Formula of Concord in the following points: It rejects Eutychianism and the ubiquity of Christ’s
body, consubstantiation in the Lord’s Supper, the use of the wafer instead of the broken bread, and
exorcism in baptism; on the other hand, it teaches the Calvinistic view of the spiritual real presence
for believers, and unconditional election, but without an unconditional decree of reprobation; it
distinctly declares that God sincerely wishes the salvation of all men, and is not the author of sin
and damnation.
The change of Sigismund was the result of conscientious conviction, and not dictated by
political motives. The people and his own wife re-mained Lutheran. He made no use of his territorial
summepiscopate and the jus reformandi. He disclaimed all intention to coerce the conscience, since
faith is a free gift of God, and cannot be forced. No man should pre-sume to exercise dominion
over man’s religion. He thus set, in advance of his age, a noble example of toleration, which became
the traditional policy of the Prussian rulers. The pietistic movement of Spener and Francke, which
was supported by the theological faculty at Halle, weakened the confessional dissensus, and
strengthened the consensus. The Moravian brotherhood exhibited long before the Prussian Union,
in a small community, the real union of evangelical believers of both confessions.
Frederick the Great was an unbeliever, and had as little sympathy with Pietism and
Moravianism as with Lutheranism and Calvinism; but he was a decided upholder of religious
toleration, which found expression in his famous declaration that in his kingdom everybody must
be at liberty to get saved "after his own fashion." The toleration of indifferentism, which prevailed
in the last century, broke down the reign of bigotry, and prepared the way for the higher and nobler
principle of religious liberty.
The revival of religious life at the beginning of the nineteenth century was a revival of
general Christianity without a confessional or denomina-tional type, and united for a time pious
Lutherans, Reformed, and even Roman Catholics. It was accompanied by a new phase of evangelical
theology, which since Schleiermacher and Neander laid greater stress on the consensus than the
dissensus of the Protestant confessions in oppo-sition to rationalism and infidelity. The ground was
thus prepared for a new attempt to establish a mode of peaceful living between the two confessions
of the Reformation.
King Frederick William III. (1797–1840), a conscientious and God-fearing monarch, who
had been disciplined by sad reverses and providen-tial deliverances of Prussia, introduced what is
called the "Evangelical Union" of the Lutheran and Reformed confessions at the tercentennial
celebration of the Reformation (Sept. 27, 1817). The term "evangelical," which was claimed by
both, assumed thus a new technical sense. The object of the Union (as officially explained in 1834
and 1852) was to unite the two churches under, one government and worship, without abolishing
the doctrinal distinctions.^798 It was conservative, not absorptive, and dif-fered in this respect from
all former union schemes between the Greek and Latin, the Protestant and Roman Catholic, the
Lutheran and Reformed Churches, which aimed at doctrinal uniformity or at best at a doctrinal
compromise. The Prussian Union introduced no new creed; the Augsburg Confession, Luther’s
Catechisms, and the Heidelberg Catechism continued to be used where they had been in use before;
but it was assumed that the confessional differences were not vital and important enough to exclude
(^798) The Cabinetsordre of Feb. 18, 1834, declares: "Die Union bezweckt und bedeutet kein Aufgeben des bisherigen Glaubensbekenntnisses;
auch ist die Autorität, welche die Bekenntnisschriften der beiden evangelischen Confessionen bisher gehabt, durch sie nicht aufgehoben
worden."