be
alleged with any show of plausibility. But even here there was no
speaking of untruth, even if [Greek: ank][a disputed reading] be
regarded as the right reading." See on this passage Meyer in his
_Commentary_, and Westcott in _The Bible Commentary_.]

Rothe names Marheineke, DeWette, von Ammon, Herbart, Hartenstein,
Schwartz, Harless, and Reinhard, as agreeing in the main with his
position; while as opposed to it he mentions Kant, Fichte, Krause,
Schleiermacher, von Hirscher, Nitzsch, Flatt, and Baumgarten-Crusius.
But this is by no means a question to be settled by votes; and not one
of the writers cited by Rothe as of his mind, in this controversy,
has anything new to offer in defense of a position in such radical
disagreement with the teachings of the Bible, and with the moral sense
of the race, on this point, as that taken by Rothe. In his ignoring
of the nature and the will of God as the basis of an argument in this
matter, and in his arbitrary and unauthorized definition of a lie
(with its inclusion of the claim that the deliberate utterance of a
statement known to be false, for the express purpose of deceiving the
one to whom it is spoken, is not necessarily and inevitably a lie),
Rothe stands quite pre-eminent. Wuttke says, indeed, of Rothe's
treatment of ethics: "Morality [as he sees it] is an independent
something alongside of piety, and rests by no means on piety,--is
entirely co-ordinate to and independent of it."[1] Yet so great is the
general influence of Rothe, that various echoes of his arguments for
falsehoods in love are to be found in subsequent English and American
utterances on Christian ethics.

[Footnote 1: Wuttke's _Christian Ethics_ (Lacroix's transl.), sec. 48.]

Contemporaneous with Richard Rothe, and fully his peer in intellectual
force and Christ-likeness of spirit, stands Isaac August Dorner. Dr.
Schaff says of him:[1] "Dr. Dorner was one of the profoundest and
most learned theologians of the nineteenth century, and ranks with
Schleiermacher, Neander, Nitzsch, Julius Mueller, and Richard Rothe. He
mastered the theology of Schleiermacher and the philosophy of Hegel,
appropriated the best elements of both, infused into them a positive
evangelical faith and a historic spirit;" and as a lecturer,
especially "on dogmatics and ethics ... he excelled all his
contemporaries." And to this estimate of him Professor Mead adds:[2]
"Even one who knows Dorner merely as the theological writer, will