FREDERICK WILLIAM KING OF PRUSSIA 

*  Issued an Edict supporting the church establishment, but at the same time allowing
    perfect freedom of thinking and conversing to the professors of every Christian faith,
    provided it was enjoyed without disturbing the general peace, orany encroachment
    on the rights of those already supported by law. His announcement was attacked
    from all hands, and criticisms, satires, and threatenings poured in from every quarter.
    His Edict was called "an unjustifyable tyranny over the conscience of men", the
    dogmas supported by it were called absurd superstitions; the King's private
    character and his opinions in religious matters were treated with little reverence and
    were ridiculed and scandalously abused. Then after flatly denying that the Prince of
    any country had the smallest right to proscribe, or even direct the faith of his
    subjects, they extended their discussions to the rights of Princes in general; They then
    made an attack in form on the Constitutions of the German confederacy, and after the
    usual approaches, they set up the standard of universal citizenship. The most daring
    of these attacks was a collection of anonymous letters on the Constitution of the
    Prussian States. This was thought to be the composition of Mirabeau. The Monarch
    was declared to be a tyrant, the people are addressed as a parcel of tame wretches
    crouching under oppression. The people of Silecia are represented as still in worse
    condition and are repeatedly called to rouse themselves and to rise up and assert their
    rights. The King is told, that there is a combination of philosophers, who are leagued
    together in defense of truth and reason, and which no power can withstand; that they
    are to be found in every country and are connected by mutual and solemn engagement,
    and will put in practice every mean of attack. Enlightening instruction was the general
    cry among the writers. The triumph of reason over error, the overthrow of superstition
    and slavish fear, freedom from religion and political prejudices, and the establishment
    of liberty and equality, the natural and unalienable rights of man, were the topics of
    general declamation; And it was openly maintained, that secret societies, where the
    communication of sentiment should be free from every restraint, was the most effectual
    means for instructing and enlightening the world. (Bk-42, P. 50-52)