline, 28 
 complaining that whereas before the Refor- 
 mation "the devil had injected the church into 
 politics now he was injecting the state into the 
 church." But within twenty years the Duke of 
 Weimar calmly reserved for himself every case 
 of excommunication, and a few years later no one 
 apparently doubted the prince's right to govern 
 in this as in every other department of the church. 
 Indeed one of the amazing things about this revo- 
 lution is the speed with which it was accom- 
 plished. And yet after all there is no reason for 
 surprise. Had Luther's own ideas and ideals 
 been consummated within the same space of time 
 it might well be called amazing, but what was 
 really accomplished was merely the transference 
 of ecclesiastical authority from one man to an- 
 other. The German prince had become summus 
 episcopus or pope in his own territory, as was 
 recognized as soon as the people had an oppor- 
 tunity to comtemplate what had been done. 
 
 27 Sehling, Geschichte, 22. 
 
 28 Letter to Gresser, Oct. 22, 1543, DeWette, v. 596. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Theories and Practice 
 
 In all essentials, the legal position of the Lu- 
 theran churches and of the Calvinistic churches 
 in Lutheran countries has remained the same 
 throughout the centuries, as at the end of the 
 sixteenth century. But although the actual con- 
 dition has not changed, the theories respecting it 
 have altered from time to time, yielding to modi- 
 fications of thought in respect to religion and 
 politics. The first is the Episcopal Theory. 
 
 The earliest writers to treat the matter syste- 
 matically endeavored to justify the existing 
 dominion of the prince out of divine and human 
 law, and at the same time to safeguard the free- 
 dom of the church. The threefold division of the 
 church into status ecclesiasticus or the clergy, 
 status politicus or the civil authority, and 
 status oeconomicus or the rank and file of the 
 laity, a division that antedates the Reformation 
 and had been appropriated by Luther, was re- 
 tained and formed the basis upon which the legal 
 structure was erected. Each estate was appor- 
 tioned its own particular share in the church life 
 with the result that to the civil ruler fell the duty 
 
 124 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 125 
 
 and right of governing, to the clergy the duty 
 and right of preaching, administering the sacra- 
 ments and advising, and to the people the duty 
 and right of approving and acquiescing in the 
 actions of their superiors. The centre of gravity 
 in such a system lay of course in the civil ruler 
 whose position received the most attention and 
 to whom the others were related. 
 
 It was assumed in the first place that the ruler 
 is a pious Christian, that is to say, in the words of 
 Luther, that he is a "conspicuous member" of the 
 church. This, however, was not now regarded as 
 a justification of his interfering in ecclesiastical 
 affairs in itself. "To the magistrate," says the 
 theologian Gerhard, 1 "has been committed by 
 God the custody of the divine law, to which be- 
 longs not only the second table of the Decalogue 
 regarding duties to one's neighbor, but also the 
 first table regarding the worship of God and the 
 public exercise of the same." Similarly, Rein- 
 ginck 2 the jurist declares that the magistrate pos- 
 sesses his ecclesiastical rights and powers "not by 
 virtue of any papal ordinance, but by virtue of 
 the royal power conferred by God." 
 
 In other words it is the divinely appointed duty 
 of princes to care for the spiritual and eternal 
 welfare of their subjects as well as for their ma- 
 
 1 Loci communes iheologici, 1610-1622, Locus xxv, quoted 
 by Rieker, 210. 
 
 2 Tractates de regimine seculari et ecclesiastico, 1619; 
 Rieker, 218. 
 
126 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 terial interests. Once this principle was clearly 
 established it was impossible to avoid the conclu- 
 sion that both the jus circa sacra and the jus in 
 sacra were vested in the civil ruler, and that the 
 whole religious and ecclesiastical life of the peo- 
 ple lay in his hands. To strengthen this conten- 
 tion the early apologists advanced as a second 
 argument the terms of treaties of Passau (1543) 
 and Augsburg (1555). By these, it was said, 
 the rights formerly held and exercised by the 
 pope and the Roman Catholic bishops had de- 
 volved upon the civil rulers of the German Prot- 
 estant states, and therefore whatever had been 
 competent for the pope in former times was com- 
 petent for German princes today. 
 
 This argument, however, was not felt to be 
 essential, or to add anything to that of divine 
 right, for no sooner was it stated than the writers 
 hasten to explain that the pope and bishops had 
 usurped the power they had exercised, and there- 
 fore its assumption by the princes should be re- 
 garded as a restitution rather than a devolution. 
 In either case however, whether the power came 
 immediately from God or mediately from the 
 Roman hierarchy, this process of argumentation 
 showed the princes to be bishops and even popes 
 in their own territories. Indeed, one writer 8 
 
 8 Samuel Stryck, De jure papali principum evangelico- 
 rum; De principe quolibet papa in suo territoris, 1690, 
 Rieker, 222 f. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 127 
 
 pointed out that the comparison does injustice to 
 the dignity of the German princes (infra digni- 
 tatem nostrorum principum) . The bishops were 
 subject to the pope and the pope himself gener- 
 ally restricted by the college of cardinals, but the 
 German Protestant prince is superior to all con- 
 trol, and acts freely out of the fulness of his su- 
 preme power (ex summae potestatis ecclesiasti- 
 cae plenitudine). 
 
 However logical and conclusive such reasoning 
 might appear to be it labored under the defect of 
 proving too much. It was obvious to all that the 
 prince, in not taking part personally in matters 
 affecting the inner life of the church such as 
 preaching and the administration of the sacra- 
 ments, was not a bishop in fact, according to the 
 established sense of the word, no matter what he 
 might be in theory. Moreover, there was still 
 such force in the traditions of the independence of 
 the church, that is to say, of the clergy, and of the 
 rights of all Christians according to the Protes- 
 tant scheme, that some account had to be taken of 
 them. Accordingly we find these writers taking 
 away with one hand what they had bestowed with 
 the other, or endeavoring to limit the prince's 
 exercise of power if not the power itself. Chem- 
 nitz 4 says that the pious and Christian magistrate 
 may not call and instal ministers "without the will 
 and consent of the clergy and the rest of the 
 
 4 Loci theologici, Rieker, 209. 
 
128 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 church," and Reinginck reminds the prince that 
 he is "not the whole church but only a member 
 of it, not its lord but its nurse." More par- 
 ticularly, it is affirmed with respect to the 
 office of preaching, administering the sacra- 
 ments and absolving sinners that "the civil 
 magistrate ought not to perform these duties 
 himself, nor indeed does he in our churches," but 
 he shall see that they are "properly performed by 
 superintendents and ministers of the church ac- 
 cording to the order divinely instituted for the 
 evangelical pattern," the superintendents and 
 ministers of course to be appointed by himself. 
 Moreover, in exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction 
 the prince should act through the consistorial 
 courts which although created by him are never- 
 theless regarded as church courts, one writer 5 
 even going so far as to say that the powers con- 
 ferred upon them cannot be recalled. 
 
 With regard to this Episcopal Theory not 
 much need be said. It was the first attempt of 
 the Lutheran church legally to justify its posi- 
 tion as over against the Roman Catholic church. 
 In this it must be admitted to have been success- 
 ful for it simply applied the Roman Canon Law 
 to the Lutheran church except that in the place 
 of pope and bishops it set the territorial ruler. 
 Apart from this, however, it accomplished noth- 
 ing. "It had little or no influence upon the actual 
 
 5 M. Stephani as quoted by Rieker, 217. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 129 
 
 conditions or the prevailing system." 6 It is inter- 
 esting, however, because of the change it shows in 
 the conception of the civil ruler as compared with 
 the views of Luther. The prince is no longer 
 merely a conspicuous member of the church using 
 his office in case of need and extraordinarily to 
 purge and reform it. He has ceased to be "emer- 
 gency bishop" and has become a real bishop in the 
 canonical sense of the word, with no less and per- 
 haps even more power than had been possessed 
 by the Roman bishops, for there were absolutely 
 no legal limits to his jurisdiction. 
 
 It is important too, in view of what is to follow, 
 to note that the bond uniting the prince and the 
 church is still regarded as a religious one. It is 
 as bishop that he rules and not as civil ruler. 
 There was no doubt confusion here but some of 
 the writers 7 of the time thought their way through 
 to the conception of a double personality of the 
 ruler as prince and bishop. And finally it is 
 worthy of remark that the whole structure of the 
 church is conceived exactly as in Roman times 
 from above down. All authority is vested in the 
 prince bishop, a little influence and some rights 
 are reserved for the clergy, but the mass of peo- 
 ple, whom Luther had called to be priests, bishops 
 and popes, are hardly brought into view. They 
 are merely objects of the church's activity. 
 
 8 Sehling, Geschichte, 84. 
 
 7 M. Slephani and Carpzov, Rieker, 217 f. 
 
180 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 During the latter half of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury two attacks were made upon the existing 
 system, one being religious and taking its depart- 
 ure from Luther's doctrine of the universal 
 priesthood, the other being political and allied 
 with doctrine of the rights of man. Spener, the 
 father of Pietism, was the champion of the first. 
 Filled with alarm at what he considered the mori- 
 bund condition of Christianity in the Lutheran 
 churches, and encouraged thereto by the healthier 
 condition of the Calvinistic churches in Switzer- 
 land and France, Spener advocated strongly the 
 introduction of a system of church government 
 which would recognize the rights of the individual 
 Christian and place the control of the church, 
 to a great extent at least, in the hands of the 
 congregations. 
 
 Writing of the absolute control of their par- 
 ishes by the clergy in 1691 he said: 8 "If the Chris- 
 tian church is to be organized aright, its constitu- 
 tion must be of such a nature as to allow all three 
 estates to have their own spheres of labor and to 
 cooperate in everything pertaining to the life of 
 the church. This is the condition which is most in 
 keeping with the divine institution, the most com- 
 patible with the universal edification of the 
 churches, and the most blessed of God .... If, 
 however, it so happens that one estate alone, es- 
 pecially the clergy, usurps the power in the 
 
 8 Bedenken, quoted by Richter, 201 f. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 181 
 
 churches and claims it as of right belonging to 
 their office, and so will not submit to correction 
 by the other estates, then there exists a condition 
 which is not to be praised nor even tolerated. 
 Indeed, such unwarranted assumption of power 
 by the clergy is genuinely papistical and anti- 
 christian and incompatible with the mainten- 
 ance of the truth." 
 
 With the position occupied by the secular au- 
 thorities he is equally dissatisfied. 9 "It is un- 
 doubtedly true that God has laid upon the civil 
 rulers the duty of enforcing the first as well as 
 the second table of the law, and so of upholding 
 His honor. But one sees very few of them taking 
 any interest in the matter, except that they claim 
 the jus episcopale as their prerogative, increasing 
 their own glory rather than the divine honor. . . . 
 And so the jus episcopale which should be exer- 
 cised for the benefit of the church has become the 
 very means whereby everything good is hin- 
 dered .... It has become the impediment of 
 everything good, so that when the civil power 
 will not undertake a thing, those of the clergy 
 and laity that would willingly do good, dare not. 
 I have often lauded some churches that live under 
 the authority of a ruler of another faith and suf- 
 fer hardship in respect to externals, as much 
 happier than those that have the ruler on their 
 side. For, having full control of the placing of 
 
 9 Bedenhen, quoted by Richter, 201 f. 
 
132 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 preachers, of discipline and of church organiza- 
 tion, all of which they exercise with splendid 
 modesty and zeal, through the pastors, elders 
 and the regulations of the congregations, in such 
 a manner as to edify all and without detriment 
 to the ruler, they accomplish much more than 
 those churches which dare not do anything with- 
 out the ruler, and whose ruler is often opposed 
 to what is good. For this reason I regard such 
 caesaropapacy and secular anti-christianity as a 
 greater evil than that which destroys the exter- 
 nals of the church." 
 
 Spener's interests like Luther's were altogether 
 religious. He too did not regard organization 
 or government as of the esse of the church, nor 
 has he left any systematic statement or plan for 
 its reconstruction. But from these passages and 
 other similar ones it is possible to affirm without 
 hesitation that he wished to see the authority, at 
 least in congregational matters, taken from the 
 princes and put in the hands of the clergy and 
 laity. Each congregation should elect its own 
 elders, who with the pastor or pastors should 
 have the management of all matters pertaining 
 to the congregational life, including of course the 
 discipline, which he admired so much in the Cal- 
 vinistic churches, and wished to see introduced 
 into his own. It is interesting, however, that he 
 too, like Luther, doubted the possibility of find- 
 ing suitable individuals for the eldership in the 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 183 
 
 German churches, 10 and that he would not ex- 
 clude the civil ruler from participation in the 
 church courts. Unlike Luther he regarded the 
 clerical office as of divine appointment, just as 
 he did the priesthood of all believers. 
 
 The great service of Pietism in respect to the 
 constitution of the church was that it stirred up 
 the people to a recognition of their Christian re- 
 sponsibilities and thus prepared the way for their 
 assuming the burdens of the church at a later 
 date. On the existing legal condition of the time 
 it made no impression whatever. One reason for 
 this was that Pietism besides advocating a greater 
 liberty for the individual Christian was entangled 
 in the dogmatic and political quarrels of the day, 
 and hence this minor point, not receiving separate 
 consideration, was condemned as part of an un- 
 orthodox and fanatical program. Indeed the day 
 was long past when participation of the laity in 
 the ecclesiastical government could be pointed to 
 as a genuinely Lutheran idea. It was regarded as 
 one of the earmarks of Calvinism, and so when it 
 made its appearance together with the collegia 
 pietatis, which were confessedly modelled on Cal- 
 vinistic gatherings, and a spirit of toleration quite 
 foreign to orthodox Lutheranism, the leaders of 
 the church took alarm at once and condemned them 
 all together, calling upon the civil magistrate, as 
 the guardian of right doctrine, to intervene, with 
 
 10 EE, xxiii, 505. 
 
134 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 the result that what promised to be the greatest 
 religious awakening in Germany since the days 
 of Luther was driven in some places to separa- 
 tism and fanaticism, and many of its adherents 
 forced to leave the home land. 
 
 The other attack came in the train of the po- 
 litical and social philosophy of the "Law of Na- 
 ture," and was intimately associated with the 
 naturalistic and humanistic doctrines and prac- 
 tices known as the Enlightenment. According 
 to Natural Law organized society is the result of 
 a contract between ruler and subjects, the pur- 
 pose of which is that men may live happily and 
 peacefully together. It is therefore the sole duty 
 of the ruler to see that peace and tranquillity are 
 maintained. He is not ordained of God, nor is 
 it his duty to care for the spiritual and eternal 
 welfare of his subjects. His direction of religion, 
 or rather of religions, is to be governed by politi- 
 cal utility. 11 With this went a change in the con- 
 ception of the scope of government. Instead of 
 a complex of rights, duties, prerogatives and 
 privileges it was now regarded as one and abso- 
 lute, with no human control or definition save the 
 common good of the state. 12 In this way the 
 
 11 Thomasius, Institutio iurisprudentiae, iii, 6, § 150, 
 quoted by Rieker, 237, "religiones debent dirigi secundum 
 utilitatem singularum rerumpublicarum." 
 
 12 "Potestas summa, id est in sui exercitio a nullo homing 
 tanquam superiore dependens, sed ex proprio indicia sese 
 exserens, sic ut eiusdem actus a nemine tanquam superiore 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 135 
 
 whole orthodox conception of the state as a divine 
 institution whose object was to maintain the two 
 tables of the law was undermined, and although 
 its advocates left a place for the church and re- 
 vealed religion the defenders of the faith felt that 
 their citadel was attacked and used every means 
 to repel the enemy. 
 
 The theory of the church suffered no less vio- 
 lently. Instead of being a divine institution, of 
 which of course only one was possible, it was now 
 represented as a society or association of individ- 
 uals adhering to a common confession. With 
 such a definition of course many churches were 
 possible, all of which had an equal right to exist 
 under the Law of Nature, and should be per- 
 mitted by the state as far as compatible with the 
 general peace. With this theory went a practical 
 tendency to recognize some truth in every church 
 and to deny infallibility and perfection to any of 
 them, and from this again a tendency to accept 
 as true only those elements common to all the 
 churches, from which it was but a step to natural 
 religion. Leibnitz's abortive plan for the union 
 of Catholics and Protestants sprang from this 
 school of thought. 
 
 As for the structure of the church, or as we 
 
 queant irriti reddi." Thomasius, as quoted by Rieker, 240. 
 Similarly Pufendorf, Die iure naturae et gentium, vii, 3, 
 § 1 : "Summum imperium quod in omni civitate existit et 
 quo velut anima ilia vivit ac libratur." 
 
136 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 should say, the churches, the same principles were 
 applied as had been used to explain civil society 
 and government. In the words of Pfaff, 13 by 
 whom the Collegiate Theory, as it is called, was 
 most clearly defined, a church is "a free associa- 
 tion of those that gather together for the common 
 worship of God according to the command of 
 Christ." Being a free association there can be 
 no external authority over it, and no one can be 
 forced to join against his will. There are not 
 three estates in the church as formerly main- 
 tained, the political, the clerical and the economi- 
 cal, but only two, namely, the clergy and the 
 laity, neither of which has authority over the 
 other. A church like all other human societies has 
 the right to call and dismiss its officers or minis- 
 ters, to agree upon a constitution or creed, to 
 make and enforce the laws of the society, and ex- 
 pel members that will not obey them. 
 
 The laity too, according to this theory, have a 
 share in all the activities of the church. They are 
 a royal priesthood and may exercise all the func- 
 tions of the priesthood. They have the right to 
 search the Scriptures and test all doctrine by 
 them, to share in the choice of pastors and elders, 
 to sit in all church meetings and vote on all ques- 
 tions even those concerning doctrine, to act with 
 pastor and elders in removing abuses, reforming 
 errors, expelling unworthy members; they have 
 
 13 Akademische Reden, 38; quoted by Rieker, 266. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 137 
 
 even the right of withdrawing from the church 
 and forming a new congregation when doctrinal 
 error or spiritual tyranny makes it impossible for 
 them to remain with a clean conscience. As for the 
 pastors, they combine in themselves the offices of 
 teachers and elders, and have the right and duty 
 to teach, administer the sacraments, edify the 
 congregation by word and example, care for the 
 soul of each individual member, catechize the 
 youth, comfort the sick and dying, punish sin and 
 exclude the unrepentent from the church. As 
 every church has exactly the same rights as any 
 other church it follows that none may rule over 
 another. And as there is no common authority 
 over them all to dictate terms of peace and agree- 
 ment, all should behave courteously and consid- 
 erately toward the others, not attempting to ex- 
 ercise a power which they do not possess. 
 
 It might naturally be supposed that such a 
 theory as this is would conclude with a practical, 
 if not entire, separation of church and state. But 
 such was not the case. As the advocates of the 
 Episcopal Theory no sooner clothed the prince 
 with absolute powers than they began to divest 
 him of them, so the advocates of the Collegiate 
 Theory had no sooner proved the right of the 
 churches to govern themselves than they deprived 
 them of nearly all they had bestowed. One rea- 
 son for this was that, according to the new theory, 
 the state, being all powerful, could brook no rival 
 
138 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 or potential rival. As Thomasius 14 says, "If we 
 admit that there is such a thing as ecclesiastical 
 government we deprive the prince of his best 
 prerogative, namely the ius circa sacra, hence it 
 is best to say that there is no such thing as eccles- 
 iastical government." Another reason was that 
 the advocates of the rights of man in Germany, 
 unlike its representatives elsewhere, taught, with 
 respect to both the state and the church, that the 
 power originally lodged with the individual mem- 
 bers of the society may pass irrevocably out of 
 their hands by the tacit or expressed contract 
 with a prince. This had taken place, they said, 
 in the Protestant churches of Germany. In the 
 time of the Reformation they had called upon 
 their rulers to reform them, to appoint orthodox 
 teachers and regulate ecclesiastical affairs. The 
 princes therefore by this pact have become the 
 governors of the church and remain such until 
 by the introduction of heresy or other breach of 
 the terms of contract they forfeit their rights, 
 which then return to the churches. 15 
 
 How far the prince's government was sup- 
 posed to extend may be seen from a list given by 
 Bohmer. 16 He had the right of issuing ecclesias- 
 tical ordinances, of reforming dogma, of regulat- 
 
 14 Der Kirchenrechtsgelahrtheit erster Teil, 9 ; Rieker, 
 258. 
 
 15 Pfaff, Origines iuris ecclesiasticae, 885 ff. Mosheim, 
 Allgemeines Kirchenrecht, 214. 
 
 16 As quoted by Sealing, Geschichte, 26. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 139 
 
 ing the rites, correcting the manner of preaching, 
 overseeing discipline, deciding theological dis- 
 putes, and of convoking and directing synods; 
 in short, just what he was supposed to have by 
 the Episcopal Theory, and just what he had. In 
 addition to this, according to the new theory, he 
 had the same power over the churches as over 
 other societies, such as the right to prohibit and 
 suppress them if they were injurious to the state, 
 to limit the number of their members and of 
 meetings, to send commissioners to ascertain 
 what was being said and done, to inquire into the 
 character and general fitness of the officers of the 
 society, to see that the laws of the society were 
 obeyed and to eject any that were not submissive, 
 to reform them when they deteriorate and to hold 
 them to the performance of their duties. 17 In 
 short, what we have here is simply a picture of 
 what the Germans expressively and appropriately 
 call a police state ("Polizei-staat") . And when it 
 is added that the civil ruler alone had the right 
 to decide how, when and where he should inter- 
 fere, to set bounds to his own jurisdiction, it is 
 evident that the Collegiate Theory in the form 
 in which it was advocated gave little or no free- 
 dom to the church. 
 
 This form of the Collegiate Theory has quite 
 properly been regarded as so far differing from 
 the other as to require a name of its own, viz., the 
 
 17 Pfaff, Akademisehe Reden, 90 ff. Rieker, 269. 
 
140 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 Territorial Theory. In the Territorial Theory, 
 it must be noted, the relation of the prince to the 
 church had been radically altered. He was no 
 longer regarded as a bishop, or as charged with 
 the duty of promoting religion and of using his 
 magisterial office in the service of the church. 
 On the contrary the welfare of the state, more 
 particularly the peace of the state, was to be his 
 first and highest duty, and the churches were to 
 be controlled in such fashion as not to disturb or 
 injure it. The work of propagating religion was 
 entirely in the hands of the religious societies. 
 Hence the spectacle of a prince of one faith rul- 
 ing over and controlling a church of another 
 ceases to be either improper or anomalous. 
 
 If we ask what was the immediate effect of 
 Pietism and the Law of Nature on the organiza- 
 tion of the church and its form of government 
 we must answer that they had none. The whole 
 system was so interwoven with naturalistic the- 
 ories, pietistic practices and toleration of other 
 denominations that it called forth the liveliest op- 
 position from the orthodox Lutheran ministers. 
 The theologian Johann Benedict Carpzov 18 in 
 particular rewrote the apology for the Episcopal 
 Theory with special reference to the new theory 
 of the rights of the individual Christians, defend- 
 ing the supreme authority of the prince in ec- 
 
 18 De iure decidendi controversias theologicas, 1696. 
 Richter, 206. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 141 
 
 clesiastical matters as of divine right as well as 
 based on human law, ascribing to the clergy con- 
 siderable power in matters pertaining to the in- 
 ner life of the church, but limiting the laity to 
 the right of examining and approving. His 
 scorn of the plan to allow the people a voice in 
 church matters is shown in a satirical apostrophe 
 to Jacob Boehme, and a picture of a synod in 
 which cobblers and other artisans meet together 
 with spinsters and cooks to determine the theo- 
 logical disputes of the day. 
 
 Another reason for the failure of the Colle- 
 giate Theory to make any immediate impression 
 upon the existing condition was that it was in 
 direct conflict with the political absolutism of the 
 time, fortified now by the recent introduction of 
 Roman Law and the new defence of classical 
 imperialism by the advocates of the natural rights 
 of man. The Territorial Theory was quite in ac- 
 cord with all this but the Collegiate Theory was 
 not. At the same time there was nothing in the 
 Collegiate Theory, as expounded by the earliest 
 writers, which was at variance with the actual 
 practice, and it persisted as an historical explana- 
 tion of the origin of the church. There was no 
 indication that the individual congregations or 
 collegia would demand the restoration of their 
 original rights from the princes. For except in 
 Pietistic circles, the Collegiate Theory and the 
 allied doctrine of the rights of men existed only 
 
142 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 in the heads of theorists and roused an interest 
 only in academic circles. In France it had been 
 called forth, a hundred years before, by the mas- 
 sacre of St. Bartholomew and the necessity of 
 legally defending the Huguenot wars. It bore 
 fruit in the political struggle which culminated 
 in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and 
 later in a purely naturalistic form in the French 
 Revolution. But in Germany there was neither 
 the spur of necessity nor the driving power of 
 Calvinism to translate it into deeds. It remained 
 simply a theoretical and academic explanation 
 of the origin and constitution of social groups. 
 As such, however, it had considerable influence 
 in preparing the way for the more liberal and 
 democratic ideas of the latter part of the eigh- 
 teenth and the nineteenth century. The standard 
 textbooks all agreed in representing the church as 
 a society of likeminded Christians banded together 
 of their own free will, little more than which could 
 be expected in this period of severe centraliza- 
 tion of all power in the hands of the civil ruler. 19 
 "Town and village communities, districts and 
 provinces ceased to have any common life of their 
 own or to possess any rights of their own. They 
 were merely objects of the state's activities, geo- 
 graphical districts for the state's administration. 
 Between them and the sovereign state there was 
 
 19 Preusz, Gemeinde, Staat, Reich, als Gebietskorper- 
 tchaften, 1889, 126. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 143 
 
 no legal relationship, for they were not regarded 
 as entities with a communal existence, or as hav- 
 ing any will of their own." The church or the 
 churches too fell under the suspicion of the state 
 authorities, which, like the Roman Empire before 
 them, regarded all societies or collegia as poten- 
 tial seed plots of treason, and sought by bureau- 
 cratic and pedantic methods to limit and control 
 their activities or even to force them into the ser- 
 vice of the state. 
 
 During the period of these debates the whims 
 and individual peculiarities of the princes found 
 expression in their regulation of church affairs 
 quite as freely as during the period immediately 
 following the Reformation, the only difference 
 being that there was now greater variety in their 
 religious views, and that their ecclesiastical policy 
 was more evidently influenced by political 
 expediency. To illustrate this it will be suffi- 
 cient to cite some examples from Prussia, choos- 
 ing this state rather than others, both because 
 after the defection of Augustus the Strong to the 
 Roman Catholic church on his assumption of the 
 crown of Poland (1697) Prussia stepped into the 
 place formerly occupied by Saxony as the lead- 
 ing German Protestant state, and because the 
 rapid expansion of Prussia brought about new 
 conditions, such as the incorporation of Roman 
 Catholic provinces in the kingdom, necessitating 
 a new ecclesiastical policy, and gave to the Prus- 
 
144 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 sian law and custom an ever growing prestige 
 among the other states. 
 
 As we have seen before, the conversion of 
 Johann Sigismund to the Calvinistic faith and his 
 failure to win or force his subjects to it led to 
 the legal recognition of both branches of Protest- 
 antism in Brandenburg and Prussia, and the 
 adoption of a policy of conciliation by the house 
 of Hohenzollern. By giving equal recognition 
 to the Calvinists with the Lutheran and Roman 
 Catholics the Peace of Westphalia (1648) had 
 removed any imperial legal restriction that might 
 have been urged against the toleration of Calvin- 
 ists, and by ordering that converted princes 
 might not force their subjects to change their 
 faith also, it actually enjoined a degree of tolera- 
 tion in some states. At the same time it confirmed 
 to the individual states the right of reforming 
 religion and so left the prince supreme over what- 
 ever church or churches existed in his territory. 
 This was one factor making for toleration on the 
 one hand and the subordination of the churches 
 to the state on the other. 
 
 To this must be added the influence of Pietism 
 and the humanistic theories of the Enlighten- 
 ment, which was entirely on the side of toleration, 
 also the imperialistic theories of government, 
 which, coupled with the dazzling example of the 
 court of Louis XIV in France, inspired every 
 petty German state with the ambition to unite 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 145 
 
 in itself the closely articulated government of 
 imperial Rome with the glories of modern France. 
 Freedom of conscience on the one hand and state 
 absolutism on the other, these two ideas super- 
 imposed upon and mingling with denominational 
 intolerance and the episcopal supremacy of the 
 civil ruler gave its peculiar character to the eccles- 
 iastical policy of the eighteenth century, while the 
 necessity of maintaining the army and of repopu- 
 lating ravaged lands and otherwise making good 
 the damage of the Thirty Years War entered as 
 a material factor in the decision of particular 
 cases. 
 
 The Great Elector (1640-1688), an ardent 
 Calvinist, was at once a champion of freedom of 
 conscience and an ecclesiastical despot. When 
 the Edict of Nantes was revoked (1685) and the 
 Calvinists of France were forced in thousands to 
 seek refuge in other lands, his commissioners met 
 them at the boundary and transported them to 
 homes where they were guaranteed the free exer- 
 cise of their religion and special privileges of other 
 kinds. To the Catholics also he allowed the liberty 
 of worship and considerable freedom in respect 
 to the laws of their church. But he also thought 
 himself justified in forbidding his subjects to at- 
 tend the strongly Lutheran University of Wit- 
 tenberg, in interfering in internal affairs of the 
 churches, regulating such matters as the use of 
 Latin hymns, crosses, vestments and the liturgy 
 
146 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 generally, in appointing days of prayer and fast- 
 ing for all his subjects irrespective of creed and 
 even prescribing the text for the sermon, while 
 he informed even the Catholics that they should 
 regard him as their lord and bishop in spiritual 
 matters and not accept commands from foreign 
 rulers. 20 
 
 By his son Frederick (1688-1713), the first of 
 the electors to assume the title of king, definite 
 attempts were made to effect a real union of the 
 two Protestant confessions. Not content with 
 merely removing some more of the "Catholic rem- 
 nants" from the Lutheran churches, such as the 
 private confessional and exorcism, or with direct- 
 ing the examiners to pay no attention to disputed 
 points of theology "which are of no importance 
 anyway," he thought to take advantage of the 
 friendlier feeling engendered by Pietism and the 
 new humanistic philosophy, in endeavoring to 
 unite the two churches by the exercise of his su- 
 preme episcopal authority. Liturgical uniform- 
 ity was to be enforced, theological harmony to be 
 secured by the retention of a minimum of doc- 
 trine, recalcitrant ministers to be silenced, and all 
 the members of both confessions to be exhorted to 
 love one another. Unfortunately for his plans 
 this program which was being prepared in secret 
 
 20 Lehroann, Preuszen und die katholische Kirche; Von 
 Miihler, Geschichte der evangelischen Kirchenverfassung; 
 quoted by Rieker, 290 ff, 807 ff. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 147 
 
 became known to the clergy, and, the storm of 
 criticism it occasioned savoring little of brotherly- 
 love, had to be abandoned. Another and more 
 ambitious project had no better success. This 
 was nothing less than the union of the English 
 and the German churches, involving the introduc- 
 tion into Germany of the English liturgy, which 
 it was believed had been useful in uniting all re- 
 ligious parties in England, and of the episcopal 
 system which was more in keeping with the dig- 
 nity and strength of royalty than the more demo- 
 cratically conceived consistorial courts and sup- 
 erintendences in which all clergymen were of 
 equal rank. Two bishops, one from either con- 
 fession, were appointed by the Elector and after- 
 ward consecrated by a bishop of the Bohemian 
 Brethren, to assist at the coronation, but the nego- 
 tiations with England fell through on account of 
 the opposition of the German ministers, and fi- 
 nally the whole scheme was abandoned when 
 Frederick William I, who had no sympathy with 
 it, came to the throne. 
 
 This prince too was not averse to union, but his 
 parsimonious and pietistic nature had no sympa- 
 thy with the pomp of episcopacy. The theologi- 
 cal differences between Lutherans and Calvinists 
 were to him also only parsons' quarrels (Pfaffen- 
 gezank) , but his attempt to unite them on a basis 
 of fifteen articles was a failure. Personally he 
 hated Roman Catholicism but for military and 
 
148 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 political reasons he protected Roman Catholics, 
 prohibiting all inveighing and sneering at them, 
 and declaring that anyone could dwell in his 
 lands that wanted to, the more people the better. 
 As there were papists in his pampered regiment 
 of giants in Potsdam he was forced to allow the 
 Catholic mass to be sung at his very door. 
 
 These may be taken as examples of princes 
 that regarded it as their duty and right to regu- 
 late the religious life of their subjects and actu- 
 ally attempted to do so. Frederick the Great is 
 the best representative of the humanistic and 
 "Enlightened" princes that regarded religion and 
 churches solely from the standpoint of the state. 
 Believing as he did that all churches were founded 
 upon intrigue and deception he lacked the per- 
 sonal, religious and denominational interest that 
 incited other rulers of his house to play the role 
 of pastor to their subjects; and having accepted 
 for himself the vague naturalistic and deistical 
 views of his time he could the more easily put 
 into practice the naturalistic views of govern- 
 ment that accompanied them. Accordingly we 
 find a greater liberty of belief than ever before 
 accorded not only to the three confessions rec- 
 ognized by the Peace of Westphalia, but also to 
 the members of the Greek church, the Men- 
 nonites, the Socinians, the Schwenckfeldians, the 
 Bohemian Brethren and others. Every one could 
 be saved in his own fashion in his kingdom, said 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 149 
 
 Frederick. "All religions are equally good if 
 only the people that profess them are honest, and 
 if Turks and heathen came and were willing to 
 populate the land we would build them mosques 
 and churches," 21 he said in another place, indicat- 
 ing both his standard of judgment in religious 
 matters and the expediency of a policy of toler- 
 ation. "False religious zeal is a tyrant that de- 
 populates provinces; tolerance is a kind mother 
 that cherishes and advances their prosperity" 22 
 is another statement from his mouth to the same 
 effect, and he did actually contemplate the in- 
 troduction of Mohammedans to increase the pop- 
 ulation and provide a reserve for the army. 23 
 He demanded of his subjects "nothing more than 
 civil obedience and loyalty. So long as they are 
 faithful in respect to these, I regard myself as 
 bound to bestow upon them equal favor, protec- 
 tion and justice, no matter what speculative views 
 they may entertain in matters of religion. Judg- 
 ment upon such matters I leave to that One who 
 alone has power over the consciences of men, and 
 of whom I cannot form such a shabby opinion as 
 to suppose that He requires human assistance to 
 realize His plans, or that it is pleasing to Him, if 
 one imagines he can be of assistance either by 
 
 21 Quoted by Lehmann, ii, 8 f . 
 
 22 RE, xix, 830. 
 
 23 Zeller, Friedrich der Grosse als Philosoph, 155; Rieker, 
 294. 
 
150 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 using force, or cunning or other indirect means." 24 
 But if Frederick himself would not force the 
 consciences of his subjects he insisted that no one 
 else should do so. The several churches were 
 required to live at peace with one another and the 
 preachers to avoid disputed points of theology. 
 In other respects also he was not behind his pre- 
 decessors in interfering in church affairs, the only 
 difference being that whereas their interest had 
 been in part at least religious his was entirely 
 political. He regulated the number of churches 
 according to the financial ability of the members 
 to be served, ordered that no one be permitted 
 to enter a cloister without permission, the object 
 in this case being to prevent depopulation, de- 
 clared himself independent of Rome in his treat- 
 ment of Catholics and even forbade the publica- 
 tion of the papal bull, abolishing the Society of 
 Jesus, because he wished to retain the services of 
 its members in the schools. 
 
 The spirit of Frederick the Great's ecclesiasti- 
 cal policy may be seen best, however, in the Prus- 
 sian Land Law, which although not published un- 
 til after his death was compiled by jurists of his 
 appointment and reflects the ideals and practice of 
 his reign. In this code of laws, which remained in 
 force with minor changes until the year 1900, the 
 naturalistic philosophy of the time is plainly re- 
 
 24 From a letter to the Empress of Austria. Lehmann, 
 ii, 585; Rieker, 811. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 151 
 
 fleeted, with the result that, on the one hand, indi- 
 viduals receive liberty of conscience and of pri- 
 vate worship, and congregations are given con- 
 siderable power in respect to calling and judging 
 pastors, regulating the liturgy and other matters 
 affecting the inner life of the church, but on the 
 other hand, the state reserves the right to inspect, 
 supervise and correct where and when it will. In 
 other words, the Land Law consistently looks 
 down upon religion from the higher viewpoint of 
 the state and ranges all churches as legal associa- 
 tions under its control. How far this control ex- 
 tends may be seen from the following extracts: 
 The private and public religious exercises of every 
 religious association are subject to the oversight 
 of the state. The state is entitled to know what 
 is taught and done in meetings of the associations. 
 Any changes in the order of service must be ap- 
 proved beforehand by the state. Church disci- 
 pline must touch neither the body, honor nor prop- 
 erty of the punished member. If punishment of 
 this kind is necessary it is to be meted out by the 
 state authorities. A member may not in every 
 case be excluded by the church ; for instance, re- 
 fusal to accept the creed is not proper ground for 
 dismissal, and in case of dispute the state must 
 decide. All the officers of the churches are either 
 appointed by or approved by the state, which also 
 holds them to the performance of their duties, 
 an obedient loyalty to the state and comity with 
 
152 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 the officers of other churches. New churches may 
 not be built without the consent of the state nor 
 property acquired nor sold. With these and other 
 restrictions the churches are recognized as "privi- 
 leged corporations," and permitted to pursue 
 their own ends. 
 
 The whole mental attitude of the law is that 
 "The corporation exists only for the state and 
 not for itself, for which reason it is subjected 
 to the will of the state as well as its own. ... Of 
 prime importance is the sentence that stands at 
 the head of the section 'On Church Associations 
 in General': 'Every church association is obli- 
 gated to inculcate in its members the fear of God, 
 obedience to the laws, loyalty to the state and an 
 amicable disposition toward their fellow citizens.' 
 From this follow logically the further state- 
 ments that all religious teachings that run con- 
 trary to these may not be taught in the state nor 
 published by word of mouth or through the press, 
 and that the state has the right to condemn any 
 such teachings and to prohibit their propagation. 
 The conception of the church underlying these 
 regulations is simply that it is a corporation ac- 
 cording to the meaning of the Land Law. That is 
 to say, the churches are independent associations 
 ideally separate from the state. They do not dis- 
 appear either in the state or under it. But they 
 are not self-determined, they exist not merely for 
 themselves, to accomplish their own ends in the 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 153 
 
 interests of their members, but they exist also for 
 the state and serve its ends, and this neither 
 through accident or lack of intention nor of their 
 own free will, but because the state has obliged 
 them to do so. But why does the state do this? 
 Because it needs the church to attain its own ends, 
 because the fear of God, obedience to the law, 
 loyalty to the state and an amicable disposition 
 toward their fellow citizens are the indispensable 
 conditions of its own, success. The state cannot 
 produce them of itself, but commits them to the 
 churches, which are therefore granted concessions 
 and privileges, but also are constantly watched 
 and controlled. According to the dominant opin- 
 ion of the eighteenth century the state alone un- 
 derstood and was capable of effecting whatever 
 served the common good. It was therefore its 
 duty to use its own means to bring about this 
 disposition in its subjects; but its means were not 
 sufficient, and for this reason it transferred some 
 of the obligations resting upon it to the churches. 
 These therefore are performing duties of the 
 state, pursuing the objects of the state and serv- 
 ing the interests of the state. It is for this reason 
 that the state claims such wide oversight of the 
 churches and reserves the right to hold them to 
 the performance of their duties. For the same 
 reason it grants them many privileges which pri- 
 vate associations lack. In handling the churches 
 in this way as corporations the state stamps them 
 
154 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 with its high approval, and confesses that they 
 perform some of the duties and fulfil some of the 
 purposes of the state and are therefore essential 
 to its welfare. That the obverse of this high ap- 
 preciation appears in the close supervision of the 
 churches is not surprising in the police state of 
 the eighteenth century. This attitude does not 
 spring from a suspicion directed particularly 
 against the churches, but from the general sus- 
 picion of all associations." 25 
 
 At the same time it must be pointed out that 
 the publication of the Land Law is one of the 
 mileposts on the road to the freedom of the 
 church. For although the Land Law appears 
 to subject the churches entirely to the state, 
 nevertheless there was no superior right claimed 
 for the state by it which had not already been 
 exercised by the prince. What is new in this 
 respect is that the state in controlling the 
 churches is no longer to be actuated by re- 
 ligious motives but by those of political util- 
 ity, and in this lay the possibilities of much 
 evil or much good according as the state allowed 
 the churches to go their own way or attempted to 
 make them simply tools for its own purposes. 
 
 Generally speaking the Land Law, reflecting as 
 it does the superficial philosophy of the Enlight- 
 enment, shows little appreciation of the meaning 
 and power of religion in the life of men and in 
 
 25 Rieker, 299 ff. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 155 
 
 society. Religion to it is merely a phenomenon 
 of social life which is to be carefully observed, 
 tolerated within bounds, and permitted to express 
 itself publicly only when and where it is not in 
 conflict with the interests of the state. The state 
 is concerned to see that violence is not done to the 
 conscience in the name of religion and that the 
 public peace and security are not endangered by 
 the rival confessions, but in the positive propaga- 
 tion of religion it should not and would not take 
 part. This was left to the churches themselves. 
 
 It was a gain that the churches were looked 
 upon as entities with their own ends, their own 
 will and their own life. To be sure, they were 
 very much restricted in their activity and con- 
 stantly in danger of entire suppression, but they 
 at least had the protection of law and recourse to 
 the tribunals of justice in case of arbitrary inter- 
 ference by the patron, the prince or any other. 
 It was a gain too that the three great confessions 
 and some lesser ones were formally recognized 
 and put upon a legal basis and that individuals 
 might worship God, at least in the privacy of 
 their homes, in whatever manner they wished 
 without fear of legal interference. It was an ap- 
 proximation to the principles of the Reformation 
 also that so much power was put in the hands of 
 the individual members of the congregations in 
 respect to calling and dismissing pastors and 
 otherwise managing the affairs of the congrega- 
 
156 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 tion. In short, the churches and the individual 
 members of the churches under the Land Law 
 had an opportunity to feel their own power and 
 exercise, within limits, their Christian responsibil- 
 ities. But unfortunately they had been in leading 
 strings so long that they found it impossible to 
 walk alone. 
 
 "Inasmuch as the Land Law made the sharp 
 distinction between the rights of the state in the 
 church and the rights of the collegia (congrega- 
 tions) the underlying principle of the law, and 
 not impracticable as the Collegiate Theory had 
 done, it was the first law book since the Reforma- 
 tion to recognize in a large way the ecclesiastical 
 freedom of congregations and individuals. This 
 was new and epoch making. It is not to be over- 
 looked that the limitation of the state's activities 
 to purely secular ends and the consequent refusal 
 of the state to undertake the government of any- 
 thing beyond this sphere gave new liberty in the 
 development of ecclesiastical institutions and doc- 
 trine. However vexatious and petty the politi- 
 cal control of the religious associations was, there 
 still remained a great part of the religious life 
 untouched by restraint. There was doubtless 
 more independence ['Ungebundenheit'] in the 
 church than we are accustomed to today. There 
 was more about which no authority troubled it- 
 self. This freedom and this independence, how- 
 ever, was enjoyed for the most part only by the 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 157 
 
 preachers because the machinery of the congre- 
 gations for the determination and representation 
 of their communal will was very clumsy and in- 
 capable of offering resistance to the preacher." 26 
 
 The Land Law reflected the condition of affairs 
 under Frederick the Great. But no sooner was 
 his successor Frederick William II seated on the 
 throne than a new and diametrically contrary pol- 
 icy was initiated to which little or no legal opposi- 
 tion could be offered even by the Land Law. 27 The 
 story of the Religious Edict of 1788 is not one 
 upon which the German church historians like to 
 dwell, but it is important as showing the helpless- 
 ness of the church in the hands of the king and its 
 legal powerlessness to avoid aggression. The 
 Edict was not the work of the weak king so much 
 as of his favorite minister Wollner, a man who 
 had been in succession private tutor, pastor, Free 
 Mason and Rosicrucian, and had been curtly con- 
 demned by Frederick the Great as a "scheming 
 and deceitful parson." His last passion, which he 
 shared with his fellow Rosicrucian the king, was 
 to restore to the people the religion of their fath- 
 ers and save them from the perdition of the ra- 
 tionalism then dominant in the pulpits. Accord- 
 
 26 Foerster, Die Entstehung der Preuszischen Landes- 
 kirche unter der Regierung Konig Friedrich Wilhelms des 
 Britten, 1905, 32. 
 
 27 The Religious Edict was published in 1788, the Land 
 Law not until 1794. The latter, however, was in course of 
 preparation and its contents known to those about the king. 
 
158 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 ingly there appeared early in the reign an edict, 
 in which the king declared that he had long felt 
 it to be his duty to restore Christianity in its ori- 
 ginal purity, and put a stop to unbelief, supersti- 
 tion and the unbridled immorality springing from 
 them. For this reason the three great confes- 
 sions, the Lutheran, the Calvinistic and the Ro- 
 man Catholic churches, are to be recognized and 
 protected in their former rights. The Jews, the 
 Mennonites, the Moravian Brethren at Herrn- 
 hut, and the Bohemian Brethren also are to be 
 recognized as "tolerated sects." All other con- 
 venticles injurious alike to the Christian religion 
 and the state are forbidden, and all proselytizing 
 prohibited. The king especially laments that so 
 many preachers have been led away from the old 
 faith and attempt to feed their flocks with the 
 long dead errors of the Socinians, Deists, Natur- 
 alists and others with the result that doubt is cast 
 upon the truth of the Scripture and Christianity 
 is held up to scorn. This he will not permit, for it 
 is the first duty of a Christian prince to maintain 
 and protect the Christian religion in its high dig- 
 nity and original purity, in order that the poor 
 masses may not fall a prey to the deceits of the 
 fashionable preachers and thereby millions of 
 good subjects be robbed of peace during life and 
 comfort in death. Therefore "as overlord and 
 sole lawgiver in our states we order and command 
 that henceforward no minister, preacher or school 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 159 
 
 teacher shall make himself guilty of these and 
 other errors by daring to teach them publicly or 
 privately in the performance of his duties or 
 otherwise, under penalty of certain dismissal and, 
 according to the circumstances, of still more se- 
 vere punishment and retribution. There must be 
 a universal, unchangeable standard, norm and 
 rule of church doctrine, and we have firmly de- 
 termined on the maintenance of this unalterable 
 ordinance, nevertheless we freely concede to min- 
 isters the same freedom of conscience as to our 
 other subjects, and are far from desirous of ex- 
 ercising constraint upon their inner convictions." 
 Any teacher holding other views must therefore 
 resign his position, or if he remains, as he may, 
 he must be true in his teaching to the doctrine of 
 his church. This remarkable edict was every- 
 where resented, as one German scholar says, 28 not 
 because of the reaction it displayed against the 
 theology of the Enlightenment, nor because the 
 government ventured to interfere in the matters 
 of doctrine or the regulation of the teaching and 
 conduct of some preachers of the new school. 
 Such interference was quite in keeping with the 
 spirit of the times. In half a dozen other German 
 states similar action was taken. But "that in the 
 land of Frederick the Great, in the metropolis of 
 the Enlightenment, and after the domination of 
 exactly the opposite views and governmental 
 
 28 Carl Mirbt in RE, xxi, 431. 
 
160 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 principles for nearly half a century, without con- 
 sideration of the customary rights of the church 
 or of the right of historical development, without 
 consultation with the church courts or with the 
 ecclesiastical and theological administrative offi- 
 cers, by royal cabinet order threatening even dis- 
 missal and still more severe punishment, not only 
 preachers and teachers received a prescribed norm 
 after which to model their official and unofficial 
 utterances but also every good citizen was en- 
 joined to keep his private views to himself and 
 carefully to refrain from making them known 
 or commending them to others — this was very 
 widely felt to be an unprecedented presumption. 
 In addition to this there was the crying contrast 
 between the austerity of the edict with its half 
 pedantical and half unctuous tone and the im- 
 morality of the prince whose name it bore." In 
 other words, the interference of the king was re- 
 garded as perfectly legal, he was the "sole law- 
 giver" to use his own words, and as in accord with 
 princely methods. Only the manner in which he 
 acted, neglecting the custom of first consulting 
 the church leaders, a custom that had no basis in 
 law though defended by some ecclesiastical writ- 
 ers as required by the divine institution, and the 
 gross inconsistency of his acts with his edict were 
 open to criticism. He had violated good taste 
 rather than the law. 
 
 The attempts to enforce the edict were of the 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 161 
 
 same nature. Protests, and requests for an elu- 
 cidation of the edict, from the members of the 
 Superior Consistorial Council and other digni- 
 taries of the churches were brusquely set aside, 
 new text books were prepared or planned for the 
 instruction of the laity and candidates for the 
 ministry, and a Commission for Immediate Ex- 
 amination was appointed to enforce the regula- 
 tions of the edict and supervise religious instruc- 
 tion and religious affairs generally. This com- 
 mission was charged among other things with 
 keeping a list, or rather two lists of the preachers 
 and teachers, one containing the names of the 
 orthodox, the other the names of all those that 
 had adopted the new views or through teaching 
 or manner of life were injurious. A watchful 
 eye was to be kept on those on the first list, ad- 
 monitions and dismissals were to be the lot of 
 those on the second. 
 
 In spite of threats, however, and the extraor- 
 dinary powers of the commission little could be 
 accomplished. A few pamphleteers had been 
 thrown into prison immediately after the publi- 
 cation of the edict, but the inquisition for hereti- 
 cal preachers was almost without result. One pas- 
 tor was deposed for immorality, and another 
 because he gave offence not only by the violence 
 with which he attacked dogmas of the church, but 
 also by the manner in which he combed his hair. 
 Interference with the freedom of the University 
 
162 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 of Halle was resented by both students and fac- 
 ulty. The students drove the visiting commis- 
 sion out of the town, and the theological profes- 
 sors, after suffering much annoyance, appealed 
 successfully for relief to the State Council as the 
 highest court of appeal. "They say we are 
 powerful," 29 said one of the members of the 
 commission, "but we have been unable to depose 
 a single preacher of the new doctrine ; everything 
 works against us." At the same time it was only 
 after the death of the king that this attempt to 
 coerce the church and mould the consciences of 
 his subjects was abandoned. 
 
 Rieker, 30 a most ardent modern defender of 
 the establishment, consistently defends the Edict, 
 pointing out that it and not the Land Law first 
 placed the three great confessions on an equal 
 footing in the kingdom, and that the restriction 
 of freedom in teaching was necessary because 
 preachers were using the pulpit to decry the very 
 doctrines they had promised to proclaim, and to 
 flout all positive religion. This is all true. From 
 the standpoint of morals and religion some ac- 
 tion was necessary and from the standpoint of 
 law the king was justified in acting as he did. 
 The remarkable things about it are that such star 
 chamber methods could have been used at the 
 dawn of the nineteenth century without calling 
 
 29 RE, xxi, 484. 
 80 P. 318 f. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 163 
 
 forth more opposition than they did, and that the 
 lesson taught by them, and universally recognized 
 elsewhere in Protestant countries, namely that 
 coercion in matters of religion must fail of its 
 object, had not yet been learned in Germany. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Nineteenth Century 
 
 Frederick William II's attempt to club the 
 church into submission failed. His successor 
 tried the rapierlike methods of diplomacy and 
 was successful. In many respects the reign of 
 Frederick William III (1797-1840) was one of 
 the most important in the history of Prussia, both 
 politically and ecclesiastically. Degraded by the 
 Napoleonic victories and brought to a sense of its 
 shame by the Treaty of Tilsit, which robbed it of 
 half its territory and left it helpless in the hands 
 of the Emperor of the French, the proud monar- 
 chy recovered in time to play a respectable part 
 in the later phases of the war, and in the treaty 
 which reestablished the peace of Europe received 
 back more than its original possessions. The rest 
 of the reign was devoted to making good the rav- 
 ages of war, unifying and consolidating the 
 kingdom along the lines laid down by Frederick 
 the Great and the Prussian Land Law. 
 
 The French Revolution had been accompanied 
 in Germany as elsewhere by the assertion of the 
 rights of man and a widespread demand for po- 
 litical reform. In the year 1815 the king had 
 
 164 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 165 
 
 yielded to this demand by promising a constitu- 
 tion, but to the great disappointment of his sub- 
 jects he did not see fit to grant it after peace was 
 declared. On the contrary, he and his ministers, 
 being persuaded that the country was not yet 
 ready for such a measure, opposed it by every 
 means in their power. Other German states were 
 forced to grant some share in the government to 
 the people, but Prussia, in spite of such examples 
 outside and continual agitation within its own 
 borders, was able to remain an absolute monarchy 
 until 1851. It is necessary to have this political 
 condition in mind as we read the story of the con- 
 flict between the king and the churches, for the 
 orders and measures taken by the king and his 
 ministers were always considered in relation to 
 the popular desire for freedom. 1 "I am becoming 
 more and more convinced," said Altenstein the 
 minister for ecclesiastical affairs, "though I am 
 not able to prove it, that the political movements 
 seek to ally themselves with the religious." 
 
 To what extent the subjection of the church to 
 the royal will assisted in postponing the civil con- 
 stitution it is of course impossible to say. But 
 judging from the analogy of other Protestant 
 countries where political freedom was the result 
 of the spirit of freedom inculcated by religion, it 
 is safe to say that the subservience of the clergy 
 as a whole which was effected to a greater extent 
 
 1 Foerster, ii, 233. 
 
166 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 in this reign than before played a proportionate 
 part in keeping the people submissive. Religious 
 forces had comparatively little to do with the 
 uprising in 1848 which led to the granting of a 
 constitution. That the king was not unmindful 
 of the political influence exercised by the preach- 
 ers is evident from the terms of the oath he sought 
 to impose upon them: 3 "In like manner I prom- 
 ise to be true to my legal king, his majesty the 
 king of Prussia, my most high and mighty terri- 
 torial ruler and supreme bishop, and will seek 
 and advance the king's interests and good in 
 every way. With life and blood, with doctrine 
 and example, with word and deed, I will defend 
 the royal power and dignity as it is established 
 in our wholesome monarchical form of govern- 
 ment. Likewise I will make it known in good 
 time, if I discover anything aiming at the altera- 
 tion or abolition of this excellent fundamental 
 constitution, in which the welfare of the state has 
 subsisted and subsists, and to which I promise 
 conformity and obedience in all particulars. In 
 like manner, as much as in me is, I will render 
 obedience to his Royal Majesty my most gra- 
 cious king, and to those who have the right to 
 command and rule in his name; and I will ad- 
 monish my parishioners and the members of my 
 congregation to think and speak rightly, at all 
 times, of the Secular authority which is ordained 
 2 Foerster, ii, 64. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 167 
 
 of God." With this oath the king endeavored to 
 bind all Protestant preachers of the kingdom, not 
 only to a loyalty to the state but even to the par- 
 ticular form of government, the absolutism, which 
 he had promised to surrender. It would be hard 
 to conceive of a more flagrant attempt to subject 
 the church to the interests of a political system, or 
 of a more powerful weapon in the hands of the 
 king if the attempt had been successful. That 
 it was not finally insisted upon is due to the fact 
 that such an oath had never before been required 
 of preachers in Germany, rather than to the feel- 
 ing that its contents were at variance or might be 
 at variance with the duties of a minister to the 
 church. 3 
 
 It is not to be deduced from this that the king's 
 interest in the church and the clergy was entirely 
 political. Indeed exactly the opposite is true. 
 Frederick William had received and responded to 
 a careful religious training, and from the begin- 
 ning of his reign showed a desire to depart from 
 the laissez f aire policy of Frederick the Great and 
 the Prussian Land Law and to return to the atti- 
 tude of the earlier members of his house who re- 
 garded it as a sacred duty to promote religion 
 and exercise the jus episcopale. 
 
 To his mind and to the mind of all observers 
 some action was necessary to preserve the Chris- 
 
 3 The report of the Royal Commission is printed in 
 Foerster, ii, 426 ff. 
 
168 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 tian religion from falling a prey to the superficial 
 rationalism of the time. The drastic measures of 
 his predecessor had had no effect. Individual 
 churches and individual preachers persisted in 
 going each his own way within the limits allowed 
 by the Land Law and the extremely tolerant 
 principles of Frederick the Great. The old de- 
 nominationalism was dead, or at least appeared 
 to be, although Lutheran and Calvinistic churches 
 still stood side by side each with its own symboli- 
 cal books and organization. Even the doctrines 
 common to both were frequently conspicuous by 
 their absence from the sermons of the preachers, 
 who satisfied themselves and apparently their 
 congregations with moral homilies or more or less 
 veiled attacks upon the fundamental doctrines of 
 the church. The upper classes openly shrugged 
 their shoulders at the mention of religion, and it 
 was feared that the peasants, ever prone to ape 
 their superiors, might soon learn to do the same. 
 
 The clergy for the most part were drawn from 
 the lower classes, badly educated and miserably 
 paid — conditions intensified by the ravages of the 
 Napoleonic war. Those in the city were better 
 provided for, but the country pastor, by uniting 
 the income from salary and incidental fees, and 
 working his glebe, was frequently unable to live 
 decently, or was dependent upon the charity of 
 his patron or other neighboring gentry. Schleier- 
 macher 4 reports in addition that many of them 
 
 4 Quoted by Foerster, i, 90. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 169 
 
 "cared neither for religion or their office and made 
 themselves obnoxious by their incapacity, their 
 immorality and their coarseness." 
 
 Moreover, the organization of the churches was 
 not satisfactory. Although the Land Law con- 
 templated each congregation as an association 
 of voluntary members with certain rights and 
 privileges, most Lutheran churches had no con- 
 gregational organization, while both the Lu- 
 therans everywhere and Calvinists in the older 
 parts of the kingdom were governed and con- 
 trolled by consistories and directories which had 
 come into existence as occasion demanded, and 
 had no bond of connection save a common re- 
 sponsibility to the crown. 
 
 To add to the confusion there was great uncer- 
 tainty concerning the theory of church govern- 
 ment and the relation of church to state. The 
 political aspirations toward freedom gave new 
 impetus to the collegiate theory, the superiority 
 of the presbyterian system was acknowledged 
 now when doctrinal differences no longer ob- 
 scured the fact, and the success of the free and 
 independent churches in England and especially 
 in America was held up as proof of the church's 
 ability to stand alone. The establishment of free 
 and independent churches was both advocated 
 and expected in the near future. Schleiermacher 
 was one of the foremost champions of freedom, 
 and, although he altered the details of his pro- 
 
170 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 posed system, remained always true to the con- 
 ception of a church organized from the bottom 
 up, and free from interference by the monarch 
 or the state. He protested against enforced uni- 
 formity in either creed or liturgy, against com- 
 pulsory church membership, and indeed against 
 all compulsion in religious matters, which he re- 
 garded as only part of a larger evil, namely, the 
 bureaucratic military absolute monarchy. He 
 wished the church to be free, and the common peo- 
 ple to feel that it belonged to them, not that it was 
 a yoke imposed upon them. 5 
 
 The most decided opponent of the more liberal 
 views, however, was the king himself, who, al- 
 though continually protesting that he would do 
 nothing to force men's consciences, ruled the 
 church as absolutely as he ruled the state, by 
 means of cabinet orders, and the skilful machina- 
 tions of his ministers. One of these, Altenstein, 6 
 reviewing his long term of service, offers this ex- 
 planation of his behavior: "I have served your 
 Royal Majesty with the most perfect devotion. 
 Not only that I have consecrated all my powers 
 in their full strength to your service and loyally 
 subordinated myself to your will — it is my chief 
 joy that I have revered in your Majesty the de- 
 terminate instrument of divine providence whose 
 utterances became my convictions when my own 
 
 B See the passages cited by Foerster, i, 159; ii, 24. 
 "Foerster, ii, 815. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 171 
 
 intentions led me in another direction or on an- 
 other course." 7 And this is the only justification 
 that may be offered. When even such loyalty as 
 this indicates failed to find a justification for the 
 king's proposals, the learning and sophistry of 
 others was drawn upon, and when all else failed 
 there remained as a last resort the royal cabinet 
 order against which none dared to protest. 
 
 Professor Augusti of Bonn revived in defence 
 of the king the old territorial theory, stating it 
 more crassly than earlier writers had ventured to 
 do, namely, that as the government of the church 
 is by nature a prerogative of the territorial prince, 
 he may, even though he be a heathen or a Turk, 
 exercise it perfectly arbitrarily. A minister of 
 state, Von Kamptz, 8 prepared an equally good 
 defence on the basis of the episcopal theory. The 
 Protestant princes of Germany, he maintained, 
 are the legal successors of the bishops and possess 
 full episcopal powers. The point of this being 
 that in his capacity of civil ruler the king might 
 be bound to observe the law but as bishop he was 
 not responsible nor bound by any political or 
 legal restrictions. 
 
 If the territorial and episcopal theories were 
 not adequate, appeal could be made to the meth- 
 ods and principles of the reformers and the 
 princes of their time. Thus an opinion of the 
 
 7 Foerster, ii, 82. 
 
 8 Foerster, ii, 84. 
 
172 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 Ministry for Ecclesiastical Affairs 9 declared that 
 although there were serious objections to the im- 
 position of a liturgy by the king in his capacity 
 of civil ruler or bishop, nevertheless, as a member 
 of the church, as a membrum praecipuum, he had 
 the right to suggest and commend alterations and 
 to use all the advantages of his position as king 
 to secure their adoption by the churches, only he 
 must not positively command their introduction. 
 The problem in this case was how to get around 
 the very definite statement of the Land Law that 
 the church associations had the right to regulate 
 their own services, the state retaining only the 
 right of veto. The opinion of the ministry found 
 a way for the king legally to introduce innova- 
 tions, but not to enforce them. A little later, 
 however, and in another connection, Altenstein 10 
 found a satisfactory solution. The church he said 
 undoubtedly has full liberty in matters of doc- 
 trine and worship. But how does the church ex- 
 press itself? Not through individual members for 
 they are not to be confounded with the church, 
 and not through its courts for they are notori- 
 ously incapable. It expresses itself through the 
 Christian ruler who since the Reformation has 
 been its only proper organ of expression. "The 
 decision of an evangelical territorial ruler, who 
 with pious mind and serious purpose has in- 
 
 9 The opinion is printed in Foerster, ii, 394 ff. 
 10 Foerster, ii, 216. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 173 
 
 quired into the needs of the church, and gath- 
 ered experience on every side, has always been 
 the most certain attestation of new institutions 
 in the evangelical church and especially in 
 Prussia from the very beginning of the Re- 
 formation until today." To this there is no re- 
 ply; it is in accord with both history and law, and 
 leaves the German prince in absolute control 
 of the church in the nineteenth as well as in the 
 sixteenth century. Indeed more so, for whereas 
 formerly his activity had been controlled to some 
 extent by the diets, and exercised in consultation 
 and agreement with the clergy, Frederick Wil- 
 liam III went his own way without conceding any 
 share in the government to either. A few writers 
 advised that ecclesiastical affairs like others 
 should be laid before the diets and regulated by 
 law, but they found no supporters. 
 
 The first change of any importance in church 
 affairs was the abolition of the consistories and 
 other church courts in 1808, and the immediate 
 subordination of the church to the government in 
 the several provinces and the capital. This was 
 not so much the work of the king as of his great 
 minister Stein who intended thereby to use the 
 church more effectually in arousing the humili- 
 ated nation and organizing it for the prospective 
 war with France. His plan contemplated also 
 the organization of the congregations with a view 
 to self-government, the abolition or at least the 
 
174 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 amelioration of patronage, and the betterment of 
 the financial condition of the clergy. 
 
 These more liberal reforms, affecting the com- 
 mon lif e of the church, remained unf ulfilled. The 
 changes made, however, were of great impor- 
 tance. They did not involve the surrender of the 
 churches' liberties to the state, for the abolished 
 courts had been quite as much the creatures of the 
 state as the new ones. But they made it possible 
 for the state to control and direct the churches 
 more immediately, and, what was of equal im- 
 portance, they united the government of the three 
 churches 11 in one office. Regarded from the 
 standpoint of the churches it could not be called 
 a church union, for each denomination besides its 
 own separate consciousness retained its peculiar 
 creeds, liturgies and domestic laws. From the 
 standpoint of the state it was a constitutional 
 union, the extent and results of which depended 
 largely upon the king and his advisers. 
 
 Frederick William Ill's religious interests did 
 not run in the direction of doctrine. Like many 
 of his ancestors he regarded the theological differ- 
 ences which divided his subjects as of no impor- 
 tance. But he was moral and serious in his reli- 
 gious views, reflecting the romantic and emotional 
 spirit of his time in his admiration for the ref orm- 
 
 11 The Lutheran, the Reformed or Calvinistic, and the 
 French Reformed churches; the first two being also sub- 
 divided. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 175 
 
 ers and his interest in the outward forms of wor- 
 ship. Like his predecessors he desired greatly to 
 bring about an organic union of the Protestant 
 churches, but felt himself debarred from doing so 
 by the freedom of conscience guaranteed to all. 
 He saw no objection, however, to his effecting 
 a more kindly attitude of the Lutherans and Cal- 
 vinists toward each other especially in respect to 
 admitting each other to their respective commun- 
 ion services, nor to his introduction of a uniform 
 liturgy in all the Protestant churches of whatever 
 faith, nor to the establishment of the episcopal 
 system of church government. This was his pro- 
 gram and in attempting to carry it out he actually 
 brought about church union. 
 
 The first step was taken in connection with the 
 celebration of the Reformation in 1817, when the 
 king urged that doctrinal differences be laid aside 
 and that both branches of the Protestant church 
 unite in partaking together the Lord's Supper in 
 a spirit of brotherly love and Christian charity. 
 The suggestion was hailed with delight in Berlin 
 and elsewhere, for indeed the time was ripe. The 
 former theological differences had almost entirely 
 disappeared from the pulpits, Pietism and Ra- 
 tionalism had undermined the denominational ex- 
 clusiveness, and the common experiences of the 
 French wars had created a feeling of unity and 
 solidarity among the people generally. The king 
 personally supervised the preparation of the 
 
176 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 liturgy for the occasion and on the 30th and 31st 
 of October the churches would not contain the 
 throngs of Lutherans and Calvinists that pre- 
 sented themselves together for the communion. 
 The same thing occurred in all the larger towns 
 and in smaller places. In many, steps were even 
 taken to complete a real union by the consolida- 
 tion of church property, schools and religious 
 services. The Calvinists, who had never been so 
 exclusive as the Lutherans, were the most ready 
 to accept the union; among the Lutherans there 
 was an unknown number that would have nothing 
 to do with it. 
 
 In view of the favorable reception of this first 
 suggestion of the king's, much was expected 
 from the provincial synods of the following year 
 in which Lutherans and Calvinists for the first 
 time deliberated together over the common needs 
 of the Protestant church. And indeed almost all 
 the synods showed themselves well disposed to- 
 ward the principle of union though differing in 
 regard to the manner and time of its consumma- 
 tion. They gave much time to the consideration 
 of the constitution of the new church and were 
 agreed that a greater amount of freedom of 
 action and authority, if not complete liberty, be 
 accorded it. 12 They demanded that a general 
 
 12 Troeltsch, Kultur der Gegenwart, I, iv, 437, criticizes 
 them for giving preference to constitutional questions, but 
 it is difficult to see how they could have done otherwise, or 
 how they could have entered con amore into the real prob- 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 177 
 
 synod be called where representatives from every 
 part of the kingdom might discuss the matter in 
 all its bearings. 
 
 These demands, however, only angered the 
 king and his ministers, who, alarmed afresh by 
 the Wartburgfest at which some students had 
 given expression to the liberal feeling of the day 
 by emblematically committing the government 
 to the flames, were more determined than before 
 to maintain the absolute rule of the monarch. 
 Like James I of England the king thought rep- 
 resentative institutions in the church did not 
 agree with monarchy in the state, 18 and one of 
 his high officials the president of the province of 
 Saxony characterized the demands of the clergy 
 as "nothing but another attempt to realize the 
 ancient ambition of the clergy, to release the 
 priesthood, falsely called the church, as much as 
 possible from the control of the state, and so to 
 create a state within the state." Compulsion there 
 certainly should be in the church but it should be 
 exercised by the state and not by the clergy. He 
 advised a stronger supervision of the preachers 
 and of doctrine. Another critic proved from 
 Luther's writings that the only power committed 
 to the church was that of preaching the Word, 
 compulsion of any kind could be exercised only 
 
 lem of the religious life of the people without some assur- 
 ance that they would be allowed to put their plans into 
 operation. 
 
 18 Foerster, ii, 285. 
 
178 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 by the state. Consequently the general synod 
 which might show an obstreperous spirit, al- 
 though promised, was never called together; the 
 provincial synods were disregarded, and the pres- 
 byteries 14 in so far as they had been organized 
 were allowed quietly to die. The church was to 
 be ruled entirely from above and the union to be 
 effected in this way, if at all. 
 
 The king's own wish was to introduce episco- 
 pacy, but in this he encountered much opposition. 
 Professor Augusti indeed enthusiastically sup- 
 ported him but others pointed out that the recog- 
 nition of any difference of degree in the consecra- 
 tion of ministers was directly contrary to Lu- 
 ther's teaching and that any attempt to introduce 
 an episcopacy involving such a difference would 
 result in a large part of the Lutheran church and 
 the whole of the Reformed church withdrawing 
 from the communion. Against the establishment 
 of an episcopacy not involving any departure 
 from Luther's principles, which could easily be 
 done for instance by naming the superintendents 
 bishops and the general superintendents arch- 
 bishops, there was not so much objection but it 
 was pointed out that it would give the Roman 
 Catholics an occasion for mockery. 
 
 14 Presbytery is the name given to the organized body of 
 elders within a congregation, and must not be confused 
 with the use of the word in the English speaking Presby- 
 terian churches. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 179 
 
 The king was obviously impressed with the 
 necessity of avoiding anything in contravention 
 to Luther's teaching for he did not attempt to 
 introduce degrees in the clerical order, but he 
 nevertheless created several bishops and arch- 
 bishops and designed himself the dress they 
 should wear — a silk gown and a golden cross. The 
 office, however, was little more than honorary, a 
 mark of the distinguished favor of the king, al- 
 though its inmates were given a seat in the pro- 
 vincial consistory where they were able to sup- 
 port the general superintendents. It was rather 
 by these latter, one of whom was appointed with 
 very wide supervisory powers in every province, 
 in 1830, that the king was enabled to keep in im- 
 mediate touch with the churches and enforce his 
 will from one end of the kingdom to the other. 15 
 
 That which lay nearest the king's heart, how- 
 ever, was the new liturgy which he had himself 
 written and was determined to introduce into 
 every Protestant church of the kingdom. In 
 preparing it he had drawn from the old German 
 liturgies, especially those of the Reformation, 
 many of which differed only slightly from the 
 Roman Catholic mass, and also from those used 
 in England and Sweden. It contained regula- 
 tions in respect to the length of the services, the 
 arrangement of the altar, the formation of choirs, 
 forms of worship for the service on Sundays and 
 
 16 See the instructions in Foerster, ii, 223, 470 ff. 
 
180 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 holy days, for the communion and preparatory 
 services, for baptism and marriage, also the Apos- 
 tles', Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, a cate- 
 chism and prayers, to which was added a little 
 later forms for ordination, confirmation, com- 
 munion and burial. It involved the introduction 
 of an altar, if possible with a rail, candles, crucifix, 
 the sign of the cross, kneeling, choral responses, 
 etc. Uniform dress, of a design chosen by the 
 king, had already been commanded. 
 
 The liturgy was put into use immediately 
 (1822) in all churches and institutions directly 
 under the king with the command that the officiat- 
 ing minister should not depart from it in the 
 slightest particular. A copy was sent to every 
 minister of the kingdom with a royal commenda- 
 tion, and the promise that those churches in 
 which it was introduced should receive a copy 
 from his majesty as a memorial of the happy 
 occasion. 
 
 In spite of such inducements not one minister 
 in sixteen was willing to use it. Objections came 
 from almost every quarter, that it resembled the 
 Roman mass, that the time for preaching and con- 
 gregational singing was too short, that uniform- 
 ity was neither necessary nor advisable, that the 
 proposed liturgy contained some dogmatical 
 statements which were peculiarly Calvinistic and 
 some that were peculiarly Lutheran, and there- 
 fore interfered with freedom of conscience, and 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 181 
 
 that the king had no right to interfere in such 
 matters anyway. A lively literary discussion 
 arose in which the matter was reviewed from 
 every angle. 
 
 The king, however, was unmoved hy criticism. 
 The most serious objections he characterized as 
 idle chatter. 18 He refused to receive the repre- 
 sentatives of a committee of clergymen, the only 
 ones with experience in such matters, and even 
 forbade their discussing it in synods, or writing 
 against it. On the other hand he promised hand- 
 somely bound copies to all superintendents intro- 
 ducing it in their dioceses, presented crucifixes, 
 candlesticks and other such things to the churches 
 which had accepted it, spread broadcast the de- 
 fence of his action by Professor Augusti, and in 
 general endeavored by every possible means, 
 short of a categorical command, to secure its 
 adoption and use. 
 
 The nature of the opposition and the way it 
 was overcome is well illustrated by the events in 
 Berlin. The ministers in two of the churches de- 
 clared their readiness to introduce the liturgy 
 and received in recognition of their zeal two copies 
 of it as a present from the king. As the congre- 
 gations, however, had not been consulted, and as 
 it was definitely stated in the Land Law that 
 church associations should have power to order 
 their own services, many prominent members 
 
 16 Geschimtz, Foerster, ii, 97. 
 
182 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 who did not favor the innovation appealed to the 
 mayor of the city, who in virtue of his office was 
 patron of the churches. He in turn accepted the 
 responsibility and, supported by the city council- 
 lors, also entered a protest on his own account as 
 patron representing in well informed and equally 
 well argued remonstrances that the action of the 
 ministers was contrary to law, that in the interests 
 of true piety and order, if for no other reason, 
 the wishes of the congregation should be con- 
 sulted, that there was danger of some of the mem- 
 bers withdrawing and joining a church where the 
 old liturgy was still in use, that the new liturgy 
 undoubtedly contained statements which implied 
 the acceptance of theological doctrines that were 
 still debated in the Protestant churches and its 
 enforced use therefore a violation of freedom of 
 conscience, and that liturgical uniformity was 
 neither in keeping with evangelical doctrine nor 
 in itself desirable. In a private note to the min- 
 ister for ecclesiastical affairs he added: "It is not 
 in keeping with the spirit of the evangelical 
 church to recognize in it any head of the church, 
 except in so far as worldly things are concerned. 
 About this there should be clearly no difference 
 of opinion in a state whose prince belongs to the 
 evangelical church and especially among those 
 that confess this faith." 17 But his remonstrance 
 availed nothing. The provincial consistory de- 
 
 17 Foerster, ii, 111. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 183 
 
 clared a consultation with the congregation to be 
 not feasible. The minister for ecclesiastical af- 
 fairs called the remonstrance unpardonable, and 
 the king interpreted the passage in the Land Law 
 appealed to, as referring only to police regula- 
 tions regarding public service and not to the lit- 
 urgy. The minister of justice interpreted it 
 otherwise but changed his opinion when shown 
 the king's order. 18 
 
 To the complaint that the imposition of the new 
 liturgy was a violation of freedom of conscience 
 the king replied, 19 "The liturgy is intended only 
 to bring about uniformity in divine worship and 
 to call again to life that which has been in the 
 evengelicaj churches throughout the centuries, so 
 that for the welfare of the church a stop will be 
 put to the exercise of destructive arbitrary free- 
 dom by so many preachers. It has nothing to do 
 with new doctrine or forcing the conscience. On 
 the contrary, to all those that desire Christian 
 edification it offers assurance and security that 
 evangelical congregations will again receive out 
 of the Holy Scriptures themselves and out of the 
 old liturgies issued by my revered ancestors that 
 which they formerly possessed, and which care- 
 less, misguided caprice' has taken from them in 
 great measure, thereby severing the holy bond of 
 spiritual communion in the church." He com- 
 
 18 Foerster, ii, 172. 
 
 19 Foerster, ii, 108 
 
184. PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 manded also that the two handsome volumes 
 which he had presented be formally returned be- 
 cause the churches by "the antagonistic and im- 
 proper conduct of the magistrate their patron, 
 and of other unauthorized spokesmen have shown 
 themselves unworthy of the royal gift." 
 
 The incident was closed by a letter from the 
 mayor in which he expresses sorrow that the dis- 
 favor of the king has fallen on him and finds con- 
 solation in the assurance that he has acted only in 
 keeping with the dictates of his conscience and the 
 duties of his office. So the liturgy was introduced 
 with comparative ease even against the will of the 
 congregation, the city councillors and the mayor 
 of the capital city of the kingdom. 
 
 Of a different nature, but no less illuminating, 
 was the conflict with those ministers of Berlin 
 who did not accept the Liturgy. There were 
 twelve of them, one being Schleiermacher, the 
 most respected and influential divine of his age. 
 Schleiermacher was in favor of union, but not of 
 a union consummated by force. He held rather 
 that the only wholesome and practicable method 
 of introducing it and of improving the spiritual 
 life generally was the establishment of the pres- 
 byterian system, in which the organized congre- 
 gations should have charge of their own affairs, 
 and representative synods should control and di- 
 rect the larger interests of the church without 
 interference from above. Angered by the new 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 185 
 
 liturgy and the attempt to force it upon the 
 churches, he formulated his views afresh over a 
 pseudonym and used the occasion to criticize se- 
 verely the personal government of the church by 
 the king and his ministers. Not many of the 
 clergy, however, supported him. "Most of them 
 yielded with broken convictions when they saw 
 themselves threatened by the disfavor of the king 
 and his ministers." 20 Schleiermacher's associate 
 in Trinity church, and fellow professor at the 
 University of Berlin, Marheineke, not only 
 yielded but wrote a personal note to the king in 
 which he stated emphatically that the king had 
 the right to introduce the new liturgy, that it was 
 the duty of subjects to obey in this as in other 
 matters, and that for his own person he was un- 
 able to judge the liturgy and confided implicitly 
 in the king's judgment. Such a declaration from 
 a professor in the leading university serves to 
 explain the readiness with which those in less 
 honorable and responsible positions yielded to the 
 royal demands. 
 
 In the summer of 1825 the authorities began to 
 apply pressure to the twelve Berlin ministers in 
 a very ingenious way. One of the king's advis- 
 ers had pointed out that whereas there might be 
 some doubt of the legality of the king's action in 
 introducing a liturgy, it was beyond question that 
 only those liturgies might be legally used which 
 
 20 Foerster, ii, 183. 
 
186 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 had been approved by the state. Following this 
 he cleverly suggested that it might be advanta- 
 geous to inquire into the origin of the liturgies 
 in use and particularly to ascertain whether or 
 not they had received official approval. If they 
 had not, then the offending minister should be 
 required either to adhere verbally to the liturgy 
 which had last been approved for his church, or, 
 if he preferred, to adopt the king's. It would be 
 difficult to conceive a more paltry method of 
 treating an important matter, and yet it was 
 adopted. During the previous century and more, 
 great liberty had been conceded to the churches 
 in this respect. A few used the form which had 
 been introduced in the time of the Reformation, 
 but generally alterations and innovations had 
 been made by the consistories, the superinten- 
 dents and even the local pastors. In many of the 
 Calvinistic churches indeed there was no set form 
 whatever. 
 
 To the alternative thus presented Schleier- 
 macher answered that the liturgy in use in Trin- 
 ity church was based upon an ordinance of Fred- 
 erick William I with some later additions which 
 had been approved by the consistory. He pro- 
 posed to leave it as it was and to defend it. 
 Moreover, he reserved the right to use it freely 
 and without servile subjection to the letter. Were 
 the new Romanizing liturgy introduced every 
 Calvinist and many of the Lutheran members of 
 the congregation would regard it as an injury. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 187 
 
 The other ministers responded in a joint note 
 in which they protested against the liturgy itself 
 and the manner in which it was being thrust upon 
 the churches. Resting upon Luther's words they 
 declared absolute uniformity to be out of har- 
 mony with evangelical freedom. Any liturgy 
 introduced should come from the church and be 
 approved in synod. The new liturgy was defec- 
 tive in literary style and theology, and not in 
 keeping with the spirit of Protestantism. In an- 
 swer to the argument that it had been generally 
 accepted they answered that many ministers had 
 accepted it against their better judgment and only 
 when threatened by the king's displeasure. They 
 sent a copy of their protest to the mayor and a 
 little later had it published in Leipzig. 
 
 The king's minister, Altenstein, found himself 
 in a very uncomfortable position. The twelve 
 ministers were among the most respected in the 
 capital and any action taken against them might 
 occasion an uprising or at least an expression of 
 sympathy among the people generally. At the 
 same time he regarded their attitude toward the 
 liturgy as reprehensible, and the publication of 
 their protest as criminal. He decided in the end 
 that it would be best not to inform the king of the 
 incident but to endeavor by private conferences 
 and threats to bring the twelve to a more reas- 
 onable attitude. 
 
 They, however, on learning this, appealed di- 
 
188 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 rectly to the king, with a dignified and respectful 
 petition written by Schleiermacher, in which they 
 reviewed the whole matter in very much the same 
 way as before. But if they expected to find more 
 favor with the king than with his minister they 
 were mistaken. "Insolence," "contumacy," "im- 
 pudence," "criminal obstinacy," "foolishness," 
 "silliness," "twaddle," are some of the marginal 
 notes with which he transmitted it to Altenstein, 21 
 who agreed or at least said he agreed perfectly 
 with his master's judgment and asked and re- 
 ceived permission to handle the authors himself. 
 
 This however was no easier than before, and the 
 matter dragged for over a year. Then as some 
 action was made necessary by continued "contu- 
 macy," it was decided in a conference of four 
 members of the state ministry, one of whom was 
 the minister of justice, that the twelve were crim- 
 inally guilty in three points, namely, of uniting in 
 their remonstrance, of divulging and of publish- 
 ing it, but that institution of criminal proceedings 
 was not advisable because of the uncertainty of 
 the outcome. Altenstein feared the judges would 
 acquit them, and with the king's consent decided 
 that the punishment should take the form of a 
 reprimand in which the ministers were informed 
 that they had committed a penal offence — or 
 rather three of them — and that they owed it to 
 the clemency of his majesty that proceedings 
 
 21 They are printed in full in Foerster, ii, 423 ff. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 189 
 
 were not taken against them. If their future be- 
 havior did not display a better knowledge they 
 would be prosecuted. To this royal admonition 
 seven of the twelve thought it best to yield, though 
 it must be said in their favor that about the same 
 time an appendix of alternate readings was prom- 
 ised for the liturgy which rendered it less ob- 
 jectionable. 
 
 Not so with Schleiermacher, however, who an- 
 swered with dignity and firmly that he could not 
 recognize his guilt in the matter, that he had only 
 followed the dictates of his conscience, and still 
 adhered to his former statements. If these did 
 not agree with the views of the king and his ad- 
 visers, he permitted himself to point out that he 
 was in a better position than they to know what 
 was edifying in public worship, and for the fu- 
 ture he could only promise to act in accordance 
 with his best knowledge and convictions as a 
 Christian and a minister. By this answer Alten- 
 stein was roused to the necessity of "making the 
 malignant divines harmless." "The evangelical 
 church," he says, 22 "is more in need than ever of 
 strong supervision. There is a little pope in most 
 of the divines and it is very hard for them to sub- 
 mit to anything different and better." In this 
 instance, however, Schleiermacher found an able 
 and influential defender in President-General 
 Motz who argued determinedly and effectually 
 
 22 Eoerster, ii, 175. 
 
190 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 against any persecution, not because it would be 
 useless but because the position taken by Schleier- 
 macher and his companions was essentially right. 
 Altenstein yielded very unwillingly, and so, to 
 quote the historian of this period, 23 "the govern- 
 ment of Frederick William was preserved from 
 the blemish of having hunted the greatest theo- 
 logian of the Evangelical Church from his office 
 and pulpit as a 'malignant divine'." To which 
 it need only be added, to set the incident in its 
 proper light, that the spirit of Frederick William 
 and his advisers in endeavoring to force the twelve 
 into submission differed not at all from that of 
 the Roman church toward Martin Luther more 
 than three centuries before. Shortly afterward, 
 the promised appendix having been published, the 
 revised liturgy was approved by the ministers of 
 Berlin, and with the consent of the congregations 
 introduced into all the churches, Schleiermacher 
 also, though with some reservations, consenting 
 to use it. 
 
 By such means as these the new liturgy was 
 gradually forced upon the churches in every part 
 of the country. The Lutherans were the more 
 willing to accept it, the Calvinists the more reluct- 
 ant, a circumstance that did not escape the king's 
 notice. In Pomerania, which was strongly Lu- 
 theran and chiefly agricultural, 1136 ministers 
 out of 1311 had adopted it two years after its pub- 
 
 2S Foerster, ii, 176. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 191 
 
 lication. The king was so delighted with this 
 that he appointed a special commission to force 
 it upon the other 175, and what was of more im- 
 portance for the future, conceded the optional 
 use of old customary prayers, formulas and cus- 
 toms in place of his own. This was so successful 
 in removing objections that similar "appendices" 
 were prepared for every province, which greatly 
 f acilitated the introduction of the whole liturgy. 
 
 There were two districts in particular from 
 which opposition was expected, and where the 
 negotiations led to important results, the Rhine 
 country and Silesia. The churches in the Rhine 
 country were for the most part Calvinistic of the 
 Swiss or French type, rather than the German. 
 They had only recently come under the Prussian 
 crown and still retained the independent presby- 
 terian form of government and freedom in litur- 
 gical matters which had characterized them be- 
 fore. In 1830, eight years after its publication, 
 out of 769 ministers 638 still refused to accept 
 the liturgy, and there had not been a conversion 
 for four years. The reason for this wholesale 
 refusal was two-fold. The ministers insisted that 
 innovations should come to them through their 
 own courts and objected to the form and content 
 of the king's liturgy. Their antagonism was also 
 embittered by the action of the king in taking 
 under his own protection and preventing suit 
 against two preachers accused of crime, when 
 
192 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 they declared their willingness to accept his 
 forms, and in endeavoring to compel submission 
 where the preacher was willing to introduce the 
 liturgy but the congregation and church courts 
 unwilling. The opposition offered was so gen- 
 eral and determined and so unlike the plasticity 
 of the eastern provinces that the king and his 
 ministers found it advisable to let the matter 
 drop for a time. It was then taken up through 
 special envoys and a general superintendent who 
 at last persuaded the king and his advisers that 
 the presbyterian constitution as there established 
 was historically and legally justifiable, and that 
 there was no hope of introducing the liturgy un- 
 less this was formally recognized. This the king 
 was forced to do, but, true as far as possible to 
 his principles, he insisted also that the state 
 should have more authority than the merely 
 nominal oversight of previous times. The result 
 was a constitution in which the presbyterian and 
 consistorial elements were combined. Organized 
 congregations, presbyteries and synods remained 
 as before, but a general superintendent and con- 
 sistory appointed by the king exercised super- 
 vision over every province (1835). This being 
 introduced and an "appendix" prepared and ap- 
 proved, the liturgy was adopted without much 
 more trouble. 
 
 This new constitution was destined to play a 
 larger part in the history of the church than was 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 193 
 
 at first intended. It was obviously a compromise 
 between the unyielding independence of the pres- 
 byterian churches on the one hand, and the abso- 
 lutistic claims of the king on the other, and satis- 
 factory to neither. But after some time it came 
 to be regarded as a proper realization of Luther's 
 ideals for a church in which the laity, the clergy 
 and the state should all share in the government 24 
 and served as a model for the constitution 
 granted to the evangelical church of Prussia in 
 1873, and in force today. 
 
 The opposition in Silesia, although similar to 
 that elsewhere at the outset, ended in bringing 
 into sharpest focus the whole question of the 
 episcopal rights of the prince. The churches 
 there, like those in the Rhine country, had only 
 recently come under the Prussian crown, and 
 still retained the freedom of their former condi- 
 tion and some of the strength developed in main- 
 taining themselves in an antagonistic Roman 
 Catholic environment. When the matter of 
 union was broached in the early '20s the Luther- 
 ans and Calvinists gathered in synod in Breslau 
 and thoroughly sifted the whole matter. They 
 began with doctrine, separated those points to 
 which both churches consented or could consent, 
 and agreed to make these the basis of the new 
 united evangelical church. They also touched on 
 liturgical matters, declaring it to be their opinion 
 
 24 Rieker, 367 ff. 
 
194 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 that uniformity was not necessary. Then, well 
 pleased with themselves, they announced the ac- 
 complished fact to the king. But in both points 
 they had run directly contrary to the royal wishes. 
 For the king was persuaded that as little as possi- 
 ble should be made of dogma, and that a uniform 
 liturgy was absolutely necessary. The report of 
 the clergy was therefore laid aside, and the new 
 liturgy pushed in the usual way by pressure 
 from above. 
 
 The leader of the opposition was Scheibel, 
 pastor of the chief Lutheran church of Breslau 
 and professor of theology in the university there. 
 Defending supernatural Christianity against the 
 prevailing rationalism of the earlier decades of 
 the century, and orthodox Lutheranism against 
 both Calvinism and indifferentism, he had grad- 
 ually gathered a considerable following among 
 all classes of the people and the clergy. He had 
 been one of the very few to vote against the 
 union in 1822 and foreseeing trouble had set him- 
 self to study the whole subject of the origin and 
 history of the constitution of the church. "He 
 found in the pastoral epistles the elements of a 
 divinely revealed constitution of the church, ac- 
 cording to which the congregation, led by clerical 
 and lay elders, by a free exercise of love should 
 maintain its pastor, care for doctrines and exer- 
 cise church discipline over all the members." 25 
 
 25 RE, xvii, 549. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 195 
 
 This constitution had been generally neglected, 
 but appears sporadically in the earlier centuries 
 among heretical sects, and later in Luther's 
 writings and among the Bohemian Brethren. 
 The consistory of the church in Breslau, com- 
 posed of ministers and laymen, he thinks in es- 
 sential agreement with it, and as long as the 
 authorities did not meddle he had no complaint 
 to make on this score. His fundamental objec- 
 tion was to union with the Calvinists whom he 
 considered in the old orthodox fashion to be 
 heathen and anti-Christians. It was only when 
 he perceived that union was to be thrust upon 
 the church that he went to the extreme of en- 
 tirely denying the rights of the king in church 
 affairs and comparing Frederick William III 
 to Balak king of Moab and Antiochus Epipha- 
 nes. That he was not the "sly self seeking fa- 
 natic" that the king's bishop Eylert represented 
 him to be is sufficiently proved by the honor in 
 which he was held wherever he came while being 
 hunted from place to place by the Prussian 
 authorities, and by the fact that after the king's 
 death he was named honorary member of the 
 superior church council and called to the chief 
 pastorate in Breslau. 26 
 
 28 Foerster, ii, 202 &., endeavors to show that he derived 
 his peculiar views from Pietism and not from Lutheranism, 
 but can do so only at the cost of denying to the latter a 
 part in the religious movement which expressed itself in 
 missionary activity, in Bible societies, tracb societies and 
 
196 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 Scheibel's suspension in 1830 for refusing to 
 use the liturgy, instead of silencing him and cow- 
 ing his followers, caused him to protest even 
 more strenuously than before, and his congrega- 
 tion to petition for permission to withdraw from 
 the church and form a separate communion. 
 They numbered about 1000 at first, but the ad- 
 vertisement of their aims and their persecution 
 led others, both clergy and laity, to sympathize 
 and join hands with them. They wished merely 
 to remain as they had been — orthodox Lutherans 
 true to the faith of their ancestors, with the right 
 of ordering their own services and managing 
 their congregational affairs. 
 
 From the standpoint of the government this 
 attitude was not only destructive of ecclesiastical 
 uniformity, but even threatened the political 
 unity of the kingdom. Religious conventicles in 
 other parts of the country had been discovered 
 with alarm, and the king had been advised by his 
 bishops that the spirit engendered thereby was 
 one of pride, the members regarding themselves 
 as peculiarly the children of God, refusing to rec- 
 ognize or to communicate with any other Chris- 
 tians, and distorting in an improper way the 
 
 prayer meetings. Such things are not contrary to the spirit 
 of Lutheranism. They have merely been absent from it 
 throughout the greater part of its history, mainly because 
 they fell under suspicion and were not allowed to develop 
 normally. They have been more or less present in it ever 
 since the days of Spener. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 197 
 
 precept that man must obey God rather than 
 man. And Altenstein a little later advised that 
 there was danger of the religious movement be- 
 coming political. 27 The petitioners therefore were 
 denied their request (December, 1830) and in- 
 formed that their "separatists spirit which un- 
 ambiguously displays a bold rebellion against 
 what pertains to the general peace, and is par- 
 ticularly suspicious at the present time, is not 
 looked upon with favor." 28 When Scheibel went 
 to Berlin in order to protest directly to the king 
 against the attempted violation of his conscience 
 he was refused an audience and curtly informed 
 that "it was not a question of conscience at all; 
 it was his duty as a subject to obey the orders 
 of the king." 29 More particularly he and his 
 friends were told that the new liturgy and church 
 union had nothing to do with each other. There 
 were "united" churches within the new evan- 
 gelical church, but there were also un-united 
 churches, that is to say, churches which still re- 
 tained their denominational Lutheran or Calvin- 
 istic confession and character, and there was no 
 reason why Scheibel and his friends should not 
 also remain loyal to the past and accept the new 
 liturgy as well. 
 
 27 Foerster, ii, 261, 
 
 28 RE, xii, 4. The reference is obviously to the excite- 
 ment of the liberal press of Germany by the July Revolu- 
 tion in France. 
 
 29 RE, xii, 2. 
 
198 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 The most charitable and probably the correct 
 explanation of the king's attitude toward doc- 
 trine is that he was incapable of appreciating it 
 or its place in history. In 1813 he ordered that 
 ministers and teachers should not be bound to 
 any creed; the Bible alone was to be the norm. 30 
 In 1822 he ordered that they should swear not 
 only to the three oecumenical creeds but also to 
 both the Lutheran and the Calvinistic symbols 
 "as they are harmoniously received," 31 and as 
 this was ambiguous to say the least, a later order, 
 in 1823, prescribed the Augsburg Confession and 
 the "creeds of the united Evangelical Church in 
 so far as they are in agreement with one an- 
 other." What he wished, of course, was to bind 
 the ministers to the consensus of doctrine in the 
 several creeds, but of any attempt to determine 
 what this was or to reduce it to form he would 
 not hear. The synod of Breslau had earned his 
 displeasure by doing so, and indeed any such 
 union creed would only have added one more 
 to the many that were already in use and given 
 one more occasion for dispute. His ancestors 
 had attempted to unite the churches on a credal 
 basis; he was determined to unite them by leav- 
 ing the question of creeds strictly alone, or at 
 least not to disturb it any more than was safe. 
 On the occasion of the anniversary of the Augs- 
 
 30 Foerster, i, 192. 
 31 Foerster, ii, 45. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 199 
 
 burg Confession in 1830 he stated in a cabinet 
 order, that was supposed to be normative for his 
 ministers, that the Augsburg Confession was 
 the one chief confession of all the Protestant 
 churches ; and he hoped to bring about a common 
 dead level of doctrine by ordering that in the 
 appointment of pastors to congregations no con- 
 sideration be given to the earlier denominational 
 training and affiliations of the candidate, and by 
 prohibiting the use of the names Lutheran and 
 Reformed (Calvinistic) in reference to churches. 
 It is not hard to see why conscientious Luth- 
 erans such as Scheibel and his associates felt that 
 their most precious possessions were endangered 
 by the interference of a prince with such views 
 and methods as these, especially as they had also 
 to regard him, hereditarily at least, as a Calvin- 
 ist. They therefore gave no sign of submission 
 but continued to present petition after petition, 
 to offer passive resistance to all measures taken 
 against them, and to continue their religious 
 services in their own way. Scheibel refused to 
 acknowledge his suspension and was forced to 
 flee the country. Other pastors that continued 
 his work were thrown into prison, and the mili- 
 tary were called out to take possession of a 
 church about which the faithful men and women 
 members of the congregation had gathered to 
 protect what they called their own. The last 
 episode of the sad story came when the miserable 
 
200 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 congregations asked for permission to emigrate, 
 and even this was refused. But in this even 
 Frederick William III had overshot the mark. 
 The sympathy of a great part of the kingdom 
 had been enlisted for the sufferers. The crown 
 prince put himself at the head of a movement 
 directed toward a more equitable settlement and 
 was seconded by many influential members of 
 the judiciary and other officials. The emigrants 
 were finally allowed to go to America and the 
 leaders who had remained in prison without trial 
 for months and years were released, but only on 
 the demand of the minister of justice himself. 
 But the right of separation and the formation 
 of independent churches was still denied, nor 
 was it granted until after Frederick William 
 Ill's death. 
 
 In many respects the ecclesiastical policy of 
 Frederick William III is closely analogous to 
 that of the Stuarts in England and Scotland. 
 In regard to the divine right of kings, the com- 
 patibility of monarchy and episcopacy, the en- 
 forcement of uniformity and lack of apprecia- 
 tion of more important matters, the subordina- 
 tion of law and justice to the king's will, the 
 failure to call together the diet, the personal 
 interference of the monarch, the determination 
 to compel obedience by every means, and the end 
 to be gained, absolutism in state and church, 
 both stories run closely parallel. The main 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 201 
 
 points of contrast are that the events in England 
 and Scotland took place in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, those in Prussia in the nineteenth, and that 
 whereas the Stuarts were opposed hy a body of 
 public opinion that effectually withstood their 
 pretensions, the Prussian king found little diffi- 
 culty in blocking or thwarting the sporadic at- 
 tempts to obtain or retain ecclesiastical liberty. 
 
 To set this in its proper perspective it is only 
 necessary to recall that at the same time and 
 almost in the same year, when the whole Prussian 
 church passively allowed the urgently needed re- 
 forms of the constitution, the mitigation of pat- 
 ronage, the organization of congregations and 
 the introduction of church discipline to be set 
 aside by the king, and accepted his dictation in 
 matters pertaining to the innermost life of the 
 congregations, one half of the Church of Scot- 
 land withdrew from the mother church, willingly 
 forfeiting material and other advantages, be- 
 cause of the encroachment of the civil power on 
 what they considered the liberties of the church 
 in the one particular of patronage. 
 
 The attempt has been made to show that Fred- 
 erick William Ill's personal intervention in 
 church matters was something new and unique 
 in Germany, 32 but such is not the case. It at- 
 tracted more attention because it occurred in the 
 open light of the nineteenth century when liberal 
 
 82 Foerster, ii, 301 ff. 
 
202 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 ideas had begun to penetrate even the Prussian 
 darkness. But in itself it is merely a continua- 
 tion of the church policy of the old territorial 
 system, as Treitschke rightly perceives. 33 The 
 authority of the prince has remained the same 
 throughout the centuries since the time of the 
 Reformation, the manner in which it has been 
 exercised has varied according to the convictions 
 or the fancies of the individual rulers. In 1827 
 when Frederick William III at last determined 
 to introduce his liturgy everywhere he justified 
 himself with three arguments, first, the author- 
 ity of Luther, second, liturgies had been intro- 
 duced by the princes in the earlier centuries, and 
 third, almost all the clergy had expressed their 
 willingness to adopt it. 84 Of these the first and 
 third are not in accordance with fact, but the 
 third, the similar interference of his ancestors, is 
 beyond all cavil. 
 
 In spite of the fact that Frederick William 
 III on his deathbed enjoined his son and all 
 succeeding kings of Prussia energetically to pro- 
 tect and maintain the new liturgy in the interests 
 of uniformity and pure revealed Christianity, 35 
 a more liberal policy was inaugurated by Fred- 
 erick William IV. The "Old Lutherans" were 
 allowed to separate, but not to call themselves 
 
 83 Deutsche Geschichte im neunsehnten Jahrhundert, iv, 
 567. 
 
 34 Foerster, ii, 161. 
 
 85 The Edict is printed in Foerster, ii, 55 f. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 203 
 
 a church. "And so the church which was older 
 than the established church itself received at last 
 a belated and conditional recognition." 36 Greater 
 liberty was permitted in the use of the liturgy 
 and all the questions of reform and reorganiza- 
 tion which had been suppressed for twenty years 
 were again brought to light. The king's own 
 wish was to establish the episcopal system with 
 many small dioceses, organized under an arch- 
 bishop of Magdeburg, and with apostolic suc- 
 cession assured by the cooperation of English or 
 Swedish bishops. 87 Into the hands of a church 
 organized in this way he was willing to commit 
 its own government but not into the hands of 
 the representative synods which the clergy 
 wished. For a general synod in 1846 had de- 
 manded the establishment of presbyteries and 
 synods representative of the church to cooperate 
 with the officers and courts nominated by the 
 king, and had at the same time prepared a new 
 creed for the united Evangelical Church, in both 
 respects running counter to the royal will. 
 Progress along this line was interrupted, how- 
 ever, by the political agitation that culminated 
 in the uprisings of 1848 and the constitution of 
 1851, from which is to be dated the beginning of 
 self-government in both church and state in 
 Prussia. 
 
 86 Von Treitschke, as cited, v, 350. 
 
 87 Von Treitschke, v, 361. 
 
204 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 The Parliament of Frankfort planned for 
 complete religious and ecclesiastical liberty. The 
 individual should be entirely free from compul- 
 sion in respect to private and public worship. 
 His rights as a citizen should not be affected by 
 his religious beliefs or preferences. Groups of 
 likeminded believers should have perfect free- 
 dom to meet together for worship and to organ- 
 ize congregations. Patronage should be entirely 
 abolished, and although it was not definitely 
 stated, it was implied that the state should leave 
 the churches entirely to themselves, that is to 
 say, that there should be a complete separation 
 of church and state after the American or Bel- 
 gian fashion. 
 
 Within church circles opinion was divided in 
 respect to the new proposals. The demand for 
 more liberty in both church and state was all but 
 universal, and most writers advocated a repre- 
 sentative form of government for the church 
 similar to that proposed for the new empire. 
 Others were found who favored episcopacy, or 
 the continuance of the territorial system. Some 
 looked forward hopefully and confidently to a 
 free and independent evangelical church which 
 should embrace the churches in all Germany, and 
 many deprecated any change that would free the 
 common people from their obligations to the 
 church, or the church from the ties that bound 
 it to the state and the people. It was feared 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 205 
 
 particularly that the church, having no organs 
 of self-expression and no experience in self-gov- 
 ernment, would not be able to maintain itself 
 and that the common people, freed from the com- 
 pulsory contributions and compulsory attend- 
 ance, would cease to render it that material and 
 moral support necessary to its existence, a fear 
 that was undoubtedly well grounded if Schleier- 
 macher was correct in saying that the people 
 regarded the church as a yoke imposed by the 
 military monarchy. It was characteristic too and 
 ominous for the future that those preachers that 
 enjoyed the reputation of being orthodox sided 
 as a rule with the monarchy in its struggle with 
 the growing democracy and thereby earned for 
 the church the reputation of being both the ally 
 and the servant of the absolute state. 38 
 
 The political agitation of 1848 failed of its 
 objects, the unification of Germany and the es- 
 tablishment of representative government, but it 
 at least had the effect of introducing representa- 
 tive institutions into those states that had suc- 
 cessfully resisted them before, and of giving 
 additional impetus for a time to liberal ideas. 
 In the sphere of church government the effect 
 was somewhat similar, but it is to be doubted if 
 the church as much as the people. 
 
 In the midst of the disturbances (1848) there 
 
 88 Ernst Schubert, Die evangelische Predigt im Revolu- 
 tions jahr, 1848. 
 
806 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 was published a provisional constitution which 
 ordered for the future that "the Evangelical and 
 Roman Catholic churches, and also every other 
 religious association, regulate and administer 
 their own affairs independently and remain in 
 possession and enjoyment of their institutions, 
 foundations and funds intended for the promo- 
 tion of religion, education and charity," 39 and 
 an explanatory note added that the hitherto pre- 
 vailing government by the prince would come 
 to an end. Measures were even taken to facili- 
 tate the transference of the church business from 
 the existing governmental bodies to the churches. 
 In the constitution of January 81, 1851, the same 
 sentence appears, though with the additional re- 
 quirement that all religious associations may re- 
 ceive corporate recognition only by special 
 legislation. As a matter of fact, however, no 
 change was made in the legal status or govern- 
 ment of the Evangelical Church which continued 
 afterward as before to be ruled by the king. 
 
 How this is to be reconciled with the statement 
 of the constitution it is perhaps useless to inquire. 
 When the first alarm was over and the govern- 
 ment again felt itself secure the political consti- 
 tution was modified in favor of the monarchy, 
 and probably the real explanation of the govern- 
 ment's failure to fulfil also its promise in regard 
 
 89 Quoted from Rieker, 394. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 207 
 
 to the churches is that it did not wish to and was 
 not forced to. But an interesting theory has 
 been advanced in defence of the king's action, 
 which may be mentioned here as it may play a 
 part in some future settlement of the relation 
 of church and state. It reaches back to the time 
 of the Reformation and turns on the peculiarity, 
 which we have noted, that the reformers did not 
 call upon the princes as princes, but as distin- 
 guished members of the church to regulate 
 church affairs. On this basis it is maintained 
 that as the jus episcopale does not belong to the 
 prince in his capacity as head of the state, but 
 as a member of the church, the constitution of 
 1851 which declared the church free from the 
 state did not declare it free from the prince, who 
 as praecipuum membrum continues to exercise 
 the episcopal jurisdiction. 40 To which the answer 
 is made that whatever form the appeal of the 
 reformers took the fact is that it has always 
 been the prince as prince that has exercised the 
 jurisdiction, and that therefore the jus episco- 
 pale is not to be considered as annexed to, but 
 as immanent in, the civil government, and there- 
 fore is modified and conditioned by anything that 
 affects the position of the prince as head of the 
 
 *° Richter, Lehrbuch des Kirchenrechts, edited by Dove 
 and Kahl, 177; Jacobson, Preussisches Kirchenrecht, 119; 
 Sehling, in RE, x, 472, and elsewhere ; Friedberg, Lehrbuch 
 des Kirchenrechts, 206. 
 
208 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 state. 41 According to the former of these the 
 king is the supreme head of the church, irrespon- 
 sible in the exercise of his jurisdiction; and the 
 church, including its head, is separate and dis- 
 tinct from the state, each having its own objects, 
 methods and administrative machinery culmi- 
 nating in the person of the king. This distinc- 
 tion, while sometimes called a meaningless 
 quibble, is not without significance were it only 
 because of its increasing popularity with German 
 scholars, in which is probably to be seen not so 
 much an attempt to defend the king's preroga- 
 tive as fear of the church's falling into the hands 
 of a diet controlled by Roman Catholic and other 
 anti-evangelical interests. It is of comparatively 
 little practical importance now, but it would be- 
 come important in case of the introduction of 
 responsible government. A choice of one of 
 three dispositions of the church would then have 
 to be made, either the complete separation of 
 church and state involving the independence of 
 the church, or the subordination of the church 
 to a responsible ministry and so to the diet (as 
 in England) , or the retention of the jus episco- 
 pale by the sovereign as a personal prerogative. 
 And in view of the peculiar historical origin and 
 development of the relations between the king 
 and the church the last of these, although open 
 
 41 Mayer in RE, xviii, 717; and also the article Kirchen- 
 recht by Mejer in the second edition of the RE. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 809 
 
 to criticism at every point, would probably find 
 advocates. 
 
 Should such a crisis occur the church would 
 not be found so utterly unprepared, at least as 
 far as the machinery of government is concerned, 
 to assume control of its own affairs, as it was in 
 1848, for the whole tendency since the beginning 
 of the reign of Frederick William IV has been 
 to create synods in which the thought of the 
 church may come to expression, and to sever the 
 connection between the governmental office for 
 the affairs of the Evangelical Church and the 
 other state offices. Even before the new political 
 constitution was published (June, 1850) the king 
 created a special council ("Evangelischer Ober- 
 kirchenrat") for handling the inner affairs of the 
 Evangelical Church, making it directly respon- 
 sible to the crown as the church courts had been 
 in earlier times. This done, the long deferred 
 organization of the congregations and creation 
 of representative synods was taken in hand. 
 
 A plan for the former which had been pre- 
 pared by the outgoing department was put in 
 the hands of the new council with the command 
 to introduce it into all the congregations in the 
 eastern provinces. This was attempted, but 
 many difficulties were immediately encountered. 
 The eastern provinces were the stronghold of 
 Lutheranism and on account of their geograph- 
 ical position had come least of all in contact with 
 
210 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 the presbyterian and Calvinistic churches. There 
 was no appreciation of and so no demand for 
 congregational organization. Objection was 
 taken also to the organization being forced on 
 the churches instead of being left to their own 
 option; it was said to threaten the freedom of 
 conscience of the individual denominational 
 churches by drawing them more firmly within 
 the less confessional Evangelical Church, to put 
 power in the hands of the masses and therefore 
 to be dangerous politically; and the patrons saw 
 their legal rights endangered by the transference 
 of so many matters into the hands of the congre- 
 gation and its officers. It was not until ten years 
 later (1860) following a cabinet order of Will- 
 iam I, commanding the introduction of both 
 presbyteries and synods, that energetic steps 
 were taken in the matter, and only in 1869 was 
 the work completed by the calling together of 
 provincial synods. In 1873 the new constitution 
 was definitely determined by royal edict and in 
 1874 it received the sanction of the diet, if that 
 had been necessary. The last stone was added 
 to the structure in 1876 when a general synod 
 for the eight older provinces was called into 
 being. 
 
 The new constitution, as has been indicated, 
 though approved by the synods did not give lib- 
 erty to the church. It was issued by the king "in 
 virtue of the authority vested in him as bearer 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 211 
 
 of the territorial church government" ("des 
 landesherrlichen Kirchenregiments"), and pre- 
 sumably can be recalled by the same authority. 
 Of this, however, there is some doubt. The fact 
 that the constitution was laid before the diet and 
 by its action became a law of the land would 
 indicate that the representatives of the people 
 have vindicated their right to share in the exer- 
 cise of even the episcopal jurisdiction of the 
 crown. In either case, however, whether the 
 source of authority be the king himself or the 
 state there can be no doubt that the real govern- 
 ment and control of the church are still in the 
 hands of the civil authorities. Not only does the 
 new constitution expressly state that it has no 
 reference to union and doctrine, which therefore 
 remain as before in the hands of the king, but 
 even in matters pertaining to the constitution 
 and management of congregations and synods 
 alike the king is able to exercise control. Royal 
 officials have supervisory rights and special privi- 
 leges in the synods. All recommendations must 
 be approved by the state ministry as containing 
 nothing contrary to any law of the state or detri- 
 mental to the interests of the state, and then laid 
 before the king for sanction, promulgation and 
 execution. The attitude of the edict is paternal 
 throughout. Exact directions are given concern- 
 ing privacy and publicity, the qualifications of 
 congregational voters, elders and representa- 
 
212 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 tives, the disposition of funds, the manner and 
 management of elections, etc. The regulations are 
 mandatory, provision being made both for their 
 enforcement and for the punishment of neglect. 
 In short, just as in the political sphere, repre- 
 sentative institutions have been created but little 
 power or authority conveyed to them. 
 
 "The limitation of the exercise of supreme 
 power which was applied in the political sphere 
 has simply been transferred to the church, a 
 constitutional form of government by the par- 
 ticipation of the representatives of the people in 
 the most important acts of the sovereign, the 
 erection of honorary official boards which is 
 called, but improperly, self-government, the 
 strengthening of the real self-government of the 
 local communities, that is to say, in the case of 
 the church, of the congregation; but of the real 
 issue, which was that the church itself, the church 
 as a whole, free as over against the state, should 
 receive self-government, — this has not taken 
 place. The church government now, as before, 
 is government by the state organized in parallel 
 lines with the political government. As the sov- 
 ereign has not ceased to be the true ruler in 
 political affairs in spite of popular representa- 
 tion, honorary offices and local self-government, 
 so also in ecclesiastical affairs. The present legal 
 position of the Evangelical Church is still the 
 old territorial system, modified somewhat indeed, 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 213 
 
 but still unmistakably and genuinely the same." 42 
 At the same time it is important to note that 
 a beginning appears really to have been made 
 at last in putting the church on its own feet. 
 This appears both in the restrictions placed by 
 the new constitution upon the prince in his exer- 
 cise of episcopal jurisdiction and the correspond- 
 ing right of approval guaranteed the synods, but 
 more particularly in the much greater degree of 
 freedom than ever before accorded to the congre- 
 gation in such matters as the election of elders 
 and managers, the choice of pastor, the exercise 
 of discipline and the management of their own 
 affairs generally. As the king truly said in his 
 preface to it, the new constitution gives the 
 powers within the church a greater opportunity 
 to take part independently in the life of the 
 church than ever before. It is true that they are 
 handicapped by the privileges of the patrons 
 which still remain in a mitigated form, by the 
 legal restrictions that bind them on every side, 
 and most of all by a lack of experience and train- 
 ing in responsibility and self-government, but 
 nevertheless the opportunity and machinery for 
 congregational life and effort are now present, 
 and it remains for the future to disclose what 
 the result will be. 
 
 If congregational duties had been voluntarily 
 assumed by men who were earnest in their 
 
 42 RE, xviii, 717. 
 
214 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 Christianity as Luther wished, there would have 
 been less doubt of the issue. But being imposed 
 from above, in many cases against the wishes of 
 the congregations, and denned in terms of the 
 civil law rather than of Christian freedom, it is 
 questionable whether the new constitution can 
 accommodate itself to the needs of those that 
 seek liberty to do good, or the desire of those 
 to whom responsibility in such matters is irk- 
 some. The leaders of the church are alive to 
 the necessity of creating congregational interest 
 in the problems of religion and the church and 
 of organizing and directing the forces now re- 
 leased.' It is realized too that the time is near 
 at hand when the inevitable separation of church 
 and state will be accomplished, and the church 
 forced to care for itself. The new century has 
 been particularly fruitful of literature, plans and 
 conferences, and also much real work has been 
 done, but it is too soon to say whether or not the 
 salvation of the church will come in this way. 
 At all events, it will require some time to over- 
 come the passivity in which the congregations 
 have been sunk for four centuries. 
 
 With regard to the larger aspects of the new 
 constitution, that is to say, the union of the 
 synodical and consistorial elements in the gov- 
 ernment, theoretically the new arrangement may 
 be described as an ideal one in which all the 
 forces of the church are released, the laity, clergy 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANS 815 
 
 and government all sharing in the responsibility. 
 But in practice it is a compromise, an attempt 
 at uniting two kinds of organization that have 
 previously been found irreconcilable, monarchy 
 and democracy, government from above and gov- 
 ernment from below. The same thing in almost 
 the same form was attempted in the sixteenth 
 century in Hesse arid ended in a victory for the 
 monarchy, but it is unlikely that history will re- 
 peat itself in the German states of the twentieth 
 century. The idea dominant in the sixteenth 
 century and at the root of the state establishment 
 everywhere, namely, that it is the duty of the 
 state to care for the spiritual and eternal welfare 
 of its subjects, is now all but dead; the parity 
 of all religions in the eyes of the state makes it 
 increasingly difficult to continue the special bond 
 uniting the Evangelical Church and the state; 
 and the outspoken denunciation of the favor 
 shown the Evangelical Church, and of the Evan- 
 gelical Church as the servant and tool of the 
 government by a large and constantly increasing 
 number of citizens — all these indications point 
 to a time not far distant when the state will throw 
 off all responsibilities in respect to the church and 
 the church will be required to assume independ- 
 ence. This is not putting it too strongly. Many 
 churchmen of Germany look forward with ap- 
 prehension and dread to the time when the 
 church shall no longer be controlled, restrained 
 
216 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 and supported by the state, but forced against 
 her will to assume responsibilities which it should 
 always be her joy to exercise, and the free exer- 
 cise of which it has always been her duty to 
 vindicate for herself. 
 
 And if the church is unwilling to be released 
 the state is equally unwilling to let her go. The 
 theory of the Social Contract as understood by 
 the eighteenth century has passed into the realm 
 of academic history, but the theory of the state 
 with which it was accompanied in Germany, 
 namely that the state alone possesses the wisdom 
 and the power of the nation and that the indi- 
 vidual citizens and groups of citizens must sub- 
 mit to its will, is still dominant there. The state 
 still keeps close guard, as close as it may in the 
 twentieth century, upon the lives, actions and 
 thoughts of its subjects, and needs the services 
 of the church to maintain, for its purposes, "the 
 fear of God, obedience to the law, loyalty to the 
 state and an amicable disposition toward one's 
 fellow citizens," to oppose the advance of Roman 
 Catholicism which with its demand of submission 
 to the pope would again subordinate the state 
 to itself, and of Social Democracy which with 
 the catch word "religion is a private matter" 
 seeks to overthrow the established church as well 
 as its ally the state. For all these purposes the 
 state needs the services of the church, which is 
 constantly in touch with the farthest individual 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 217 
 
 in the realm and ever ready to preach peace and 
 submission to the state as indeed she is required 
 by her constitution to do. 43 
 
 43 RE, xviii, 721. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 The Effects of the Territorial System 
 upon the Church 
 
 From the time of the Reformation until the 
 present there have not been lacking in Germany 
 many pastors in every generation that have stood 
 fearlessly for what they considered pure doctrine 
 and true morality, and by their learning and life 
 endeared themselves to their parishioners, and 
 put the Christian world in their debt. From the 
 homes of Lutheran ministers, as from the Scot- 
 tish manses and our own ministers' homes, have 
 gone out sons and daughters whose influence has 
 been so great and good in every department of 
 social life, as well as in the church, that no one 
 can doubt the seriousness, piety and sound disci- 
 pline that surrounded their childhood. More- 
 over, owing to this constancy of the pastors, 
 there has been a steady though not uninterrupted 
 advance throughout the centuries, so that it may 
 be said that the position of the pastor and of the 
 church as a whole was never so favorable or se- 
 cure as today. But the struggle upward has 
 been long and arduous, much more so than might 
 have been the case had it not been for the op- 
 
 318 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 819 
 
 pressive hand of the state and the lack of inde- 
 pendence in the church. The Protestant church 
 in Germany, by being deprived of the form of 
 organization and the self-government compatible 
 with its principles, has never been free to control 
 its ministers, to train its people or to play its 
 proper part in educating, disciplining and direct- 
 ing the thought of the nation. The evil effects 
 of the territorial system are written plainly in 
 every page of its history. 
 
 The German Protestant clergy suffered in 
 comparison with their brethren of the Roman 
 church in not being supported and sustained by 
 a closely articulated institution which was able 
 to command the respect of all by its imposing 
 dimensions if by nothing else, and in comparison 
 with the clergy of the Calvinistic churches in not 
 being supported and sustained by the laity in 
 their congregations and their clerical brethren in 
 synods. In Germany the church was monarch- 
 ically conceived and organized. Beginning with 
 the secular prince and working down, each mem- 
 ber in the chain of government was subordinated 
 to those above him and ruled over those below. 
 Thus the pastor was not so much the spiritual 
 adviser as the ruler over his parish. Nothing is 
 more striking or of greater importance in the 
 history of Protestantism than that the Calvin- 
 istic churches everywhere created congregations 
 with a more or less democratic life, and a per- 
 
220 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 sonal bond between pastor and people, and that 
 the Lutheran churches, except in rare instances, 
 as in Hesse, or where they came into contact 
 with and imitated their Calvinistic brethren as 
 in the Rhine country, had no such congregational 
 life until the end of the nineteenth century. 
 
 The relation of pastor and people was compar- 
 able to that of monarch and subjects. This is to 
 be attributed to the unwillingness of the authori- 
 ties to allow the people any share in the govern- 
 ment of the church, and to the circumstance that 
 the pastor was, not only in appearance but also 
 in fact, a state official exercising and enforcing 
 his authority in the name of and with the means 
 provided by the state. His duties were to preach, 
 administer the sacraments, hear confession, cate- 
 chize the youth, exercise discipline and oversee 
 the school and poor relief, in all of which he was 
 responsible only to his superintendent and pat- 
 ron. Apart from visiting the sick, which was 
 continued from Roman Catholic times, there was 
 no pastoral visitation. According to the plans 
 of the reformers the private confession was to 
 be made an occasion for advising individuals, but 
 even though time had permitted such personal 
 attention the plan was made nugatory by the 
 debasement of confession to the recitation of a 
 prescribed formula. Pastoral visits and gather- 
 ings at which the pastor might meet with the 
 more serious minded for prayer and mutual edi- 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 221 
 
 fication, as Luther had recommended, were not 
 only unknown but in some places actually for- 
 bidden. It was not until the end of the seven- 
 teenth century that they were introduced by 
 Pietism from the practice of the Calvinistic 
 churches, and even then they were not received 
 with favor. 1 
 
 The social position and recognition accorded 
 the pastor varied, being determined largely by 
 the dignity of his church and his own birth. The 
 theological professors in the universities were 
 held from the beginning, as they are still, in the 
 highest esteem, forming in many respects a class 
 by themselves. The court preachers and the 
 ministers in the cities were also highly respected 
 and given prominence both in official functions 
 and in the councils. But the country pastor or 
 the village preacher, as he was called, was re- 
 garded as little if any better than the peasants 
 whom he served. The ironbound distinction be- 
 tween the several grades of the nobility, the citi- 
 zens, artisans and peasants which reached its 
 climax with the era of absolutism and fell only 
 with the reforms of Stein at the beginning of 
 the nineteenth century, fixed the boundaries be- 
 yond which no one might hope to pass. The 
 first Protestant ministers were recruited from 
 the priesthood of the Roman Catholic church, 
 
 1 Tholuck, Das kirchiiche Leben des 17ten Jahrhunderts, 
 i, 101 f. 
 
222 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 the trades and lower offices of the civil service. 
 Very few of the nobility and practically no peas- 
 ants are found among them. There was great 
 difficulty in finding candidates, and many of 
 them were quite unsuitable. 
 
 After the Thirty Years War the number of 
 applicants greatly exceeded the demand. "It 
 fairly swarms with candidates," says Schupp ; "it 
 is impossible to spit for fear of hitting one in the 
 face." 2 But the quality was not good. One ex- 
 cellent source of supply, ministers' homes, had suf- 
 fered very greatly during the war. The nobility, 
 as before, would not lower themselves to such a 
 level, and their example worked upon the lower 
 classes of freemen. On the other hand, great 
 numbers of peasants presented themselves. Every 
 peasant apparently wished to have a son in the 
 ministry, and these, insufficiently trained, with- 
 out home advantages of a better kind, and under 
 the social stigma of their birth (it is to be re- 
 membered the peasants were serfs until the nine- 
 teenth century), were not adapted for the role 
 of leaders. So harmful was the presence of peas- 
 ants in the ministry considered that when Wiirt- 
 temberg took the reformation of the clergy in 
 hand in the latter half of the eighteenth century, 
 all peasants, laborers, minor officials and those 
 not belonging to the "more honorable" classes 
 
 "Drews, 140. 
 * Drews, 89. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 223 
 
 were forbidden to allow their sons to study the- 
 ology however well endowed by nature they 
 might be. 3 
 
 The difference between the country and city 
 pastors was so marked that a lower degree of 
 preparation was allowed the former, two years 
 of training being regarded as sufficient and even 
 much less at times accepted for the one, whereas 
 the others were required to have pursued a course 
 of five, eight or ten years. In passing from a 
 country charge to the city a second examination 
 was required. Lack of education is a constantly 
 recurring complaint, and although theological 
 study was required by law and supposed to be 
 enforced by superintendents, little improvement 
 was noticeable. Nor was this criticism unjusti- 
 fied. Many of the preachers were ignorant of 
 the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, to say 
 nothing of the points of doctrine so hotly dis- 
 puted in the universities. It is illuminating in 
 this respect to hear that as late as 1720 two pas- 
 tors were found in East Prussia who did not 
 possess a Bible and never had possessed one. 4 
 
 The salaries of ministers were very inadequate 
 for their position and often not enough to pro- 
 vide the necessaries of life. The secularization 
 of church properties in the time of the Reforma- 
 tion, in Germany as elsewhere, enriched the no- 
 
 3 Drews, 140. 
 
 4 Drews, 89. 
 
224 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 bility at the expense of the church. Besides this, 
 the changes in the services resulting from the 
 new doctrinal conception of the sacraments was 
 accompanied by a decrease in the number of in- 
 cidental fees, while those that remained were ir- 
 regularly and uncertainly paid. The town pas- 
 tors were better provided for, but those in the 
 country had to eke out their very meagre sal- 
 aries with the income from their own and their 
 wives' labor in other employments. Teaching or 
 tutoring was common among the educated. 
 Manual labor of some sort, and generally farm- 
 ing, was resorted to by the others. Frequent 
 complaints are found of their selling beer, the 
 brewing of which was one of their special privi- 
 leges, but the selling of which was practiced 
 against the law. Even with the income from 
 these secondary employments, which of course 
 had to be pursued to the neglect of pastoral 
 duties, they were often not able to live with as 
 much comfort, or rather, lack of distress, as 
 the peasants. Throughout the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries there was a constant demand 
 for the betterment of these conditions, but it was 
 not until the nineteenth century, after the Na- 
 poleonic wars had made the situation even worse, 
 that it was taken in hand. Even yet there is 
 much to be desired in this respect. 
 
 Another evil was the abuse of the patronage. 
 "In this we touch a matter which has affected 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 225 
 
 the whole ministry until well into the nineteenth 
 century, like a cancer (and is not yet eradicated) . 
 The practice which established itself actually cor- 
 rupted the pastorate. It was ominous that in 
 Protestant lands there was no superior ecclesias- 
 tical court to watch over the placing of ministers. 
 Formerly this had lain to a large extent in the 
 hands of the bishops who examined, approved 
 and ordained the ministers, and so had it in their 
 power to reject unsuitable candidates when they 
 were presented by the patron. But the bishops 
 did not come into the Reformation, and as the 
 patronage was allowed to remain and no one 
 had the courage to entrust the choice of a pastor 
 to the individual congregations, the patron ob- 
 tained an altogether extraordinary influence in 
 the appointment of pastors — with evil results to 
 the ministry. ... It is the complaint of this 
 early period, as of all following periods, that the 
 patrons, who were for the most part uncultured 
 and self-seeking nobles, often appointed men 
 that were personally pleasing to them for some 
 reason or other, but wholly useless as ministers. 
 It happened not infrequently that a pastor was 
 appointed for a set time, 'as when one hires a 
 servant or maid,' and more often that the patron 
 demanded a fee or made some other improper 
 condition. The position occupied by the patron 
 in the country and the mayor in the towns in 
 relation to the pastors can be appreciated only 
 
226 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 when it is remembered that they were the local 
 magistrates, and had the administration and ju- 
 diciary in their hands, that is to say, that they 
 were little princes (Obrigkeit). . . . As every 
 other prince they too ruled in the church. The 
 pastors were their officials, whom they handled 
 altogether arbitrarily." 6 
 
 According to the symbols of the Lutheran 
 church the congregations should have a voice in 
 the choice of their pastor but except in rare in- 
 stances this was not observed. Speaking gen- 
 erally, the law existed only on paper. The only 
 limitation to the patron's power of choice and 
 appointment was the licensing examination, and 
 this was made of little or no effect by its being 
 held not before but after presentation, and by 
 the nature of the examination itself, which, espe- 
 cially for village pastors, was very perfunctory. 
 A man that was presented by the patron in one 
 way or another was sure of ordination and in- 
 duction. It was only at the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century that all candidates were re- 
 quired to sustain the examination before pre- 
 sentation. The candidate, after finishing his 
 studies, might be teacher or private tutor or ser- 
 vant or groom, or do anything which would en- 
 able him to ingratiate himself with the patron. 
 "When a student," says Schupp, one of the keen- 
 est observers and critics of the seventeenth cen- 
 
 B Drews, 40 f. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 227 
 
 tury, "has spent all his patrimony at the univer- 
 sities and finally seeks a position and is unable 
 to gild the palms of the patrons, he must make 
 obeisance and doff his hat to some ink boiler, 
 secretary or bootblack with the request that he 
 announce him to his master — and then it runs 
 'Yes, domine Johannes, you shall have a place 
 but you must marry Margaret my wife's maid!' " 
 Schupp's words do not exaggerate. To the lesser 
 nobility the country pastor was only a "Latinized 
 peasant." A condition sometimes imposed was 
 that the candidate marry the patron's mistress, 
 and it was a recognized custom, approved by the 
 church in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
 turies, that he be required to marry the widow 
 of his predecessor. 6 
 
 Sometimes the patron demanded a promise of 
 obedience in all things, more generally of obedi- 
 ence in all secular matters. To what degree this 
 was put to the test depended upon the respective 
 qualities of the patron and the pastor. Espe- 
 cially in the period after the Thirty Years War, 
 when the caste system became intensified as a 
 sort of reflection in all the social strata of the 
 absolutism of the monarch, instances are not 
 lacking of the patron's ordering the time of the 
 service to suit his drunken revels or requiring 
 the pastor to excommunicate individuals that had 
 fallen under his displeasure. If the pastor dis- 
 
 6 Tholuck, 90, 94 f ; Drews, 68, 122. 
 
228 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 pleased in any way the patron simply locked the 
 door of the church, or hunted him out of the 
 parish. There were hundreds of such unfortun- 
 ates wandering about the country. In behaving 
 in such despotic fashion the squire was simply 
 following the example of his lord. Sarcerius 
 (+ 1559) was deprived of half of the churches 
 under his supervision because he defended a 
 pastor who had been dismissed by the prince 
 and of the other half because he reproved a 
 favorite court preacher for his evil life. 7 And 
 the court preachers of Brunswick, at the dawn of 
 the Enlightenment, were adjudged worthy of 
 long imprisonment and exile because they ob- 
 jected to the conversion of a princess to the Ro- 
 man Catholic faith on the occasion of her be- 
 trothal to an Austrian prince. At the same time 
 Thomasius gave it as his official opinion 8 that a 
 court preacher who exercised church discipline 
 on the person of his prince or even threatened 
 to do so was guilty of shameless disobedience. 
 He was a subject of the prince in spiritual mat- 
 ters as in all else and dared not judge him even 
 in the grossest sins. 
 
 Such being the general conditions under which 
 the ministers had to live and work it is not sur- 
 prising that a great number of them were wholly 
 unfit for their sacred duties, and that they ac- 
 
 7 RE, xvii, 486. 
 
 8 Tholuck, ii, 96. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 229 
 
 commodated themselves to the evils of the sys- 
 tem. From the time of the Reformation to that 
 of Schleiermacher the evidence of drunkenness 
 and other sins of the flesh, of neglect of duty, of 
 highmindedness, pride and dictatorial speech 
 and manner is sufficiently definite and detailed 
 to leave no doubt of the widespread corruption. 
 Treated as peasants by their superiors they in- 
 sisted on being treated as lords by their inferiors. 
 Being placed in authority they took pride in their 
 rank as "sixth or seventh class officials" 9 and be- 
 haved as other officials of the time. 
 
 Moreover, the ecclesiastical origin of their 
 office encouraged them in self-esteem. Luther 
 had regarded the pastor as merely the representa- 
 tive of the congregation, and the first Lutheran 
 pastors were actually installed without ordina- 
 tion or any other churchly ceremony. As doubts 
 were raised thereby in the minds of both pastors 
 and people of the validity of such methods, a 
 formal ordination with the laying on of hands 
 was used as early as 1530. This, together with 
 the administration of the sacraments and the ab- 
 solution, which were entirely in the hands of the 
 pastors, the monarchical government of the con- 
 gregation committed to them, and the Lutheran 
 doctrine of the Word brought in its train also 
 the belief in the divine right of the ministry. 
 
 9 Richter, Geschichte der evangelischen Kir chenverf as- 
 sung, 246. 
 
230 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 "The preaching office is the highest office, as 
 much better than the civil office as the soul is 
 better than the body." "The Holy Spirit works 
 in the preaching office. Blasphemy against it 
 is blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, an un- 
 pardonable sin." 10 This was the belief of the 
 "orthodox" period. 
 
 Actuated by such a high conception of their 
 office the pastors might have been expected to 
 stand firmly for what they considered right, and 
 so they did or at least attempted to. One of the 
 saddest episodes in the history of the Lutheran 
 church is the struggle between the pastors en- 
 deavoring to enforce discipline and the patrons 
 and congregations resisting. The greater ex- 
 communication was taken out of the pastors' 
 hands at an early date, but as a rule they were 
 supposed to exercise the lesser excommunication, 
 that is to say, to exclude sinners from the Lord's 
 Supper and some other privileges. The inca- 
 pacity of many of the pastors, the lack of any 
 support or cooperation on the part of the con- 
 gregation, the method of scolding and denounc- 
 ing by name from the pulpit, the interference of 
 the patron when he wished or of the superintend- 
 ent, and the stolid resistance offered by the con- 
 gregations made discipline little more than a 
 scandal. 
 
 For the first hundred and fifty years after the 
 
 10 Quoted from Drews, 51. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 231 
 
 Reformation the position of the Lutheran pastor 
 more nearly resembled that of his Roman Cath- 
 olic predecessor than that of a Protestant minis- 
 ter as described by Luther. In respect to sub- 
 ordination to authority, authority over the con- 
 gregation, and the emphasis laid upon the office 
 rather than upon the man, there is little to dis- 
 tinguish the Lutheran from the Roman Catholic 
 system. 
 
 It was Pietism that first offered effective criti- 
 cism to this state of affairs and suggested a pro- 
 gram of reform. The pastor should be above 
 all things a winner of souls, not a mere official. 
 The means to be used by him were not discipline, 
 coercion and the formal use of the sacraments, 
 but the example of a pure and holy life, personal 
 intercourse with parishioners, pastoral visits, 
 Bible classes, prayer meetings and other things 
 of a like nature. The office of the preacher 
 should yield to the Christian, and the outward 
 forms and services of the church to the religion 
 of the spirit. These ideas have been growing 
 ever since the days of Spener, and have been 
 very fruitful. The effect was felt immediately 
 in some places, notably in Wiirttemberg where 
 the clergy organized themselves into groups, 
 after the Calvinistic fashion, for the purpose of 
 mutual edification and support. A higher stand- 
 ard of both scholarship and godliness than before 
 was required of candidates in many places and 
 
232 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 provision made for their better training. But 
 the influence of Pietism was very restricted at 
 first and soon had to yield before Rationalism, 
 which also did its share in breaking down the 
 "orthodox" theory of the preaching office. The 
 preacher was so far from being a priest that he 
 was only a teacher of morality and of religion, 
 and as such should lay claim to no honors or 
 privileges or rights which did not come to him as 
 scholar and pedagogue. 
 
 Pietism and Rationalism together did much to 
 change the conception of the minister's office and 
 duties and to create a demand for good, well 
 educated men, but they had no immediate effect 
 upon the evils of patronage and of servility toward 
 the state. Indeed, as we have seen, it was in the 
 eighteenth century that the church became most 
 completely incorporated in the state and the pas- 
 tors less independent, if possible, than before, 
 while the story of the introduction of the liturgy 
 by Frederick William III sufficiently illustrates 
 the lack of independence in the nineteenth cen- 
 tury. That century saw many improvements. 
 The pastors were better provided for, in the first 
 place. Greater care was taken with their train- 
 ing and examinations. The choice of the patrons 
 was limited to candidates already approved by 
 the church courts. The breaking down of the 
 caste system at the beginning of the century 
 prepared the way for their taking the position 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 in society to which they were entitled by educa- 
 tion and culture, if not by birth. And finally, 
 and most important for the future, they were 
 organized in synods where they could meet to- 
 gether and take counsel as brethren for their own 
 good and the good of the church, and share in 
 its government. The evils of the patronage still 
 remain, though in a mitigated form, and there 
 are indications that even these will soon be en- 
 tirely removed. And in place of the patron, as 
 pastors' assistants there is a body of elders, a 
 presbytery, chosen indeed under restrictions that 
 savor more of the state than the church, but 
 nevertheless a representative body of laymen 
 that may do much to remove the ancient deep 
 seated distrust of the pastor and the church and 
 to initiate such a congregational life as Luther 
 had in mind in his "German Mass." 
 
 It is sad to think that the German pastor has 
 had to wait until today for this. All the more 
 so because the remedy lay ready to hand. For 
 the immorality and servility, the claims of divine 
 right and power over parishioners, the gross ig- 
 norance, vulgarity, ignobility and intolerance, 
 and the contempt in which they were held, that 
 characterized such a large proportion of the 
 Lutheran clergy were almost entirely lacking in 
 the Calvinistic churches to the west of them. 11 
 This was due in large measure to the system of 
 
 11 Tholuck, i, 268 ff. 
 
«34 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 church government whereby laity and clergy 
 worked together as brethren, both in the congre- 
 gations and the higher courts, thus assuring a 
 unity of will and action as well as controlling 
 and supporting the individual by the strength 
 of many. The consistorial courts in Germany 
 were devised partly in order to protect the 
 individual pastor from aggression, but they 
 failed to do so. His isolation at the end of 
 the eighteenth century was as complete as in the 
 sixteenth, if not more so. In like manner the 
 many laws and regulations issued from above 
 respecting the educational qualifications and 
 purity of life of candidates and ministres failed 
 to have any appreciable effect. Some of the best 
 German pastors knew the proper solution and 
 advocated it. The establishment of clerical syn- 
 ods for purposes of edification was a success 
 wherever tried, as in Hesse, and later in Wurttem- 
 berg, and the successful independent Lutheran 
 churches in Silesia and the Rhine country certain- 
 ly showed that their clergy needed no state super- 
 vision or control. But in spite of all these testi- 
 monies the German clergy have had to wait for 
 their emancipation until the present day. 
 
 The evils of the state establishment appear 
 even more deleterious when regarded from the 
 standpoint of the people. The great outstanding 
 fact in this respect is that the German Protestant 
 church has never been the people's church. The 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 235 
 
 very thing which the state control was designed 
 to bring about, namely, the Christianization of 
 the people in the Protestant sense of the word, 
 remains unaccomplished, and in its place there is 
 and always has been a feeling of enmity among 
 the masses toward the church as the instrument of 
 the state, and a corresponding feeling among the 
 religiously inclined that it could not satisfy their 
 religious needs. 
 
 The reasons for this are not hard to find. The 
 first and foremost was Luther's attitude toward 
 the peasants and artisans in the Peasants' War. 
 When he definitely sided with the princes, bid- 
 ding them in God's name to "stab, beat and 
 strangle," he lost the lower classes for the Re- 
 formation. The peasants and laboring classes, 
 beaten into submission, and subjected to even 
 greater abuses than before, had nothing but 
 hatred for the person and teaching of the man 
 whom they had called upon to champion their 
 cause and who, though acknowledging the right- 
 fulness of their claims, nevertheless sided with 
 their oppressors. Moreover, when the new 
 church was organized the people found them- 
 selves with no more religious or ecclesiastical 
 liberty than before, and indeed, except for a few 
 alterations in the liturgy and the condemnation 
 of the pope from the pulpit, might have sup- 
 posed that no change had taken place. In the 
 Saxon visitation of 1527 many were found who 
 
236 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 thought the difference between Protestant and 
 Roman consisted solely in the use of wine in the 
 Lord's Supper by the former. Attendance at 
 church and sacrament and payment of altar fees 
 and church dues were required as before, under 
 pain of fine and imprisonment. Sins were con- 
 fessed and absolution received in very much the 
 same way, and, after a little, money payment 
 could be substituted for penance. The minister 
 was their rector or governor, as the Roman priest 
 had been. Failure to obey him might bring in 
 its train serious consequences. The superior 
 courts, the consistories, bore strong resemblance 
 to their Roman counterparts. There was even 
 the same confusion of jurisdiction as before, but 
 now both civil and ecclesiastical courts were the 
 instruments of one and the same supreme author- 
 ity. The common man rightly regarded his 
 pastor as an officer of the government and the 
 representative of law. More particularly, as the 
 personal relations between them were predomi- 
 nantly of a disciplinary character, he regarded 
 him as a penal officer, 12 and in this too he was 
 right, for civil and ecclesiastical disciplines were 
 not kept distinct in the German states. 
 
 It is not surprising, therefore, to learn that 
 there was constant enmity between the people 
 and their pastors during the "orthodox" period, 
 though the length to which the peasants some- 
 
 "Richter, 200; Drews, 71, 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 237 
 
 times went in expressing their feelings is as- 
 tounding. Not only did they interrupt the 
 church services by whistling or shouting in the 
 church or playing noisily in the adjacent grave- 
 yard, but they lay in wait for the pastor with 
 axes, pitchforks and loaded guns, or threatened 
 him with a dagger when he ventured to correct 
 them. 13 What a fearful picture of the pastoral 
 relationship is contained in the following abstract 
 from a church record (1644) : 14 "The following 
 persons have persecuted me in my office and 
 brought me near to destruction 'but God hath 
 magnified me and delivered me out of their 
 hands.' J. Dirkson hit me to the ground with 
 a hay fork. I was carried into the house as dead 
 but afterward recovered. Some years later he 
 was stabbed and died in the street. J. Volkwart- 
 sen tried to kill me with my own spade. He 
 was afterward killed by his own brother and 
 buried by the south wall. Whither his soul is 
 gone, God knows. P. Jensen tried to stab me 
 in the sexton's house but M. Payens saved me. 
 He went to sea and during a storm they threw 
 him overboard. He tried to hold on with his 
 hands but they cut them off. A. Frese, who com- 
 mitted adultery with my wife, went after me 
 with a loaded gun. He was drowned in the sea. 
 . . . D. Momsen broke two of my ribs on the 
 
 13 Drews, 63 f. 
 
 "Quoted by Tholuck, i, 117. 
 
238 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 right side. He did penance for it. How he has 
 prospered since, experience teaches. I have for- 
 given him. O Jesus, do Thou protect me and 
 Thy poor church that it may praise Thee to 
 eternity." 
 
 It might have been expected that Pietism 
 would bring about a better feeling by the new 
 and more spiritual conception of pastoral duties 
 it inculcated. But with the exception of Wiirt- 
 temberg, where the cordial cooperation of theo- 
 logical professors, superintendents and clergy 
 made it possible to reach all classes of society 
 except the nobility, this was not the case. One 
 reason was that the size of the congregations 
 often did not permit a pastor to come into per- 
 sonal relations with his parishioners. One pastor 
 in Hamburg, feeling this keenly, applied to the 
 University of Leipsig for an opinion as to 
 whether he was the true and legitimate shepherd 
 of his parish containing 30,000 souls when he 
 did not and could not give them each his pastoral 
 care. The answer he received was that 30,000 
 was certainly a great number, but the prophet 
 Jonah had had over 120,000 in his parish in 
 Nineveh and yet had given individual attention 
 to each. 16 Another reason was that Pietism, at 
 least in north Germany, was popular with the 
 nobility and at court, and therefore proportion- 
 ately unpopular with the lower classes. Fred- 
 
 1B Tholuck, ii, 102. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 239 
 
 erick William of Prussia, who was an ardent 
 Calvinist, welcomed it and called Spener to Ber- 
 lin because he saw in it something akin to his 
 own ideals, by which he might eliminate some 
 more of the remnants of popery from the all but 
 universal Lutheranism of his territories, and in- 
 duce the Lutheran clergy to adopt a more tol- 
 erant attitude toward Calvinism. Under such 
 circumstances neither Lutheran pastors nor the 
 mass of the people were likely to accept it, nor 
 were they affected by it to any great extent. 
 And in the third place, the strength of Pietism 
 lay rather in the edification of the religiously in- 
 clined. Much time was given to Bible classes 
 and prayer meetings and proportionately little 
 to seeking the sinners that remained aloof from 
 such things. Moreover, when the common people 
 were affected by the religious principles of Piet- 
 ism they showed everywhere an almost irresist- 
 ible tendency to withdraw from the church. 
 Altogether Pietism cannot be said to have recon- 
 ciled the masses to the Establishment. 
 
 The period of Rationalism also brought no 
 change in this respect, but rather additional 
 proof, if that were needed, that the church was 
 the servant of the state. More freedom of 
 thought and liberty of action were allowed in 
 religious and ecclesiastical matters. Indeed, no 
 one seemed to care for the church's welfare in 
 respect to these. But the pastor became all the 
 
240 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 more the representative of the government in 
 promulgating and enforcing laws of a purely 
 worldly character. It is therefore not surprising 
 to hear Schleiermacher, who was certainly well 
 acquainted with the circumstances, declare in the 
 early years of the nineteenth century that the 
 common people did not feel at home in the 
 church, but regarded it as a yoke imposed by an 
 absolute military monarchy. 
 
 During the nineteenth century the parties were 
 ranged differently, but the general situation re- 
 mained unchanged. The abolition of serfdom 
 and the removal of legal obstacles to the transi- 
 tion from one social class to another took away 
 some of the causes of dissatisfaction among the 
 peasants. The clergy too were no longer so dic- 
 tatorial or objective in the treatment of their 
 parishioners. There was a better class of 
 preachers and, particularly toward the end of 
 the century, more churches were erected, urban 
 parishes were subdivided, pastoral attention was 
 given to parishioners, and an attempt was made 
 to win the people rather than drive them. This 
 attempt, however, has not as yet succeeded. The 
 concession of some liberty was followed, not by 
 expressions of satisfaction and content, but by 
 a more clearly expressed demand for other re- 
 forms in church, state and society. The shifting 
 of the population from the country to the city, 
 from the farm to the factory, enabled the discon- 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 241 
 
 tented to exchange views and organize as had 
 never been possible before. And when the erec- 
 tion of representative assemblies occasioned the 
 grouping of the people in parties it became evi- 
 dent that a very great number of them were 
 opposed both to the church as the servant and 
 tool of the state, and also to Christianity itself, 
 which they had learned to know through the 
 church, and which they judged by the church, 
 as the French had done in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. The Social Democratic party is not today 
 officially anti-Christian, but under the phrase 
 "Religion belongs to the individual" ("Religion 
 ist Privatsache") which they have adopted from 
 Schleiermacher and interpreted to suit them- 
 selves, there is hidden an antagonism to the union 
 of church and state, to the church itself and to 
 any other religion than that of humanity. If 
 the disestablishment of the church is brought 
 about and its original freedom restored, it will 
 in all likelihood not be because it asserts its own 
 independence but because the mass of the people 
 reject it today as they always have rejected it, 
 and will no longer support an institution which, 
 while claiming to proclaim the word of God, re- 
 ceives its orders from the state. 
 
 Another indication of the unpopularity of the 
 church, which illustrates how it has been regarded 
 as a religious institution rather than as an instru- 
 ment of the state, is the constantly recurring 
 
242 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 tendency toward separation from it in times of 
 revival of religious interest. The ruthless perse- 
 cution of all separatists under the name of Ana- 
 baptists after the Peasants' War was effective 
 in driving out of the country or into hiding all 
 attempts at the formation of religious com- 
 munities or churches based simply upon the vol- 
 untary agreement of their members and the 
 desire for kindred fellowship. Only the Men- 
 nonites and Schwenckfeldians and a few others 
 maintained a precarious existence and served as 
 gathering points for those who sought something 
 more than was offered by the state church. 
 
 But when Pietism revived the interest in per- 
 sonal religion and rediscovered Luther's doctrine 
 of the spiritual priesthood of all believers, separa- 
 tion became a really serious problem. In Wurt- 
 temberg, in spite of the friendlier disposition of 
 the court and the clergy toward Pietism, many 
 of the new converts were not satisfied that their 
 private classes be allowed within the limits of 
 the church, but demanded permission to with- 
 draw entirely. After several refusals had failed 
 to bring submission they were finally allowed to 
 withdraw, in the middle of the eighteenth century. 
 In other states where the same demand was 
 made the opposition was so strong that the Piet- 
 ists were forced to emigrate or continue their 
 meetings secretly. The movement begun in this 
 way was continued in the nineteenth century, 
 and, especially after the right of such gatherings 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 243 
 
 was legally recognized, grew to large propor- 
 tions, and is now known as the Community 
 Movement. 
 
 Negatively, the members of the communities 
 justify their separation by saying that the re- 
 ligious life of the state church is cold and formal, 
 and that the congregations are spiritually dead. 
 Those that have experienced the rebirth and re- 
 ceived the Christians' call to service cannot be 
 content to sit under a minister who shows no 
 sign of conversion, to be associated with purely 
 worldly people in the formal worship of God, or 
 to be the passive objects of the church's activity. 
 Positively they appeal to Luther's statement in 
 the "German Mass" that those that are serious 
 in their profession of Christianity must volun- 
 tarily come together for prayer, reading, the 
 administration of the sacraments and the per- 
 formance of other Christian works, and to the 
 inner necessity that drives a Christian to seek 
 fellowship with others of like mind and to carry 
 his Christianity into all he does. "A converted 
 man feels the irrepressible necessity of com- 
 munion with similarly minded men, that is, with 
 people which have come through or do come 
 through a like moral and religious inward ex- 
 perience, a communion with brethren and sisters 
 who sustain, foster, protect, cherish, encourage 
 and cheer him." 18 
 
 16 Kuhn, Das christliche Gemeinschaftswesen, 1 5, quoted 
 in RE, xxiii, 529. 
 
244 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 Within the communities is to be found the 
 excessive emotionalism with which we are ac- 
 quainted in Great Britain and America. Indeed 
 there has not been a "revival" in the English 
 speaking world during the last century which 
 has not found its echo there, or an excess which 
 was not duplicated, from the "gifts" of Irving 
 to the "speaking with tongues" which originated 
 in Kansas a few years ago. This, however, while 
 denoting a peculiarity of the communities, by 
 no means may be taken as descriptive or indica- 
 tive of their whole character. They resemble 
 rather the associations formed within our own 
 congregations for the various departments of 
 Christian work, which indeed is only natural for 
 the incitement has come largely from America. 
 They own their own halls, maintain training 
 houses for missionaries, deaconesses, etc., engage 
 in evangelistic work, distribute Christian litera- 
 ture, publish magazines, plan and carry out cam- 
 paigns against particular evils, support home 
 and foreign missions, conduct Bible classes and 
 prayer meetings, organize special societies of 
 Christian bakers, butchers, hotel keepers, etc., 
 and, in general, endeavor in every way they can 
 to deepen the Christian consciousness and apply 
 their Christianity to the world about them. 
 
 Since about 1890 the attempt had been made 
 with some success to draw the many com- 
 munities into closer relationship with one an- 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 245 
 
 other, and also to overcome the hostility toward 
 the established churches. Conferences are held 
 annually, attended by both lay and clerical dele- 
 gates from all parts of the empire and Austria, 
 and although many of the older communities 
 still hold back, the way is thus being prepared 
 for a German national free church. 
 
 It is impossible to ascertain the number of 
 individuals interested or even the number of the 
 communities. 17 In Wurttemberg alone where 
 they have taken deepest root there are about a 
 thousand communities. In East Prussia a union 
 organized in 1903 had grown in ten years to fifty 
 communities, owned nine halls and supported 
 twelve evangelists, one deaconess and two foreign 
 missionaries. Something similar is going on in 
 every state in Germany. Altogether, in spite of 
 blemishes, this is one of the brightest pages in 
 the history of German Protestantism, and makes 
 one regret all the more that these forces now 
 slowly and with difficulty coming to self-expres- 
 sion could not have been released long ago in 
 such fashion that piety and zeal might have been 
 joined with learning and wisdom, and the church 
 united rather than divided by the determination 
 of those that took their Christianity seriously to 
 meet together for prayer and reading the Scrip- 
 tures and performing other Christian works. 
 
 17 The figures are from RE, xxjii, 542 ff. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Other Effects of the Territorial System 
 
 Just as the importance of the congregational 
 organization and discipline in the Calvinistic 
 churches for the later political and moral devel- 
 opment of the countries where they were estab- 
 lished cannot be overestimated, so too the failure 
 of the Lutheran church to follow the suggestions 
 of its founder in this respect, and the continua- 
 tion of the monarchical priestly system played 
 a large part in determining the political and 
 moral condition of Germany. It is quite usual 
 for German scholars even today to criticise the 
 arrangements in Geneva as harsh, cruel and al- 
 most inhuman, and something similar may be 
 found even in English and American books. 
 
 The correct explanation of the German at- 
 titude is doubtless that it is a remnant of the 
 traditional "orthodox" hatred of Calvinism and 
 everything associated with the name of Zwingli 
 or Calvin. Certainly it cannot be truthfully as- 
 serted that the German reformers or princes 
 were one whit behind the Swiss in their desire 
 to enforce disciplinary measures, or in their con- 
 ception of the extent to which discipline should 
 
 246 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 247 
 
 be carried into the private affairs and lives of the 
 citizens. Luther's "Address to the German No- 
 bility" clearly shows his position, and the de- 
 tailed regulations of the church Ordinances 1 re- 
 veal to what extent the authorities were willing 
 to interfere. If more proof were needed it might 
 be found in the lament of many good Lutheran 
 ministers that church discipline in Germany fell 
 short of that in France and Switzerland and in 
 the personal supervision exercised by the Ger- 
 man police state. The outstanding difference 
 between the Calvinistic system and the Lutheran 
 consists simply in the fact that the former was 
 successful and the latter was not. 
 
 The cause of this success was that the Calvin- 
 istic system was in agreement with and founded 
 upon the Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of 
 all believers and that the people responded to 
 the challenge of personal direct responsibility 
 to God. For the Calvinistic system was not, 
 either in Geneva, France or elsewhere, a tyranny 
 as it is so often misrepresented to have been, but 
 directly the contrary. It was government by a 
 committee of the best and most highly respected 
 members of the congregation chosen by the con- 
 gregation, with whom was associated the pastor 
 who was also chosen by the congregation. In 
 this way every member of the church was allowed 
 and encouraged to participate directly and in- 
 
 1 Sehling, Kirchenordnungen, passim. 
 
248 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 directly in the affairs of the church, and no dis- 
 tinction of birth, position or spiritual superiority 
 was recognized. The elders were brethren rather 
 than judges and the minister was pastor rather 
 than recton There was nothing sacerdotal or 
 savoring of sacerdotalism in the treatment of sin 
 and forgiveness, and nothing despotic in the ex- 
 ercise of discipline. The regulations governing 
 the life of the members had the approval of the 
 congregation, and were enforced by men having 
 its confidence. The object of discipline was to 
 arouse and maintain a sense of duty and respon- 
 sibility before God in every individual, to ad- 
 monish in brotherly manner those that erred and 
 in the case of unrepentant sinners to exclude them 
 from the sacraments and the church. The con- 
 fusion of the civil and spiritual jurisdiction in 
 Geneva, Scotland, New England and elsewhere, 
 the apparent triviality of some offences and the 
 character of some of the punishments inflicted 
 are repulsive to the mind of the nineteenth and 
 twentieth centuries ; but these things were charac- 
 teristic of the time and not of Calvinism. 
 
 It was a strenuous and exceptional age in 
 which right and wrong were grappling with pe- 
 culiar ferocity for the mastery and when excep- 
 tional measures were needed. We today, who 
 live in a similarly strenuous time when extraor- 
 dinary laws and measures are being taken in the 
 defence of high ideals, are in a better position to 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 249 
 
 view sympathetically the struggle of four cen- 
 turies ago than were our fathers. At all events, 
 whatever imperfection there may have been in it, 
 there is no doubt that the Calvinistic system with 
 its emphasis upon the direct responsibility of the 
 individual to God and government by a commit- 
 tee of the best men, without regard to birth or 
 rank or any other earthly qualification, was the 
 best that had ever been devised and the most pro- 
 ductive of good. 
 
 The Lutheran system cultivated the idea that 
 religion and morality were imposed from above, 
 that they could be cared for like sanitation and 
 education, and that it was the sole duty of the 
 layman to obey. The importance of this in the 
 education and development of the people cannot 
 be exaggerated. It lay, and to some extent still 
 lies, at the basis of German thought and German 
 institutions. The German was not encouraged 
 to judge of doctrine though it was enjoined by 
 Luther and the symbols, nor was he even allowed 
 to do so. That was imposed by the prince. The 
 custom of confession and absolution and the be- 
 lief that the Lord's Supper wrought forgiveness 
 of sins continued the Roman Catholic idea of a 
 human mediator and an opus operatum sacra- 
 ment. The individual was not brought face to 
 face with God but with a pastor for whom he 
 often had no respect. He did not think of sin 
 as a condition but as an act. The original Luth- 
 
250 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 eran view of grace was modified to permit the 
 retention of the idea that a had deed could be 
 balanced by a good one; while the confusion of 
 civil and spiritual faults, the payment of a pen- 
 ance fee, the permission to substitute a money 
 payment or fine for penance or correction, 2 and 
 the comparative immunity of the upper classes 
 from discipline — all these things permitted and 
 encouraged a purely human and superficial esti- 
 mate of sin and morality. What a perversion 
 is to be seen in the action of young people in 
 throwing down their penance fee and demanding 
 absolution before the communion service, and 
 what a sad confession in the wonder expressed 
 by Spener's brother-in-law Stoll, 3 that the Cal- 
 vinists exercised discipline without respect to 
 persons. The introduction of the naturalistic 
 philosophy was followed in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury by the release of both princes and state offi- 
 cials from church discipline, and what are we to 
 think of the morality of an opinion written by 
 Faculty of Law of Halle University and worded 
 by the great Thomasius :* "The aversion to con- 
 cubines of great princes and lords must cease. 
 For such princes and lords are not subject to 
 the penal laws applicable to private persons but 
 have to give an account to God alone; and in 
 
 2 Richter, 229; Drews, Der evangelische Geistliche, 112. 
 s Tholuck, ii, 236. 
 4 Tholuck, ii, 195. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 251 
 
 addition part of the splendeur of her lover ap- 
 pears to he transferred to the concubine." When 
 gross sin in high places could be trifled with in 
 this way it is no wonder that the lower classes 
 allowed themselves license. The whole system 
 was contrary to Luther's conception of Christian 
 freedom and allowed no opportunity for the in- 
 dividual to rise to its heights. The German lay- 
 man was simply the object of the church's activ- 
 ity. He was not encouraged to cultivate self- 
 responsibility, self-examination, self-restraint, 
 self-respect and independentmindedness. The 
 people were also debarred from participation in 
 congregational meetings and church councils and 
 so felt no responsibility in church matters. By 
 this they were not only deprived of their rights 
 as Protestants as denned by Luther, but also 
 lacked the training which comes from sitting at 
 the council board sharing responsibility with 
 others, while the church and the country in gen- 
 eral did not know that all pervasive activity and 
 voluntary cooperation which was so fruitful in 
 Calvinistic churches and lands. 
 
 The extreme intolerance which characterized 
 the Lutheran church is doubtless to be connected 
 with this. For while the Calvinistic churches 
 were not free from blame in this respect, they 
 never unchurched the other great branches of 
 Christendom, nor hid behind the high wall of 
 their own particularism as Lutheranism did. 
 
252 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 The efforts of the Calvinists to effect an under- 
 standing were not only spurned but interpreted 
 as a confession of weakness and heresy, and it 
 will always be remembered as peculiarly charac- 
 teristic of Lutheranism that it objected to the 
 reception of Huguenot fugitives and under the 
 leadership of Saxony opposed the extension of 
 the benefits of the Treaty of Westphalia to 
 Calvinists. 
 
 Everything was conceived from the standpoint 
 of unity, absolutism and perfection, we might 
 almost say inf allibility. It throws a remarkable 
 light on the condition of thought to learn that 
 one objection urged against the Calvinistic form 
 of church government was that it required ma- 
 jority rule and majorities are likely to err. 5 The 
 Germans had no experimental knowledge of nor 
 faith in that method of reaching decisions and 
 assuring united action. They had not the train- 
 ing at the council board which teaches the indi- 
 vidual the necessity of listening to opinions other 
 than his own, of voluntarily subordinating his 
 own will to that of others, of throwing his own 
 ideas into the common pot, of putting himself 
 in the position of others and seeing things from 
 the standpoint of others. In short, they did not 
 learn toleration either in religion or anything 
 else. They did not have any opportunity to 
 learn cooperation or to feel the power there is 
 
 B Richter, 189. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 253 
 
 in union, or the strength that comes from sym- 
 pathy. They did not even have the opportunity 
 to exchange opinions, so closely were all gather- 
 ings, religious or otherwise, supervised by the 
 authorities. Sane public opinion can come only 
 from a people trained in self-criticism and self- 
 restraint, and it can make itself felt only when 
 the people are conscious of their agreement. The 
 conditions for the formation of healthy and ef- 
 fective public opinion have been absent from 
 Germany largely because the people were de- 
 prived of their privileges as Protestants. 
 
 This lack of a high sense of individual respon- 
 sibility and mutual support has borne its evil 
 fruits all through the centuries. That the de- 
 moralization incident to the Thirty Years War 
 would have been mitigated by their presence and 
 operation is evident from the better condition in 
 Hesse where the church was organized at this 
 time on a synodical basis, and from the experi- 
 ence in Calw where the pastor Andrea gathered 
 about him a committee of laymen for the mainte- 
 nance of discipline 6 and the cultivation of true 
 religion in imitation of what he had observed in 
 Geneva. When the principles of natural law, 
 the rights of man and the "Social Contract" were 
 introduced they won a hearing only in the univer- 
 sity circles, where they were developed not in the 
 
 8 Drews, 78 f., 89; Ritschl, Geschichte des Pietismus, 
 iii, 8 ff. 
 
254 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 interests of political and religious freedom but in 
 those of the absolute state. The demoralization 
 which followed the military defeat in the Napo- 
 leonic war showed how quickly a nation could 
 fall to pieces that had been organized ever so 
 well as a military monarchy with its wisdom and 
 will centred in the head. The reformer Stein 
 perceived this and made plans for the freeing 
 of the people and the restoration of self-govern- 
 ment to the churches and the towns, in order that 
 the interest of all classes should be enlisted and 
 their powers utilized for the salvation of the 
 fatherland. But when the immediate danger was 
 past the reforms came to an end and things re- 
 verted to their old course. The only effectual 
 expression of opinion by the people of Germany 
 in political matters was that of 1848, and even 
 this failed of any real result. There has been 
 no effectual expression of opinion in the church. 
 This is a condition of affairs that requires the 
 most careful consideration. How did it happen 
 that wherever Calvinism established itself abso- 
 lute monarchy had to yield before it almost im- 
 mediately as in Scotland and England or fight 
 it to the death as in France, and that where the 
 sister Protestant church of Lutheranism was es- 
 tablished, absolute monarchy was introduced and 
 has persisted longer than anywhere else in west- 
 ern Christendom? It is not because Calvinism 
 had everywhere to make its way against monarchs 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 255 
 
 of another faith while the German princes were 
 members of the Lutheran church, for there was 
 no more discrepancy between the religious faith 
 of the Stuarts and their people than between the 
 German princes, who could be Calvinists or ad- 
 herents of any one of several schools of Luther- 
 anism, and their subjects. Nor can it be 
 attributed to a lack of training in self-govern- 
 ment. The free towns, the village local govern- 
 ment and the organization of the trades had 
 prepared the way. For it is to be remembered 
 that the establishment of the absolute and bu- 
 reaucratic state belongs to the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries, not to the sixteenth. The 
 brutal suppression of the people in the Peasants' 
 War and the fear of similar punishment doubt- 
 less acted as a restraining influence on the mind 
 of the masses at first, and the official supervision 
 of all public and private assemblies rendered it 
 both difficult and dangerous to plan anything 
 or even to exchange opinions at a later date. But 
 even these would not have been sufficient to hold 
 in check a serious minded people determined to 
 achieve freedom. The answer must be sought 
 not so much in the form of the state as in the 
 minds of the people, and must account not only 
 for the continuance of the absolute monarchy but 
 also for its rise. 
 
 One powerful influence was undoubtedly the 
 doctrine of the divine right of the princes. This 
 
256 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 goes back to Luther and has always had the sup- 
 port of his great name. In his first appeal to 
 the nobility, in 1520, the intervention of the secu- 
 lar arm in matters formerly pertaining to the 
 church was justified mainly by the doctrine of 
 the universal priesthood of believers, which 
 placed all Christian laymen on an equality with 
 the clergy, and distributed the powers formerly 
 properly exercised by the hierarchy to the mem- 
 bers of the church. Two years later he developed 
 in sermons the doctrine of the divine appointment 
 of the secular rulers, and in 1523 reduced it to 
 systematic form in the treatise on "The Secular 
 Authority, to What Extent Does One Owe it 
 Obedience." In this he proves from the Old and 
 New Testaments that princes are ordained of 
 God and have power under God over the bodies 
 and worldly goods of their subjects. It is their 
 duty to maintain order and to punish evil. In 
 respect to all matters pertaining to these, uncon- 
 ditional obedience to them is enjoined by God. 
 In matters pertaining to faith and salvation they 
 have no authority. If they attempt to use force 
 their subjects should refuse obedience, for God 
 is to be obeyed rather than men. They should 
 not, however, resist forcibly but rather suffer pa- 
 tiently and leave the punishment of the tyrants 
 to God. Three years later Luther looked back 
 upon this argument with satisfaction, saying that 
 since the days of the Apostles no one had written 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 257 
 
 so clearly of the secular sword and authority or 
 apprized it so highly as he. 7 But when the im- 
 perial Recess of Spires in 1529 seemed to en- 
 danger the life of Protestantism unless armed 
 resistance were opposed to the emperor the ques- 
 tion of the legality of such resistance was forced 
 upon him from a new direction, with the result 
 that he declared 8 it to be right to withstand the 
 civil ruler if he overstepped the bounds of law. 
 Whether he did so was to be determined by law-, 
 yers and not by theologians. A few years later, 
 1539, he declared that 9 "as the Gospel confirmed 
 the office of the civil ruler so also it confirmed 
 natural and legal rights, and it is beyond doubt 
 that every father is in duty bound to defend wife 
 and child against open murder with all the means 
 at his disposal; and there is no difference between 
 a private murderer and the emperor, if he goes 
 beyond the limits of his office in the exercise of 
 power unjustly, and especially if he does so 
 openly and notoriously. For open violence abro- 
 gates all the duties binding subjects and sover- 
 eigns by the law of nature." 
 
 But while such occasional utterances as these 
 make it possible to claim Luther as one of the 
 exponents of the right of resistance, and might 
 have been appealed to by a suffering and rebel- 
 
 7 In 1526. WA, xix, 625. 
 
 8 DeWette, Luthers Brief e, iv, 222. 
 "DeWette, v, 161; vi, 223; RE, xi, 743. 
 
258 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 lious people, they have had little if any effect 
 upon German thought as a whole. Luther's 
 teaching and example after the Peasants' War 
 were predominatingly in favor of subjecting not 
 only body and goods but also the church to the 
 civil power ordained of God, whose duty to keep 
 peace and prevent disturbance was used as justi- 
 fication for interference in matters which accord- 
 ing to Luther's earlier views lay outside his 
 jurisdiction. What was thus begun under the 
 Reformer was carried to rapid conclusion after 
 his death, with the result that the princes ruled 
 over both church and state in the name and place 
 of God. It would be too much to say that the 
 doctrine of the divine right of kings has remained 
 unchallenged through the centuries. The philos- 
 ophy of the Enlightenment and the Social Con- 
 tract theory know nothing of divine sanctions. 
 But it has always been impressed upon the minds 
 of the common people, and found champions in 
 learned circles in the nineteenth century as in 
 the sixteenth. It has always been and remains 
 even to this day one of the strongest weapons of 
 the monarchy. 
 
 The reverse of the doctrine of divine right of 
 kings, namely, that of non-resistance, has been 
 of even greater importance in keeping the people 
 submissive. Luther's words were normative in 
 regard to this also. Evil and injustice in the 
 civil authority do not excuse uproar and rebel- 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 259 
 
 lion, 10 "For it is not given to everyone to punish 
 evil, but to the civil authorities which wield the 
 sword. As St. Paul, Rom. xiii, and St. Peter, 
 I Pet. iii, say, they are ordained of God for the 
 punishment of evil doers. It is the law of nature 
 and of all the world that no one shall or may be 
 his own judge or avenge himself." Following 
 this it has been consistently inculcated by the 
 German pastors that any rebellion against the 
 state is sin no matter how tyrannous or unjust 
 the government may be ; though there is a differ- 
 ence of opinion among theoreticians as to whether 
 rebellion is ever justified, some holding that it is 
 under no circumstances permissible, 11 and others 
 that it is justified only when the national exist- 
 ence is at stake, as in the case of the Netherlands 
 and Spain. In any case, the German Christians 
 have been taught that nothing would excuse their 
 rising against their rulers but that it was both a 
 Christian duty and a Christian virtue to submit 
 and if necessary to suffer under tyrannous and 
 oppressive measures. 
 
 But although the doctrines of the divine right 
 of princes and of non-resistance may account for 
 a great deal, they do not explain why Lutheran- 
 
 10 In 1525. WA, xviii, 303. 
 
 11 Even Schleiermacher says in his Sittenlehre, 253, "With 
 the greatest inclusiveness we must say that it is not possi- 
 ble to think of a case in which a Christian may oppose or 
 escape punishment even if ... it be imposed with the 
 greatest injustice." 
 
860 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 ism and Calvinism moved in diametrically dif- 
 ferent directions in regard to the relation of 
 church and state, for the teachings of Calvin in 
 regard to both were practically identical with 
 those of Luther. The real reason must be sought 
 somewhere else. The chief reason is that when 
 Luther declared the people unfit as yet to be 
 trusted with the regulation and management of 
 their church, Lutheranism ceased to inculcate the 
 essentially Protestant ideas of direct individual 
 responsibility to God and the personal call to 
 duty, and substituted for it in practice if not in 
 theory the ideas of submission on the one hand 
 and of authority and priestly mediation on the 
 other, both of which were essentially mediaeval 
 and Roman. Upon these as a foundation there 
 grew up the divinely ordained church-state, or- 
 ganized from above down, and exercising su- 
 preme authority in both the religious and the 
 political spheres, a condition unparalleled in 
 western Europe either before or after the Re- 
 formation. 12 "In the conflict between Rome and 
 the Gospel the secular ruler won immeasurably, 
 not only in property but in privileges, not only 
 in independence and self-consciousness but in 
 duties. The whole complement of prerogatives 
 and privileges with which the church had pene- 
 trated into the sphere of the civil authority, and 
 
 12 Droysen, Geschichte der preussischen Politik, 2nd edi- 
 tion, ii, 260. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 261 
 
 which it had organized into a scheme, was ac- 
 tually and theoretically, by the new doctrine, 
 taken from her and transferred to the civil ruler. 
 It fell to him to take her place and keep it in 
 the future." 
 
 In Roman Catholic countries the mutually 
 antagonistic claims of church and state have held 
 both in check and prevented the centralization 
 of all power in the hands of either, and in Cal- 
 vinistic countries the people themselves have 
 seized the government and made all tyranny im- 
 possible, whether ecclesiastical or political. For 
 John Calvin, although teaching the divine right 
 of kings and the duty of non-resistance, included 
 and retained within his system the idea, which, 
 however unconscious he may have been of the fact, 
 was incompatible with submission and tyranny, 
 namely the divine duty of the individual Chris- 
 tian to exercise his religion both in worship and 
 in all the affairs of life, and his immediate re- 
 sponsibility before God for the performance of 
 this duty. The Calvinistic system as it devel- 
 oped was based on this. Neither in government, 
 in sacraments nor in morality did it encourage the 
 idea of a priestly mediator or rector of souls. It 
 brought every man face to face with God, first 
 as a sinner, then as saved by the grace of God 
 in Christ, and then as the Christian servant of 
 God called to do His work. Beside the divine 
 right of kings stood the divine right and calling 
 
262 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 of every Christian, and between the two there 
 was bound to come a trial of strength. With the 
 head of the man Charles Stuart fell the doctrine 
 of divine right of kings in Calvinistic countries. 
 This was the spirit which animated the early Cal- 
 vinists in France, Holland, Great Britain and 
 America; and this was the real driving power 
 behind their efforts to secure liberty. The ap- 
 peal to natural law was only secondary and did 
 not come until after the Huguenot wars had 
 already begun. Whether it was occasioned by 
 the desire to justify themselves in seizing arms 13 
 contrary to Calvin's teaching, or was an attempt 
 to put political rebellion upon a broader basis 
 than that of religion and so to justify it for 
 others than Christians, is immaterial. We feel 
 all through the struggle that it is not the human 
 and natural motives that are compelling but the 
 religious and Christian. 14 
 
 It was only when the ancient philosophical 
 doctrine of natural rights was shot through with 
 the principles of Christianity that it was able to 
 leave the academic halls and express itself in the 
 
 18 Cardauns, Die Lehre vom Widerstandsrecht des Volks 
 gegen die rechtmassige Obrigkeit im Luthertum und im Cal- 
 vinismus des sechszehnten Jahrhunderts, 1903. In the 
 Princeton Theological Review, vii, 2 (April, 1909), Pro- 
 fessor A. Lang quite properly points out the non-protestant 
 character of the revival of Natural Law in the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries. 
 
 14 Gooch, The History of English Democratic Ideas in 
 the Seventeenth Century, 1898. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 263 
 
 life of the Calvinistic nations in the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries. Since that time, more 
 or less independently of its great ally it has been 
 successful in reforming the institutions of other 
 peoples also. Curiously enough it has found its 
 way into Roman Catholic countries where it had 
 been taught by the church in order to discredit 
 human institutions in favor of the divine institu- 
 tion of the papacy, and naturally it has had most 
 difficulty in making headway in Germany, where 
 the prince united in himself the whole power of 
 church and state and fortified his position by an 
 appeal both to divine law and to the law of na- 
 ture. In this respect England exhibits a curi- 
 ously striking parallel and an equally striking 
 contrast to Germany. In the introduction of 
 Protestantism by the princes, the control of the 
 established church by the state, the subserviency 
 of the clergy, the doctrine of the divine right of 
 kings and its counterpart non-resistance, the al- 
 liance of the church and the aristocracy, the evils 
 of patronage, the claim to divine right by some 
 of the clergy, the exclusion of the lay element 
 from church councils, the insistence on uniform- 
 ity in matters of ritual, the comparative disre- 
 gard of dogma or latitudinarianism, the devotion 
 to a church manual rather than to the Bible, the 
 superciliousness toward other Christian sects, and 
 the failure to reach or to hold the common peo- 
 ple — in all these matters there is a strong simi- 
 
264 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 larity between the established churches of Eng- 
 land and Germany, which might profitably be 
 more thoroughly investigated. The outstanding 
 points of difference are that in England the 
 principles of the Reformation took hold upon a 
 considerable portion of the people in the early 
 seventeenth century, and were worked at that 
 time into the political and religious life of the 
 country, where they have continued to live and 
 thrive although sometimes embarrassed in their 
 struggle for existence. A large proportion of 
 the Church of England has always been Prot- 
 estant, and the common people have found a re- 
 ligious home in the non-conforming churches, 
 which, although denied full liberty by the law 
 and condemned socially, have enjoyed the right 
 of existence since the seventeenth century, and 
 have played an ever increasing part in the po- 
 litical and religious life of the kingdom, and may 
 today claim to be more representative of the 
 English people and more influential than the 
 established church itself. Germany on the con- 
 trary has no "non-conforming conscience" to 
 criticise or guide her. Her non-conforming 
 churches are of very recent origin and count 
 among their members less than one per cent of 
 the population. 
 
 For there is nothing in Germany parallel to 
 the struggles for freedom in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries. After the Peasants' War 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 265 
 
 for a hundred and fifty years the people were an 
 entirely negligible quantity in the government 
 of church and state. Instead of asserting new 
 rights they lost what they had, and the absolute 
 state emerged victorious and unchallenged after 
 the ravages of the Thirty Years War. Pietism 
 attempted to revive the Lutheran doctrine of 
 the priesthood of all believers and call them to 
 service, but found itself antagonized by the 
 "orthodox" church and forced for the most part 
 into the narrow and devious paths of emotional- 
 ism. The doctrine of the rights of man came 
 to Germany through the naturalism of the eigh- 
 teenth century and the French Revolution. It 
 was but an echo of a great idea, a subject for 
 the lecture hall and drawing room. Not until it 
 had swept over western Europe in three succes- 
 sive waves did it at last find a lodging and then 
 only temporarily in the heart of Germany — 
 Prussia. It lacked entirely any divine element 
 or anything that appealed to the nobler instincts, 
 and allied itself with the existing monarchy which 
 it strengthened in its control of both church and 
 state, and transformed to a purely natural, hu- 
 man, self-centred and self-determining unrelig- 
 ious absolutism. Says Richter 15 speaking of its 
 first appearance in the eighteenth century and 
 thinking of the scenes of 1848 of which he was 
 an eye witness: "The divine foundation of the 
 
 15 P. 247. 
 
266 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 church was gone and in its place stood the 
 worldly theory of the social contract, upon which 
 was erected a system of natural church law, 
 equally applicable to all religious associations 
 without distinction. . . . This had a very marked 
 influence upon the mental attitude of the mem- 
 bers of the church. For since it preached the 
 sovereignty of the association and made the will 
 of the individual members the determining prin- 
 ciple, it thereby cultivated an antagonism to the 
 existing law, which in so many respects was in 
 direct contradiction to its presuppositions, and 
 prepared the way for the movement of a later 
 time which endeavored to destroy the institution 
 of the church and to establish a constitution in 
 which there was no place for the words service, 
 duty and discipline." To which may be added 
 a quotation from Petri, 16 pastor in Hanover, 
 who while looking forward with hope to the in- 
 troduction of a more liberal constitution feared 
 the result of the application of the purely human 
 philosophy by which it was supported: 
 
 "Whether justice and law in their own form 
 and constitution will be the same for all, protect- 
 ing impartially and without exception the rights 
 of all, the prince upon his throne as the citizen 
 in his business, and avenging every evil deed, or 
 whether they will be merely the sharp sword with 
 which the frightful spirit of party anger arms 
 
 "Schubert, 102. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 267 
 
 itself against life and its rights — whether, that 
 is to say, the noble, holy and blessed freedom 
 will stretch out her life giving sceptre over our 
 beloved Germany, or a frenzied destructive pas- 
 sion sweep through the unhappy land, and then 
 tyranny with its leaden weight crush all inde- 
 pendent life, this will depend on which way to 
 freedom we choose. . . . The idea that a nation 
 is its own source of right, if that means that a 
 nation, or those that call themselves by this name, 
 determine what is right of their own free will 
 and define the guarantees of right entirely of 
 their own free will, is certainly wrong. Just 
 as the individual is not the source of right for 
 himself but dependent in his conscience on God 
 and responsible to Him, to this same God on 
 whom the individual is dependent, nations also 
 are dependent. Oh, let it be graved deeply in 
 our souls that true freedom is to be found only 
 where man is conscientiously subject to human 
 ordinances for the Lord's sake." 
 
 The first half of the nineteenth century saw 
 the return of the religious note into the govern- 
 ment, but not the expulsion of natural law or its 
 companion absolutism. The latter part of the 
 nineteenth century and the early years of the 
 twentieth have witnessed natural law with its 
 emphasis upon the rights of man, and a freer 
 Christianity with its emphasis upon service, con- 
 fusedly working together for the overthrow of 
 
868 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 the absolutism which is felt as a drag in both 
 church and state. The voice of the people can 
 now make itself heard in diets and synods, and 
 doubtless will be more audible in the future. But 
 neither in religious nor political matters have the 
 German people as yet advanced far beyond the 
 idea of their rights under the law of nature and 
 this alone goes a long way toward explaining 
 why the establishment of more liberal institu- 
 tions has been so long delayed. Only when they 
 feel it to be a moral duty will they vindicate for 
 themselves the liberties of which they have talked 
 so long. 
 
 It is impossible that the religion and freedom 
 of the German churches have been so dominated 
 and controlled by the state without leaving a 
 very marked impress upon the whole tone of the 
 religious life, thought and endeavor. Some 
 years ago Professor Max Weber 17 and, building 
 upon his conclusions, Professor Troeltsch, 18 
 pointed out the different qualities of Lutheran- 
 ism and Calvinism respectively and attempted to 
 evaluate them for the modern world. Both are 
 characterized by what they call an innerweltliche 
 Askese, or an asceticism practiced not in cloisters 
 but in the daily life of the world. Behind it lies 
 
 17 Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapital- 
 ismus, Archiv fur Socialwissenschaft, Bde. xx, xxi, xxx, xxxi. 
 
 18 Protestantism and Progress, English translation, 1912; 
 Kultur der Gegenwart, Teil I, Abteilung 4, ii. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 269 
 
 the consciousness of sin and salvation, of the con- 
 trast between this life and the life to come, but 
 in its practical application it takes different 
 forms in, the two communions. Calvinism looks 
 out upon the world as a field of labor which it is 
 bound to reduce to order and obedience to divine 
 law. It is aggressive, orderly, lacking in mere 
 sentiment and emotion, restrained and disciplined 
 and for this reason has become and remains the 
 carrier of modern civilization. Lutheranism on 
 the other hand looks inward, is idealistic, neither 
 rationalized nor disciplined. It is a "tone and 
 temper of mind," "reluctant to take an active 
 part in the world." It is "mainly a mere en- 
 durance and toleration of the world, which does 
 not exclude, indeed, on occasion a thankful and 
 obedient joy, but is nevertheless essentially a 
 self-abnegation and submission, a transference 
 of all hope to the blessed world of the hereafter, 
 and a rejoicing in martyrdom in this world." 19 
 Its part, therefore, in the economic development 
 of the modern world is negligible. 
 
 After what we have seen of the history of the 
 German church could anything different have 
 been expected? When has genuine Lutheranism 
 been given an opportunity to work itself out in 
 Germany, and when has it not had cause to with- 
 draw to the secret recesses of its own heart and 
 there take comfort for the oppression under 
 
 19 Protestantism and Progress, 82 f. 
 
270 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 which it groaned? Luther's words, 20 "Suffer- 
 ing, suffering, cross, cross, these and nothing else 
 are the rights of Christians," found an echo in 
 many pious hearts. Says one of the best village 
 pastors of the eighteenth century: "If a man 
 beats his dog the whole day it will run away and 
 seek another master that will treat it better. 
 Now every one beats the common people. The 
 duke beats them, the soldiers beat them, the 
 huntsmen beat them. This they will not endure, 
 but run away and seek another master, namely, 
 Christ; and he who seeks Christ is a pietist." 
 Quoting this passage Ritschl 21 has pointed out 
 that the political conditions in Wiirttemberg in 
 the time of Pietism were such as to occasion the 
 cultivation of a religion of the heart, a turning 
 inward to escape the conditions without, and the 
 earnest desire for the sympathy and companion- 
 ship of likeminded sufferers. Cannot the same 
 be said of the conditions in Germany generally 
 since the Peasants' War? And is not the modern 
 "Community Movement" sufficient proof of its 
 existence today? 
 
 In this condition, however, we should see more 
 than an occasion of sympathy. There is an ele- 
 ment of danger in it. Persecution and fanati- 
 cism have gone hand in hand through the history 
 of the church, and indeed of the world. Relig- 
 
 20 WA, xviii, 310. 
 
 21 Geschifhte des Pietismus, ii, 8. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 271 
 
 iously minded men and women, rejected by those 
 from whom they have a right to expect sympathy 
 and support, excluded from the church and made 
 the object of the state's most careful supervision, 
 may be expected to nurse their grievances care- 
 fully, to find solace in the cultivation of the feel- 
 ings, and to identify religion with emotionalism. 
 That this took place in the eighteenth century 
 and continues until today there is no doubt. That 
 it is more or less characteristic of all German 
 piety is equally true, as Weber and Troeltsch 
 assert. Mysticism has found its Protestant 
 home in Lutheran lands. During the last hun- 
 dred years, moreover, the theology of the emo- 
 tions has not been confined to the Separatists, 
 Mystics and Pietists, properly so called, but for- 
 tified by both the newer Pietism and the require- 
 ments of the state-church it has advanced to the 
 conquest of the universities and the church, and 
 spread its influence far beyond the limits of Ger- 
 many. 
 
 For it was Pietism with its appeal to the re- 
 ligious feelings rather than the reactionary re- 
 vival of strict Lutheranism which gained the 
 good will of all classes of church members after 
 the rationalism and naturalism of the eighteenth 
 century were discredited, and the old orthodoxy 
 dead. The f eelings were declared to be the court 
 of last resort in religion, and the religion of feel- 
 ing to be sufficient in itself, independent of his- 
 
272 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 tory, philosophy, science and indeed of any and 
 every objective test or restriction. Earlier 
 writers like Schleiermacher retained, it is true, 
 more or less of the old theology, but the logic 
 of the premises demanded that this be discarded 
 and that the religious feeling of the individual 
 or the community be regarded as both the testing 
 ground of religious truth and the source of re- 
 ligious knowledge. 22 
 
 Parallel with this is the endeavor of the state 
 to make of the church such an institution as will 
 include all its citizens. For, however short it 
 may come of realization, it is inherent in the idea 
 of a state church, that is to say, of a people which 
 regarded from the civil point of view are mem- 
 bers of the state, and from the religious point of 
 view are members of the church, that dogma 
 must be put, if possible, upon such a plane that 
 no one can reasonably object to it. The policy 
 of the Prussian rulers has been actuated by some 
 such motive. The points of dispute between 
 Lutherans and Calvinists were suppressed and 
 discussion forbidden. The preparation of a new 
 creed was not allowed. The Augsburg Confes- 
 sion, the oldest, simplest and apparently least 
 likely to cause discussion, was declared normative 
 for the clergy and little was said even of this. All 
 that was required of the laity was that they be 
 
 22 The development is sketched in Professor McGiffert's 
 The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas, 1915. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 273 
 
 born in the church and obey orders. Today the 
 Evangelical Church in Germany may include in 
 its ministry men of every shade of belief from 
 the most conservative and reactionary Lutheran 
 to the advanced theologian who denies all author- 
 ity of church, Bible or creeds, denies in toto the 
 story of our Lord's life as recorded in the Gos- 
 pels, yes, who denies even the very existence of 
 Jesus and places Nietzsche's "Zarathustra" be- 
 side the Bible. 23 In effect, the state-church says 
 to its members: believe what you will, every- 
 thing or nothing, only don't leave me. What 
 theology, what conception of religion and re- 
 ligious truth could suit such a situation so well 
 as that which tells the Christian man and Chris- 
 tian community that they are to find their creed 
 within their own hearts, and that there is no 
 higher or other test of religious truth, no other 
 point from which they may draw religious knowl- 
 edge than their own emotions? The fact is that 
 much modern German theology is not theology 
 at all but psychology, and that in it there is as- 
 cribed to the human mind in the sphere of re- 
 ligion a creative power which is defensible only 
 on the basis of thoroughgoing subjective ideal- 
 ism. It would not be fair to say individualistic 
 subjective idealism, for adhering to the early 
 Christian or the Collegiate idea of the congrega- 
 tion as the unit, the source and test of religious 
 
 23 This was true in the case of Kalthoff, EE, xxiii, 724. 
 
274 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 truth is said to be not the individual but the com- 
 munal consciousness. In this way religion be- 
 comes Privatsache (a private matter) in a sense 
 unknown to Luther, the early Pietists or even 
 Schleiermacher — independent of all authority, 
 of history, of science, of philosophy, independent 
 even of the existence of external realities corre- 
 sponding to religious ideas. In other words, it 
 is reduced to the one element of subjective assur- 
 ance. And in carrying it to this extreme 
 Troeltsch claims 2 - 4 to be essentially in agreement 
 with Luther. 
 
 But this is not all, it is but a step to the next 
 and last deduction that the Christian conscious- 
 ness, the purposeful conviction or assurance of 
 the individual and the community is not only the 
 source and test of religious truth, but its creator 
 and determiner. That is to say, that men or 
 communities or nations create their own God, 
 who has no necessary self -existence, no objective 
 reality, but is none the less really and validly 
 God. And thus some German theologians have 
 returned consciously, and so with less excuse than 
 more primitive peoples, to the anthropomorphic 
 tribal God. One would not dare to make this 
 assertion unless he were prepared to support it 
 with evidence of the event. A pastor in Holstein 
 preaching before his congregation two years ago 
 
 2 * Protestantism and Progress, 197. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 275 
 
 said: 26 "God is nothing but our moral activity, 
 our honest and just dealings, the ultimate and 
 deepest motive of our life struggle. God lives 
 in our hearts. And all our prayers are a deep 
 and confident faith in the victory of the eternal 
 and divine order of things. Thus victory is 
 achieved by a nation from whose soul the prayer 
 incessantly arises, pure and pious, humble and 
 trustful: 'God is our help!' Aye, verily, God 
 as the last, the deepest, the inmost foundation 
 of our soul, as the purity and truth in our feel- 
 ings, as the righteousness and honesty in our 
 actions, as the moral necessity of our struggle, 
 that God, as in this war only we Germans can 
 possess Him, that German God is our best and 
 strongest help." 
 
 In this way the "German God" is shown to be 
 not the blasphemous product of pride but the 
 logical outcome of a century of German theo- 
 logical thought, conditioned by the suppression 
 of Christian liberty and the policy of the church- 
 state. It is, however, the reductio ad absurdum 
 and will work its own cure. German Christians 
 will be the first to repudiate it. There have been 
 signs too for some time that even in academic 
 circles the subjective theology was not found 
 wholly satisfactory. And it may be expected 
 that the recent cataclysm may have so clearly re- 
 
 25 Pastor W. Lehmann as quoted by Professor J. P. Bang, 
 Hurrah and Hallelujah, English translation, 88. 
 
276 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 vealed the abyss before which they stood that 
 they will be brought to realize that the Gospel 
 is both simpler and deeper than their self-evolved 
 conception of it, that its doctrines are positive, 
 objective and authoritative, and that whatever 
 be the necessities of political and social life there 
 is not room for the disciple of Jesus Christ and 
 the disciple of Nietzsche at the same communion 
 table. 
 
 In conclusion let us set over against each other 
 two ideals now battling with each other in Ger- 
 many, the one striving for the continuance of 
 the present union of church and state, the other 
 for its dissolution. Says Rieker, 26 "The church 
 had been governed absolutely by the territorial 
 prince, but that had done it no harm. For the 
 state as such had an evangelical character and 
 therefore the prince had no reasonable ground 
 for injuring his evangelical church." "So long 
 as the state regards it as its duty to serve the 
 interests of the Gospel, so long as the secular 
 authority remains a Christian authority and pro- 
 tects and cherishes the evangelical church with 
 its strong arm, the church may calmly trust her- 
 self to it." "Luther has expressed the Protest- 
 ant ideal of the relation of church and state in 
 the words, 'Christ has not two bodies or two 
 kinds of body, one worldly, the other spiritual: 
 there is one Head and He has one body.' " 
 
 2e Pp. 370, 482, 484. 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 277 
 
 Over against this we may set the words of one 
 of the keenest modern critics of Luther: 27 "There 
 is nothing falser than the statement that the so- 
 called territorial church government corresponds 
 most closely to Luther's ideals. It can he main- 
 tained, on the contrary, that the territorial church 
 government, in so far as it really is a government, 
 as its name implies, is in direct contradiction to 
 Luther's fundamental conception of religion." 
 
 And to this let us add the appeal of Professor 
 Otto Mayer 28 for the liberation of the church: 
 "The road is indicated and laid out. External 
 obstacles either do not exist or are surmountable. 
 That is, however, not all. The chief thing is that 
 the evangelical church must show itself capable 
 and strong enough to take the road. Whoever 
 has doubts of this, and therefore advocates the 
 retention of the territorial church government at 
 least provisionally, and as help in the emergency, 
 should open his eyes wide to the fact that it is 
 this very territorial church government that is 
 responsible for the grounds of his doubts. Insti- 
 tutions train a people, and the centuries of the 
 territorial church government have educated the 
 evangelical people badly; that is certain. And 
 just for this reason it is time to abolish it. 
 
 "First of all, it has taken away from the people 
 all faith in themselves. There is even in many 
 
 27 Boehmer, Luther im Lichte der neueren Forschung, 169. 
 
 28 RE, xviii, 726 f. 
 
278 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 
 
 places a real fear of freedom, as though evan- 
 gelical Christianity were only waiting, until the 
 restraining hand is withdrawn, to lacerate itself 
 and cut itself up into little pieces. It has dead- 
 ened the feeling of responsibility in the members 
 of the church. Many a hasty act here and there, 
 which now shocks us, would have remained un- 
 done were it not for the quieting thought that 
 the government would take care of things. It 
 has not allowed the thought to emerge that every- 
 one, as well as the prince and his officials, has his 
 own duties to perform — conscientious duties in 
 respect to the maintenance of the church. It has 
 been as Montesquieu says of the monarchical 
 state and vertu, civil virtue, Tetat vous en dis- 
 pense.' The salvation and the future of the 
 church depend upon the recognition and per- 
 formance of such duties. But this can only take 
 place under the wholesome discipline of freedom; 
 and therefore the first duty is to attain this. 
 Even then everything will not go smoothly. On 
 the contrary, there is every prospect of serious 
 conflicts and hard work. The state also will not 
 find things so simple and easy as before; but 
 when they are more healthily and correctly regu- 
 lated it too at last will share the benefit." 
 
 Which of these corresponds with fact and 
 which promises better for the future of the 
 church in Germany there can be no doubt in the 
 light of the history of the territorialism of four 
 
PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY 279 
 
 centuries, but the condition of success today is 
 the same as in the days of Luther, namely, that 
 those that are serious in their profession of Chris- 
 tianity shall come forward and of their own will 
 assume the burdens of the church. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Absolute monarchy, 254 ff. 
 Address to the Nobility, 21, 28, 
 
 33, 59 
 Admonition to Peace, T4 
 Against the Heavenly Prophets, 
 
 71 
 Albrecht of Hohenzollern, 114 
 Alstedt, 67, 69 
 Altenstein, 165, 170, 172, 187 
 
 f., 197 
 Anabaptists, 14, 52 f., 67, 72 ff., 
 
 84, 242 
 Andrea, Jacob, 102 
 Andrea, Johann V., 253 
 Apostolic Succession, 203 
 Assurance, 11, 274 
 Augsburg Confession, 272 
 Augusti, 171, 178, 181 
 
 B 
 Babylonian Captivity, 34 
 Berlin, 119, 181, 184 f. 
 Bible, Authority of, 2, 5, 105, 
 
 173 
 Bible, Luther's Translation, 3, 
 
 12, 78 
 Boehme, Jacob, 141 
 Boehmer, 52 n., 138, 277 
 Brandenburg, 116 
 Brenz, 97 
 
 C 
 Calvinism, 54 f., 83, 130, 158, 
 
 175, 190 f., 195, 246 ff., 251 f., 
 
 255, 269 f. 
 Calvin, John, 1, 83, 101, 261 
 Canon Law, 24, 59, 95, 108, 128 
 Carlstadt, 43, 64 f., 66, 69, 71 f., 
 
 84 
 Carpzov, J. B., 140 
 Chamberlain, Stuart, 9 
 Charles I of England, 262 
 
 Chemnitz, 127 
 Christian Freedom, 25 
 Church Union, 146 f., 174 f. 
 Clergy, 106 ff., 127, 168, 218 ff. 
 Collegiate Theory, 136 ff., 156 
 Community Movement, 243 ff., 
 
 270 
 Concord, Book of, 2 
 Consistory, 89, 95, 103, 128, 173, 
 
 23'4 
 Constantine, 56, 91 
 Constitution in Rhine Country, 
 
 192 
 Constitution of 1848, 205 f. 
 Constitution of 1851, 206 f. 
 Constitution oi 1873, 192, 210 
 
 ff., 219 f., 221, 233 f. 
 D 
 Discipline, 77, 96, 151, 228, 230 
 
 f., 246 it. 
 Distelmeyer, 116 
 Divine right of civil govern- 
 ment, 59 f., 125 f., 255 f. 
 Divine right of clergy, 109 ff., 
 
 130 f., 229 f. 
 Doctrine, 30, 33, 35, 198, 249, 
 
 272 
 Drews, 80 n., 224 ff. 
 
 E 
 Elders, 97, 98 f., 233. 
 Election of Pastors, 33 ff., 39, 
 
 41 
 "Emergency Bishops,'' 89, 129 
 Emotionalism, 244, 269 ff. 
 England, 263 f. 
 "Enlightenment," 5 ff., 134, 144, 
 
 154 
 Episcopacy, 14, 147, 178 f., 203 
 Episcopal Theory, 124 ff., 1'40, 
 
 171 
 Erasmus, 78 
 
 280 
 
INDEX 
 
 206, 
 
 Evangelical Church, i 
 
 209 f., 212, 215 
 Exposition of Psalm CX, 34 
 
 F 
 Fichte, 8 
 
 Force, Use of, 64, 79 
 Foerster, 156 
 
 Frankfort, Parliament of, 204 f. 
 Frederick I of Prussia, 146 
 Frederick the Great, 148, 157, 
 
 159 
 Frederick the Wise, 59, 64, 73, 
 
 85 * 
 
 Frederick William I, 148 
 Frederick William II, 157 ff. 
 Frederick William III, 164 ff., 
 
 232 
 Frederick William IV, 202, 209 
 Free Church of Scotland, 201 
 
 G 
 Gerhard, 125 
 "German God," 274 f. 
 German Mass, 46, 47 ff., 98 f., 
 
 233, 243 
 Geneva, 246 ff. 
 Great Elector, 145 
 
 H 
 Hamburg, 42, 238 
 Herder, 16 
 Heresy, 122 
 Herrmann, 11 
 Hesse, 44 ff., 95, 98, 215, 220, 
 
 234, 253 
 
 Homberg, Council of, 44 ff., 51, 
 61, 98 
 
 I 
 Iconoclasm, 63, 66, 70 f. 
 Instructions for Visitors, 94 
 Intolerance, 251 f. 
 
 J 
 James I of England, 177 
 John, Elector of Saxony, 61, 85 
 John Sigismund, 117 ff., 144 
 
 K 
 Kalthoff, 273 
 Konigsberg, University of, 115 
 
 L 
 Lambert, Francis, 46 
 
 281 
 
 ff., 
 
 Land Law, Prussian, 150 
 
 167 f., 181, 183, 184 
 Law of Nature, 134 ff., 353 f., 
 
 262, 265 f. 
 Leisnig, 39, 43, 80 n. 
 Lehmann, W., 275 
 Letter to Senate . . .of Prague, 
 
 41 
 Liturgy of Frederick William 
 
 III, 179 ff. 
 Luther, 'passim 
 
 M 
 Machiavelli, 58 f. 
 Magdeburg, '43, 203 
 Marburg, University of, 45, 47, 
 
 100 
 Marheineke, 185 
 Marriage, 94 f. 
 Mayer, Otto, 212, 277 f. 
 Melanchthon, 64, 80, 84, 94, 107 
 Mirbt, Carl, 159 
 Miinzer, Thomas, 72 ff. 
 Mysticism, 11, 271 
 
 N 
 Nantes, Edict of, 142, 145 
 Nicea, Council of, 91 
 Nietzsche, 10, 273, 276 
 Nobility, 112 ff., 119 ff., 225 
 Non-conformity, 264 
 Non-resistance, 261 258 f. 
 
 O 
 Oath of Allegiance, 166 
 "Old Lutherans," 203 
 Organization of Lutheran 
 
 Church, 89 
 Orlamund, 42, 66 ff., 84 
 
 P 
 Pastors, duties of, 220 
 Pastors, village, 221 ff. 
 Patronage, 66, 174, 204, 223 ff. 
 Peasants' War, 53, 74 ff., 235, 
 
 242 
 Petri, 266 
 Pfaff, 136 ff. 
 Philip of Hesse, 44, 46, 61, 84, 
 
 85 
 Pietism, 4, 130 ff., 144, 231, 238 
 f., 242, 265, 270 
 
INDEX 
 
 Pomeramia, 108, 190 
 Power of Princes, 58, 121 ff. 
 Presbyterian organization, 209 f. 
 Priesthood of believers, 22 f., 
 
 29 f., 82, 34, 42 
 Proof and Reason from the 
 
 Scripture, etc., 39 
 Prussia, 44, 113, 143, 164, 223, 
 
 045 
 
 R 
 Rationalism, 232, 239 f. 
 Reinginck, 125, 128 
 Religious Liberty, 36, 39, 204 
 Resistance, Right of, 257 f., 
 
 261 f. 
 Richter, 53, 265 
 Rieker, 17, 21, 37 f., 52, 53, 91 
 
 f., 104, 162, 276 f. 
 Ritschl, 11, 270 
 S 
 Sarcerius, 228 
 Saxony, 47, 99, 102, 122 f., 143, 
 
 252 
 Scheibel, 194 ff. 
 Schleiermacher, 168, 169, 184 ff., 
 
 205, 240 f., 272 
 Schupp, 222, 226 f. 
 Schwenckfeld, 82 n., 84 
 Secular authority, concerning, 
 
 35 
 Seeberg, 15 
 Sehling, 54, 103, 121 
 Self government of congrega- 
 tions, 33 ff., 39, 48 ff., 62 ff., 
 
 96 ff., 156 ff., 213, 226, 235 
 Separatism, 136 f., 242 ff. 
 Silesia, 191, 193 ff. 
 Social Democrats, 241 
 Spener, 130 ff., 231, 239 
 Spires, Diet of, 1526, 46, 60, 90 
 
 Spires, Diet of, 1529, 257 
 Stuarts, policy of, 200 ff. 
 Superintendents, 89 
 Synods of 1818, 176 
 Synod of 1846, 203 
 Synod of 1876, 210 
 
 T 
 Territorial System, 88 ff. 
 Territorial Theory, 140, 171 
 Teutonic Knights, 114 
 Thomasius, 134, 138, 140, 250 
 Toleration in Prussia, 119 f., 
 
 144 f., 148 
 Troeltsch, 268, 271, 274 
 
 U 
 Uniformity, 23, 175, 179 
 
 V 
 Visitation, 47, 61, 89 f., 121, 235 
 Von Bezold, 83, 85 
 Von Kamptz, 171 
 Von Stein, 173, 221, 254 
 Von Treitschke, 202 
 Von Zezschwitz, 54 
 
 W 
 Waldeck, 96 
 Wartburgfest, 177 
 Weber, Max, 268, 271 
 Werner, 7 
 Westphalia, 191 
 Westphalia, Treaty of, 1'44, 148, 
 
 252 
 William I, 210 
 Wittenberg, 2, 42, 63 ff., 95 
 Wollner Edict, 157 
 Wurtemberg, 97, 222, 231, 234, 
 
 238, 245, 270 
 Z 
 Zorn, 103 
 Zwingli, 46, 84, 102 
 
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