Finally, an historical reminiscence, which carries us back to the religious contradictions as they existed in Germany a hundred years ago, may not be out of place. At that time Gottlieb Jakob Planck of Württemberg, Professor of Theology at Göttingen, after the lengthy and unprofitable polemics of earlier ages, made a first attempt to pave the way for a more just treatment by the Protestant party of Luther’s history and theology. In his principal work, i.e. in the six volumes of his “Geschichte der Entstehung, der Veränderung und der Bildung unseres protestantischen Lehrbegriffs” (finished in 1800), he ventured, with all the honesty of a scholar and the frankness natural to a Swabian, to break through the time-honoured custom according to which, as he says, all “those who dared even to touch on the mistakes of our reformers were stigmatised as blasphemers.” “While engaged on this work,” he declares, “I never made any attempt to forget I was a Protestant, but I hope that my personal convictions have never led me to misrepresent other people’s doctrines, or to commit any injustice or even to pass an unkind judgment. Calm impartiality is all that can be demanded.” I should like, _mutatis mutandis_, to make his words my own, and to declare that, while I, too, have never forgotten that I am a Catholic, I stand in no fear of my impartiality being impugned. I would likewise wish to appropriate the following words taken from Planck, substituting the word “Protestants” for “Catholics”: “The justice which I have thought it necessary to do to Catholics may perhaps excite some surprise, because some people can never understand one’s treating opponents with fairness.” But “I am convinced that, if my readers are scandalised, this will merely be on account of the novelty of the method. I really could not bring myself to sacrifice truth and justice to any fear of giving offence.” Planck admits, elsewhere, speaking of Lutheran history, that compliance with the demands of impartiality in respect of certain persons and events which he had to describe, was sometimes “incredibly hard,” and he proceeds: “There are circumstances where every investigator is apt to get annoyed unless indeed disinterestedness is to him a natural virtue.... It is exasperating [the present writer can vouch for this] to have to waste time and patience on certain things.” So speaks a theologian renowned among Protestants for his earnestness and kindliness.