IV.

The prejudice of our Protestant Churches in favour of German
Theological Faculties proceeded on the assumption that German
Protestantism was identical with Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. Surely
that strange assumption does little credit to the spiritual insight of
our divines. German Protestantism has absolutely nothing in common
with Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. For whatever may have been adduced
against British and American Nonconformity, it must be admitted that
at least Anglo-Saxon Nonconformity was generally what it professed to
be. Anglo-Saxon Nonconformity actually did refuse to conform,
Anglo-Saxon Protestantism did actually protest. The separation between
Church and State was a fundamental principle of Anglo-Saxon policy,
and that separation was no ideal platonic theory. Nonconformists gave
up their emoluments, they again and again risked their lives in
defence of their principles. In defence of their principles tens of
thousands migrated to distant climes.

For that very reason Anglo-Saxon Nonconformity has rendered
inestimable service to political liberty. German Protestantism has
never rendered a single service to political liberty, for the simple
reason that its political practice has been consistently the reverse.
So far from Lutheran Protestantism being based on the separation of
Church and State, it was based on the confusion of spiritual and
temporal power. That confusion began with the very earliest days of
Lutheranism. Lutherans are inclined to depreciate the personality and
activity of John Huss, the great Slav reformer, because, judged from
worldly standards, John Huss seems to have been a failure. As a matter
of fact, the Slav reformer was the ideal spiritual hero. The Teutonic
reformer was in many ways a time-server. To Luther must be traced the
principle that spiritual allegiance must follow temporal allegiance,
that the subjects must follow the creed of their Prince. That belief
was expressed in the Protestant motto, _Cujus regio illius religio_,
and that motto even to this day accounts for the bewildering religious
geography of the German Empire.

That servile attitude of the Protestant Church to the German State has
survived to this generation; whereas the Roman Catholic Church made a
brave stand against Bismarck in the _Kulturkampf_, the Lutheran Church
has remained a docile State Church. This Erastianism is illustrated by
no one more signally than by the Pontifex Maximus of Prussian
Pr