In the New Testament, the writings of F. C. Baur have opened up a new method of investigating the canon, which promises important and lasting results. Proceeding in the track of Semler, he prosecuted his researches into primitive Christianity with great acuteness and singular power of combination. Though his separation of Petrine and Pauline christianity is not new, he has applied it in ways which neither Toland nor Morgan was competent to manage. These writers perceived the difference between the leading principle of the twelve and that of Paul, they had some far-seeing glimpses of the origin and differences of the New Testament writings,(384) but they propounded them in an unsystematic way along with untenable conjectures. It was reserved for the Tübingen professor to elaborate the hypothesis of an Ebionite or primitive christianity in contra-distinction from a Pauline, applying it to the origin and constitution of christian literature; in a word, to use a _tendenz-kritik_ for opening up the genius of the sacred writings as well as the stages of early christianity out of which they arose. The head of the Tübingen school, it is true, has carried out the antagonism between the Petrine and Pauline christians too rigorously, and invaded the authenticity of the sacred writings to excess; for it is hazardous to make a theory extremely stringent to the comparative neglect of modifying circumstances, which, though increasing the difficulty of criticism, contribute to the security of its processes. Yet he has properly emphasized internal evidence; and many of his conclusions about the books will stand. He has thrown much light on the original relations of parties immediately after the origin of Christianity, and disturbed an organic unity of the New Testament which had been merely _assumed_ by traditionalists. The best Introductions to the New Testament must accept them to some extent. The chief characteristic of the school is the application of historic criticism to the genesis of the New Testament writings, irrespective of tradition—a striving to discover the circumstances or tendencies out of which the books originated. Baur’s _tendenz_-principle judiciously applied cannot but produce good results.