Still their work rested upon that which had already been done by Spinoza
and Malebranche, by Hobbes and Leibnitz, by Descartes and Bayle, by
Locke and Wolff, by Voltaire and the Encyclopædists. With all of the
contrasts among these men there are common elements. There is an ever
increasing antipathy to the thought of original sin and of supernatural
revelation, there is the confidence of human reason, the trust in the
will of man, the enthusiasm for the simple, the natural, the
intelligible and practical, the hatred of what was scholastic and, above
all, the repudiation of authority.

All these elements led, toward the end of the period, to the effort at
the construction of a really rational theology. Leibnitz and Lessing
both worked at that problem. However, not until after the labours of
Kant was it possible to utilise the results of the rationalist movement
for the reconstruction of theology. If evidence for this statement were
wanting, it could be abundantly given from the work of Herder. He was
younger than Kant, yet the latter seems to have exerted but slight
influence upon him. He earnestly desired to reinterpret Christianity in
the new light of his time, yet perhaps no part of his work is so futile.


Pietism


Allusion has been made to pietism. We have no need to set forth its own
achievements. We must recur to it merely as one of the influences which
made the transition from the century of rationalism to bear, in Germany,
an aspect different from that which it bore in any other land. Pietism
had at first much in common with rationalism. It shared with the latter
its opposition to the whole administration of religion established by