Note 1 — Chapter XVII · FRENCH FREETHOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

When two generations of Protestant strife had turned to naught the intellectual promise of the Reformation, and much of the ground first won by it had lapsed to Catholicism, the general forward movement of European thought availed to set up in Germany as elsewhere a measure of critical unbelief. There is abundant evidence that the Lutheran clergy not only failed to hold the best intelligence of the country with them, but in large part fell into personal disrepute.1 “The scenes of clerical immorality,” says an eminently orthodox historian, “are enough to chill one’s blood even at the distance of two centuries.”2 A Church Ordinance of 1600 acknowledges information to the effect that a number of clergymen and schoolmasters are guilty of “whoredom and fornication,” and commands that “if they are notoriously guilty they shall be suspended.” Details are preserved of cases of clerical drunkenness and ruffianism; and the women of the priests’ families do not escape the pillory.3 Nearly a century later, Arnold resigned his professorship at Giessen “from despair of producing any amendment in the dissolute habits of the students.”4 It is noted that “the great moral decline of the clergy was confined chiefly to the Lutheran Church. The Reformed [Calvinistic] was earnest, pious, and aggressive”5—the usual result of official hostility.