Note 1856 — Chapter XXXIV

P. 896. Harnack takes great care to prevent his criticism of Luther giving rise to any impression that he himself is favourably disposed or indifferent towards Catholic dogma and Catholic life. He is shocked at the attitude of Erasmus, the defender of the Catholic view of man’s free will even under Divine Grace, and declares his Diatribe against the “servum arbitrium” a “profoundly irreligious work,” whereas Luther “had restored religion to religion” (see above, vol. ii., p. 292, n. 4).—He asks: “What does original sin represent to Catholics?” (“Dogmengesch.,” 34, p. 749), as though Catholic dogma discarded it. He mocks at the “whole, half and quarter dogmas” of Catholics (ib., p. 764) and at their handbooks of theology (p. 763). The Catholic “system of religion,” so Harnack teaches, gave rise to “a perversion of the moral principles” (p. 749); “this system still works disaster both in theology and in ethics.... Since the 17th century the imparting of forgiveness of sins has been made a regular art.” “But conscience is able to discover God even in its idol” (ib.). In other passages he places “devotion to the Sacred Heart” and “Mariolatry” on a par with the veneration of idols, though he admits that in Catholics “the Christian sense is not actually stifled by their idols” (p. 748). Only in these devotions and in the anxiety-breeding confessional does piety still live (ib.).