Prince Mirski resigned, his resignation being immediately followed by a reactionary imperial manifesto reaffirming the principle of autocracy (February 18th).
So far as the extreme claims of the tsar were concerned, neither Austria nor Prussia was willing to concede them, and both had joined with France and Great Britain in presenting, on the 12th of December 1853, an identical note at St Petersburg, drawn up at the Conference of Vienna, reaffirming the principles of the treaty of 1841.
These to the number of twenty-five the synod subscribed, and adopted a supplementary statement, reaffirming the Augustinian doctrines of corruption, human inability, prevenient grace and baptismal regeneration.
Even the Counter-Reformation, so far as it was a matter of doctrine (Council of Trent, 1545-63), took the form of reaffirming a cautious version of Augustinianism.
It contented itself with reaffirming the Nicene and Constantinopolitan creeds and the Ephesine formula of 431, and accepting, only after examination, the Christological statement contained in the Epistola Dogmatica of Leo I.
