ith
the Catholic type of religion, as a new conception, and which indeed
draws support from the old dogmas, but changes their original
significance materially and formally. What this conception was may still
be ascertained from those writings received by the Church, the
Protestant symbols of the 16th century, in which the larger part of the
traditionary dogmas are recognised as the appropriate expression of the
Christian religion, nay, as the Christian religion itself.[2]
Accordingly, it can neither be maintained that the expression of the
Christian faith in the form of dogmas is abolished in the Protestant
Churches--the very acceptance of the Catholic canon as the revealed
record of faith is opposed to that view--nor that its meaning has
remained absolutely unchanged.[3] The history of dogma has simply to
recognise this state of things, and to represent it exactly as it lies
before us in the documents.

But the point to which the historian should advance here still remains
an open question. If we adhere strictly to the definition of the idea of
dogma given above, this much is certain, that dogmas were no longer set
up after the Formula of Concord, or in the case of the Reformed Church,
after the decrees of the Synod of Dort. It cannot, however, be
maintained that they have been set aside in the centuries that have
passed since then; for apart from some Protestant National and
independent Churches, which are too insignificant and whose future is
too uncertain to be taken into account here, the ecclesiastical
tradition of the 16th century, and along with it the tradition of the
early Church, have not been abrogated in authoritative form. Of course,
changes of the greatest importance with regard to doctrine have appeared
everywhere in Protestantism from the 17th century to the present day.
But these changes cannot in any sense be taken into account in a history
of dogma, because they have not as yet attained a form valid for the
Church. However we may judge of these changes, whether we regard them as
corruptions or improvements, or explain the want of fixity in which the
Protestant Churches find themselves, as a situation that is forced on
them, or the situation that is agreeable to them and for which they are
adapted, in no sense is there here a development which could be
described as history of dogma.

These facts would seem to justify those who, like Thomasius and Schmid,
carry the history of dogma in Protestantism t