“ In Germany it had, for a while, been assumed by the Lutherans as against the Calvinists, and when in 1817 King Frederick William III. of Prussia forcibly amalgamated the Lutheran and Reformed Churches in the new “Evangelical Church” its public use was forbidden in the Prussian dominions. It survived, however, in spite of royal decrees, but in an altered sense. It became—to quote Professor Kattenbusch—the “secular” designation of the adherents of the Reformation, the shibboleth of the “liberal” ecclesiastical and theological tendencies. ”

“ By many churchmen, too, the name of “Protestant” is accepted in what they take to be the old sense as implying repudiation of the claims of Rome, but as not necessarily involving a denial of “Catholic” doctrine or any confusion of the Church of England with non-episcopal churches at home or abroad. ”

“ Its use appears to have spread more rapidly outside Germany than in Germany itself, one cause of its popularity being that it was negative and colourless, and could thus be applied by adherents of the “old religion” to those of the “new religion,” without giving offence, on occasions when it was expedient to avoid abusive language. The designation was moreover grateful to the Reformers as connoting a certain boldness of attitude ”