rictness with
which they have held to the doctrine of imputation, which is
incompatible with any system of moral theology. In other countries it
was the same; where that doctrine prevailed, there was no ethical
system, and where ethics were cultivated, the doctrine was abandoned.
For a century after Luther, no moral theology was written in Germany.
The first who attempted it, Calixtus, gave up the Lutheran doctrine. The
Dutch historians of Calvinism in the Netherlands record, in like manner,
that there the dread of a collision with the dogma silenced the teaching
of ethics both in literature and at the universities. Accordingly, all
the great Protestant moralists were opposed to the Protestant doctrine
of justification. In Scotland the intellectual lethargy of churchmen is
not confined to the department of ethics; and Presbyterianism only
prolongs its existence by suppressing theological writing, and by
concealing the contradictions which would otherwise bring down on the
clergy the contempt of their flocks.

Whilst Scotland has clung to the original dogma of Calvin, at the price
of complete theological stagnation, the Dutch Church has lost its
primitive orthodoxy in the progress of theological learning. Not one of
the several schools into which the clergy of the Netherlands are divided
has remained faithful to the five articles of the synod of Dortrecht,
which still command so extensive an allegiance in Great Britain and
America. The conservative party, headed by the statesman and historian,
Groen van Prinsterer, who holds fast to the theology which is so closely
interwoven with the history of his country and with the fortunes of the
reigning house, and who invokes the aid of the secular arm in support of
pure Calvinism, is not represented at the universities. For all the
Dutch divines know that the system cannot be revived without sacrificing
the theological activity by which it has been extinguished. The old
confessional writings have lost their authority; and the general synod
of 1854 decided that, "as it is impossible to reconcile all opinions and
wishes, even in the shortest confession, the Church tolerates divergence
from the symbolical books." The only unity, says Groen, consists in
this, that all the preachers are paid out of the same fund. The bulk of
the clergy are Arminians or Socinians. From the spectacle of the Dutch
Church, Dr. Doellinger comes to the following result: first, that without
a code of doctri