Page:History of Freedom.djvu/423

 DÖLLINGER'S HISTORICAL WORK 379

vielen Punkten hatte Luther immer Recht, wenn er yon Missbräuchen der Römischen Gewalt spricht, dass dort alles feil sei.- Tetzel verfuhr ohnediess auf die ernpörendste Weise, und übertrieb, rnit einer religiösen Rohheit und einem Stumpfsinn ohne Gleichen, das Bedenkliche der Sache auf die äusserste Spitze. The disagreement which made itself felt from time to time behveen the famous colleagues was not removed when one of them wished the other to change his confessor before his last illness. Möhler claimed the supreme chair of ecclesiastical history as a matter of course, and by right of seniority. He apologised for venturing to supersede one who had gained distinction in that lecture-room, but he hinted that he himself was the least fit of the two for dogmatics. Ich habe mich für die historischen Fächer entschieden. Ihr Opfer, wenn Sie Dogmatik lesen, anerkenne ich, aber ich bitte das meinige nicht zu übersehen. 'Velcher Entschluss, ich rnöchte sagen, welche U nverschämtheit ist es, nach Ihnen und bei Ihren Lebzeiten, Kirchengeschichte in M ünchen zu doziren ? Döllinger took that branch for the time, but he never afterwards taught theology proper. As Möhler, who was essentially a theologian, deserted divinity to compose inferior treatises on the gnostics and the false decretals, Döllinger, by choice and vocation a divine, having religion as the purpose of his life, judged that the loftier function, the more spiritual service, was historical teaching. The problem is to know how it came to pass that a man who was eminently intelligent and perspicuous in the exposition of doctrines, but who, in narrative, description, and knowledge of character, was neither first nor second, resolved that his mission was history. In early life he had picked up chance copies of Baronius and Petavius, the pillars of historic theology; but the motives of his choice lay deeper. Church history had long been the weakest point and the cause of weakness among the Catholics, and it was the rising strength of the German Protestants. Therefore it \vas the post of danger; and it gave to a theologian the command