§ 179. LUTHERANISM, MELANCHTHONIANISM, AND CALVINISM.
Widespread as the favourable reception of the Prussian union had been, there were still a number of Lutheran states in which the Reformed church had scarcely any adherents, _e.g._ Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, Mecklenburg, and Schleswig-Holstein; and the same might be said of the Baltic Provinces and of the three Scandinavian kingdoms. Also in Austria, France, and Russia the two denominations kept apart; and in Poland, the union of A.D. 1828 was dissolved in A.D. 1849 (§ 206, 3). The Lutheran confessional reaction in Prussia afforded stimulus to those who had thus stood apart. In all lands, amid the conflict with rationalism, the confessional spirit both of Lutheran and Reformed became more and more pronounced.
§ 179.1. =Lutheranism within the Union.=--After the Prussian State church had been undermined by the revolution of A.D. 1848, an unsuccessful attempt was made to have a pure Lutheran confessional church set up in its place. At the October assembly in Berlin, in A.D. 1871, an ineffectual effort was made by the United Lutherans to co-operate with those who were unionists on principle. During the agitation caused by the May Laws (§ 197, 5) and the Sydow proceedings (§ 180, 4), the first general evangelical Lutheran conference was held in August, A.D. 1873, in Berlin. It assumed a moderate conciliatory tone toward the union, pronounced the efforts of the “Protestantenverein” (§ 180) an apostasy from the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, bewailed the issuing of the May Laws, protested against their principles, but acknowledged the duty of obedience, and concluded an address to the emperor with a petition on behalf of a democratic church constitution and civil marriage.--The literary organs of the United Lutherans are the “_Evang. Kirchenzeitung_,” edited by Hengstenberg, and now by Zöckler, and the “_Allgem. konserv. Monatsschrift für die christl. Deutschl._,” by Von Nathusius.
§ 179.2. =Lutheranism outside of the Union.=--A general Lutheran conference was held under the presidency of Harless, in July, A.D. 1868, at which the sentiments of Kliefoth, denouncing a union under a common church government without agreement about doctrine and sacraments, met with almost universal acceptance. At the Leipzig gathering of A.D. 1870, Luthardt urged the duty of firmly maintaining doctrinal unity in the Lutheran church. The assembly of the following year agreed to recognise the emperor as head of the church only in so far as he did not interfere with the dispensation of word and sacrament, admitted the legality of a merely civil marriage but maintained that despisers of the ecclesiastical ordinance should be subjected to discipline, that communion fellowship is to be allowed neither to Reformed nor unionists if fixed residents, but to unionists faithful to the confession if temporary residents, even without expressly joining their party; and also with reference to the October assembly of the previous year the union of the two Protestant churches of Germany under a mixed system of church government was condemned. The third general conference of Nüremburg [Nuremberg], in A.D. 1879, dealt with the questions: Whether the church should be under State control or free? Whether the schools should be denominational or not? and in both cases decided in favour of the latter alternative.--Its literary organ is Luthardt’s “_Allg. Luth. Kirchenzeitung_.”