ABSTRACT
The genuine early Protestantism of Lutheranism and Calvinism is, as an organic whole, in spite of its anti-Catholic doctrine of salvation, entirely a Church civilization like that of the Middle Ages. Early Protestantism, in spite of its universal priesthood of believers and its principle of inwardness, has to be conceived as a strictly ecclesiastical supernaturalistic civilization resting on an immediate authority with a strictly defined sphere, distinct from the world and its interests. The older Protestantism disposed of these under the categories of "Naturalism" on the one hand, and "Fanaticism," "Enthusiasm." Free-Churchism, philologico-critical theology, the subordination of objective revelation to the practical ethico-religious content of life, an immediacy of the religious consciousness which turns the historical element into a mere means of self-stimulation, a subjectivism which makes little of cultus, ceremonial and ecclesiasticism, have since then irresistibly broken in upon the Protestant Churches, like a flood sweeping away the old landmarks.
