638 HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 



Rationalistic ecclesiastical history, though claiming to be inde- 

 pendent of dogmatic prejudices, nevertheless obeyed some doctrinal 

 ideas. One while, especially in England, it aimed chiefly to identify 

 true Christian religion with natural religion, and to denounce, as 

 sacerdotal and theological adulterations, fortuitous or voluntary, 

 all doctrines or institutions of the churches which did not agree with 

 that so-called natural religion, that is, with their own religious 

 philosophy. 1 Another while, especially in Germany, it endeavored 

 to show, not only that all things in the history of the church must 

 be explained in a way satisfactory for reason, which is indeed 

 a postulate of scientific history, but still more, that all teachings 

 of true Christianity, supernatural as well as natural, were perfectly 

 reasonable. 2 



Rationalistic historians of the eighteenth century have done a very 

 useful work of clearing away. Their criticism was short-sighted; they 

 do not go to the bottom; the proper sense of religion is not very 

 sound in their works and their philosophy of history is very poor. 

 However, they dealt a blow to the traditional dogmatic conception of 

 ecclesiastical history, after which it could not rise again on scientific 

 ground. Their work will be taken up later on by men of a freer spirit 

 and of a less vulgar common sense, like Schrockh, Standlin, Spittler, 

 Planck, and later on still, by Gieseler and Hase, whose sense of re- 

 ligion and feeling of historical continuance fired the scholarship, 

 whilst their respect for the texts and the documents secured the 

 soundness of their work. 



But let us not anticipate. Between the rationalistic historians of 

 the eighteenth century and those famous masters of ecclesiastical 

 history in the nineteenth century, the spiritual world had been 

 renovated by a great and teeming revolution of idealist philosophy. 

 Ecclesiastical history, indeed, like every science of information, 

 excludes all party and dogmatic or philosophical prejudice. Its sole 

 allowable aim must be to reconstitute men and facts of the past 

 in their objective reality and to teach how events proceed the one 

 from the other. But experience makes out that historical investi- 

 gations must be led by certain principles to be productive, and it is 

 philosophy which inspires those principles. After all, we observe 

 that in our studies we are indebted for all progresses to certain 



1 So, for instance, in the works of Lord Herbert of Cher bury and Lord Shaftes- 

 bury, of Matthew Tindal, Toland, Collins, and of the historians of Locke's school. 

 Hume's skepticism had most fatal consequences for rationalism and favored a re- 

 vival of authoritative faith for practical use. 



2 See the works of Semler, J. A. Ernesti, Michaelis, Walch, Mosheim, etc. 

 The last one has sometimes been called "the father of ecclesiastical history." 

 We ought also to take into account the influence of the "pietism" of Spener's 

 school. Although not favorable to scientific study of religion, it conduced to throw 

 off the yoke of orthodox intellectualism by urging the importance of piety to the 

 prejudice of the right doctrine. The pietists became anxious to know the history 

 of religious life and feelings, hitherto too much neglected. 



