THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
police regulation. Since, however, neither Roman Catholic nor Protestant would admit that his opponent also taught true doctrine, it became practically necessary merely to recognize the power of the authority of each country as purely personal, a concept later expressed in the phrase " whose is the land, his is the religion." Nevertheless, the Protestants gained the one point that those who adhered to the Augsburg Confession could only be banished by Roman Catholic princes, and not brought before a criminal court.
A further step was made in the Peace of Westphalia, which, taught by the bitter lesson of the Thirty Years' War, proceeded to real tolerance, and first officially employed the term. 3. Tolera- It enacted that Roman Catholics in tion of Protestant lands, and Lutherans and Roman Reformed in Roman Catholic lands, Catholics, should be " tolerated patiently " (pa- Lutherans, tienter tolerentur) if they rendered due and obedience to the civil authorities Reformed, and caused no disturbance. They were likewise granted the right of simple private worship. No other religions than those just mentioned, however, were to be " received or tolerated " in the Holy Roman Empire. Thus arose the distinction long maintained between " received " and " tolerated " religion. The Roman Catholic Church declared these enactments of toleration in the Peace of Westphalia null and void by the bull Zelo domus Dei (Nov. 20, 1648), and in consequence of the strict Lutheran insistence on the " guardianship of the First Table " likewise had cause to refuse obedience, especially as the Protestants came to hold that Roman Catholicism could be tolerated only when civil authority was insufficient to repress it, or when the State was in such condition that the repression could not be effected without civil war and effusion of blood, or when its repression would lead to greater harm than its toleration. This rigid adherence to the " guardianship of the First Table," however, could be carried out only in the narrow domains of the old empire; in lands of more diverse interests a larger spirit was needful. This was first shown in Holland, whence the new movement spread to Germany, especially the rising State of Prussia. When the Lutheran princes of the Palatine Electorate (1560), Bremen (1568), Nassau (1577), Wittgenstein, Solms, and Wied (1577-86), Tecklenburg and Steinfurt (1588), Anhalt (1596), Hesse-Cassel (1604), and Lippe (1605) entered the Reformed Church, they obliged their subjects to follow them; but when, in 1614, the Elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg did likewise, he merely permitted the coexistence of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches in his territories. This precedent of two " received " Churches side by side was taken by the seventh article of the Osnabriick treaty of 1648 as the model of general regulations on the mutual relations of Lutheran and Reformed Churches in one and the same territory. This marks a change from a principle of intolerance to one of tolerance, and of the substitution of a purely political concept of the State for a theological theory.
Since the weakness of the empire and the variety
of conditions in the individual States were fatal to
any national basis for the State in Germany, the
social theory, largely represented at the time by
Dutch views, and aided since the Ren-
4. Change aissance by the trend of juristic and
in the political tenets, formed the necessary
Political substitute. The State being regarded
Theory as a congeries of interests united by soof the cial contracts, and its authority being
Church, derived from a contract to obedience, two theories of the Church became possible. Either it might be assumed, with Hugo Grotius, that the maintenance of the Church as an institution was a function of the State, and that the administration of the Church was essentially administration of the State, this being Territorialism (q.v.). Or it could be supposed that the conditions of religious freedom which had preceded the rise of the State had not been abrogated by the contract of the State. By the latter hypothesis, termed Collegialism (q.v.), first developed by Samuel Pufendorf (q-v.), religion remained a matter of individual freedom, even under the State, and entitled to the protection of the State. Territorialism had been in use for ages, with the substitution of political for theological premises. Collegialism was the way in which the State began the restoration of the social independence inherent in both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant Church. Viewing both Churches as unions of religious interests, the State could without prejudice determine under what conditions, based on its general interests, it could and would permit a plurality of such unions of religious interests to coexist. Thus the State reached the standpoint of modern tolerance, as it now prevails in Germany. Yet this point of view was reached only gradually. The Elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg, mentioned above, permitted the Arminians to hold private worship in 1683, and three years later allowed the Reformed refugees from France to have public religious services. But what was allowed by the empire to Prussia was forbidden in the smaller States. Thus when Count Ernest Casimir of Runkel and Isenburg promised religious freedom to all who should settle at Biidingen (Mar. 29, 1712), even though they might not be either Roman Catholics, Lutherans, or Reformed, he was fined and obliged to retract his offer. Prussia, however, continued in her course, and Frederick the Great granted religious freedom to Mennonites, Socinians, Arians, Schwenckfelders, and other sects. On the other hand, he never issued any law of toleration, nor did even the Roman Catholic Church gain full equality with the two Protestant bodies during his reign. The example of Frederick, who was more influenced by Voltaire and the Encyclopedists than by Pufendorf and Thomasius, was followed in the edict of toleration promulgated by Joseph II. of Austria (Oct. 18, 1781) and by the Elector Clement Wenzel of Treves in 1783. Finally, by the religious edict of 1788 and the general Prussian statute of 1794 the Roman Catholic Church received equal privileges with the Lutherans and the Reformed.