[p. 570]
|570| by force, as indeed they have never thirsted very much for the martyr’s crown. And that proselytising is no longer the system of a court has also in part freed them from the former mortal dread that this their faith might be taken from them by cunning and their conscience secretly conjured out of their pocket. The length of time alone has given them more confidence and assurance in the possession of the truth. It has long since ceased to be heard of that the Catholic confessor was regarded by the Imperial Diet as a puissance and that a demand could have been made on the Emperor about this on the part of the Imperial Diet.
If Berlin private writers have wished to reawaken this mortal dread among the Protestants by the dreadful noise of Jesuit-sniffing, such a thing is not only no longer a matter for the cabinet, no object of deliberations of the Imperial Diet, but appears merely as a silliness or else an outburst of a most narrow interest, of discord among the branches of the order of Freemasons.
Another interest was the rescue of what was otherwise called German freedom against what was called universal monarchy or afterwards also the oriental system.
Since for ten years the whole of Europe has fixed its attention on the terrible struggle of a people for freedom, and the whole of Europe has been in universal movement on that account, it cannot be otherwise [than] that the concepts of freedom have undergone a change and [have] been purified from their former emptiness and indeterminacy. German freedom formerly meant nothing other than the independence of the estates from the Emperor, [that is:] either slavery and despotism – or the abolition of the bond of the state; the older times knew nothing third.
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