_The Lutheran Theology._—Preachers precede theologians, and Luther (1485-1546) was preacher rather than theologian. But Melanchthon (1497-1560), “the preceptor of Germany,” as he was called, embodied the theology of the Lutheran church in his “Loci Communes” = points of doctrine common to believers (first edition Augustinian, afterwards substantially Arminian; grew out of lectures on the Epistle to the Romans). He was followed by Chemnitz (1522-1586), “clear and accurate,” the most learned of the disciples of Melanchthon. Leonhard Hutter (1563-1616), called “Lutherus redivivus,” and John Gerhard (1582-1637) followed Luther rather than Melanchthon. “Fifty years after the death of Melanchthon, Leonhard Hutter, his successor in the chair of theology at Wittenberg, on an occasion when the authority of Melanchthon was appealed to, tore down from the wall the portrait of the great Reformer, and trampled it under foot in the presence of the assemblage” (E. D. Morris, paper at the 60th Anniversary of Lane Seminary). George Calixtus (1586-1656) followed Melanchthon rather than Luther. He taught a theology which recognized the good element in both the Reformed and the Romanist doctrine and which was called “Syncretism.” He separated Ethics from Systematic Theology, and applied the analytical method of investigation to the latter, beginning with the end, or final cause, of all things, viz.: blessedness. He was followed in his analytic method by Dannhauer (1603-1666), who treated theology allegorically, Calovius (1612-1686), “the most uncompromising defender of Lutheran orthodoxy and the most drastic polemicist against Calixtus,” Quenstedt (1617-1688), whom Hovey calls “learned, comprehensive and logical,” and Hollaz († 1730). The Lutheran theology aimed to purify the _existing_ church, maintaining that what is not against the gospel is for it. It emphasized the material principle of the Reformation, justification by faith; but it retained many Romanist customs not expressly forbidden in Scripture. Kaftan, Am. Jour. Theol., 1900:716—“Because the mediæval school-philosophy mainly held sway, the Protestant theology representing the new faith was meanwhile necessarily accommodated to forms of knowledge thereby conditioned, that is, to forms essentially Catholic.”