34 8
ESSAYS ON LIBERTY
Protestants; for a scientific Protestant theology exists only in Germany. The German Protestant Church is emphatically a Church of theologians; they are its only authority, and, through the princes, its supreme rulers, I ts founder never really divested himself of the character of a professor, and the Church has never emancipated itself from the lecture-room: it teaches, and then dis- appears. Its hymns are not real hymns, but versified theological dissertations, or sermons in rhyme. Born of the union of princes with professors, it retains the distinct likeness of both its parents, not altogether harmoniously blended; and \vhen it is accused of vlorldliness, of paleness of thought, of being a police institution rather than a Church, that is no more than to say that the child cannot deny its parentage. Theology has become believing in Germany, but it is very far from being orthodox. No writer is true to the literal teaching of the symbolical books, and for a hundred years the pure doctrine of the sixteenth century has never been heard. No German divine could submit to the authority of the early articles and formulas \vithout hypocrisy and violence to his conscience, and yet they have nothing else to appeal to. That the doctrine of justification by faith only is the principal substance of the symbolical writings, the centre of the antagonism against the Catholic Church, all are agreed. The neo-Lutherans proclaim it cc the essence and treasure of the Reformation," "the doctrine of which every man must have a clear and vivid comprehension who would know anything of Christianity," "the banner which must be unfurled at least once in every sermon," "the permanent death that gna\vs the bones, of Catholics," "the standard by which the \vhole of the Gospel must be interpreted, and every obscure passage explained," and yet this article of a standing or falling Church, on the strength of \vhich Protestants call themselves evangelical, is accepted by scarcely one of their more eminent divines, even among the Lutherans. The progress of biblical studies is too great to admit of a return to the doctrine which has been
