1. In Prussia: The Lutheran free churches in Germany do not recognize the position of the secular ruler as supreme head of the Church, and have organized independent congregations without the aid of the State. Originating primarily in hostility to the introduction of the Union (q.v.) between the Lutheran and Reformed Churches, they do not, however, reject the State Church altogether.
The oldest and largest free church in Germany is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia, also known as Old Lutherans. It origina^ ted from the opposition to the Union, which was introduced into Prussia in 1817 and gradually carried through by 1830 (see I., ยง 1, above). Johann Gottfried Scheibel,.sesistant preacher at St. Elisabeth's in Breslau, was the leader of the opposition. He attacked the Union in his writings, from the pulpit, and at synods, and pleaded in vain to be permitted to explain to the king his scruples of conscience in a personal interview. Refusing to sign a statement of the Breslau clergy which recommended the amalgamation of the Lutherans and Reformed into one church, Scheibel was suspended from office for fourteen days. Several hundred members of Scheibel's congregation appeared before Scheibel, declaring that they would remain faithful to the Church of their fathers. The new congregation regarded itself se the continuation of the Lutheran Church hitherto legally soknowledged in'Prussi$, and asked the king to grant them a constitution. The authorities, however, saw in the new congregation only revolutionaries and dissenters, and their petitions long remained unanswered. Since Scheibel was strictly forbidden to officiate, the members of his congregation received the sacraments from Berger in Hermannsdorf, two miles from Breslau, who still used the old Lutheran agenda. When this too was forbidden, the heads of the families themselves baptized their children, and the Lord's Supper was distributed by lay elders, because of a total lack of Lutheran clergymen. In a ministerial order, dated June 13, 1831, Scheibel was required to use the new agenda, and the formation of a special Lutheran church was refused.
Meanwhile Baron von gottwitz had pleaded for the Lutherans before the king in Berlin. The king tried to remove their scruples against the agenda by the concession of the Lutheran formula of dis tribution, but he refused the formation of a dissenting church on the ground that with it the purity of the Lutheran Church within the Union was openly denied. In 1832, after being deposed from his offices in the church and the university, Scheibel left Breslau and settled in Dresden that he might advance the cause of the Lutheran Church by writing, unhindered by Prussian censorship. The former members of his congregation held meet, ings conducted by laymen, or turned to the few pastors in Silesia who had not yet adopted the new agenda.
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