Introduction: Friedrich II seen as the enlightened philosopher-king of Prussia
The name of Friedrich II and his nearly half-century reign from 1740 to 1786 are virtually synonymous with the advent and advance of the Enlightenment in Prussia. In his famous 1784 answer to the question posed by the Berlinische Monatsschrift, “What is enlightenment?” Immanuel Kant asserted that enlightenment could be partially conceptualized as a temporal epoch, one whose salient characteristics, especially in regards to religion, were manifested in the personal opinions and public policies of his royal Prussian sovereign. “We do not live in an enlightened age, but in an age of enlightenment – the century of Friedrich.”Footnote 1 In a similar spirit, a generation after Kant wrote, Friedrich Schleiermacher delivered a paean to Friedrich II's memory in a January 24, 1817 address to the Prussian Academy of Sciences on what would have been Friedrich II's one-hundred-and-fifth birthday. Schleiermacher heralded Friedrich II as “a friend of the muses,” who doubtlessly conversed with Plato in the afterlife, the legacy of whose domestic initiatives had been to transform Prussia into a more cultured society, while his “heroic” and “glorious” victories secured for the Prussian Army its vaunted reputation for military prowess.Footnote 2 As the 29-year-old king himself wrote in a February 24, 1741 battlefield letter from the frontlines of the First Silesian War, “I love war for its glory, but if I were not a ruler, I would be nothing but a philosopher.”Footnote 3
Kant, a professor of logic and metaphysics at the University of Königsberg, was deeply troubled by how the current state of religious affairs in German-speaking Europe near the end of the eighteenth century did not seem to him to treat most people with human dignity as he perceived the population to have long been kept in a state of religious immaturity by merely being told by others what they must believe. He likened the Lutheran and Reformed Churches’ traditional commitments to the fixed statements of religious truth found in their respective confessional symbols, the Augsburg Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism, to “totally invalid contracts” because of how the definitiveness of such doctrinal positions, allegedly, conspired to “prevent all further enlightenment of the human race,”Footnote 4 and contributed to a culture of religious inculcation that reminded him of how farmers treated their livestock.Footnote 5 Kant denounced this as the “most harmful and dishonorable kind of immaturity,”Footnote 6 and he exhorted his readers to “have the courage to use your own understanding”Footnote 7 when it came to what they believed. He then proceeded to extol the Prussian king as “Friedrich the Great,” praising him as one who was particularly exemplary in this regard for being a “prince who does not find it beneath himself to say that he considers it to be his duty to regulate nothing, but to rather leave men complete freedom in religious matters.”Footnote 8 As Friedrich II himself had noted with royal pride in his 1750 Mémoires pour servir a L'Histoire de Brandenbourg, since the beginning of his reign, “every man” in his kingdom had been “at liberty to go to heaven in whatever way [was] pleasing to him.”Footnote 9
Kant's panegyric to an absolute monarch is not the only source upon which we must rely for this depiction of Friedrich II as an enlightened ruler and proponent of religious toleration and religious liberty. Indeed, from as far away as colonial Boston Friedrich II was lauded in 1758 as a ruler who had “an abhorrence of persecution, and a strong attachment to the principles of religious liberty in their utmost extent.”Footnote 10 That same year the nephew of King George II of Great Britain and Ireland was also extolled in Philadelphia as one who was compassionately “indulgent to the various errors of the human mind and because he [was] tainted with so few errors himself, he [had] established universal toleration, that decisive characteristic of true religion, moral justice, social benevolence, and even good policy.”Footnote 11 In 1765, Friedrich II called Dieudonné Thiébault to his court in Potsdam to help him to improve his French prose. Thiébault resided there until 1784, and his four-volume collection of memoirs is an exceedingly valuable source for historical observations related to the second half of Friedrich II's reign. In his first volume of remembrances, Thiébault relates a story told to him by General Field Marshal Prince Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel of a discussion that he had had with Friedrich II while they were traveling to inspect Prussian troops in Pomerania.
The young prince explained to his uncle that he was not surprized “by how many philosophers declare that they have no religion,” but he “could not imagine that a king would ever speak like this,” because of how “religion supports royal authority.”Footnote 12 To this Friedrich II responded that he found his throne secure apart from any specifically religious sanction of his rule because his laws were just and he ruled his citizens with their best interests in mind.Footnote 13 The prince then queried if there was surely not some advantage to be gained from religious beliefs “that represent kings as the image of God on earth and which require the people to blindly obey their will?” to which Friedrich II replied that such “blind obedience is only acceptable to a tyrant, while true monarchs require nothing beyond rightly motivated, rational obedience.”Footnote 14 Furthermore, Friedrich II explained how he saw the religious admonitions to obey royal authority that the clergy gave their congregations as actually a potentially latent threat to absolute royal power. When the clergy told the people that in order to obey God they had to obey their king, this implied a principle that he believed could be deleterious to royal authority. According to Friedrich II, it elevated the clergy as those who spoke with God's authority. He could then imagine circumstances in which the clergy might say to him that he had to submit to their admonitions in order to obey God. This was a check on absolute monarchy that Friedrich II would not suffer: “While the priests represent us as the depositaries of divine authority, they are happy to style themselves as the mouth by which it speaks; in this manner, they subject us to their will and place us at their feet.”Footnote 15 Lastly, the prince wondered if regular announcements of impending divine punishments in the next life for unrepentant criminals were not essential to the maintenance of a well governed society in this world. To this the king tersely replied that either his gallows or his insane asylums provided the proper treatment for those who would not or could not be rationally constrained by the law.Footnote 16
It is with these sorts of contemporary depictions of Friedrich II's character in mind that this essay examines his earliest published work on religion, his “Confession of Faith.” Friedrich II promulgated his confession for the first time in 1741 after he had annexed the province of Silesia from the Austrian Empire, and he did so again in 1756, shortly before the outbreak of the Third Silesian War/The Seven Years’ War. In light of how Friedrich II's modern secular opinions on religious matters are such prominent aspects of his enduring historical significance, it is rather quite surprising that these opinions have yet to be analysed in relation to his earliest religious views, the sentiments of which may be best described as quite similar to those held by leading Protestant clergy and prominent Pietists. Please refer to the appendix for a complete transcription of the confession.
In his confession, which he had published in pamphlet form and distributed to the Protestant members of the imperial parliament of the Holy Roman Empire in Regensburg, Friedrich II publically professed (1) his belief in the divine inspiration of the texts of the Old and New Testament; (2) his faith in the Triune nature of God; (3) his understanding that the death of Jesus was a substitutionary atonement for the sins of mankind and propitious for those who were united to him through faith; (4) that in regards to predestination, all men were called by God to salvation, but that God justly damns some because they reject his gracious calling and obstinately remain in their sinful way of life; (5) that salvation is received by faith and is not achieved by good works, but that true faith and good works are as inseparable from each other as light is from fire; (6) that through the sacrament of baptism he was not washed merely in water, but had been mystically washed in the blood of Jesus, whereby he entered into a covenant of grace with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; (7) that in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper he was further nourished by the grace of Jesus Christ as he in this way partook by faith in all of the spiritual benefits that were procured by Christ's wounds and sufferings; and (8) that while the ministries of Martin Luther and John Calvin had both been guided by the Holy Spirit, because their opinions were inherently inferior in authority to the Word of God, he would never consent to being called either a Lutheran or a Calvinist, but would ever only be known as a Christian. Needless to say, this is hardly a catalogue of beliefs that one readily associates with the religious opinions of either the “moderate” or “radical” branches of the Enlightenment, to use Jonathan Israel's conceptual terminology.Footnote 17
Furthermore, as Friedrich II's invasion of Silesia was based on the legal pretext of a remote Hohenzollern claim to sovereignty over the province, Friedrich II appended to the end of his confession, as scriptural support for the legitimacy of his conquest, 1 Maccabees 15:33–34, in which Simon Maccabeus declares to the messenger of King Antiochus, “The land that we have conquered is our inheritance that we have from our fathers and it belongs to no one else. However, through violence our enemies have unjustly occupied it for a time. For this reason, we have now reclaimed for ourselves what is ours and have taken nothing that belonged to another people.”
Neither the University of Münster church historian Albrecht Beutel's 2006 study, Aufklärung in Deutschland, which is now the standard work on the Enlightenment in German ecclesiastical history and historical theology, nor the essay on Friedrich II that the University of Bonn church historian Walter Hubatsch contributed to the volume on the Enlightenment in the major series Gestalten der Kirchengeschichte make any mention of Friedrich II's confession of faith.Footnote 18 As far as can be determined, the respective, aforementioned editions of Das Glaubens-Bekänntnis Seiner Majestät des Königs von Preusen, welches Er allen Protestantischen Ministern zu Regensburg hat insinuieren lassen, um, und dadurch das Directorium über die Evangelischen Stände zu erlangen, remain extant only in the special collections of the Landesbibliothek in Dresden (the 1741 edition) and the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin (the verbatim 1756 edition). The appearance of English translations of this royal confession of faith in London in 1741 and 1757, and in Dublin in 1758, attests to its contemporary international significance and dissemination.Footnote 19
Rather than being a true articulation of his personal religious beliefs, one which, if it were genuine, would then have to be analysed in relation to the markedly different religious views that the king expressed later in his life, his Confession of Faith was instead the means by which Friedrich II repeatedly dissembled orthodoxy at important moments in his life and reign, while his true religious beliefs actually changed from those of a moderate to a radical Aufklärer. What motivated Friedrich II to twice publically profess faith in religious tenets that the wider body of his writings suggests that he mostly likely did not adhere to is a difficult question to answer. What appears most plausible is that in 1741, after his conquest of Silesia, which nearly doubled the size of his kingdom, and in 1756, before the outbreak of the war that many contemporaries feared would amount to a “confessional Armageddon” between the Roman Catholic Empires of France and Austria and the Protestant powers of Prussia and the United Kingdom, Friedrich II calculated that for pragmatic political reasons it would be most advantageous for him to project the image of a theologically orthodox Protestant ruler to other rulers and to those over whom he ruled.Footnote 20 That Friedrich II not only spoke publicly about his religious beliefs at these two significant junctures in Prussian history, but expressed his personal faith in historically orthodox Protestant beliefs when he did so, provides striking examples of how Friedrich II perceived European politics to still be sensitive to Christian proprieties at these moments in the eighteenth century. In contrast to how Friedrich II religiously postured himself on these two occasions, he made no similar statement either before or after the 1778–1779 War of Bavarian Succession, in which he again fought against Austria, or in 1784 when he formed a defensive alliance, the so-called League of Princes, with the Catholic Elector of Saxony and the Protestant Elector of Hannover. It is helpful to begin the following analysis of Friedrich II's religious opinions by placing them into the larger historical context of the development of Protestantism in Brandenburg under its Hohenzollern rulers, with particular reference paid to the foremost of Friedrich II's formative religious influences: the faith of his father, Friedrich Wilhelm I.
Friedrich II's Early Religious Environment and Education
The Protestant Reformation began later in the Electorate of Brandenburg than it had most elsewhere within the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation for the simple reason that Elector Joachim I and his brother, Cardinal Albrecht, the ecclesiastical primate of Germany (Primas Germaniae) in his capacity as Archbishop and Elector of Mainz opposed Martin Luther and his early followers.Footnote 21 After succeeding his father upon his death in 1535, Joachim II publically demonstrated on All Saints’ Day (November 1) 1539 that he had embraced the Lutheran faith of his mother Elisabeth and his grandfather King Johann I of the Kalmar Union of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden by taking both the bread and the wine in his celebration of the Lord's Supper.Footnote 22 Joachim II's son and grandson, Joachim Georg and Joachim Friedrich, were reared and died as convinced Lutherans, but during his extended visit to the court of the Friedrich IV, the Elector of the Palatinate at Heidelberg, his great-grandson, Joachim Sigismund, became persuaded that Calvin's theological system was a more accurate formulation of the teachings of the Bible.Footnote 23
Following Joachim Sigismund's public declaration of his faith on Christmas Day 1613, the overwhelmingly Lutheran and Catholic inhabitants of the Hohenzollerns’ scattered domains across northern Germany were ruled by Reformed sovereigns. Such confessional adherence placed the Electors of Brandenburg in a politically tenuous position within the Holy Roman Empire. Under the terms of the 1555 Peace of Augsburg, only those Protestants who subscribed to the Augsburg Confession of Faith were accorded official recognition and protection, a legal status that Reformed Protestants did not acquire until the Peace of Westphalia was signed in 1648. Beginning with Elector Friedrich III's call of the Alsatian Lutheran minister Philipp Jakob Spener to the Saint Nicholas Church in Berlin in 1691 and his establishment of the University of Halle in 1694, the rulers of Brandenburg generously supported the religious reform movement that is now recognised as Pietism. Among their motivations for doing so was to utilise certain Pietist theological emphases to reduce the strong Protestant sectarian tensions that existed between Lutherans and Calvinists within their realm.Footnote 24
Friedrich II was born in 1712 as the fourth child but eldest surviving son of Friedrich Wilhelm I and Sophia Dorothea of Braunschweig-Lüneberg, whose two previous sons had both died in infancy. Friedrich Wilhelm I is commonly caricatured as the eccentric “Soldier King” and known for his austere Spartan demeanor, economic thrift, disinterest in the arts and higher learning, commitment to building up the Prussian Army, and bizarre penchant for abnormally tall soldiers.Footnote 25 However, it must be noted that, unlike his far more urbane and cosmopolitan son, he never began a war, and his kingdom was at peace for nearly the entirety of his twenty-seven-year reign; furthermore he has the distinction of sponsoring in 1732 the foundation of the first mosque in Germany, permitting space in a military building in Potsdam to be converted to facilitate the worship needs of twenty Turkish grenadiers who had entered his service the previous year.Footnote 26 Friedrich Wilhelm I's religious beliefs and practices introduced Christianity to his son and laid the foundation upon which Friedrich II would later form his own religious convictions.
On August 13, 1718, when Friedrich II was six years old, Friedrich Wilhelm I instructed that his son follow the same highly regimented plans for his spiritual formation that his father had issued for him when he was his age.
My son must especially be brought to a right understanding of how the true love and fear of God are the foundation and the only pillars of our well-being in this world and in eternity. Therefore, even the mention of any of the contrary, injurious, corrupting, and misleading errors of the atheists, Arians, Socinians, and other such sects, all of which are poison and can easily confuse, pollute, and capture a young and tender mind, must be strictly avoided and not spoken of in his presence. He must also, in like manner, be instructed to regard the Roman Catholic religion as an abomination, and have its falsity and absurdity laid before him and impressed upon him. On the other hand, however, he must be directed and led to the true Christian religion, which consists, before everything else, in the fact that Christ died for all men, and that he is our only consolation and our only guide in life. God's omnipotence must also be thoroughly impressed upon him, so that he might at all times have a holy fear and reverence of God, for this is the only means of restraining a king, who is otherwise above all human laws and the fear of their punishment.Footnote 27
Ironically, it was exactly the latter of these beliefs that Friedrich II disputed the most in the above-cited discourse with his nephew that was later recounted by Thiébault. There he argued that one could rule justly and securely without either being a Christian or promoting adherence to Christianity among one's subjects. Three years later on September 3, 1721 Friedrich Wilhelm I detailed how he wished to see his religious beliefs and virtues inculcated in Friedrich II through a highly specific set of instructions in which he prescribed to his tutors when, and for how long, on each day of the week his son was to be made to pray, to read the Bible, to sing hymns, and to hear catechetical lectures.Footnote 28
From the opening lines of Friedrich Wilhelm I's 1722 Political Testament, which he wrote to instruct his successor in the particular art of statecraft necessary to rule Prussia, it becomes readily apparent that Friedrich Wilhelm I's religious opinions were deeply tinged with certain Pietistic sensibilities, even if he articulated them in a rather formulaic manner.
I stand well with God Almighty. Ever since my twentieth year, I have put all my trust steadfastly in God, whose gracious ear I have always supplicated. He has constantly heard my prayers, and I know that I am assured of salvation through the grace of Jesus Christ and His bitter passion and death. I heartily repent of all the grievous sins which I have committed and I pray to God to forgive them for the sake of Jesus Christ. I have always labored to make myself better and to live a godly life so far as I was humanly able to do so, and with God's help I will so persevere until my end.Footnote 29
In a subsequent section, Friedrich Wilhelm I explicitly states how greatly he valued his confessional identity, “I am a member of the Reformed Church and, with God's help, I will die as one.”Footnote 30 However, he emphasized immediately afterwards that he was also certain, “that the Lutheran who lives a godly life will be saved as well as a member of the Reformed church will be.”Footnote 31 Then in a strong criticism of what he perceived as the overly polemical tendencies of the Protestant clergy in Prussia, he stressed that the differences between the adherents of the Heidelberg Catechism and Augsburg Confession were mostly artificial in nature and had been manufactured and magnified “by quarrels between their preachers,” and that his heir was to ignore these and “hold the Reformed and the Lutherans in equal honor, to do good to both religions, and to make no difference between them.”Footnote 32
Regarding Roman Catholics, Friedrich Wilhelm I reminded his successor that he was bound to tolerate their public worship by both the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia and Prussia's 1657 Treaty of Wehlau with the “Republic of Poland,” but he was adamant that he must not permit any members of the Society of Jesus to take up residence in Prussia, because the Jesuits were “devils, full of evil designs and plots against our land and its people.”Footnote 33
The king directed his harshest remarks against Jews, in anti-Semitic language.
It is unfortunate that there are so many Jews in our lands. They have no letters of protection from me to be here. You must hound them out because Jews are like locusts and bring about the ruin of Christians. . . . You must strike against the Jews because they are the betrayers of Jesus Christ. You cannot trust a Jew because I am persuaded that even the most noble among them is a pestilent knave.”Footnote 34
In addition to containing his views on the principle religious communities that constituted his realm, Friedrich Wilhelm I's political testament also reveals how seriously he believed that he was accountable before God for all his conduct as king. In an era in which many rulers initiated wars of conquest in Europe and colonization in North America, Africa, and Asia, Friedrich Wilhelm I instructed his heir:
I beseech you according to the will of God, not to begin any unjust wars and not to be an aggressor, for God has forbidden unjust wars and one day you will have to give account for every man who dies in an unjust war. . . . To be sure, you are a great lord on earth, but one day you will have to give an account to God for all the unjust wars and blood that you have caused to be spilled.Footnote 35
It is also clear that Friedrich Wilhelm I believed the scope of his divine responsibilities as the Landesvater of his subjects extended to their individual moral lives as well. In his Christian paternalism, the king denounced “drunkenness, overindulgence, mistresses, comedies, operas, ballets, masked-balls, and gambling halls” as “godless and devilish things, whereby Satan, his temple, and his kingdom advance.”Footnote 36 It was imperative for the temporal welfare of the kingdom that his successor fulfill the “duty” incumbent upon all God-fearing rulers “to suppress and not to suffer the temple of Satan,” because “ever since the days of Johann Sigismund [reigned 1608–19] none of these sins have characterized the House of Brandenburg . . . and for this reason, God has continually blessed our House. Have no doubt that this blessing still remains upon our House because of our fear of the Lord.”Footnote 37
While such examples of Friedrich Wilhelm I's orthodox and pious religious rhetoric may create the impression that he was particularly earnest in his faith, other sources come together to form a more nuanced portrait, in which the king appears as having had an indifferent, if not an anti-intellectual, attitude towards theology, as well as a less than fully serious commitment to the pursuit of personal holiness. Writing in his autobiography, August Friedrich Wilhelm Sack, whom Friedrich Wilhelm I appointed as royal chaplain shortly before he died in 1740 and who served Friedrich II in this capacity for the entirety of his reign, recalled how the old king had instructed him that “‘the main point of religion is to fear God, love Jesus Christ, and to act justly; everything else is. . .’ and at this point the king said a rude word which I refuse to repeat.”Footnote 38
In the months before he died on 31 May, 1740, the king entered into a correspondence with Count Nicklaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, in which he professed to the protector and leader of the Moravian Brethren (Unitas Fratrum) his complete confidence that he was right before God and was ready to die and enter into God's presence. Zinzendorf cautioned the king to be wary of such confidence, as it was rarely experienced by true Christians and might rather be a sign of sinful self-confidence than as one of godliness.Footnote 39 Similarly, when addressing the king on his deathbed on May 10, 1740, after he had claimed that because of his faith he knew that he was justified in the sight of God and ready to die, Michael Roloff, the Lutheran provost of the St. Nicholas Church in Berlin, refused to assure him of his salvation. In spite of his doctrinally correct profession of faith, Roloff believed that the king had neither truly understood the seriousness of his sins, nor had ever truly repented of them, because during his lifetime there had never been any observable changes in his conduct. Footnote 40 In his attempt to shake the king out of his self-satisfaction, Roloff reminded him of how he had “oppressed [his] people by conscripting them to work on [his] many building projects and through [his] liberal application of the death penalty,” and he asked why Friedrich Wilhelm I would even want to go to heaven when “neither your army, your treasure, your lands, nor your servants will follow you there.”Footnote 41 All of this led the mid-nineteenth-century University of Basel church historian Karl Hagenbach to conclude that Friedrich Wilhelm I's formalistic commitment to Christianity, together with his aversion to the life of the mind and selective zeal for Christian morality, predisposed Friedrich II to intellectuals who challenged what he must have perceived as the epitome of orthodox Protestantism as exemplified by the religiosity of his father.Footnote 42
The circumstances surrounding the composition of Friedrich II's Confession of Faith, September to November 1730
Among the foremost of Friedrich II's formative life experiences was the period between September and November 1730, when at age 18, after an unsuccessful attempt to flee to England with his close friend, the 26-year-old Lieutenant Hans Hermann von Katte, in order to escape his father, he was imprisoned for military desertion (being at this time a junior officer in the Prussian Army) under harsh conditions in the Cüstrin Fortress on the Oder River. As part of his punishment, his father forced him to witness Katte's beheading and considered beheading Friedrich II himself.
During Friedrich II's lifetime, rumors circulated in Berlin and Paris that he loved men, “the way Socrates loved Alcibiades,” that is that, in modern parlance, the king's sexual orientation was either homosexual or bisexual.Footnote 43 Such claims, coupled with possible veiled homoerotic innuendos in Friedrich II's poetry, have latterly interested scholars in the precise nature of Friedrich II and Katte's relationship, whether it was only a platonic friendship or whether it may have been a romantic and sexual relationship as well. Given that Friedrich Wilhelm I had had a man named Andreas Lepsch burned at the stake for sodomy in 1730, it is entirely conceivable that he overruled the military tribunal that recommended a sentence of life imprisonment to punish Katte for leaving his military unit without permission. It is possible that he instead decided to impose the death penalty on him precisely because he had a particularly strong animus against homosexuality and either knew, or perceived, the relationship that Katte had with Friedrich II to be homosexual in nature. Louis Crompton asserts that this was indeed the case, while Christopher Clark cautions that it is exceedingly difficult for such details about Friedrich II's romantic and sexual life to be definitively determined.Footnote 44 In any event, according to Jean Grandpre, who later translated Friedrich II's Confession of Faith into English in 1741, it was during this time of confinement that Friedrich II composed his confession.Footnote 45
During these months, Friedrich II's father instructed the Lutheran chaplain to the regiment stationed in Cüstrin, Johann Ernst Müller, to discuss the Bible and theology on a daily basis with his wayward son, “so that he might be rescued out of the clutches of Satan,”Footnote 46 a reference he made to his son's disobedience and to those religious opinions of his son's that he did not share. As Friedrich Nicolai reported in 1791, Friedrich Wilhelm I was especially eager for a Lutheran minister to speak to his son. He wanted a minister who taught only the single divine predestination of the elect to eternal life, without simultaneously affirming the existence of any divine eternal decree pertaining to the final state of the reprobate. Friedrich Wilhelm I disapproved of Friedrich II's adherence to the canons of the 1619 Synod of Dordrecht regarding double predestination (i.e., the belief that God inscrutably wills both the salvation of the righteous and the damnation of the wicked), which, despite his own professed allegiance to the Reformed Church and faith, Friedrich Wilhelm I believed promoted a fatalistic kind of thinking that was unsuitable for a king.Footnote 47
In his letters to Friedrich Wilhelm I on the progress of these theological discussions, Müller reported that Friedrich II participated in them quite enthusiastically, regularly asking that they begin at six o'clock in the morning and eagerly continuing with them for half of the day. In their course, according to Müller, the prince experienced a spiritual conversion, and Friedrich II announced to the chaplain that he had taken several verses from Psalm 73 as his personal watchwords, “Oh Lord, whom do I have in heaven but you? There is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.”Footnote 48 If Grandpre's statements are accurate, we may conjecture that Friedrich II read his confession on Sunday, November 19, 1730 before the royal commission of state councillors and military officers who had been sent to hear him swear a new oath of loyalty to his father and who were then to reinstate him as an officer of the Prussian Army before accompanying him to the Lutheran Church in Cüstrin where he took communion as a sign of his repentance and forgiveness.Footnote 49
Whether Friedrich II sincerely believed in his heart the doctrines that he proclaimed in his confession or whether he merely perceived that they were the words which his father would want to hear from him and which would enable him to regain his freedom, one is not able to definitively determine. Given the circumstances of his detention, it is not difficult to believe that Friedrich II may have feigned such theological convictions out of fear for his life. While this is an entirely plausible explanation of Friedrich II's motives to confess his faith as he did in 1730, following the death of his father in 1740, it cannot explain his decisions to publish his confession in 1741 and then to do so again in 1756. Therefore, we are first forced to consider the most obvious possibility: that the confession actually did convey his authentic religious views at these times in his life and that he wrote it because he wanted to make these known to others. However, we can be virtually certain that this was not the case and that Friedrich II did not profess faith in the doctrinal tenets that he did because he wanted others to know what he believed. Rather, Friedrich II twice published his confession as a pragmatic political act, acting under the assumption that professing his faith in a minimum standard of Protestant orthodoxy legitimated his rule before several constituencies: the representatives of the Protestant states of the Holy Roman Empire, to whom it was officially addressed; the other rulers of Europe, to whom he related as allies and enemies during wartime; his people; and his army. The latter of the two aforementioned possibilities regarding what motivated Friedrich II to write his Confession of Faith is far more likely because of how greatly incongruous the doctrinal contents of Friedrich II's Confession of Faith are with those religious opinions that consistently appear in his other works and correspondence.
Friedrich II's radical Enlightenment religious positions
In an essay in the 2006 Cambridge History of Christianity, Hartmut Lehmann identified the beginning of Friedrich II's reign in 1740 as a moment of “drastic change” and nothing less than a “watershed” in the religious history of German-speaking Europe.
Before 1740, [Pietism] was growing, especially due to the favours that Halle received from the Prussian king and also because of the attraction of Zinzendorf's initiatives. When Frederick the Great assumed power in Berlin in 1740, things changed drastically. The new King of Prussia was a fervent believer in the ideas of the Enlightenment. He despised the kind of piety that Halle propagated and did not hesitate to make his thoughts on the matter clear.Footnote 50
Lehmann further on characterizes Friedrich II's accession to the throne as the catalytic event that marks the “caesura” between the successive cultural eras shaped by Pietism and the Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment had little impact in Protestant Germany before Frederick the Great became king. The Enlightenment then gained momentum between 1740 and the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763. In the years between 1763 and the beginning of the French Revolution, the public sphere, including the theological faculties of the German universities, became dominated by the themes that were central to the Enlightenment.Footnote 51
While an awareness of Friedrich II's Confession of Faith certainly does nothing to call Lehmann's overall analysis into question, it does introduce a slight, but important, nuance into our understanding of the pace at which this secularizing cultural change occurred and how Friedrich II himself perceived that it was important for temporal authorities in Protestant areas of Germany to profess adherence to orthodox, Reformation-era understandings of Protestant doctrines as late as 1756.
When Friedrich II's 1741 Confession is compared with his 1750 Oeuvres du Philosophé de Sans Souci we become aware of considerable discrepancies between the traditional Protestant orthodoxy of his confession and the deistic views that are characteristic of the moderate religious Enlightenment. Friedrich II's philosophical reflections in this volume consisted of ten odes, twenty letters, and a six-part poem on the art of war, each of which he employed as literary devices to discourse on different metaphysical topics. In his study of Friedrich II's philosophy, the late University of Marburg ecclesiastical historian Ernst Benz remarked that the religious understanding that it presupposed was completely discontinuous with Pietism and that Friedrich II exhibited “a skeptical, antagonistic attitude towards the Church as an institution.”Footnote 52 According to Benz, the king professed an entirely “demythologized Christian faith,” and in his discussion of his religious beliefs, “the chief doctrines of Christianity, such as the Trinity, Christ's divinity and humanity, and redemption,” were highly conspicuous by their complete absence, even as, we may note, they were central tenets of his Confession of Faith. Friedrich II's conception of God as a “distant creator,” who was uninvolved in the daily lives of people and who was content to allow the world to run according to the laws that he had set into motion at its creation, stands in sharp contrast to the conception of God that appears in Friedrich II's confession as one who remains active in the world by his Word and Spirit. In his “Ode to Maupertius,” the contemporary French philosopher and mathematician, Friedrich II, goes beyond the bounds of deism and into materialism when he asks rhetorically, “Why does man fear the arm of heaven, when good and evil are only but a dream?” before concluding that “at the end of our lives we lose even ourselves in nothingness.”Footnote 53 When this work was translated from French into German in 1760, it elicited negative responses from the entire range of contemporary theists; the Lutheran Pietist Friedrich Oettinger from Württemberg, the Calvinist mystic Gerhard Teerstegen from the Rhineland, and the leader of Jewish Enlightenment in Berlin, Moses Mendelsohn, each wrote highly critical replies against it, while the Roman Catholic Congregation for the Index of Prohibited Books proscribed the members of their Church from reading it.Footnote 54
Also in 1750, Friedrich II published his study of the history of his realm, Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de Brandenbourg, in which he made a series of negative observations about Christianity in general and contemporary German Protestantism in Prussia in particular. Friedrich II criticized Protestantism for “having retained a great many superstitions of Roman Catholicism,” especially its belief in the devil and demons.Footnote 55 He believed that the lesson that one could learn from the decisions of his Hohenzollern ancestors to install Calvinist clergy in Lutheran villages in the years and decades that followed Elector Johann Sigismund's conversion to the Reformed faith on Christmas Day 1613 was “obviously, that religion does not destroy the passions of mankind, and that priests of every religion are always ready to oppress their opponents, whenever they have the power of the state on their side to do so.”Footnote 56 Friedrich II described the new Pietist institutions of Halle, which his father had greatly patronized, its new university, charity school, orphanage, pharmacy, publishing house, and museum, as having constituted a “nursery for young divines, out of which has issued a swarm of priests, who formed a sect of rigid Lutherans.”Footnote 57 Friedrich II opted to describe the Pietists as “Protestant Jansenists, who are distinguished from other Protestants by their mystical severities,” thereby defining their identity in a category of meaning that his French readership, as well as those familiar with that country's religious landscape, would have instantly recognized.Footnote 58 The Pietists proceeded to open the door for “all sorts of Quakers, followers of Zinzendorf, millenarians, and other sects, each one more ridiculous and extravagant than the last, some of whom, who by carrying the principles of the primitive church too far, descended into criminal abuses.”Footnote 59 Friedrich II lamented how it was “a great disgrace that a century as enlightened as the eighteenth century could have had at its beginning such ridiculous superstitions.”Footnote 60 His denigration of the Pietists, and especially of the Moravians, is rather odd considering how closely Friedrich II's claims in his confession to having been in his baptism, “washed from sin, not by water, but by the real blood of Christ,” and to having been saved “through the wounds of Christ,” resemble Zinzendorf's own so-called “blood and wounds theology” of the 1740’s.Footnote 61
Sixteen years later, in his 1766 Les Matinées du Roi du Prusse, Friedrich II unambiguously adopted a hostile stance towards Christianity that was characteristic of the radical Enlightenment, especially as it was epitomized by Voltaire, with whom Friedrich II corresponded with between August 8, 1736 and April 1, 1778.Footnote 62 Herein Friedrich II announced his support for the creation of a new reason-based religion to replace Christianity, in a work that employed the literary device of a series of morning discourses in which the king advised his successor on how he ought to rule Prussia.
We have to make ourselves useful to all mankind, by turning all men into brothers, by requiring them through the law to live together as friends and relations, and by impressing upon them the absolute necessity of living and of dying in mutual peace and harmony, and the importance of seeking their only happiness in the social virtues. After these principals have taken root in the rising generations, their fruit will be the transformation of the world into one numerous family, and then the long sought-after and anticipated golden age will arrive and the happiness for which I ardently wish for all men to have, will then be enjoyed without any adulteration. . . . Voltaire has authored the preamble to this new religion; he has shown us the necessity of abandoning everything that has been said about religion heretofore, because there is not one point upon which everyone is in agreement. . . . D'Alembert and Maupertius have formed the groundwork of the plan and it all is formulated with such a scrupulous exactness. . . . Rousseau has been hard at work during these past four years in order to eliminate all objections to it; and I am anticipating in my imagination the pleasure that I will derive from humiliating all of those ignorant wretches who will dare to challenge me in this endeavour.Footnote 63
Friedrich II made his attitude towards these designs more explicit in a February 10, 1767 letter to Voltaire.
The Englishman Thomas Woolston [1669–1731] determined that the infamous thing [which was how Friedrich II had come to refer to Christianity by this time] would perhaps last another two hundred years [i.e. until 1900]; he could not have anticipated what has happened in our day. The matter is how to destroy the prejudice which serves as the foundation to this edifice. It is crumbling by itself, and its fall can only be made more rapid. [Pierre] Bayle [1647–1706] began this; he was followed by a number of Englishmen and you were set aside to complete this work. Footnote 64
Two final anecdotes from the 1770’s further suggest that by this time Friedrich II had thoroughly embraced an inimical attitude towards Christianity. During the mid-1770’s, John Moore, a Scottish physician, traversed much of Europe as the traveling companion to the Duke of Hamilton, a Scottish nobleman, during his multi-year Grand Tour. Moore wrote hundreds of pages of letters to friends and family members which he later published as an account of his travels. His observations provide a fascinating perspective on the social history of continental Europe at the beginning of the third-quarter of the eighteenth-century. He met many leading literary figures and members of the royalty and nobility. He also had a particularly strong interest in the common people and everyday life.
Upon his arrival in Berlin, Moore commented that Friedrich II had dedicated an astonishingly high number of statues and public buildings to Mercury, Apollo, Minerva, and Cupid, deities which, we may note, are frequently invoked throughout his Oeuvres du Philosophé de Sans Souci, such that “a stranger might be led to suspect that the Christian religion had been expelled from the Prussian dominions.”Footnote 65 Moore also considered the way in which Friedrich II had ordered the interiors of Berlin churches to be decorated as strange. “Instead of saints or crucifixes, the King intends that the churches of Berlin shall be ornamented with the portraits of men who have been useful to the state.”Footnote 66 Moore then lists several military heroes from Friedrich II's wars whose portraits “are already placed in the great Lutheran church,”Footnote 67 a probable reference to the Saint Nicholas Church in central Berlin. These curiosities were only some of the reasons which led Moore to describe Berlin as the most godless and immoral place of all those which he had visited in Germany during the Duke's tour.
During their stay in Potsdam, Friedrich II invited the Duke of Hamilton and Moore to participate in the social life and recreations of the court. Moore remarked that the king seemed to especially enjoy performances of the ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, and reported how Friedrich II became particularly animated during the scenes in which Jocasta raged against the cruelty of the gods for what they had allowed to happen to her family and how he fulminated over the uselessness of the Theban priests, who had proved themselves to be ignorant of the workings of the gods and thereby worthless as royal counsellors.Footnote 68 Moore believed that Friedrich II had had such visceral reactions at these points of the play because of how he saw the gods of Olympus and the priests of Thebes as foils of the God of the Christian faith and of Christian clergy. The king also arranged for his court a performance of Voltaire's play Le Fanatisme, ou Mahomet le Prophète, a thinly veiled satire of Christianity, and organized religion in general, as inherently dangerous to humanity because of how it promotes irrational thinking that readily leads to violence.Footnote 69 In a January 20, 1742 letter, Voltaire had dedicated the play to Friedrich II, which the young king warmly acknowledged.Footnote 70 Eight years later, Friedrich II extended asylum to Voltaire and welcomed him to his royal residence outside Berlin in Potsdam, where he resided from 1750–1753.
In his memoirs, Karl von Hessen-Kassel (1744–1836), a nobleman who ultimately earned the military rank of general field marshal for his battlefield achievements in the Prussian Army, recounted a conversation that he once had had while dining with Friedrich II as one of his aides-de-camp during the autumn of 1778, while they were on campaign during the War of the Bavarian Succession, which further illustrates Friedrich II's radical Enlightenment religious opinions.
One day I had a quite lively conversation with the king about religion. He could not look at a crucifix without blaspheming, such that whenever he spoke of the Christian religion at the table, I could not take part in the conversation. Instead, I lowered my eyes and kept completely silent. The king was very much aware of this. Finally, he turned towards me and with great forcefulness said to me, “Tell me, my dear prince, do you believe in these things?” I answered him in a very firm tone, “Your Majesty, I am more certain that Jesus Christ lived and died on the cross as our savior than I am that I have the honor of seeing you today.” The king remained for a moment rapt in his thoughts, and then suddenly gripped my right arm, squeezed it strongly, and said, “Well now, my dear prince, you are the first man of spirit whom I have found who believes so.” I then spoke a few more words to the king to reiterate to him the certainty of my faith.Footnote 71
To better grasp some sense of the interpersonal dynamics of this exchange it is helpful to note that at this time Karl von Hessen-Kassel was thirty-four and Friedrich II was sixty-six years of age. After rising from the table, the young officer had another memorable encounter in the adjoining room with General Friedrich Bogislav von Tauentzien, sixty-eight years old, who also had been present at dinner that evening and who had been fighting alongside Friedrich ever since his invasion of Silesia in 1740.
After dinner, I came into the adjoining room and found General Tauentzien alone. I had known him as a great and powerful man, but he placed both of his hands on my shoulders, and wetted me with a stream of his tears as he said, “Now praise God! I have lived to see that an honest man has confessed Christ before the King!” The kind old man overwhelmed me in his embrace. I cannot recall this happy moment in my life without the greatest thankfulness to God, that He gave me the opportunity to confess my faith in Him and His Son before the King.Footnote 72
Conclusions
This essay has demonstrated major incongruities within the avowed religious opinions of Friedrich II of Prussia that exist on multiple, overlapping levels: differences between those religious beliefs that he voiced early on in his reign and those that he expressed later in life and differences between his official public pronouncements on religious matters and those views that he articulated privately in his correspondence and in his literary endeavors. While our ability to ascertain what Friedrich II truly believed is inherently circumscribed by what we can construe from the extent sources, the best interpretation of the available evidence is that each time he presented his Confession of Faith he did so to project publically an image of himself as an orthodox Protestant that most likely did not reflect his genuine religious beliefs. He first did so in order to be released from prison. Subsequently, he reiterated his confession to more favorably position himself politically within the Holy Roman Empire and Central Europe, first after his annexation of Silesia in 1741 and again before the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War in 1756, when a major Catholic-Protestant confessional war between two respective camps led by Austria and France and Prussia and the United Kingdom appeared imminent.
What broader significance do these episodes of Friedrich II's seeming willingness to engage in religious hypocrisy for the sake of self-preservation and political pragmatism have beyond the additional texture which they contribute to our biographical understanding of him? When Friedrich II's decisions in 1741 and 1756 to send copies of his Confession of Faith to all the Protestant members of the imperial parliament of the Holy Roman Empire are considered together with the completely candid political commentary that he included in his 1752 and 1768 Political Testaments, documents that were intended only ever to be read by his successor upon his death, we gain insights into his own perceptions of the progress of European political secularization in the eighteenth century.
Eleven years after he first promulgated his Confession of Faith in 1741, Friedrich II advised in the instructions that he prepared for his heir that:
For governance, it does not matter one way or the other, whether or not the sovereign is religious or not. When one really thinks about it, all religions are founded on mythical systems that are more or less absurd. It is impossible for any man with a sound mind, who thoroughly investigates these matters not to see how delusional all religion is. However, all such prejudices, delusions and miracles are made for the masses of common people and so you must be careful to avoid doing anything that might cause offense to any of the public's religious sensibilities.Footnote 73
Such comments evince how, alongside his personal disdain for the tenets of Christianity as metaphysical absurdities, Friedrich II believed, at least in 1752, that they nevertheless had an abiding pragmatic value because of how they facilitated a stable social order that had to be maintained for the sake of his realm.
In reflecting further about the relationship between church and state in Prussia since the Reformation in Prussia, Friedrich II quipped that although he shared none of their religious beliefs,
I am virtually the pope of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches and as their Supreme Head, I appoint their pastors and require nothing from them except that they have good morals and mild manners. . . . We must tolerate all sects of Christianity within our lands and silence anyone who would attempt to start a civil war by inciting the members of the different confessions against each other. Likewise, we must see to it that those who introduce novel religious opinions receive their deserved derision. I am indifferent to both Rome and Geneva, but I will not permit the members of either Church to interfere with the rights of the other.Footnote 74
With such pragmatic political concerns in mind, it becomes possible to conclude that the likely motivation that Friedrich II had in 1756 for announcing his faith in the triune nature of God, the divinity of Christ, the efficaciousness of sacraments as supernatural means of grace and other historically orthodox doctrines of Protestantism was to reaffirm publically his adherence to longstanding theological traditions that he associated with political and social stability in Prussia as Europe prepared for war. In light of the evidence that indicates that he did not personally believe such items of faith to be true, his publication of his confession suggests that he perceived such doctrinal positions to nonetheless retain considerable importance and purchase within Prussian domestic and European international political discourse at this time. However, over the next decade, Friedrich II appears to have sensed that European culture was evolving along a secular trajectory in such a way that it might no longer be politically necessary for an enlightened ruler to maintain the façade of adherence to traditional religious beliefs.
In contrast to how he specifically condemned those who introduced religious innovations in his 1752 Political Testament as being like those who would destabilize society through internecine religious war, as discussed above, Friedrich II himself advocated in 1766 the introduction of a new reason-based religion that he hoped would one day replace Christianity and inaugurate a heretofore unknown level of social harmony. That Friedrich II felt free to publically associate himself with such designs, albeit only to those who could read the French prose in which they were detailed, suggests that he perceived European politics to have secularized to such an extent that by this time it had become politically possible for a king to speak about Christianity in a manner that only fourteen years before seemed impossible. His proposal also suggests that Friedrich II changed his mind regarding his earlier opinions about the need to maintain Christian religious traditions in order to maintain a stable society. Friedrich II commented on the long-term historical significance of certain recent secularizing changes in European politics that he perceived in the substantial revisions that he made to his Political Testament in 1768.
In a brief section entitled “On Religion,” Friedrich II instructed his heir that while Christianity was “a religion that had changed the face of the world,” in reality, it was still nothing more than:
An old metaphysical fiction, full of miracles, contradictions, and absurdities that originally came from the fervid imaginations of the peoples of Near East, and then spread into our Europe, where enthusiasts proclaimed its message, ambitious schemers pretended to be convinced by it, and only fools actually believed that it was true.Footnote 75
Friedrich II then sketched in quite broad strokes his view of the religious history of Europe from the introduction of Christianity to the Enlightenment.
The peddlers of this holy nonsense themselves became famous thereby. They became rulers as there was a time in which Europe was ruled by their words. There then developed in their heads overbearing theological pride and a spirit of despotism, which is still to be found among all the various kinds of Christian priests, regardless of whatever sect they belong to or by whatever name that they call themselves.Footnote 76
Friedrich II concluded his diatribe against the malevolent effects of such clerical political influence with an observation that, “in earlier times, the clergy interfered in all the affairs of the state, but it seems that today such involvements have come to an end.”Footnote 77 Precisely when Friedrich II believed that this new day began is something that cannot be determined, but the inclusion of such rhetoric here, which does not appear in his first political testament, suggests this was a cultural trend that had become more clear to him during the interval between 1752 and 1768.
After Friedrich II published his confession of faith in 1756, he never again publically declared his personal religious adherence to its doctrinal contents, despite how the War of Bavarian Succession in 1778–1779 and the foundation of the League of Princes in 1784 furnished him with occasions similar to those on which he had previously done so in 1741 and 1756. Rather than assuming that the reason that Friedrich II never again expressed such views was that his personal religious views themselves changed from those of historic Protestant orthodoxy to those of the radical Enlightenment, the more plausible interpretation is that after the Treaty of Hubertusberg concluded the Seven Years’ War in 1763, Friedrich II never again felt the need to dissemble orthodoxy as he perceived that the increasing secularization of European political life had eliminated the need for pious princes.
Appendix:
[Note: the unusual capitalizations of the first and second letters of certain words are that way in the original]
Das Glaubens-Bekänntnis Sr. Maj. des Königs von Preusen, welches Er allen Protestantischen Ministern zu Regensburg hat insinuiren lassen, um, und dadurch das Directorium über die Evangelischen Stände zu erlangen. Nebst einem Anhange Derer Berechtsamen auf Schlesien Macc. 15,33 u.s.w. 1741
§. 1
Ich glaube nicht was der Papst befiehlt, auch nicht in allen Stücken, was Lutherus, Beza und Calvinus geschrieben; sondern ich glaube an den Drey-Einigen GOtt, und setze sein Heiliges Wort zu einem offenbahren Grund meines Glaubens, und was damit übereinstimmet: Solches soll niemahls von mir geglaubet werden, und wann es auch ein Engel von Himmel geschrieben hätte.
§. 2
Ich glaube auch, daß durch Christi Blut und Todt, durch seine Wunden, und heiligen Verdienst, ich und alle fromme Christen seelig werden.
§. 3
Und weil in keinem andern Namen, Heyl und Seeligkeit zu finden, als allein in den seeligmachenden Namen JEsu CHristi; so mag ich mich nicht nennen Lutherisch oder Papistisch; sondern ich bin, und nenne mich einen Christen.
§. 4
Von der ewigen Gnaden Wahl, oder Prädestination ist dieses mein einfälltiger Glaube, daß der Barmherzige GOtt alle Menschen zur Seeligkeit beruffen hat, daß aber nicht alle Menschen seelig werden, solches kommt nicht her aus Mangel des Beruffs; sondern aus der obstinaten Boßheit der Menschen, welche die angebothene Göttliche Gnade gleich als mit Füssen von sich stossen, weßwegen sie aus gerechtem Gerichte GOttes in ihrer Herzens-Boßheit und Sünden verdammt werden.
§. 5
Von den guten Wercken statuire ich, daß, woselbst ein aufrichtiger wahrer Glaube ist, da müssen auch gute Wercke seyn, den der Glaube und guten Wercke können so wenig separiret werden, als Licht von der Sonnen, und Hitze von dem Feuer. Daß man aber, mit guten Wercken den Himmel verdienen solte, solches ist eine schlechte Meynung, angesehen wir allein aus einem wahren Glauben seelig werden. Was soll uns das Verdienst Christi nütze seyn, wenn wir durch unsere eigenen guten Wercke könnten seelig werden.
§. 6
Von der Tauffe und Heiligen Abendmahl, ist mein einfälltiger Glaube dieser, gleichwie ich bey der Tauffe, nicht allein mit blossen Wasser, sondern durch das wahre Blut von meinen HErrn JESU Christo von Sünden abgewaschen, und in den vorigen Bund der Gnaden bey GOtt dem Vater, Sohn, und Heiligen Geist auf und angenommen worden, also werde ich auch in dem Heiligen Abendmahl an der Gnaden-Tafel JEsu Christi gespeiset, und durch dessen Krafft werde ich theilhafftig aller Wohlthaten, die der Herr Christus erworben, und bin ein Erbe des ewigen Lebens, und ist dieses mein Schluß, wer an GOtt glaubet, und in Christi Blut seine Seeligkeit suchet, und Christlich lebet, der kan seelig sterben, und seelig werden.
§. 7
Hiernächst lasse ich einen jeden die Freyheit seines Glaubens, und bezeuge hiermit vor dem Angeschichte meines GOttes, daß ich auf dieses einfältige Glaubens-Bekänntnis leben und sterben will, und das ich nicht weder kalt noch warm oder laulicht bin, solches alles stelle ich dem Urtheil aller gewissenhafften Menschen anheim.
§. 8
Ich mache mich auch nicht theillhafftig, daß der Dienst der Seelen bey denen Catholischen Priestern angesehen, ich aus der Erfahrung abnehmen können, daß all ihr Vertrauen nicht so sehr zur Ehre GOttes und zur Beförderung der Seeligkeit, als bloß zur eigenen Ehre und Respect der Menschen gereichtet.
§. 9
Daß ich mich nennen solte Papistisch, Lutherisch oder Calvinisch, trage ich billig Bedencken, doch weil man aus blosser Gewohnheit und Opinion der Welt, mit den blossen Namen eines Christen nicht fortkommen kan, daß man sich also zu einer Kirche und Confeßion von derselben halten und davor bekennen muß, und weil die reine unverfälschte reformirte Religion, am meisten mit meiner Religion übereinstimmet, so kan ich mich per mundi errorem reformirt nennen, ohngeachtet ich nicht sehe, worinnen mein obbemeldes Glaubens-Bekänntniß mit der reinen unverfälschten Religion streiten solte, doch mag ich nicht den Namen eines Reformirten mit dem Namen Calvinisch vergleichen lassen, sondern ich bleibe ein reformirter Christ, der ist derjenige, welcher von allen Irrthun der Lehre befreyet ist, bleibet und glaubet, gleichwie ich oben bezeuget habe, allein ein Calvinist ist derjenige, welcher die Lehre von Calvino zu einer Glaubens-Regel machet.
§. 10
Und weil Calvinus auch ein Mensch gewesen ist, so hat er auch irren können, sonsten halte Lutherum und Calvinum vor auserkohrne Werckzeuge GOttes, welche aus der Krafft des Heiligen Geistes aus der Finisterniß gerückert sind, und den rechten Weg zum ewigen Leben gezeiget haben; weilen sie aber beyde Menschen gewesen, so hat sowohl der eine als der andere fehlen können. Derowegen, so glaube ich keine Lehre, als so weit sie mit den wahren Wort GOttes übereinstimmet, denn so spricht der Apostel Paulus: Prüfet alles wohl, und das Gute behaltet, Thessal. 5 v. 21.
Anhang
Angeführtes Dictum ist am 2. Febr. dieses Jahres [1741] in einer Predigt im königl. Preusischen Lager erkläret worden: Das Land, daß wir erobert haben ist unser Väterliches Erbe, und gehöret sonst niemand. Unsere Feinde aber habens eine Zeitlang mit Gewalt und Unrecht inne gehabt. Darum haben wir jetzt das Unsere wieder zu uns bracht, und niemanden das Seine genommen, Macc. 15 v. 33. u. 34. GOtt allein die Ehre.
The Confession of Faith of His Majesty the King of Prussia, which he made known to all the Protestant members of the Regensburg Parliament, in order to inform thereby The leadership of the Corpus Evangelicorum. With an addendum regarding his ancestral rights to Silesia (Maccabees 15:33 and following)
§. 1
I do not believe what the Pope commands, nor do I even believe everything that Luther, Beza, and Calvin have written; rather I believe the triune God, and I lay down his holy word as the revealed foundation of my faith. Whatever does not accord with it, that I shall never believe, even if it were written by an angel from heaven [Galatians 1:8].
§. 2
I also believe that, through the death and blood of Christ, through his wounds and holy merits, I will be saved, along with all pious Christians.
§. 3
And because salvation and blessedness are found in no other name, than in the saving-name of Jesus Christ alone, I thus do not like to call myself Lutheran or Papist; rather, I am, and I call myself, a Christian.
§. 4
Regarding the eternal election of individuals to receive divine grace, or predestination, it is my simple belief that God is merciful and has called all men to salvation, but that not all men will be saved. This is not from a defect in how they are called, but it is rather because of the stubborn wickedness of men that they treat the grace offered to them by God with contempt. For this reason, such as these will be damned, according to the righteous judgment of God upon the wickedness of their hearts and their sins.
§. 5
Regarding good works, I warn that wherever there is heartfelt, true faith, there must also be good works, because faith and good works can no more be separated from each other as light can be from the sun, and heat can be from fire. However, it is a mistaken view that a man could merit heaven with his good works, or in any other way, except by true faith. What use would the merits of Christ be to us, if we could save ourselves through our own good works?
§. 6
Regarding baptism and the Lord's Supper, it is my simple belief that I am washed from sin in baptism, not only by mere water, but through the true blood of my Lord Jesus Christ and adopted and received into the eternal covenant of grace between God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So too, at the Lord's Supper it is my simple belief that I am fed at the table of the grace of Jesus Christ, through whose power I partake of all the benefits that the Lord Christ gained through his holy wounds, sufferings, and death, and I that I have become an inheritor of eternal life. This is my conclusion: he who believes in God, seeks his salvation in the blood of Christ, and lives a Christian life, he can die in peace for he shall be saved.
§. 7
I allow everyone liberty regarding his faith and I testify here before the face of my God that I want to live and die in this simple confession of faith. As to whether or not I am cold, hot, or lukewarm [Revelation 3:16], I entrust myself to the judgment of all conscientious men.
§. 8
I do not share the view that the care of souls is the aim of Catholic priests. From experience, I have learned that they do everything, not as much for the honor of God and the salvation of men as they do merely for their own honor and to gain respect from men.
§. 9
I have no small objection to being called a Papist, a Lutheran, or a Calvinist. According to the mere customs and opinions of the world, one cannot proceed to be called simply a Christian, but must also belong to a church and adhere to its confession. Therefore, as I must confess my faith, and because the pure, unadulterated, reformed religion agrees the most with my religion, so I can call myself reformed, after the folly of this world. Nevertheless, I do not see how my confession of faith, to which no one else subscribes, should place me in any conflict with the pure unadulterated religion of anyone else. I want to emphasise that being a reformed Christian is not the same as being a Calvinist. I am a reformed Christian, that is, one who is free from all doctrinal errors and believes just as I have described above, whereas a Calvinist is one who makes the teachings of Calvin the rule of his faith.
§. 10
Because Calvin was only a man, so too was he able to err. Moreover, I regard Luther and Calvin as the chosen instruments of God, who by the power of the Holy Spirit were drawn out of the darkness and shown the right path to eternal life. Yet because they were both only men, one was just as able to be mistaken as the other. Therefore, I do not believe any doctrine, except as far as it agrees with the true word of God, just as how the Apostle Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:21, “test everything and hold onto that which is good.”
Addendum
The following text was expounded upon on the second of February this year [1741] in a sermon in the royal Prussian camp. The land that we have conquered is our inheritance that we have from our fathers and it belongs to no one else. However, through violence our enemies have unjustly occupied it for a time. For this reason, we have now reclaimed for ourselves what is ours and have taken nothing that belonged to another people. Maccabees 15:33-34. To God alone be the honor.
