§ 191.4. =John Adam Möhler.=--None of all the Catholic theologians of recent times attained the importance and influence of Möhler in his short life of forty-two years. Stimulated to seek higher scientific culture by the study mainly of Schleiermacher’s works and those of other Protestants, and putting all his rich endowments at the service of the church, he won for himself among Catholics a position like that of Schleiermacher among Protestants. His first treatise of 1825, on the unity of the church, was followed by his “Athanasius the Great,” and the work of his life, the “Symbolics” of 1832, in its ninth edition in 1884, which with the apparatus of Protestant science combats the Protestant church doctrine and presented the Catholic doctrine in such an ennobled and sublimated form, that Rome at first seriously thought of placing it in the Index. Hitherto Protestants had utterly ignored the productions of Catholic theology, but to overlook a scientific masterpiece like this would be a confession of their own weakness. And in fact, during the whole course of the controversy between the two churches, no writing from the Catholic camp ever caused such commotion among the Protestants as this. The ablest Protestant replies are those of Nitsch [Nitzsch] and Baur. In 1835 Möhler left Tübingen for Munich; but sickness hindered his scientific labours, and, in 1838, in the full bloom of manhood, the Catholic church and Catholic science had to mourn his death. He can scarcely be said to have formed a school; but by writings, addresses, and conversation he produced a scientific ferment in the Catholic theology of Germany, which continued to work until at last completely displaced by the scholasticism reintroduced into favour by the Jesuits.