I think that either my father knew something disadvantageous as to the past history of the chaplain or else that he took a personal dislike to him. We certainly never went to the dull Lutheran services. I can, therefore, say as little about the pastors as did my father. Baron Pöllnitz complained that in his time they were so given to scurrilous railing against Papists and Calvinists, that the King was compelled to issue an order requiring them to preach the Word of God, and seek the edification of their people, and not to labour to set them by the ears.
Certainly Justification by Faith alone has had a demoralizing effect in Saxony. The pastors should look after the morals of their people in place of raging over controversial points. The Court church is in the hands of the Catholics, but the rest of the churches are given over to Lutherans, and are sparsely attended. Definite, dogmatic religion has rapidly declined in Saxony. The Athanasian Creed has been discarded throughout Germany, the Nicene Creed has fallen into disuse, and in Saxony even the Apostles' Creed has had to make way for a substitute drawn up by Dr. Rosenmuller, who was superintendent of the clergy of Leipzig.[1]
" . . . my work," wrote Tristram Shandy, "is of a species by itself; two contrary motions are introduced into it, and reconciled, which were thought to be at variance with each other. In a word, my work is digressive, and it is progressive too, and at the same time. . . . Digressions, incontestibly, are the sunshine; they are the life, the soul of reading; take them out of this book, for instance, you might as well take the book along with them."
Were I to limit what I have to say to statistics about myself at an early age of nine and ten, I would have to record how many feet and inches I stood against the door-post; how much I measured round the waist; what I weighed (before dinner); how many times I had my hair cut, and when I was breeched; then, as Tristram Shandy says, "one cold, eternal winter would reign in every page" of my Reminiscences. I venture, accordingly, to break away from a dry record of infantile experiences, of no
- ↑ H. Crabbe Robinson, who was in Germany from 1800 to 1805, and was in Saxony, possessed the same opinion of Lutheranism there as degenerated into Socinianism. (Diary, 1872, i. 51–2.)
