e Theologie. 1871, p. 181
ff.]

[Footnote 8: In Catholicism, the impulse which proceeded from Augustine
has finally proved powerless to break the traditional conception of
Christianity, as the Council of Trent and the decrees of the Vatican
have shewn. For that very reason the development of the Roman Catholic
Church doctrine belongs to the history of dogma. Protestantism must,
however, under all circumstances be recognised as a new thing, which
indeed in none of its phases has been free from contradictions.]

[Footnote 9: Here then begins the ecclesiastical theology which takes as
its starting-point the finished dogma it strives to prove or harmonise,
but very soon, as experience has shewn, loses its firm footing in such
efforts and so occasions new crises.]

[Footnote 10: Weizsaecker, Apostolic Age, Vol. I. p. 123. "Christianity
as religion is absolutely inconceivable without theology; first of all,
for the same reasons which called forth the Pauline theology. As a
religion it cannot be separated from the religion of its founder, hence
not from historical knowledge. And as Monotheism and belief in a world
purpose, it is the religion of reason with the inextinguishable impulse
of thought. The first gentile Christians therewith gained the proud
consciousness of a gnosis." But of ecclesiastical Christianity which
rests on dogma ready made, as produced by an earlier epoch, this
conception holds good only in a very qualified way; and of the vigorous
Christian piety of the earliest and of every period, it may also be said
that it no less feels the impulse to think against reason than with
reason.]

[Footnote 11: In this sense it is correct to class dogmatic theology as
historical theology, as Schleiermacher has done. If we maintain that for
practical reasons it must be taken out of the province of historical
theology, then we must make it part of practical theology. By dogmatic
theology here, we understand the exposition of Christianity in the form
of Church doctrine, as it has been shaped since the second century. As
distinguished from it, a branch of theological study must be conceived
which harmonises the historical exposition of the Gospel with the
general state of knowledge of the time. The Church can as little
dispense with such a discipline as there can be a Christianity which
does not account to itself for its basis and spiritual contents.]

[Footnote 12: See Eusebius' preface to his Church History. Eusebius in