prove that the Reformation changed nothing save
abuses, so now the leader's liberalism was much over-stressed. It was in
view of the earlier Protestant bigotry that Lessing [Sidenote: Lessing]
apostrophized the Wittenberg professor: "Luther! thou great,
misunderstood man! Thou hast freed us from the yoke of tradition, who is
to free us from the more unbearable yoke of the letter? Who will finally
bring us Christianity such as thou thyself would now teach, such as
Christ himself would teach?"

German Robertsons, though hardly equal to the Scotch, were found in
Mosheim and Schmidt. Both wrote the history of the Protestant revolution
in the endeavor to make it all natural. In Mosheim, indeed, the devil
still appears, though in the background; Schmidt is as rational and as
fair as any German Protestant could then be.

{713}

SECTION 3. THE LIBERAL-ROMANTIC APPRECIATION. (CIRCA 1794-c. 1860)

At about the end of the eighteenth century historiography underwent a
profound change due primarily to three influences: 1. The French
Revolution and the struggle for political democracy throughout nearly a
century after 1789; 2. The Romantic Movement; 3. The rise of the
scientific spirit. The judgment of the Reformation changed
accordingly; the rather unfavorable verdict of the eighteenth century
was completely reversed. Hardly by its extremest partisans in the
Protestant camp has the importance of that movement and the character
of its leaders been esteemed so highly as it was by the writers of the
liberal-romantic school. Indeed, so little had confession to do with
this bias that the finest things about Luther and the most extravagant
praise of his work, was uttered not by Protestants, but by the Catholic
Doellinger, the Jew Heine, and the free thinkers, Michelet, Carlyle, and
Froude.

[Sidenote: The French Revolution]

The French Revolution taught men to see, or misled them into
construing, the whole of history as a struggle for liberty against
oppression. Naturally, the Reformation was one of the favorite
examples of this perpetual warfare; it was the Revolution of the
earlier age, and Luther was the great liberator, standing for the
Rights of Man against a galling tyranny.

[Sidenote: Condorcet]

The first to draw the parallel between Reformation and Revolution was
Condorcet in his noble essay on _The Advance of the Human Spirit_,
written in prison and published posthumously. Luther, said he,
punished the