In spite of all these differences, these two great forms of Protestantism manifest almost the same attitude toward the Bible, and we see them changing their attitude almost at the same time and in the same direction. The theologians of the orthodox period exaggerated the authority of the Bible to such an extent that critics like Lessing could speak of Bibliolatry or Bible-worship. They extended the notion of inspiration even to the smallest details in the printed text which lay before them, with no regard for the fact that those details were late additions, sometimes even misprints, and that the various editions did not agree in these details. True scholastics as they were, they had no sense for facts but an unlimited desire for theory; the facts had to submit to the theory, and whoever would appeal to the facts against the theory was denounced as a heretic and driven out as a disreputable person. This doctrinal attitude changed when, at the end of the seventeenth century, Pietism in Germany and Methodism in England once again turned religion from ecclesiastical doctrine to personal devotion. The estimation of the Bible is not diminished--quite the contrary; yet it finds its expression not in stiff formulas of dogmatics but in beautiful hymns. Under the direction of P. J. Spener (d. 1705) people once more gather in private circles to read and to interpret the Bible; once more the students are drawn away from dead scholasticism to the living study of the Bible. To the _theologia dogmatica_ is opposed a _theologia biblica_. People begin to realise again what is the true use of the Bible, not as a text-book for dogmatic competitions and controversies, but as the divine word of comfort and exhortation, a guide to salvation, and an expression of salvation already gained. There is a beautiful tract written by A. H. Francke of Halle (d. 1727) and very often printed as a preface to the Bible in German, "A brief direction how to read the Bible for edification." It sounds thoroughly modern, as it deals not with questions of theology but entirely with piety. This attitude was again changed by the so-called rationalism. That movement, too, entered the Protestantism of Germany as well as of England and America in various forms and under various names (deism, unitarianism), but with the same tendency. It may be that it had an easier start and a wider spread in the Lutheran church of Germany. We shall speak of its influence in the next chapter. The Bible was submitted to reason or explained according to reason. The Bible was to be followed for the sake of the precepts of reason contained in it or else not at all. It was, however, the common conviction that the Bible gave the most reasonable injunctions, and whereas orthodoxy had been mostly intellectual and Pietism emotional, rationalism by its moral strictness helped the Bible to retain its influence on daily life.