Get Rid of Your Own Popery First

Schaf identifies rationalism as a problem that has infected both Protestant and Roman Churches. Of course keeping in mind that Schaf was writing in the mid nineteenth century, this is still fairly prophetic as things have tended. But whatever the case, he suggests that whatever common enemies and problems we have ought to be solved first. Before taking aim at eachother there ought first to be a concerted effort to eradicate common philosophical problems. He says, "Luther and Calvin, if they should make their appearance now, would act very differently, in the altered state of things, from what they did three hundred year ago. Their main zeal would be directed no doubt against such purely negative pseudo-protestantism [Protestant Rationalism], as something altogether worse than popery itself..." And turning to the Protestant problem with rationalism he exhorts us: "Let us first with united strength expel the devil from our own temple, into which he has stolen under the passport of our excessive toleration, before we proceed to exorcise and cleanse the dome of St. Peter." (p. 104-5)