separatist, he had no strong attachment to the church.[508]--The prayer-book of =Conrad Mel=, pastor and rector at Hersfeld in Hesse, died A.D. 1733, continues to the present day a favourite in pious families of the Reformed communion. § 169.2. =The Reformed Church in Switzerland.=--=The Helvetic Confession=, with its strict doctrine of predestination and its peculiar inspiration theory (§ 161, 3), had been indeed accepted, in A.D. 1675, by all the Reformed cantons as the absolute standard of doctrine in church and school; but this obligation was soon felt to be oppressive to the conscience, and so the Archbishop of Canterbury and the kings of England and Prussia repeatedly interceded for its abrogation. In Geneva, though vigorously opposed by a strictly orthodox minority, the _Vénérable Compagnie_ succeeded, in A.D. 1706, with the rector of the Academy at its head, J. A. Turretin, whose father had been one of the principal authors of the formula, in modifying the usual terms of subscription, _Sic sentio, sic profiteor, sic docebo, et contrarium non docebo_, into _Sic docebo quoties hoc argumentum tractandum suscipiam, contrarium non docebo, nec ore, nec calamo, nec privatim, nec publice_; and afterwards, in A.D. 1725, it was entirely set aside, and adhesion to the Scriptures of the O. and N.T., and to the catechism of Calvin, made the only obligation. More persistent on both sides was the struggle in Lausanne; yet even there it gradually lost ground, and by the middle of the century it had no longer any authority in Switzerland.--The =union efforts= made by the Prussian dynasty found zealous but unsuccessful advocates in the chancellor Pfaff of Lutheran Württemberg (§ 167, 4), and in Reformed Switzerland in J. A. Turretin of Geneva.