[120] difference what faith a man professes so long as he is loyal to the State.  His toleration indeed is not complete.  He was much influenced by the writings of his contemporary Locke, and he excepts from the benefit of toleration the same classes which Locke excepted.

Besides the influence of the jurists, we may note that the Pietistic movement—­a reaction of religious enthusiasm against the formal theology of the Lutheran divines—­was animated by a spirit favourable to toleration; and that the cause was promoted by the leading men of letters, especially by Lessing, in the second half of the eighteenth century.

But perhaps the most important fact of all in hastening the realization of religious liberty in Germany was the accession of a rationalist to the throne of Prussia, in the person of Frederick the Great.  A few months after his accession (1740) he wrote in the margin of a State paper, in which a question of religious policy occurred, that every one should be allowed to get to heaven in his own way.  His view that morality was independent of religion and therefore compatible with all religions, and that thus a man could be a good citizen—­the only thing which the State was entitled to demand—­whatever faith he might profess, led to the logical consequence of complete religious liberty.  Catholics

[121] were placed on an equality with Protestants, and the Treaty of Westphalia was violated by the extension of full toleration to all the forbidden sects.  Frederick even conceived the idea of introducing Mohammedan settlers into some parts of his realm.  Contrast England under George III, France under Louis XV, Italy under the shadow of the Popes.  It is an important fact in history, which has hardly been duly emphasized, that full religious liberty was for the first time, in any country in modern Europe, realized under a free-thinking ruler, the friend of the great “blasphemer” Voltaire.

The policy and principles of Frederick were formulated in the Prussian Territorial Code of 1794, by which unrestricted liberty of conscience was guaranteed, and the three chief religions, the Lutheran, the Reformed, and the Catholic, were placed on the same footing and enjoyed the same privileges.  The system is “jurisdictional”; only, three Churches here occupy the position which the Anglican Church alone occupies in England.  The rest of Germany did not begin to move in the direction pointed out by Prussia until, by one of the last acts of the Holy Roman Empire (1803), the Westphalian settlement had been modified.  Before the foundation of the new Empire (1870), freedom was established throughout Germany.

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In Austria, the Emperor Joseph II issued an Edict of Toleration in 1781, which may be considered a broad measure for a Catholic State at that time.  Joseph was a sincere Catholic, but he was not impervious to the enlightened ideas of his age; he was an admirer of Frederick, and his edict was prompted by a genuinely tolerant spirit, such as had not inspired the English Act of 1689.  It extended only to the Lutheran and Reformed sects and the communities of the Greek Church which had entered into union with Rome, and it was of a limited kind.  Religious liberty was not established till 1867.