Page:French Calvinism, German Lutheranism and the War.pdf/13

 -12- religions are equally true to the believer, they are equally false to the unbeliever, they are equally useful to the statesmen."

It may be admitted then that historically Lutheranism did produce in Germany a certain amount of toleration. But it was only a negative toleration and it was a very precarious toleration. And one who takes the trouble of studying tne inner history of the German universities and of the German churches will discover constantly recurring cases of intolerance.

Let me quote only three typical illustrations.

In 1783, Kant published his epoch making treatise: Religion within the limits of pure reason. It was the outcome of thirty yeers of meditation. The book wes prohibited by the pietist politicians who were then supreme in Berlin and Emmanuel Kant submitted to the Caesaro papism of Prussia.

A generation after Kant, seven professors of the University of Goettingen, including Jacob Grimm the Father of German philology and German folklore, were dismissed because their ideas were not acceptable