Page:French Calvinism, German Lutheranism and the War.pdf/7

 which even then was producing giants like Michael Angelo and Rephael, Lionardo and Titian, Luther could only see the moral corruption of an effete Church. With all the elemental passion of his German soul, he was repelled by and he rebelled against what he assumed to be something essentially pagan, something inherently evil.

We are therefore justified in saying, that Luther's rebellion against Rome was primarily the rebellion of the Teutonic Barbarian against a Latin civilisation which he did not understand.

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My second thesis is that Lutheranism is the insurrection of the national spirit in religion against the universal spirit. I need hardly tell my audience that to speak of a national religion is a negation in terms. Religion cannot be nationalised, it cannot be included within territorial barriers. God Almighty cannot be appropriated - although as a matter of fact He has again and again been appropriated - by one particular nation, and although for four hundred years he has been claimed by the Teuton as belonging to him, as being "der alte Deutsche Gott" the old German/