“Hence, when the injunction to ‘do new work’ is thrust upon the theologian, it is almost a direct incentive to heretical innovation. The animus which this trait of the German erudition has imported into theological study, is poisonous to orthodoxy. It begets an endless and ever restless spirit of innovation. To the current inquiring mind, the doctrines which are accepted and established are presumptively obnoxious because they are accepted. The Protestant principle is that nothing is to command our faith merely because supported by human prescription. Educated Germany is prone to push the truth to this extreme: that because a proposition happens to be supported by the prescription of the day, therefore it is not to be believed.” — Robert L. Dabney, The Influence of the German University System on Theological Literature (1881)