accordance with the principle of Leibnitz, that the valuable elements
which are everywhere to be found in history must be sought out and
recognised. And the richness and many-sidedness of his mind qualified
him for gaining such a knowledge. But his latitudinarian dogmatic
stand-point as well as the anxiety to awaken no controversy or endanger
the gradual naturalising of a new science and culture, caused him to put
aside the most important problems of the history of dogma and devote his
attention to political Church history as well as to the more indifferent
historical questions. The opposition of two periods which he endeavoured
peacefully to reconcile could not in this way be permanently set
aside.[23] In Mosheim's sense, but without the spirit of that great man,
C.W.F. Walch taught on the subject and described the religious
controversies of the Church with an effort to be impartial, and has thus
made generally accessible the abundant material collected by the
diligence of earlier scholars.[24] Walch, moreover, in the "Gedanken von
der Geschichte der Glaubenslehre," 1756, gave the impulse that was
needed to fix attention on the history of dogma as a special discipline.
The stand-point which he took up was still that of subjection to
ecclesiastical dogma, but without confessional narrowness. Ernesti in
his programme of the year 1759. "De theologiae historicae et dogmaticae
conjungendae necessitate," gave eloquent expression to the idea that
Dogmatic is a positive science which has to take its material from
history, but that history itself requires a devoted and candid study, on
account of our being separated from the earlier epochs by a complicated
tradition.[25] He has also shewn in his celebrated "Antimuratorius" that
an impartial and critical investigation of the problems of the history
of dogma, might render the most effectual service to the polemic against
the errors of Romanism. Besides, the greater part of the dogmas were
already unintelligible to Ernesti, and yet during his lifetime the way
was opened up for that tendency in theology, which prepared in Germany
by Chr. Thomasius, supported by English writers, drew the sure
principles of faith and life from what is called reason, and therefore
was not only indifferent to the system of dogma, but felt it more and
more to be the tradition of unreason and of darkness. Of the three
requisites of a historian, knowledge of his subject, candid criticism,
and a capacity for