At an early period of his reign, the king had ex- pressed his determination to allow the Church, over which the crown had acquired supreme power during the Reformation, freely to form for itself its own exter- nal organization. The transfer ofa part of tic astic administration from the provincial governments to the consistories in 1845 might be con-trued as an ex- pedient to get an easier control of the Church by the appointment of persons of a particular party. But when the provincial synod- had a-.-emblcd in 1*14. composed of the superintendents of each of the six eastern prov- ince-, and a clergyman chosen from each diocese, the king called a General Synod at Berlin— not of represent- atives, but of distinguished persons in the Church, thir- ty-seven of whom were clergymen and thirty-eight were laymen. Under the presidency ofthe minister for public worship, during a Bession continued from June 2 to Aug. 30, I846,"this body," says Hase, "which made no pretensions to a legal authority, but had no restraint on the expression of its opinion.-, and acted on conclu- sions drawn from the proceedings ol the provincial syn- ods, presented its views of the existing wants of ihe Church. Its plan for a future ecclesiastical constitution combined the consistorial administration proceeding di- rectly from the crown with the synods proceeding direct- ly from the congregations in regularly ascending circles. The assembly had not been convened without some ref- erence to its nature, and only a single voice was raised in it in behalf of undisguised rationalism. But as the great majority there, a- well a- in the previous provin- cial synod-, declared itself against not only uncondition- al freedom of instruction, but the compulsory obligation of cued-, the party led bj the Evangelical Church Jour- nal found itself in a decided minority. The moral im- possibility of compelling men to adhere- to tin- old creeds wa- conceded; and yet ii wa- thought indispensable to the completion of the union that a confession of faith should be formed, to Berve a- a formula for ordination. Lul the cold. — ion then composed expressed only tho.-e
sentiments which are essential to Protestant Christian- ity in Scriptural language, and without the precision of theological science. The orthodox minority i fourteen io forty-eight), therefore, had reason to complain, not- withstanding all that was .-aid lor the ir satisfaction, that
PRUSSIA 727
the adoption of the new confession was a virtual abro- gation of the old." The only concession to those con- gregations and patrons who were especially attached to the Lutheran or the Reformed type of doctrine or wor- ship was the assurance given them that they should have full liberty, without endangering the development and existence of the union, to use their respective con- fessions, if they wished, in a regular manner, to bring those clergymen whom they called under obligation to some creed. But the orthodox opposition from with- out, in whose eyes such a body seemed a robber-synod, in which Christ was denied, was powerful enough; at least, to postpone the execution of these enactments, al- though the ecclesiastical authorities had given them a unanimous concurrence, and had pronounced them of urgent importance. The superior Consistory was the only court finally formed under them (January, 1848) , but as this was not sustained by any contemporary synodal regulations, it was looked upon as a mere party authority.
While the government and the Church gained so lit- tle, the people became more and more restless. There was a general displeasure against the bureaucratic spirit of over-governing which characterized the administra- tion and became daily more irksome to the nation. In the Church it resulted in the successful formation of free churches or Protestant communities espousing the in- terests of a rational Christianity. A contemporaneous excitement which had arisen in the Roman Catholic Church, as the result of the schismatic movement due to the stand taken by the chaplain Eonge on the ex- hibition of the so-called holy coat (q. v.) of Treves, further complicated the ecclesiastical relations. In the State, revolution ensued. The king and his advisers, underrating the importance of the movement of 1848 in German}', thought they had satisfied the requirements of the hour by granting a few unimportant reforms and making equivocal promises of further concessions. When at length, however, the citizens and troops came into collision, and blood was shed, Frederick William came forward as the proposed regenerator of his coun- try, offering to lay down his royal title and merge his kingdom in the common fatherland, for the salvation of which he recommended a cordial union of all German princes and people in one bond, and proposing himself as the leader and guide of this new Germany. His own subjects, and at first many Germans in other states, were carried away by these Utopian schemes. The publication of a political amnesty, the nomination of a liberal ministry, the recognition of a civic guard, the re- tirement of the prince of Prussia, the heir presumptive —with whom every arbitrary measure of government was believed to originate — and the summoning of a rep- resentative chamber to discuss the proposed constitution — all tended to allay the general discontent. But when the National Assembly at Frankfort-on-the-Main, in 1851, in disregard of the wishes of the Prussian king, declined to accept his proffered services, and elected the archduke of Austria as lieutenant-general of Germany, his ardor in the cause of the fatherland cooled, his pledges to his own subjects were evaded as long and as completely as the occasion permitted, and his policy be- came more strongly tinged than before with the jealousy of Austria. His powerful co-operation in putting down the insurrection in Poland and the democratic party in Baden gave, however, ample proof of his determined op- position to every popular demonstration against abso- lutism. The only exception during his reign is the ac- tion of the Prussians in the war of the Sleswig-Holstein duchies, when the Prussians, acting in concert with the disaffected against their sovereign, the king of Den- mark, occupied the ducal provinces in the name and on behalf of the diet. But this was the work rather of him who is now emperor of Germany, and is capable of ex- planation even from an ultra-royalistic standpoint. The latter years of the reign of king Frederick William IV were characterized by great advance in the material