With regard to religious opinions, Protestantism in Germany has not been split into a multitude of new, various, and jarring sects, as in other countries, such as England, Holland, and North America, where it was exclusively or for the most part predominant; for even the Hernhutters were not properly a sect. It is only very recently the Pietists have formed themselves into a party opposed to the Rationalists--but their doctrines are not sufficiently precise and determinate to constitute them a sect, according to the proper signification of that word. Pietism consists rather in a deep, though vague, sentiment of religion, and in a fusion of various and opposite religious views and doctrines. Undoubtedly this moral fusion of opinions, as well as that outward complication of the interests and doctrines of Catholicism and Protestantism, and of so many private views in matters of religion, produced many wild and fanciful abortions peculiar to the age; many pure idiosyncrasies among the Protestants, whether they made half advances towards the Catholic church, or pursued the opposite path of absolute individualism--or among the Catholics still more monstrous amalgamations--Protestant or semi-Protestant innovations in doctrine aimed at by individuals--innovations which originated in the principles of Illuminism, and were countenanced by the well-known policy of certain sovereigns. Much as we may feel disposed, or are even bound to oppose with all our might, such moral abortions, when the question regards their practical operation--yet I do not think we ought to pronounce an absolutely unfavourable judgment on their general intellectual tendency. The real primary evil of the eighteenth century--an utter indifference for all religious doctrines and concerns,--the dangerous spirit of complete indifferentism, from whose contagion many purely Catholic countries did not escape, took less strong hold in Germany, and obtained less general diffusion than in any other country. A deep, indelible religious feeling still continued to characterize the German nation, and to give a tone to its philosophical speculations. We should not pay too much attention to some transient and partial paradoxes:--I well recollect the words of an old, very experienced, pious, and enlightened ecclesiastic, who well understood the German character, and who used to say; "If we don't give a religion to the Germans, they will make one out for themselves."