In like manner, the established Protestant Church was enriched by the newly inaugurated system of gov- ernment supervention, churches were built, the emolu- ments of the clergy were raised, and their dwellings im- proved ; but, not content with that, the king wished to legislate for the Church in accordance with a set plan, and determined to force a union of the Lutherans and the Reformed, whose unhappy separation was painful to the devoted king. This union scheme was not new. A union tendency had shown itself early in the German Church, and attempts were made to bridge over the gulf which began to deepen between the Lutherans and the Reformed in consequence of the differences on the doctrine of the Lord's Supper. The so-called Concordia of Wittenberg in 1536 and the Augustana Variata of 1540, with which also the Reformed Synod agreed, are prominent proofs of this. For nearly half a century, John Durajus (died 1680), an Anglican clergyman and an apostle of union, travelled about for the accomplish-
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ment of his great object; but each of the three great Protestant churches — Lutheran, Reformed, and Angli- can—contended not only for a faith in the Christ re- vealed in the Scriptures, which was the only basis of union insisted upon by him, but for all those peculiari- ties which separated it from the others. An agreement for mutual ecclesiastical recognition (toleruntia ecclesias- tica) was formed on the principles of Calixtus at the re- ligious conference at Cassel in 1661, and resulted in the transfer of the University of Rinteln to the Reformed Church. But notwithstanding these concessions, which gave the appearance of a unionistic and tolerating ten- dency, the Lutheran divines, according to Tholuck, de- clared that they would rather hold communion with the papists, and regarded the hope that even Calvinists might be saved as a temptation of the devil (Geist d. lath. Theol. Wittenberg, p. 115, 169, 211). Yet, after the Peace of Ryswick, when it became urgently impor- tant to have fraternal connections between the Protes- tant nations as a security against the dangerous exalta- tion of the Catholic powers, the house of Prussia took upon itself the task of adjusting the dissensions which prevailed, principally among the Lutherans, by a union of the two Protestant churches. The elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg, while accepting the Re- formed creed in 1614, did nevertheless adhere to the Augsburg Confession — like the Brandenburg and Hes- sian theologians at the Leipsic colloquium in 1631 — and his successors, the princes of Brandenburg and Prussia, who remained in the Reformed communion, always cherished a desire to bring their evangelical people to a better understanding, and, if possible, a union in the government and worship of the churches. The ap- pointment of a few bishops constituted a part of the ceremonial at the coronation of the first king of Prussia (1700), but this suggested the idea of a union by the in- troduction of the form of government which prevailed in the Anglican Church. Temples of peace and union churches were, however, consecrated in vain. Leibnitz succeeded in breaking off the negotiations. There was, none the less, full confidence that the object would one day be brought of itself to a successful conclusion.
When the wars with France ended so favorably, the king thought the day auspicious for the consumma- tion of the dream of his reigning ancestry, and by royal decree of Sept. 27, 1817 (the Jubilee of the Reformation), king Frederick William III declared the union effected. But the various Protestant churches refused to be joined in the Utopian union prescribed for them. New diffi- culties arose. The tendency to over-legislation was long the predominating evil feature of Prussian admin- istration. The State, without regard to the incongru- ous elements of which it was composed, was divided and subdivided into governmental departments, which in their turn, under some head or other, brought every in- dividual act under governmental supervision, to the utter annihilation of political or mental independence. The people, when they gradually began to comprehend the nature of this administrative machinery, saw that it made no provision for political and civil liberty, and de- manded of the king the fulfilment of the promise he had given in 1815 of establishing a representative constitu- tion for the whole kingdom. This demand was evasive- ly met by the king, who professed to take high relig- ious views of his duty as a sovereign, and its immediate fruits were strenuous efforts on his part to check the spirit of liberalism. Every measure taken by other sovereigns to put down political movements was vigor- ously abetted by him. Siding with the pietists of Ger- many, he introduced a sort of Jesuitical despotism. The Landstdnde, or provincial estates, organized in accord- ance with the system of the Middle Ages, were the sole and inadequate mode of representation granted to Prus- sia in that reign, notwithstanding the pledge made to the nation for a full and general representative govern- ment. A further attempt made forcibly to unite Lu- theran and Reformed churches by royal decree of Feb..
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