YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

AN

HISTORICAL ENQUIRY,
8fc. fyc.

HISTORICAL ENQUIRY
INTO THE
PROBABLE CAUSES
OF THE
RATIONALIST CHARACTER
LATELY PREDOMINANT
IN THE
Cfjeotogs of <&evmmu.
TO WHICH IS PREFIXED,
A LETTER FROM PROFESSOR SACK,
UPON THE
REV. H. J. ROSE'S DISCOURSES ON GERMAN PROTESTANTISM:
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN.

BY E. B. PUSEY, M.A.
FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD.

LONDON:
PRINTED FOR C. & J. RIVINGTON,
st. Paul's church-yard,
and waterloo-place, pall-mall.
J£2&

TO THE
RIGHT REV. FATHER IN GOD

ERRATUM.— Page xii.
For the words, " it must be confessed somewhat too vehement impulse
given by the British Bible Society " read " the truly praiseworthy impulse "
Sfcc. The Translator imagined the words of the German MS. to be " ein
wenig zu grei/enden Anregung," &c. whereas he finds from the Author that
these stood "me genug zu preisenden." Those acquainted with the German
character will recognize the similarity of most of the letters which led to the
mistake. The rest of the translation has been approved of by the Author.

T919K

TO THE
RIGHT REV. FATHER IN GOD
CHARLES,
LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD,
IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF ADVANTAGES DERIVED
FROM HIS PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ASSISTANCE
IN THE COURSE OF THEOLOGICAL STUDY,
AND FROM THE CONTINUED KINDNESS OF PRIVATE INTERCOURSE,
Cf)e follototng $f)£rt0
ARE INSCRIBED
WITH THE SINCEREST GRATITUDE AND RESPECT.

PREFACE.

The relation which the following sheets bear to a
work, which has in this country met with consi
derable approbation, seems to require that a brief
explanation be given of the circumstances in
which they originated. Mr. Rose's Essay has un
questionably, through the number of facts which
it stated, had the merit of introducing the subject
of German Theology more extensively before the
English, and of furnishing a considerable number
of data, from which the character of the late Ra
tionalist Theology might in itself be appreciated.
In the. mode, however, in which these facts were
presented, the Author missed that arrangement of
the facts themselves, through which alone it be
comes possible to trace the connexion of causes
and effects through the whole course of the sys
tem described ; as well as a due appreciation of
the intrinsic and relative importance of those
facts. To some of the innovations a degree of
weight seemed to be attached, which their rela?

VHl PREFACE.
tion to the whole compass of the Christian system
did not appear to justify : other attempts, which
were in themselves justly stigmatized, had either
expired as soon as they came into being, or even
if they did enjoy a short-lived existence, were,
from their nature and the character of their
authors, as little entitled to notice, as the ephe
meral and contemptible productions of a Carlile
or a Hone. It was indeed almost unavoidable,
that, without enquiry in the country itself, mis
takes must frequently be committed as to the
real influence of any instrument, whether a lite
rary production or an institution. The Christian
Evidence Society in this country has appeared at
first sight to foreigners, who knew only its object,
but neither the manner in which it was con
ducted, nor the little talent by which it was sup
ported, an engine of some magnitude. Of infi
nitely more importance, however, appeared to be
the omission of the history of German Theology
previous to the commencement of the crisis de
scribed ; since, in that previous history, the deep*
est causes of this crisis must necessarily lie, and
without a full knowledge of this, it seemed hope
less to anticipate any satisfactory results. The
causes accordingly incidentally assigned in Mr.
Rose's work (for his professed object was to give
an account of the actual state of Theology, not of

PREFACE. ix
the causes in which that state originated), seemed
partly inadequate to produce so great a revolu
tion, partly of too negative a character to be
entitled to the name. The weight in particular
ascribed to the neglect of a controlling superin-
tendance, and of adherence to the letter of the
symbolical books, appeared to confound the with
drawing of what are, at the utmost, but means of
prevention, with the introduction of a positive
agency. Yet the stream must be filled from
some other causes than those which merely shake
the floodgates by which it is restrained : nor, un
less it were thus swelled beyond its usual height,
could the mere opening of a free course to its tide
produce so extensive and desolating an inunda
tion. Did the removal of these checks neces
sarily or probably involve the downfall of the
religion, which they were employed to fence in,,
a strong probability would exist against the truth
of that religion, which was thus " incapable of
maintaining, unassisted, its own ground, and of
producing an adequate conviction of its divine
origin. The question does not here relate to the
use of articles, either to restrain individual error,
or as the depository of the faith of highly-gifted
and enlightened men, with the standard of whose
belief it may be beneficial for all to compare the
results of their own conviction ; but whether any

X PREFACE.
relaxation of the binding force of these articles
will produce not merely deviation from their
doctrines within the bounds of Christianity, but
the abandonment of the principles and the autho
rity of Christianity itself. The affirmative of
this question is indeed implied in the conduct
and avowed principles of the Church of Rome,
but it has, exteriorly to that church, received
hitherto only the unwelcome support of Hobbes,
and another English deist !. Though fully assured
of the excellence of Mr. Rose's intentions, the
author could not but think, that the view sup
ported in his work involved the abandonment of
the fundamental principles of Protestantism, and
derogated from the independence and the inherent
power of the word of God. That Scripture did
need no such adscititious means to preserve
generally its healthful truths from such corruption
as would neutralize their efficacy, appeared to
result from the history of the early Church, in
which for above two centuries no symbols were
at all received, and even when heretical specula
tion did render such safe-guards necessary in
individual cases, they were extended no further

J The author believes that he found this theory in Tindal, but
cannot at the moment be certain in which of the English deists
he met with it.

PREFACE. xi
than the emergency of such cases required; the
rest of the body of Christian doctrine was com
mitted to the keeping of unauthoritative tradi
tion, expounding the word of Scripture : that a
recurrence to Scripture is sufficient to regenerate
the system when corrupted, independent of, or in
opposition to, existing symbols, resulted from the
various portions of the history of the Reforma
tion. It must be repeated that it is not intended
by the maintenance of these views to derogate
from the value of articles generally, much less of
such, as are drawn up with so much judgment
and moderation as our own ; their value is certainly
very great both to individuals, as presenting a
test by which to examine the character of their
own faith, and to the Church, as enabling it to
exclude those, who depart from the principles
upon which itself was founded. The view, in which
the author felt it impossible to participate, was not a
supposed probability that the Church might suffer
from individual deviations, but the supposition that
the whole or the greater part of the body must
necessarily decline, unless it were voluntarily to
bind its hands by the resolution never to deviate
from the letter of the faith of its earlier state.
During a year's residence in Germany, the author
found that every class of theologians, with whom
he had intercourse,, (and among them were men

XU PREFACE.
whose deep piety, sound faith, and extensive views-
excited his veneration,) shared these opinions
with regard both to the inadequacy of the causes
assigned by Mr. Rose for the deflections of Ger
man theology, and to the classes of errors which
the Author thought he perceived in it. Aware,
however, of the difficulties under which a stran
ger must always lie in appreciating the extent
and influence of any complex state of things,
but thoroughly dissatisfied with all the criticisms
which had yet appeared in Germany, he applied to
the theologian, of whose letter he has here given
a translation, for his opinion in writing, as fully
as his important avocations permitted, upon the
principal points in Mr. Rose's work. An early
work, published by that author on the state of
English Protestantism, (though circumstances
had prevented his becoming so much acquainted
as might have been wished with the largest por
tion of the Episcopal Church) indicated the
possession of the talents and religious character
requisite for the execution of the task. He
performed it with the ready kindness, which
the Author gladly acknowledges to have received
from him in a gratifying and useful intercourse,
and circumstances alone, which it is not necessary
to state, have thus long delayed its appearance.
In the translation, the principal object has been

PREFACE. Xlll
to render with the utmost faithfulness the mean
ing of the original, and to this, (as must be
necessarily the case in any precise translation
from so rich and powerful a language as the
German), style has been voluntarily sacrificed.
Professor Sack's numerous occupations not al
lowing him to enter into the other part of the
enquiry, the historical causes of the late revolu
tion in German Theology, the Author has at
tempted a brief sketch, rather with the view of
inducing others, whose principal department may
lie within the province of ecclesiastical history,
to institute a fuller investigation, than with the
wish that his own opinions should be adopted.
He feels indeed convinced, from his own exami
nation, and from the independent concurrence of
some of the most valuable divines in Germany,
that conclusions more or less corresponding with
these will be the result of a more extensive en
quiry ; his only object, however, here is, that
such an enquiry should be instituted. On this
ground it being to him comparatively indifferent,
with what reception his own opinions may meet,
he will not feel himself under any obligation to
maintain them, should they be opposed. Con
troversy is generally of little advantage to the
public, and detrimental to those who engage in
it ; and the Author will consequently not think it
6

XIV PREFACE.
necessary to abandon his pursuits for the ungrate
ful and unprofitable employment of self- vindica
tion. The removal from any large public library,
as well as from the greater portion of his own,
during the period in which this Essay was written,
has compelled him for the most part to quote
mediate authorities only, instead of having re
course to the immediate sources. He has, how
ever, no reason to apprehend from the character
of the authors principally used, Weismann, Bud-
deus, Schrockh, Mosheim, Henke, Vater, Twes-
ten, any incorrectness of the facts adduced.
It may perhaps be necessary to state, in order to
avoid misconception, that the term " Evangelical"
is used in the following sheets according to the
phraseology of the German church, to designate
the Lutheran body, that of " Reformed" or " Cal-
vinistic" for such as agree in the doctrine of the
Lord's supper with ourselves. There remains in
conclusion only, to acknowledge with gratitude
the assistance derived from the MS. of a German
friend, who has carried on the same enquiry, and
whom though the Author is not permitted to
name, he cannot but express his sincere sense of
his kindness, as well as his thankfulness for the
advantages, which through that kindness he has
been, on many occasions, permitted to enjoy.

CONTENTS.

Introductory Letter by Professor Sack.
Historical Enquiry.
Uses, and extent of the Enquiry — Period from which it
must be commenced — Causes of the imperfect completion
of the Reformation in Germany — External — Internal — Conse
quent limitation and narrowing of the Lutheran Church — Per
nicious effects on the Theology of the 17th century — View of
that Theology in its several parts, Scriptural Interpretation,
Doctrinal and Moral Theology, Ecclesiastical History, Prac
tical Theology, and dangers to be apprehended from the state of
each — General descriptions of it by Spener and Thomasius —
Shocks sustained by this system, from the improvement attempt
ed by Calixtus — from the endeavour of Arndt and Spener to
restore genuine Christianity — Means employed by Spener — Their
influence — Continuation in the school of Halle — its character,
institutions, and influence — its inherent liabilities to degenerate —
School indirectly produced by it — Opposition to parts of the pre
vailing system by Arnold and Thomasius — Effects of the Wolfian
Philosophy — Review of the state of Theology at the time of the
first struggle with Unbelief — External circumstances tending to
promote Unbelief — Moral and intellectual character of the age —
Influence of Frederic — English and French Unbelievers — Nicolai
— Popular Philosophy — Gradual decline of Theology — Influence
of Baumgarten, Ernesti, Michaelis; of Semler, Morus, Koppe,&c.
of Steinbart — Principal directions of German Theology then

XVI CONTENTS.
coexisting — Exceptions to the general Character — Individuals
who prepared for a restoration of Christianity; Lessing, Herder —
Opposition to the shallow philosophic -religious system by Kant —
Influence of the system of Kant on its positive and negative side,
favorable and unfavorable — Influence of the philosophy of Fichte,
Schelling, Jacobi — Final formation of Rationalism — Results —
Present state of German Theology and Church.

LETTER FROM
PROFESSOR SACK
TO
THE AUTHOR.

You express a wish, my dear Friend, for my opinion upon
Mr. Rose's book " on the state of Religion in Protestant
Germany ;" and, even at the risk of your occasionally meet
ing with views and opinions contrary to those to which you
are attached, I will give it you ; being fully, convinced that
we are agreed on the main points, and that you are yourself
sufficiently acquainted with Germany to enter into the cir-1
eumstances, which either remove or mitigate the charges of
Mr. R. You will allow me in the outset to own to you that
a renewed perusal of the work of your countryman excited
in me on two accounts a feeling of pain ; on the one hand,
that so much evil could be said of the Theological Authors
of my country, which it is impossible to clear away ; on the
other, that this was done in a form and manner which could
not but produce a confused view and false picture of the
state of Germany. Gladly, however, I allow, that a very
different mode of judging of German Theology would have
given me infinitely deeper pain» I mean such an agreement
with the prevailing views of the Rationalist School as would)
have presented them to the indifferent party in England"
under the dazzling colors of theological liberality. This
Would have seemed to me a yet more unnatural violation of
the relation in which the English Church" (taking the word
in. its widest sense) is called upon to stand to the German ;
a

iv tETTER FROM PROFESSOR SACK.
source of the weakness of the Authorities is to be sought ;)
she may think it right to bind her ministers by subscription
to these Articles ; nothing of all. this do we wish to depreciate ;
Still one cannot grant to its advocates that the disorders ob
served in Germany evidenced the necessity of laying " some
check and restraint upon the human mind," nor that the
binding force, the necessity of the subscription, the setting
the letter of the symbol on the same level with its scriptural
contents, can be regarded as the source of the spiritual pless*
trig which the Church enjoys. The former would too much
resemble the control which the Romish Church exerts oyer
her members; the latter appears to involve too strange a
confusion of the prevention of an evil with the existence of
a good, The necessity of deterring the ministers of a Church from
the arbitrary aberrations of heresy, by binding them to human
Articles, and of thereby assuming the right to remove them
when, convicted of erroneous doctrines, may often, perhaps
always, exist ; yet where it does exist, it presupposes an
inclination to these heretical.aberrations, and that in a de
gree proportionate to the apparent urgency of this necessity.
Such an inclination, however, in a considerable part of
the Clergy, is no healthy condition, nor one productive of
blessing. Its suppression is but the prevention of a yet
greater, evil than actually .exists within the system. The
blessing, however, ,the blessing of doctrines delivered by
enlightened and believing men, must be derived elsewhere ;
from the spirit, namely, of grace and of prayer, which
human forms can never give, but which they may by an
unreasonable strictness hinder, though they cannot quench.
When a Church then so far confides that this spirit of grace
and of truth, which is the Spirit of Christ, will illumine her
teachers, if duly prepared and called, as to trust that such
unscriptural heretical aberrations, by which the basis of
Christianity is shaken, should be but pf rare occurrence •
she may, indeed, go too far in this originally noble conn-

EETTER FROM PROFESSOR SACK; ,'y
dence, and may find herself compelled by experience to
return more decisively to the preventive means and rules
comprised in the documents upon which she was founded :
in no event, however, will she be tempted to look for blessing
and prosperity-, from the establishment of the most definite
verbal forms, from the erection of symbols independent of
immediate controversy, and from a mode of restraint which
places the human form of the doctrine on an equality with
the word of Scripture. Had she such expectations, it were
evident that she trusted more in the human formula than in
the Spirit' of Christ. While she trusts in this, she will indeed
not neglect those means of protection ; still she will make it
her first aim to impart to her young Clergy, by a genuine
theological preparation, that spirit which preaches the same
Gospel under forms, varying indeed, yet all within the limits
of the word of Scripture, and which produces adherence to,
and justification of, the doctrine not after the letter but after
the spirit of the symbol : for ill were the state of any eccle
siastical authorities who should be unable to discern and to
exhibit this spirit; and lamentable the condition of any
Church, Which, besides the legal fences against error, did
not believe in a source from which the truth issues in such a
living stream, that error itself must progressively diminish,
the administration of the law become continually more en
lightened, the means of repression less and less necessary.
Such belief, however, and such endeavours form the prin
ciples upon which the Evangelical Churches of Germany
acted. If they stumbled occasionally in this noble course is
that a sign they can never reach the object they proposed ?
and if their principles are grounded on faith in the Spirit
of Christ, should they abandon them in the midst of their
career, and recur to those which centre on a reliance upon
the letter of the human form, and upon the restraining force
.of the law ?
- But this leads further to those other charges of Mr. R.'s
work, whjch indeed constitute by far the most important

VI LETTER FROM PROFESSOR SACK.
portion of its contents, the condemnatory representation of
the direction which theology took for so long a period, and
in part still takes, in so great a portion of the German
authors : and here it is my duty both candidly to avow the
pain which I also feel at such numerous aberrations from
the purity of Christian truth ; and yet distinctly to indicate
that this evil, when contemplated in the due connection with
the free developement of theological science, (and how can
science exist without freedom) appears partly to have taken
place beyond the limits of the Church, partly to have been
a necessary point of transition to a purer theology, partly to
have been less widely extended than the author represents.
It is not necessary for us, my dear friend, to settle as a
preliminary, whether those rationalist tendencies, through
which the external and internal facts of Christianity are to
be transmuted and solved into speculation and reflection, are
disastrous and pernicious in any literature, and in any times.
Christianity is a divine fact, whose divine character, ex
ternally manifested, is inseparably united with an internal
transformation of mind, which remains eternally distinct
from any thing which man by his own device can produce :
and yet will the rationalism of all times and all descriptions
remove this distinction; this is its error, this its irpwrov
iptiiSoQ, and herein is it at all times equally destructive,
whether it employ itself in the sublimest speculations on
the ideas contained in the facts of Christianity, or whether
on the shallowest department of the common-place, empiric,
factitious view of history it strain to evaporate the miracles
of the sacred relation.
Yet must we confess that this rationalism appears from time
to time in every people and every literature. England has
felt its full presumption and full perniciousness, in its deism.
In France it united itself, though not at all times entirely,
with materialism : and in Germany, it appeared in the form
of a baseless innovating interpretation of Scripture, a
shallow, would-be enlightening philosophy of religion.
2

LETTER FROM PROFESSOR SACK. Vll
If then the author rightly says, that the distinctive and
specially revolting characteristic of the German rationalism
consists in its having made its appearance within the
Church, and in the guise of Theology ; this indeed cannot
be denied, yet it is not true to the extent to which the
author represents it. Many of those writers whom he
quotes for their unscriptural positions and opinions, as
Reimarus, Becker, Buchholz, &c, were never in any ec
clesiastical or theological office : they wrote as men pur
suing in entire independence their philosophical systems ;
and if the influence of some of them widely extended itself
even among the theologians, yet are not their opinions
upon that account to be charged upon the theology and
the Church. Or can this be done with greater fairness,
than if the deistical principles of a Hume and a Gibbon,
nay of a Toland and Tindal, were to be imputed to the
English theology? We may further take into consideration,
that many of those scientific men, who went furthest in a
superficial and forced interpretation of the sacred docu
ments, belonged to the philosophical faculties in our univer
sities: in these it has ever been a principle to allow
science to speak out entirely unrestrained, even in opposi
tion to the doctrine of the Church, in the confidence that
the theological faculty, through greater depth, or the greater
correctness of its point of view, would be able to supply a
counterpoise : if we take this also into the account, no small
portion of the blame is already removed from the theolo
gians and the Church of Germany: the evil itself remains,
but it appears more as connected with the philosophical
and literary spirit of the time, than as a charge against the
theology, which however it may have come in contact with,
and been affected by, the philosophical endeavours of the
age, has yet its own independent history; nor are the several
portions of this so indistinct and confused as would appear
from the notes of Mr. Rose.
And this constitutes the second point which I would

viii LETTER FROM PROFESSOR SACK..
notice, namely, that not only in Mr. Rose'g citations, but
in the sketch given in the discourses themselves, the dis-».
tinction of the different times and periods has been to so
great a degree neglected: an omission, which has entirely
obscured the several points of transition by which theo
logy progressively advanced towards a purer and sounder
state. How can your countrymen form a correct image of
our literature, when Lessing and Schelling, Steinbart and
Bretschneider, Tollner and Schleiermacher, Bahrdt and
Wegscheider, Herder, and the anonymous author of the
Vindiciae sacrae N, T. scriptur., are mentioned together,
without any other distinction than the often incorrect dates 1
Most of these authors who are thus named together, were
separated by 30 or 40 years from each other ; they may to
the letter say the same thing, and yet the meaning in which
they say it, and the influence which it has upon the times, are
by no means the same ; the earlier have, perhaps, suggested
as an experiment what has long sifice been discarded ; or they
have started that as philosophers, which only the more
superficial writers have attempted to convert into theology :
several of them moreover had grown up in close connec
tion with a period in which it was a duty to contend against
a false orthodoxism which clung to the letter alone : while
many of the weaker moderns have proceeded to develope
their opinions into positions, against which those nobler
strugglers for truth would themselves with great earnestness
have contended. The neglect of these historical relations
however, (which is not made good by the description of
Semler) casts, a false light upon the whole view. .Had our
author possessed a vivid conception of the spirit of German
theology, which toward the middle of the preceding century
was more rigidly attached, than was ever the case in England,
to a false system of doctrine, combined with a confined idea
of inspiration, and a stiff intolerant method of demonstra
tion, which impeded the healthy process of a scriptural
&nd deeper theology ; had he moreover by the study of the

LETTER FROM PROFESSOR SACK.: is
noblest authors of our nation in that earlier period, whether
in philosophy, or in practical or elegant literature, learnt
the inward desire after a noble genuine freedom of mind,
for which at that time Protestant and Romanist longed, he.
would deem the rise of* a new and partly daring direction
of theology, not only a natural but an interesting pheno-
menon; he would have acknowledged that in part the
legitimate requisitions of science in philology and history,
led to the adoption of that new course ; that many also of
those so-called innovators, were well conscious that they pos
sessed a Christian and good scriptural foundation and ob
ject, but that almost all were so deficient in firm scientific
principles in the execution of these views, that too much
freedom and too open a course was given to the bad, the
capricious, and the irreligious, to violate the sanctuaries of
the Bible, by a semi-philosophical babbling and a lawless
criticism. If then this point of view be adhered to, that all German
innovations in theology discharged themselves principally
in two main channels ; the one in which scientific clearness
and freedom were the object of honest exertion, the other in
which an inward indisposition toward the peculiar character
of the Christian Religion, moulded the yet uncompleted
results of historical investigation with a shallow philosophy
into an unconnected revolting commixture of naturalism
and popular philosophy, all the phenomena in the history
of theology will be sufficiently explained. That better
race of authors, for the most part too little acquainted with
the principles of the science of scriptural interpretation,
and the defence of religion, committed indeed many an error,
but with a chastened judgment they again struck back into
the right path. It was natural that they should occasionally
fail at first sight to recognise the shallowness and perverted^
ness of enquiries of the second sort; and that to a certain
degree participating in the fascination with which the spirit
of that time had invested every species of tolerance, they

X LETTER FROM PROFESSOR SACK.
should expose themselves to the injustice, by which their
purer endeavours were subsequently confounded with those
of the deistic naturalist ; — an injustice frequently practised
in these times in a crying manner, not by Romanists only,
but by Protestants of too exclusive a system of theology.
And now that this better sort of temperate, religiously dis
posed, and scientific enquirers have gained a better basis,
rule, and methQd, partly through their own more enlarged
acquaintance with the province of their science (to which be
longs also the acknowledgment of its limits) ; partly through'
the exertions of decided apologists and apologetic doctrinal
writers; partly, and not least, through the endeavours
of a deeper philosophy ; and lastly, in part through the
religious stimulus caused by momentous political events;
now also that studies in ecclesiastical history, alike deep in
their character and pure in their point of view, have quick
ened the sight for discerning the essence of Christianity ;
our German theology is attaining a pure and scientific
character, which it could not have acquired, so unfettered
and in such full consciousness, without first discharging
itself of those baser elements.
Much is yet left to be done, much to clear away ; but the
more that genuine apologetic and hermeneutic principles,
derived from the nature of belief and of thought, possess
themselves of the mind, the more will those falsifying theo
ries of accommodation, those wretched explanations of mira^
cles, those presumptuous critical hypotheses, give place to a
perspicuous view of the essence of Divine Revelation, to a
living understanding of the prophetic and apostolic, writings,
and consequently to a purer exposition of the main doctrines
of Christianity. You must not allow this hope to be obscured
by what you may have seen of the struggles of supernatural-
ism, and rationalism, or perhaps may read most obnoxiously
exhibited in several of our periodical works. Within the
province of proper theology this contest is not so important
as it often appears, and the more it developes itself the

LETTER FROM PROFESSOR SACK. xi
less lasting can it be ; inasmuch as an independent rational
ism is irreconcileable with the very idea of Christian theo
logy, and a bare supernaturalism, which goes no further than
what its name expresses, does not contain the slightest por
tion of the substance and doctrines of Christianity. If then
it is true, that through a genuine study of scriptural inter
pretation and of history, a better theology has begun to
find place among us, the distracting influence which this
conflict exerts, must of necessity here also be gradually di
minished : on the other hand it will probably continue, pos
sibly yet more develope itself, in the more direct province of
religion, in philosophy and in politics, where amid many a
struggle, and many an alternation, it may systematise itself in
the contrast of a religious and of an atheistic, or of a sincere
and of an hypocritical character of thought, and then again
from the various points of mutual contact unavoidably re-act
upon theology. This danger is, however, no other than
that to which the English Episcopal, nay even the Roman
ist, and indeed every part of the Christian Church, is ex
posed ; and this disease, thus universal to mankind, may
indeed delay, but cannot preclude, the restoration of Ger
man theology, derived from the genuine sources of philolo
gical and historical investigation combined with that 'ex
perience in faith, which brings the mind and heart in vivid
contact with them.
If, however, Mr. Rose has failed to perceive the neces
sary course of developement of German theology, so neither
has he become sufficiently acquainted with, nor duly appre
ciated, the counter workings, by which the further progress
of the evil was even in the worst and most perplexed times
opposed and checked. He names indeed Storr as an oppo
nent of the rationalist school, yet so that no one could
thence perceive that this theologian was only the represen
tative of a party at all times considerable and important.
He names the philosophy of Schelling, yet almost as if all
the impulses in Religion and in the Church, which, for al-

Xll LETTER FROM PROFESSOR SACK.
most twenty years, have been tending to improvement and
increased unity, were derived from the suspicious source of
mystical philosophemata. Neither was the case. Storr was
but the disciple of the whole school of Wiirtemberg and
Tubingen, of which he was subsequently the head; a school
which, without being exempt from the errors of the time,
has now for between thirty and forty years united in its
writings the most conscientious earnestness with the deep
est investigation. Here should have been mentioned toge-?
ther with Storr the names and the works of the two Flatts,
of Siisskind, Bengel, Steudel, &c. To the same effect
notice should also have been taken of Reinhard, who, chiefly
by the pure means of works alike classical and theological,
promoted an improved spirit in Saxony ; of Knapp, who, but
lately deceased, blended the purest orthodoxy with classical
attainments, which might satisfy even English scholars, and
with a depth of scriptural interpretation, Which was the object
of respect in every school ; of Hess, the venerable investigator
and relator of biblical history; of the works of Planck on
Theological Encyclopaedia, and in defence of Christianity ;
of Kleuker in Kiel, Schott in Jena, Schwarz in Heidelberg,
and of the direction (in part one of scientific depth) deci
sively opposed to the common rationalism, which the theo
logical faculty of Berlin has by its historical and philosophi
cal investigations, for more than fifteen years imparted to
theological study. All this must be viewed in connection
with the great number of well-disposed and Christian prac-.
tical Clergy in evangelical Germany, and with the almost
universal removal of the lower classes from unchristian books.
upon religion. It should have been acknowledged, that in
certain parts of Germany and Switzerland, Christian socieT
ties existed for the purpose of mutually imparting biblical
and Christian knowledge, and for the circulation of the Scrip-?
tures, even previous to the (it must be confessed, somewhat
too vehement) impulse given, by the British Bible. Society.
It should have been noticed, how the community of the

LETTER FROM PROFESSOR SACK Xlll
Moravian brethren exerted, upon the whole, a very deep and
gentle influence (even though not altogether, exempt from
error) upon the very highest as well as upon the lowest
classes, in producing the reception of the fundamental doc
trines of Christianity, especially of the Atonement. It
should have been remarked, that the entirely voluntary assert
ciations in Bible and Missionary Societies could not have
been so universal and so great, as is upon the whole the
case, without a considerable foundation of Christian disposi
tion ; this and so much more therewith connected, must be
more accurately known, investigated deeper, and exhibited in
more connexion, before the theology and Church of Protes
tant Germany can be displayed in their real form ; and they
would then certainly not appear so revolting and so offend
ing as they are represented in Mr. R.'s work. '
i Should these remarks have now made it clear that thq
foundations upon which the theology of Protestant Germany
may be raised to a high degree of pure Christian and sci
entific elevation, are, through the blessing of God, already
laid on the deep basis of her improved principles, neithe?
can one share the great expectations which the author enter
tains from the introduction among ourselves of fixed litur
gies, and an ecclesiastical constitution resembling that of the
Episcopal Church. Be it here undecided how far the one
or the other could in themselves contribute to a better state
of things ; thus much at least is certain, that in a church ac
customed, in the noblest sense of the word, to so much free
dom as that of Evangelical Germany, and which, without
any external interference, is at this moment conscious of a
voluntary return to the fundamental evangelical principles,
(a return in which all its earlier spiritual and scientific
advances are comprised and guaranteed,) political restraint
can be neither necessary nor beneficial. Those, however,
who conceive that they can observe in the theology and
Church of Evangelical Germany an internal formative prin
ciple, tending to realize a high Christian purity, while they

xiv LETTER FROM PROFESSOR SACK".
do not ascribe the same value as the author to the measure
which he proposes, will attach themselves so much the more
firmly to one, which they regard as proceeding from the
same principle, and of which the author speaks with an
almost inconceivable suspicion. You will perceive, that I
speak of the union of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches
in Germany ; and I must confess to you, that it is the judg
ment passed upon this, which appears to me to fix the stamp
of misconception upon every thing else which is unclear in
the work. Had the author but recalled to mind, that in the
period of the greatest indifference to religion and church,
the division of these two parties continued unregarded and
unmitigated ; that the endeavour to remove it coincided with
the renewal of a warm interest in divine worship and in the
Church, had he allowed himself to be informed, that it ori
ginated with men very far removed from indiflerentism, and
promoted by that very evangelically-disposed king of Prussia,
from whom he himself anticipates so much, he could scarcely
have ascribed the union to motives so bad. But had he
(which he at all events both could and ought) informed him
self, that the one difference in doctrine between the two
Churches is of such a nature, that the distinction can scarcely
be retained in the symbolical books of the Church even by
a straw-splitting nicety, (this is the case with regard to the
doctrine of the Lord's Supper in the two Churches) while
the other, that regarding election, never existed in Germany,
(in that the strict Calvinistic doctrine is not at all expressed
in the symbol of the German reformed Church, the Heidel
berg Catechism) and that Brandenburg expressly refused to
acknowledge the definitions of the synod of Dort respecting
it; had he weighed this he would have spared himself this
hostility against a work, in its nature originating in Chris
tian brotherly love, and which has already produced in many
countries, especially in Prussia and Baden, the cheering-
fruits of reanimated interest in the Church.
Yet enough; for you, my worthy friend, I have made

LETTER FROM PROFESSOR SACK. XV
myself sufficiently intelligible, and should I, through your
means, perhaps, contribute to prepare a portion of your coun
trymen for a correcter view of the character of Protestant
Germany, I should deem myself happy in thereby repaying
a small portion of the debt, which the privilege of surveying
the character of your English Church, in its important and
pure (though as yet unreconciled) contrasts, has laid upon
me. And if I might express a wish, which forces itself upon
me at the close of this long letter, it is, that more of your
young theologians would visit our Protestant Universities,
become acquainted with our theologians, and hear our
preachers, only not making a transient and hasty stay, nor
living principally amid books, but acquainting themselves
with the people, and the Church, and the literature, in their
real character, and ready for mutual confidential interchange
of their different talents.
With real regard and esteem,
Your's most sincerely,
Charles Henry Sack,
Professor of Theology, anctMinister of the
Evangelical Church of Bonn.
Bonn,
July 27, 1827- •

HISTORICAL ENQUIRY,

Human nature, as in itself it for the most part
remains the same, so does it continue upon the
whole in the same relation to Christianity, opposes
the same obstacles to its first reception, and to
the complete exertion of its influence, furnishes
the same temptations to substitute for it a mere
passive acquiescence in its doctrines, or to convert
it into a mere material for the speculation of the
understanding. Still more uniform than the ex
istence of the obstacles themselves is the na
tural tendency of each aberration to re-pro
duce another, for the most part its opposite,
extreme. The form, however, of the impedi
ments, and the prominence assumed by each,
will be in' great measure modified and deter
mined by the degree of civilization, by the pecu
liarities and predominant tendency of each age,
by national character, and by national circum
stances. Fruitful then as must be every portion
of ecclesiastical history, in exhibiting the inherent
power of Christianity to conquer the different
difficulties to which it is opposed, in proving it
to be the leaven, by which the whole mass of hu-

2 CAUSES OP THE LATE RATIONALIST
man nature is to be penetrated and changed, and
in supplying the knowledge of the conditions by
which the full exertion of that influence is limit
ed ; more especially productive must those por
tions be, which relate to its struggles in nations,
derived from the same common stock, under cir
cumstances in many respects similar, and above
all, where the remedy applied was equally freed
from the grossest of those extraneous admixtures,
which in other less favoured countries create a pre
judice against its use, or diminish its efficacy.
The experience furnished by Evangelical Germany
is to us as the biography of an individual to one
of similar character, temperament, and circum
stances. The plant, though its growth and exter
nal character may be affected by the influence of
a different climate, will not belie its original stock :
nor can the atmosphere of a neighbouring region
be changed, without the probability of its affect
ing our own. Linked as European nations are,
every direction which the human character takes
in one country must exert an influence over the
rest ; the circulation may be rendered more or less
rapid by the peculiar subordinate organization of
each ; yet still is the whole one great system, no
part of which can be affected without indirectly
operating upon the rest, in a degree proportioned
to the general analogies of their constitution. Nor
is it nationally alone that the result of German
experience may benefit ourselves ; the moral and
religious history of mankind is but an enlarged
biography ; should therefore no crisis be impend-

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 3
ing over this country, similar to that from which
Germany is now recovering, (and, with some simi
larities, there is still sufficient which is dissimilar,
to justify the hope that we shall be preserved from
such a visitation,) much individual profit and
warning may be obtained from the study. The
several, and not unfrequently opposite, aberrations
which took place in Germany, and w hich terminated
in the temporary unbelief of so large a portion of
its speculating minds, has not unfrequently been
realized in the deflection of a single individual.
Independently, moreover, of its personal as well as
national utility, it affords in itself a sublime con
templation of the innate force of pure Christianity,
which, instead of sinking irrevocably, as the fall
ing stars of the false religions of old, or the now
waning crescent of Mohammedanism, shines forth
again with a clearer brightness, and a more vivi
fying warmth, from amid the clouds which were
for awhile permitted to obscure its face. Su
perstitions or false belief, foundations of " wood,
hay, stubble l," when tried by the fire, disappear
for ever ; divine truth, as the" silver and gold,"
in each successive trial to which it has been ex
posed, has come forth purer from the human alloy
which had collected round it.
A large, however, and extensive survey will be
necessary, whenever this crisis is to be fully un
derstood. Completely comprehended, indeed, it
can then only be, when time shall have more
entirely disclosed the results, to which Providence
1 1 Cor. iii. 12.
B 2

4 CAUSES OP THE LATE RATIONALIST
has through this fearful developement been con
ducting the Evangelical Church in Germany;
though enough may be already seen to lay open
His general purposes, and to furnish comfort
amid that temporary desolation in the gladdening
results of a purer, more active, more vivifying faith,
which are even now apparent. Even the causes,
however, by which these events were immediately
produced, can only be fully discovered by a wide
and accurate study of the previous history, from
a period long prior to their commencement. No
revolution or developement in the moral, or poli
tical, any more than in the physical world, can be
understood from the single contemplation of the
times alone in which it takes place. The pro
ducing causes must evidently be anterior to the
commencement of the manifestation of the re
sults. As in vegetable nature, the seed has long
been prepared, the root has already struck, before
the first indications of the germ above the sur
face, so, for the most part, has the train of
producing causes been long imperceptibly in ac
tion, before they give any visible manifestations
of their agency ; the developement itself is almost
inevitable, before the tendency of circumstances
to produce it is generally felt. But if such is the
case in civil, much more is it in religious, history,
since this exhibits not the result of irregular, un
defined, and often jarring, principles ; but the
application of one uniform system, the course of
one great plan for the elevation, purifying, hal
lowing, of the human mind, in the vast contest,

CHARACTER OP THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 5
which in the words of one of the most philoso
phic observers of Germany, forms the only and
the deepest theme of the history of the world
and of man, the contest of faith and unbelief1.
An unity thus necessarily belongs to ecclesiasti
cal history, which no other history, even of prin
ciples, at least to the same degree, can claim ; and
the necessity of considering each given period in
combination with the whole, or at all events with
a large preceding portion, becomes manifestly
more indispensable. Throughout this vast course,
however, there occurs a series of elevations, from
which the survey of the several intervening stages
is facilitated, and the relation of the whole scheme
to each tendency of the human mind, which it is
given to correct, becomes more distinct. Uniform
as this scheme is in itself, the subordinate princi
ples, with which it is brought in contact in succes
sive ages, will necessarily vary : and as, in combi
nation or in conflict with these, it either proceeds
tranquilly onward, modifying and being in its
external character modified by them, or, having
reached a crisis, manifests itself more energeti
cally in the new developement to which this crisis
gives rise, there have been and will be a succes
sion of periods and of eras in its history. Each
new era is the commencement of a new period,
in which the results of the former crisis are car
ried on in gradual progress ; each new period pre
pares for a new crisis, as soon as the human prin
ciples, with which Christianity has been brought
1 Gothe Westostlicher Divan, S. 224.

6 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
in contact, or by which it has been acted upon,
shall have acquired sufficient strength to induce
a re-action, if the fofeigningredients be combined
with it ; a collision, if they be opposed. Each
period then will be best understood from the pre
ceding crisis or era; each era requires for its
explanation the knowledge of the preceding pe
riod. In the periods also, or at least in their later
portions, it appears, Christianity will be most
mingled with, or opposed by, extraneous princi
ples ; in the eras, it will most exert its native and
original powers. The last great crisis in the
Christian Church in Germany preceding that,
which is now being developed, was the Reforma
tion; and from that time, therefore, must any
full investigation of the course of things, which
led to the present, commence. This, however,
though upon the whole one period, in that no
complete crisis intervened in it, can be subdivided,
accordingly as the system, which became predo
minant, was either pre-eminently engaged in the
process of formation, or in maintaining itself
against its various antagonists. It must, how
ever, be kept in view, that this division is subor
dinate ; inasmuch as these conflicts, till the final
collision with unbelief, succeeded indeed in de
taching portions from the sway of that system,
but not in modifying its character. Within the
limits, which it yet retained, its developement
continued, until the final crisis by which it was
overthrown. It will be further necessary in any
complete view, to consider distinctly the two ele-

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 7
ments of Theology, the religious basis and the
scientific form ; though mutually acting upon each
other, it is only by a distinct consideration, that
the very different efforts, which in the close of
this period tended to the same results, can be un
derstood and appreciated. The minor periods
then are, I. — The formation of the system from
the Reformation, and its developement through
the Formula of Concord until the first opposition.
II. — The Opposition, 1. on the scientific side by
Calixtus, 2. on the religious side by Spener
and the school of Halle carrying on the earlier
efforts of Arndt, 3. both on its scientific and reli
gious side, either by the partial but honest endea
vours of men, whose sole object was to remove
its errors, or by unbelief in its various gradations.
Much, both in the external and internal cir
cumstances of the German Reformation, occurred
to prevent its full and adequate developement.
Had this been perfected in the spirit in which its
great instrument might have completed it, if
permitted tranquilly to finish his work, or sup
ported by others, acting in his own principles, and
surveying the whole system of Revelation with
the comprehensive and discriminating view of his
master-mind, the history of the German Church
had probably been altogether different ; the re
sults, which it is now reaching after centuries, and
at which it is arriving through such a fearful tran
sition, might have been even then attained. A
great part of the really valuable principles, which
have resulted from the late collisions, may be

8 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
found, unsystematized indeed, occasionally only
implied, in the works of Luther. The fruitless at
tempts to satisfy an uneasy and active conscience
by the meritorious performances of a Romish con
vent had opened his eyes to the right understand
ing of Scripture, in whose doctrines alone it could
find rest ; and the clear and discerning faith which
this correspondence of Scripture with his own
experience strengthened in him, gave him that in
tuitive insight into the nature of Christianity,
which enabled him for the most part unfailingly
to discriminate between essentials and non-essen
tials, and raised him not only above the assumed
authority of the church, and above the might
of tradition, but above the influence of hereditary
scholastic opinions, the power of prejudices, and
the dominion of the letter. Unfortunately, how
ever, the further expansion of his views neces
sarily yielded to the then yet more important
practical employments, to which this great apostle
of evangelical truth dedicated the most of his
exertions ; — the instruction of the young, the care
of all the churches, the necessary struggles with
the Romish Church, or with those seceders from
it, who maintained tenets inconsistent with the
first principles of the Reformation, as in the op
posed errors of the Anabaptists, and of Zwingli.
His successors, in developing to the utmost
subordinate but contested points of his system,
neglected the great views which lay beyond the
sphere of their polemics. Few, comparatively,
in the large mass of the active agents in the

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 9
Reformation, were led to the rejection of the
errors of the Church of Rome through the same
school of experience, by which the master-mover
had been conducted. Many had been merely
theoretically convinced of its errors, others sought
a freedom from intellectual tyranny, others poli
tical advantages, some finally followed, but half
consciously, the mighty impulse. The number
of the noble band, who were actuated by the
same spirit which impelled Luther, was dimi
nished, and their agency disturbed by the troubles
of the times ; by which e. g. Melanchthon and
Chytrseus became for some time wanderers in
Germany ; Bucer acquired among ourselves a new
scene of evangelical exertion. More fatal than
the impediments thus presented to the tranquil
developement of the principles of the Reforma
tion were the internal divisions, originating in
an imperfect conception of its scheme, which
distracted its members, and diverted their atten
tion from its essential points to subjects of very
subordinate importance, or upon which con
troversy should never have been raised. These
had been checked indeed by the commanding
spirit of Luther; after his death (1546) no one
was left of sufficient authority or firmness to pre
vent their eruption, or to lead back the current.
Even in Melanchthon's life, the Adiaphoristic '
1 Henke infers from this controversy being confined to the
Electorate of Saxony, exclusive of Brandenburg, where the ob
noxious compliances were carried to a greater extent, that not the
supposed errors, but the school of Melanchthon, was the real
object of attack. (Kirchengesch. iii. 418.)

10 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
controversy, (a controversy, which, from the neg
lect of the simple but comprehensive principles
of St. Paul, has, under different forms in various
ages, been destructive of Christian charity, and
drawn down the minds of Christians to minute and
subordinate questions from the great and influ
ential truths of the Gospel,) the Majoristic1,
Synergistic 2, Flacianist 3, Osiandrist 4, Stanca-
1 Major's doctrine of the necessity of good works to salvation,
had appeared without offence in Melanchthon's lociTheol. 1 535, as
well as iri the translation by Justus Jonas, 1536. Being however
repeated in the Interim of Leipzig, in which Major had a share,
it served to swell the papistical errors which were to be found in
it. Major throughout maintained justification by faith alone»
willingly pledged himself -not to use the offensive expression, yet
was compelled publicly to recant. One of his principal antagoT
nists, as is known, held " that they were hurtful to salvation.'*
Schrb'ckh Kircheng. B. 39, S. 548, fgg.
8 The doctrine questioned had appeared with Luther's appro
bation in Melanchthon's Examen ordinandorum in the scholastic
form, that there were three causes of conversion, God, God's
Word, and Free-will, (Vater. K. G. 225.) implying, however,
(according to PfefHnger's explanation in the present contest)
" that though the human will could not awaken or rouse itself
" to good works, but must be awakened by the Holy Spirit, yet
" that man was not altogether excluded from such works of the
" Holy Spirit, to the degree. that he should not also do his share."
(Planck Gesch. des Prot. Lehrbegr. ap. Schr. ib. 554.)
3 The principal subject of the controversies in which Flacius
was, on the defensive, engaged, was an assertion made in the
vehemence of his opposition to Strigel, that " original sin was
the substance of human nature."
* Brentius, who wrote as the organ of the theologists of
Wiirtemberg, concluded their judgment by saying, that if the
theologians of Kbnigsberg would interpret each other's words in
Christian love, and not explain unusual or imperfect expressions
with the greatest rigour and in the worst sense, they would not then

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 11
rian1, had unceasingly torn the infant church2;
nor can it have been the mere love of peace, but
rather the deep and oppressive sense of the im
pediments presented to the progress Of the truth
by these endless and by him incurable dissentions,
which made Melanchthon gladly hail approaching
death as a refuge from the phrenzy (rabie) of the
Theologians 3 ; nor was it merely as his own anxious
wish, but rather as the most important principle
contend against each other as against Turks, especially as this
dispute could produce no useful result, (ap. Schr. ib. 579.)
Though the whole question was whether SiKcuwdfjvai signified
" to be acquitted," as Osiander held, or to be made righteous,
and whether, (it being allowed on both sides,, that our righteous
ness was derived from the perfect obedience of Christ, and his
obedience resulting from his divine nature) Christ were our
righteousness solely according to his divine nature, Osiander
was accused by a synod of " destroying the whole merit of the
atonement of Christ." (Schrockh, ib. 582.) The people were
warned in sermons against his devilish heresy, (ib. 578.) and the
command of Duke Albrecht of Prussia to wave the contested
point in their sermons, declared by his opponents to have ema
nated from the devil. (Ib. 581.)
1 The over-speculation of Osiander naturally produced the re
action, that the work of justification was ascribed by Stancarus
to the human nature alone of Christ.
3 Schliisselberg, who has more fully than any other contem
porary writer enumerated the contests of his times, composed his
" Catalogus Hereticorum," in 13 8vo. volumes, describing as
many classes of deviations. (Schr. ib. 484.)
3 Melch. Adam. Vita Germ. Philos. p. 93. That these evils,
not the depreciation and revilings of his own name and character,
were what Melanchthon principally felt, see in Heerbrand Pr.
Funebr. in ob. Mel. in Strobel's Miscell. St. vi. S. 215. Strobel's
Apologia Mel. wider Gb'ze.

12 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
which he could impress upon his times, that he
wrote as his motto and memorial in the alba of
his contemporaries, " a contentioso Theologo
libera nos, bone Deus." Far be it from us, how
ever, who are removed by the differences of age
and manners from the temptations to which these
often well-intentioned men were exposed, who,
though our faith be equally the result of inde
pendent conviction, have yet had the easier task
of examining an existing system by the test of
Scripture, instead of that of constructing it for
ourselves from the ruins of one deformed by
human additions, and whom the lapse of time
has for the most part enabled to discriminate be
tween the vital and the subordinate truths of the
Gospel, to judge harshly of those, whose difficul
ties we have not experienced. It was, perhaps,
natural, certainly pardonable, that accustomed by
early and deeply impressed habit, in the Church
which they had left, to attach an equal value to
every doctrine, and dazzled by the adscititious in
terest, with which the recency and difficulty of
the acquisition had invested every portion of the
newly obtained truths, they failed to appreciate
the relative value of those truths ; especially as
these were, for the most part, opposed to a sys
tem, every portion of which was inculcated as
of equal importance, every departure from which
was represented as an equal sin : it was natu
ral also, that those who differed in opinion should
be suspected of disaffection to the common cause;
and consequently, that as every error seemed to

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 13
be an error in essentials, those should appear the
least excuseable, who in other points approached
the nearest to the truth, and in whom, there
fore, from the general correctness of their views, a
single aberration would appear the result of wil
fulness. These principles would of course exert
a similar influence upon the human deductions or
speculations by which they fenced, or defined, the
newly-acquired divine truths. External circum
stances, however, also contributed to foster this
uncompromising refusal to allow of the slightest
deviation, even in the minuter and collateral points,
which had once been sanctioned. The unhappy
limitation of the toleration, guaranteed by the re
ligious peace of Augsburg, to the adherents of the
Augsburg Confession, and the undisguised anxiety
of the Romanists to take advantage of any devia
tion from the letter of that Confession ', to ex-
1 Many of these attacks, either upon the validity of a religious
peace generally, or upon its extension to those who only accepted
the Confession with Melanchthon's later alteration, are related in
Salig's Vollst'and. Hist, der Augsb. Conf. Th. 1. S. 772. fg. ; see
also Budd. Isag. 429. 441. Among these one of the most re
markable was written by the private secretary of the Emperor,
1586 (Schrb'ckh Kirchengesch. B. 39. S. 338. fg.) It is well
known that the Reformed were not formally included in the reli
gious peace until nearly a century afterwards, by the peace of
Westphalia ; that even then this acknowledgment was protested
against by the Elector of Saxony, and obtained only by the asse
veration of the Elector of Brandenburg, that he accepted every
thing which was verbally contained in the confession of Augsburg,
and by the interposition of Holland and Sweden ; even then the
theological distinction was maintained by the substitution of the
words "inter illos," for "inter hos," which latter would have directly

14 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
elude them from the protection which it afforded,
bound them to its letter, as the safeguard of their
privileges or their existence. The common-place
and shallow argument also, drawn from the varia
tions of the evangelical statements of doctrine
against the truth of their system itself, which was
even then urged, was met not by the easy task of
retort upon the Romish Church, nor by the ob
vious principle that all human discoveries of truth
must be gradual, must be effected by the slow and
toilsome passage through error, nor by shewing
that these discrepancies in collateral points, or
modes of statement, were still entirely consistent
with the truth and harmony of the general sys
tem, but by drawing still closer the limits of their
Churches' pale, and by excluding as heretics all
who departed from the strictest letter of the sym
bol. The Protestant princes, who had embraced
the Reformation rather from feeling than from
clear views, felt themselves responsible for the
doctrines of their clergy ; and, perplexed by the
differences of the Socinians, Anabaptists, Fana
tics, and their own controversialists, sought to
obviate discordance by minute and detailed con-
included them among the members of the Augsburg Confession.
(see authorities in Schrbckh, ib. 347 ; Henke, K. G. B. 3. S. 596*
fg. ; Vater, K. G. S. 269.) Even after this the theologians of
Wittenberg taught, that this, as a political measure, could not
affect the theological question, (Henke, B. 4. S. 272.) After this
time, however, the political interests of the two evangelical bo
dies,, in that the voices of both together only equalled those'of the
one Romanist, became identified.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 15
fessions : in other cases their political jealousies,
especially those of the two lines of the house of
Saxony, of which the younger had dispossessed
the elder of the Electorate (1547), aided to give
bitterness to these contests1. Not theologians
merely, but jurists, historians, even physicians,
participated in the acrimony of the elder branch 2.
Yet, however these and other difficulties may
prevent our assuming an uncharitable right to
condemn the successors of the Reformers, certain
it is, that the measures employed to produce uni
formity, miserably impeded the progress of the
Reformation, buried in great measure the hardly
won evangelical truth under a load of scholastic
definitions, and converted the Gospel truth it
self, when it shone dimly through, into matter
of speculation, instead of motive for practice.
The history of Christian controversy scarcely ex
hibits more unhappy, more unpractical, and fre
quently presumptuous polemics, than many of
those which distracted the German Church after
the death of Luther, unless perhaps in the eastern
controversies3 on the person of the Redeemer,
1 Schrbckh, ib. 554. In these originated the foundation of the
University of Jena, as a bulwark of genuine Lutheranism against
the falsifications of the then Melanchthonian Wittenberg : the new
edition of Luther's works, in opposition to the alleged corruptions
of the collection of Wittenberg, was a proof of the spirit in which
it was founded, as also the strictest and most polemical Lutherans,
such as Flacius, were invited thither.
* Henke, 3. 411. fgg.
3 The Annals of Eutychius furnish, perhaps, the fullest proof
6

16 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
or the endless straw-splittings of the schoolmen.
Little, indeed, could be hoped from measures so
little in unison with the principles of the Refor
mation, as the attempt to re-establish a minute
uniformity by the oppressive accumulation of new
formulae of faith, or by the infliction of civil, some
times the severest, penalties for minute declen
sions even from the human system. Both,
however, were extensively employed. Of the
latter it may be sufficient to mention the impri
sonment of Strigel1, the deposition and banish
ment of Hardenberg2, (1561), the ten years con
finement of the physician Peucer3, and the death
that the uncharitableness of controversy is in proportion to its un-
practicalness. See Annales Eutych. ed. Pococke, Oxon.
1 To obtain Strigel's release, after he had been confined three
years for maintaining, that man was not merely passive in the
work of his conversion, not evangelical princes only, but the ca
tholic ^Maximilian interfered. Schrbckh, ib. 560.
a Hardenberg, minister in- Bremen, was banished from the
whole of Lower Saxony, for approximating to the reformed doc
trine on the communion, though he admitted a sacramental dis
tribution of the body of Christ, distinct from the participation by
the faithful, (Schrbckh, ib. 602) that the body of Christ was
distributed with, but not in, the bread, (ib. 600.) His followers
were deposed, and excluded from the communion. In the course
of the proceedings an edict of 1534 is referred to, which directed
the immediate expulsion of Anabaptists and Sacramentarists from
Bremen. The persecutors of Hardenberg, having afterwards wil
lingly resigned their offices rather than cease from revilings in
the pulpit, succeeded in inducing Hamburg and Lubeck to ex
clude Bremen from their league, and renounce her commerce, as
a protectress of heresies. Her trade suffered also, from the same
cause, in Dantzig, and other places.
3 Peucer's offence was the recommending for the theological

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 17
of Cracau, a Jurist, in consequence of torture^
with the banishment or imprisonment of the other
Crypto-Calvinists of Saxony (1574), measures re-
enacted against the same party after a temporary
encouragement (1591), with the additional blot
of the death of Krell their chief after ten years
confinement l, (1601) and the deposition and
banishment of Huber2 for a mere variation in
chairs at Wittenberg zealous followers of Melanchthon, and the
share which he had in promoting the reception of their catechism,
which yet asserts, that in the receiving the Sacrament, the Son of
God is truly, and according to his substance, present. (Schrbckh,
ib. 615.) The reason why Cracau was put to the torture is not
known ; yet he was apprehended as a promoter of the Philippian
school. These two cases are the stronger, in that neither ber
longed to the theological body, and both were men of distin
guished talents. Cracau had had a principal share in the " Con
stitutions of Augustus," the celebrated reform of Saxon law;
(Schrbckh, ib. 619.) Neither were the other depositions con
fined to theologians, (ib. 621.) another eminent man died after
two years imprisonment. " Others," says Schrbckh, " met with
similar fates." (Ibid.)
1 The final sentence against Krell, Chancellor of Christian I.
of Saxony, imputed to him secret practices with foreign courts,
(the supplying Henry IV. with troops against the league.) This,
though the pretext, cannot have been the real reason, since four
years expired before the nature of his accusation was agreed
upon. It seems probable that the jealousy of the nobility, whom
he had in great measure excluded from office, combined with his
attempted innovations in religion, was the cause of his fate. (See
Schrbckh, ibid. 649—659.)
a Huber maintained that the Calvinistic predestination could
only be effectually opposed by the assumption of an " universal
election to eternal life ;" yet this he so explained, that it became
entirely equivalent to the " universal call, offer of mercy," &c.
The contest was miserably prolonged by the obstinacy in adhe-
C

18 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
the mode of stating the Lutheran doctrine, that
none are excluded from salvation. Depositions
of all the clergy of a province, who refused to
subscribe a newly introduced formula, were not
unfrequent, where the prince passed from the
Lutheran to the Reformed Church : yet here the
intemperance1 of the clergy often mitigated,
often justified, the proceeding. The similar
enactments of the Lutheran Church had no plea
but the supposed necessity of a strict adherence
to the letter of its founder. The effect of these
violent measures was in their own nature transi
tory or partial ; from the unsettled state of Ger
many, those expelled from one province were
preferred in another. More efficacious in produ
cing an at least external uniformity was the other
measure of binding down the Protestant freedom
by formulae, more and more closely rivetted, until
"the human mind could take no step except in the
leading-strings of authority. Of these formulae,
enacted for the most part for separate lands, the
majority are known principally through the cata-
rence to terms, and by the invidious use of the names of former
heretics (see Schrockh, ib. 66 1-5.)
1 This is the more credible from the general vehemence of the
Lutheran clergy. It is expressly mentioned by Schrbckh in pal
liation. (Ib. 374, 5. 381, 2, &c.) Even within the Lutheran
Church itself, we find the edict of Augustus, Elector of Saxony,
forbidding all strife in the pulpit about the Adiaphorists, Majoriets,
and Synergists, regarded as an undue limitation of the pastoral
office, and the Consistorium of Leipzig consulted whether such
a command were unchristian. (Schr. ib. 612.) see also Henke,
3. 452.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 19
logues in which they are enumerated1; they
have perhaps an historical value, rather from the
light which they cast upon the spirit of the times,
than from any extensive influence which they
exerted. More fatal, because more widely, and
at last almost universally, received, was the for
mula of Concord. Until this was adopted, a
certain latitude was still allowed by the symbo-
lical.books, though not indeed equal to that per
mitted by our own articles; notwithstanding
some exceptions, still upon the whole, similarity
of principle, rather than exact uniformity of ex>-
pression, or of minute mode of conception, was
made the condition of belonging to the Lutheran
communion ; some points were left altogether
undefined ; and the re-union of the Protestant
churches, (which perhaps had never been divided
had Calvin, instead of Zwingli, been the original
founder of the Reformed, or might have speedily
again been blended, had Luther survived3, when
the fair prospect died away through the timidity
1 See Kbcher Biblioth. Theol. Symbol, p. 114. Feuerlein
Biblioth. Symb. Eceles. Luther. J. G. Walch Introd. in 1.
Symbol. G. G. Meyer 1. Symb. util. et Hist, subscript, eorund.
Gbtt. 1796. It may suffice to name the Confutation-book of
Weimar (1558) against the Synergists, the Symbol fbrnied at
Stuttgard (1559) enforcing the doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ's
body, (Schr. ib. 606.) and the Corpus Doctrinae Pruthenicum
against the Osiandrists. (1567.)
s Calixtus, whose accuracy is unquestioned, says that Luther
became gradually more inclined to an union, (de Tolerantia Ref.
ap. Schr. ib. 498.
c2

20 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
of Melanchthon, and the vehemence of the ul
tra-Lutheran Westphal ») (1552) was still open,
and might gradually have been effected by the
mediation of the Crypto-Calvinists. The face
of things was changed by the introduction of
the formula of concord2. The moderate party
of the Lutheran Church, which in accordance to
Melanchthon's wise counsel confined itself to the
Scriptural expressions on the communion, and
which, though inferior, was still considerable 3,
was annihilated, or passed into the Reformed
Church ; the desirable union of the two churches
in Germany itself, was for above two centuries
and a half delayed. The immediate object of
the new formula was indeed so far effected, that
the existing contests were laid aside; the scene
of warfare, however, was changed, not peace
produced4: struggles about the reception of the
formula itself, about the altered and unaltered
Augsburg Confession, and the contests with the
reformed, succeeded ; so that the only permanent
fruits of this restriction were, on the one hand,
the exclusion of many who in principle agreed
1 Mosh. cent. xvi. iii. 2. c. 3. § 6.
2 In its first form as the Articles of Torgau, (1574) though
such that the theologians of Wittenberg signed it. at last, after
undergoing imprisonment, only with restrictions, even it was
deemed too favorable to the Crypto-Calvinists. Budd. ib. 433.
3 Schrbckh, ibid. 623, 649.
* Mosheim, ibid. c. 1. § 40. sq. Henke, ibid. 457, fgg. Budd,
ibid. 435, sq.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 21
with the Lutheran doctrines ; on the other, the
enforcement of the letter * of the Lutheran tenets,
1 It was a natural, though injurious, consequence of the great
superiority of Luther, that every expression of his upon contro
verted points became a norm for the party, which, at all times the
largest, was at last co-extensive with the Church itself. This
almost idolatrous veneration was perhaps increased by the selec
tion of declarations of faith, of which the substance on the whole
was his, for the Symbolical books of his Church. At" least, it is
remarkable, that in the Reformed Churches, where the original
articles were not taken from the works of the chief founder, no
such scrupulous adherence to the expressions of that founder ever
existed. On the other hand even in the earlier Lutheran controver
sies, the question is often, not whether the tenet agree with Scrip
ture, but " whether it be a deflection from Luther's doctrine," —
" whether the individual be fallen away from Luther," whether " if
the expression be the same, it be used precisely in the sense of
Luther," (e. g. of Osiander, Vat. 5, 229. Schr. ib. 577. so also in
the collateral definitions on the sacrament.) " Much as both par
ties were indebted to Luther, it is still strange to see the constant
reference in the one, not merely to what Luther taught, but what
expressions, what grounds, what ideas he had on collateral points;
and this with the view of not varying a hair's-breadth from him."
(ib. 599.) These principles were made universal by the formula
of Concord ; in this, ideas, which Luther had only thrown out
in controversy, or had recalled, or which were at all events
secondary only, became primary articles of faith ; till this was
received, even the then symbolical books were not exclusively
adopted ; they appear in different countries with different modi
fications; and it was yet doubtful whether the milder form in the
Corpus Doctrinse Christianas Philippicum, and the Consensus
Dresdensis, might not prevail. A greater freedom had occasion
ally been left ; not only could Hardenberg declare, that on his
appointment he had only bound himself to adhere to the. Bible
and the ancient Christian doctrine, (Schr. ib. 601.) but the
synod of Hesse, in rejecting the formula of Concord, held the
language, that it was not expedient that all the writings of

22 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
the establishment of mere scholastic opinions as
articles of faith, the substitution of human tech
nicalities for the free spirit of the Gospel, of a
logical formalism for the scriptural and living ex
pression of revealed truth. From the time that
this formula was, through the influence of the Uni
versities, generally received, and the ultra Luthe
ran compendium of Hutter * substituted there as
Luther, which were so unequal, should be thus extolled as rules
of doctrine ; that the Evangelical Church had already been re
proached with submitting to a Babylonian captivity ; that no man
should be so much trusted to the detriment of conscience, &c.
(Schr. ib. 627.) After the second attempt to approximate to the
Reformed doctrine, the formula of Concord was in Saxony further
guarded (1592) by a new temporary symbolical book, the
Visitation- Articel, for not subscribing which, many distinguished
men, and among them the celebrated Schindler, who first pro
moted the enlarged study of Hebrew, were deposed. (Schrbckh
ib. 660, 1. Budd. 440.)
1 This was not only introduced into all the schools of Saxony
to the exclusion of every other, but was to be learnt by heart
with the greatest accuracy practicable before going to the univer
sity. The spirit of the author may be judged of from his other
works, as the Calvinista aulico-politicus, in which he warns the
clergy of Brandenburg against the accursed Calvinism ; (Schrbckh.
ib. 385.) his loci Communes Theologici, whose object was to
correct and replace the heresies of Melanchthon ; and his Cal-
vinus Judaizans, hoc est Judaicee scholse et corruptelse, quibus
J. Calvinus illustrissima S. S. loca et testimonia de gloriosissima
Trinitate, Deitate Christi et Spiritus S. — detestandum in modum
corrumpere non exhorruit." The ground of which charge was the
greater discrimination, which Calvin employed in adducing evi
dence for the Trinity, and in admitting prophecies and types of
Christ in the Old Testament. As a system of theology, the work of
Hutter is not sufficiently connected, is unpractical, and meagre :-

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 23
the basis of instruction for the loci theologici of
Melanchthon, nothing remained but to proceed
onward in the groove into which they had been
forced to enter, to develope in still greater minute
ness the fixed, immutable, definitions of the sanc
tioned form1, to offer solutions of its difficulties,
and to refute its opponents. It was to be ex
pected from human nature, that party-spirit, thus
fostered, should fail in none of its destructive
effects. The circumstances of the age, as above
observed, in themselves nurtured it ; it had already
painfully manifested itself in the vehement con
tentions within the Lutheran church, in the
refusal to admit to the Lord's table, or to grant
honourable burial to those, who on some minuter
speculative points disagreed 2. It did in fact in-
as a compendium, it is burthened with over-refined discussions ;
twenty pages being, for example, devoted to the developement of
the doctrine of the union of the two natures in Christ, and the
communieatio idiomatum. It continued, however, for a century to
be one of the most favourite compendia ; (Langemack Hist. Cate-
chet. P. iii. p. 13.) that, which was its principal object, to combat
the errors of the Romanists and the Reformed, remaining during
that period the almost exclusive aim of doctrinal theology. The
principal commentators upon it are mentioned by Budd. Isag.
p. 351.
1 Spener mentions that the symbolical books were often arbi
trarily adduced in support of deductions, of which their authors
never thought, (ap. Weism. 1227.)
2 E. g. even laymen, who would not sign the confutation-book
(against Synergism) were excluded from acting as sponsors, and
even from honourable burial ; (Henke 3.420) so were the non-
Flacianists ; (Schr. ib. 571.) the Osiandrists by the opposed
party of Mbrlin, (Vater, S. 223.) and the students of Wittenberg

§4 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
crease. The monuments of that age, whether
theological works, or the publiq opinions of the
universities, are but too deeply stamped with
it; and agreeably to its genuine principles, the
slightest approach to any tenet, or rite, or observ
ance, of the opposed party, or the faintest disap
probation of any of those questioned by that party
in the Lutheran Church, were considered sufficient
indications of the adoption of every tenet of that
party. The disapproval of the rite of exorcism
at baptism, of private confession before admis
sion to the Lord's table, of the decoration of
churches with images, or the approval of the
breaking of bread instead of the use of the wafer,
the division of the Ten Commandments according
to the Heidelberg, not according to the Lutheran,
catechism, even the collocation of the two first
words of the Lord's prayer, (" unser Vater" for
* Vater unser,") were considered as sufficient in
dications of the reception of the whole system '.
by the clergy of the Jena, unless after a formal renunciation of
the corruptions there taught, (Id. S. 226.)
2 Vater, ib. S. 241. It is singular that of these rites,
which now became criteria of Lutheranism, some had been
before either rejected in the Adiaphoristic controversy, or re
tained for a time only to avoid offence. (Henke, ib. 470-2.) The
very valuable remarks of Whately on the abuse of party-feeling
in religion, find ample illustration in those times. It may be here
mentioned in confirmation of the ill effect of the indiscriminate
use of party names, that the application of that of Calvinist to
all, who in the slightest shade varied from the later Lutheran defi
nitions, (Henke, ib. 345.) considerably diminished the numbers
of the exclusive party.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 25
The inevitable consequence was, that the parties
thus accused of adopting the Reformed doctrines
did actually approximate more nearly to them,
and the remaining Lutherans became more rigid
in their own system and their own peculiarities.
The effect of this narrowing spirit, of these
unceasing jarrings, could not but be injurious to
the whole Lutheran theology. It is probably the
unavoidable consequence of polemics, certainly
of such polemics as these, that the question in
dispute assumes an undue importance, that the
mode of stating the truth, or some collateral
points connected with it, more or less displace in
the minds of the disputants the practical and re
ligious purport of the doctrines themselves, and
their relation to the rest of the Christian system ;
though in this relation alone, it can exert an
efficacious, vital, and consistent influence. Every
thing else is forgotten in the determination of the
immediate controversy ; the conviction of the in
tellect becomes in itself the end; the heart is
forgotten in the exclusive employment of the
understanding. What, however, is perhaps only
a tendency when other corrections are at hand,
was realized in its whole painful extent in the
practical as well as the scientific theology of
Germany in the 17th century. In proof of this,
it will be necessary briefly to consider the different
branches of theology as they were, or were not,
then studied. A vivid picture of the times can
indeed be furnished by no general statement, but

26 CAUSES OP THE LATE RATIONALIST
must be obtained from the perusal of the authors
themselves. Here the results only can be given.
The Reformers, in consistency with their great
tenet, that scripture is the only authoritative
source of Christian knowledge, had laid the study
of the sacred volume as the foundation of all
Theological science. In the pursuance of this
principle they had established as the rule of inter
pretation one which, when correctly developed,
contains all the elements of right exposition,
which have since been gradually vindicated by
the combination of several partial efforts. Their,
or rather the Biblical, rule, that " Scripture is its
own interpreter," includes in itself the religious,
historical, grammatical, elements, which were
imperfectly, because separately, brought forward
by Spener, Semler, and Ernesti. For it is obvi
ous that if scripture is to be understood from
itself, those only can rightly and fully understand
it who have a mind kindred to that of its author;
as any human production, upon which the mind
of its author is impressed, will be best understood
by him, whose intellectual and moral character is
most allied to the original which it expresses.
The individual is thus placed, as it were, at the
centre of the same circle, from which the views
of the author emanated, and contemplates there
fore every part in the same order, harmony, and
relation, of which they were originally possessed.
In religious writings it is plain that the spirit re
quired is a religious spirit ; that none can truly

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 27
understand St. Paul or St. John, whose mind has
not been brought into harmony with theirs, has not
been elevated and purified by the same spirit with
which they were filled : and this, unquestionably,
was what the pious Spener meant by his much dis
puted assertion, that none but the regenerate could
understand Holy Scripture. The same principle
of the Reformers contained, further, the gramma
tical element, in that it directed, for the right un
derstanding of the several writers, to the constant
comparison with themselves and with each other :
views, which were subsequently lost, when it was
deemed necessary to inspiration to maintain the
perfect purity of the language of the New Testa
ment \ Historical, finally, as opposed to the doc
trinal, Interpretation, was secured by the direct
contrast of this self-illustration of Scripture to the
decision of councils, and to the authority of Tradi
tion. If the theory were less distinctly stated, at
least it was admirably exemplified in the translation
of Luther, and the commentaries of Melanchthon ;
individual Christian knowledge enabled these Re
formers to perceive the fundamental distinctions
of the two covenants, to determine what in the
documents of the latter was occasioned by tem
porary events, and, above ail, to avoid that iden-
1 It is remarkable, as illustrative of the comparative freedom
of judgment in the two Protestant bodies, that the prejudice
with regard to the purity of the language of the New Testament,
and the importance attached to it, continued predominant among
the Lutherans long after it had been extinguished among the
Reformed. 6

28 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
tification, by which the full, and pregnant, and
varying, language of Scripture is forced into the
fetters of the narrowing and monotonous concep
tions of system.
These principles of interpretation ! were for-
1 The much abused doctrine that each passage of Scripture
must be interpreted according to the analogia fidei, which was
the basis of the dogmatical interpretation, appears as early as in
the Clavis Scripture Sacree of the learned but bigoted Flacius.
His maxim " omnia debent esse consona catechisticee, aut arti-
culis fidei" entirely precludes all independent interpretation of
Scripture from itself; yet was it received unquestioned in the sys
tematic ultra- Lutheran school. Spener complains of the practice
of many of the theologians of his day, who rather made the
symbolical books the norm of interpreting Scripture, than Scrip
ture the norm of the symbolical books, (ap. Weism. 1227.) It is
therefore natural though remarkable that the Lutheran inter
preters of the age immediately subsequent to Luther, who even
now retain their value, Strigel, Camerarius, Chemnitz, belonged
to the school of Melanchthon ; that with the cessation of that
school, scriptural interpretation for a time ceased ; and that the
only three who in the largest portion of the next century were
at all distinguished, — J. Gerhard, Tarnov, and Hackspan, were
depreciated by their contemporaries, the two latter on the especial
account of occasional deviations from received interpretations, (on
J. Gerhard, see Weismann (H. E. 2. 1127.) on Tarnov, Budd.
Isag. (p. 1669.) on Hackspan and Tarnov, Schrbckh (39. 429.)
It attests the polemic character of the age that the chief subject
of Scriptural exposition was the Apocalypse, (Schr. ib. 428.)
and that principally in reference to the Romish Church. Bud-
deus, speaking generally of the times subsequent to the Refor
mation, says, Hinc et multum lucis S. S. accessit ; licet amplius
quid accedere potuisset, nisi simul ortse in religione dissensiones
maximse gravissimseque multorum animos partium studio infecis-
sent, . quo praepediti veritatem illis se offerentem videre aut nolue-
runtaut non potuerunt. Isag. 1453. § 12.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 29
gotten, this pre-eminence of scriptural above hu
man system strangely reversed by the successors of
the Reformers. Scriptural interpretation, instead
of being the mistress and guide, became the hand
maid, of doctrinal Theology. Its principal and
nearly exclusive employment was the justification
and defence of the Symbolical books by means of
the Oft-repeated exposition of the loci classici
(beweis-stellen) for each of the positions therein
contained, conveyed for the most part in the same
technical language; nor was a departure from the
received explanations of any of these passages, or a
doubt as to the real applicability of one sanctioned
as supporting a given doctrine, any more per
mitted than the rejection of the doctrine itself; or
was thought, indeed, to involve it 1. To this per
verted mode of interpretation some ground may
have been laid in the Symbolical books themselves,
especially in the formula of Concord, in which
passages are quoted in proof, whose irrelevancy
has been acknowledged by later Lutherans. False
ideas of inspiration, introduced by the imaginary
necessities 2 of the argument with the Romanists,
1 This fact, which is indeed notorious, is directly asserted by
Schrbckh. 42, 557. and 43, 6. The influence attributed to the
formula of Concord I find also in Meyer Gesch. der Schrifter-
klarung. B. 2. S. 519. fg.
2 Bellarmine had inferred from the priority of the existence of
the Church to that of Scripture, that the Church could not be
founded upon it, but must be the judge and controller of it.
The right answer had been that the Church was founded upon
Apostolical doctrine, which was faithfully preserved in Scripture
alone ; that tradition was indeed the foundation of faith, but not

30 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
contributed to the same result; from the first
assumption, that the whole of Scripture was immer
diately dictated by the Holy Spirit* was derived
a second, that all must be of equal value : to prove
this, it was supposed that the same doctrines^
the same fundamental truths of Christianity, must
be not implied merely, but expressed, by all ; a
theory which must, of necessity, do much vio
lence to the sacred text, while it overlooked the
beautiful arrangement, according to which the
different doctrines of Revelation are each pree
minently conveyed by that mind, which was most
adapted to its reception, (love, by St. John ; faith,
by St. Paul ; hope, by St. Peter ; faith, developed
in works by St. James ;) and thus the highest illur
mination of inspired minds, each in the fullest
degree of which it was capable, are combined te
convey to us the vast compass of Christian truth.
Yet greater confusion must obviously be the re
sult of the same theory, when applied to the Old
Testament, The difference of the law and the
Gospel, which Luther had so vividly seen, was
obliterated, the shadow identified with the sub
stance, the preparatory system with the perfect
disclosure. Not content with finding the germs
of Christian doctrine in the Old Testament, or
those dawning rays, which were to prepare the
as it had hecome Origenian, Gregorian, &c. but as it was Apos
tolical, i. e. in Holy Scripture. The answer given was, that as
long as the Apostles spoke and taught, their individual agency
mingled itself, but that when they began to write, they became
the immediate agents and amanuenses of the Holy Spirit.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. SI
mental eye for the gradual reception of fuller
light, but whose entire character could only be
understood by those, who should witness the
rising of that luminary whose approach they an
nounced; they not only considered prophecy as
being throughout an inverted history, but held
that all the distinguishing doctrines of Christian
ity were even to the Jews as much revealed in
the Old Testament as in the New, and that the
•knowledge of these doetrines was as necessary to
their salvation as to ours v No scientific error
seems to have prepared so much for the subse
quent re-action, in which all prophecy was dis
carded, all doctrine considered to be precarious,;
It was assumed, further, in support #f the same
system, and was indeed the natural consequence
of the doctrinal interpretation, that the same doc
trinal word, wherever it occurred, was employed
in the same sense ; the sense, namely, attached to
it in the symbolical books. The Scriptures thus
handled, instead of a living Word, could not but
become a dead repository of barren technicalities^
Less important, lastly, though perhaps in its effects
more immediately dangerous, was the corollary
to the same theory of inspiration, that even his
torical passages, in whieh no religious truth was
contained, were equally inspired with the rest, and
consequently, that no error, however minute, could
even here be admitted. Yet the imparting of
religious truth being the object of revelation, any
1 A proof of this will occur in the account of Calixtus> inf.

32 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST -
further extension of inspiration would appear an
unnecessary miracle, as indeed it is one no where
claimed by the writers of the New Testament;
Violence was, in consequence, naturally done to
the language of Scripture ; it may suffice, as an
instance, that k is by these interpreters stated to
be equivalent to ug. This, however, for the time,
could produce no detrimental doctrinal result,
yet in its palpable perversion of the doctrine of
Inspiration it did prepare for the indiscriminate
rejection of the doctrine itself.
Not only, however, were the principles of scrip
tural interpretation perverted, but the study itself
neglected. At the University of Leipzig, until
Spener, one of whose great objects was the pro
motion of the study of the Bible, obtained a de
cree from the Elector, directing that an exegetical
lecturer should be established, none were there
delivered; nor was it without an open expression
of bitterness against Spener, that the learned Carp-
zov, who, on a former occasion, had been com
pelled, for want of hearers, to abandon his lecture
on Isaiah, before he had concluded the first chap
ter, resumed the attempt \ Spener himself men
tions, that he knew theologians, who during a six
years' course of study at universities, had not
heard a single exposition of any biblical book.
The unpractical and untenable character of the
doctrinal theology of the same century will have
1 Canstein's Leben Speners, ed, Lange. S. 119. ap Schrbckh,
43,267.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 33
been partly anticipated from what has been al
ready said on the controversies and the scriptural
interpretation of the times. It was in fact, for the
most part, but a connected polemic ; which again,
by the method in which it was handled, contri
buted to reinstate the extremest dryness of scho
lastic formalism. This method, indeed, was ori
ginally reintroduced by contests not so immedi
ately connected with the present view, those with
the Romanists, and especially with the Jesuits, who
employed the same weapons ' ; but it gained yet
greater admission in controversy with individuals,
who (as some inclined to the reformed doctrine
in the Lutheran Church) endeavoured to conceal
diversity of doctrine under similarity of terms.
In order to maintain the distinction which it was
thought necessary to perpetuate, yet nicer and
minuter distinctions were to be adopted, and the
contrast of the two systems pursued to its re-
1 Mosheim, c. 16. s. 3. p. 2. § 19. Budd. Isag. p. 239. and
249, (who, following Elsevich de varia Aristot. in scholis Protes
tant, fortuna, p. 75, dates the influx of scholasticism from the
conference of Ratisbon, 1601.) and Twesten's Dogmatik, S. 235, a
work, of which the first volume, which appeared in 1826, is one
of the most valuable productions of the new German theology,
uniting philosophic depth with pure Christian faith, and which
promises, if continued, to form an era in the doctrinal theology
of that country. The view of the character of Protestantism,
and of its successive stages in Germany, § 8 — 12, as well as that
of doctrinal theology from Melanchthon to the present time, §
13, fgg. though concise, touches in a masterly manner on all the
principal points of the enquiry, and has been partly followed by,
partly found to coincide with the previous views of, the writer of
this essay. D

34 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
motest consequences1. It were then almost
needless to state, that not even a wish for free
dom of enquiry existed ; that the Lutheran sys
tem, instead of being freed from those errors or
unscriptural appendages, which were blended
with its basis of scriptural truth, or existed only
in the mode of stating what was purely scriptu
ral, was developed, and carried to a precarious
height, by increased yet consistent speculation ;
yet the higher the system was carried, the more
dangerous was a return ; the fabric was ready to
fall by its own weight, yet any attempt to lighten
it might only precipitate the evil. The virtual
claim of infallibility (which is perhaps natural to
every long established, unaltered, Church) was in
this case strengthened by the perverted system of
Scriptural interpretation. Revelation being inter
preted according to the analogy of Faith, or, what
was then equivalent, according to the doctrinal
system of the Church, could furnish no other result
than that which already existed. It was referred to
for the justification of preconceived and predeter
mined opinions. The separation, further, by Calixtus
of the system of "Christian moral" from " Christian
doctrine," with which it had been hitherto inter
woven, though in itself greatly to the advantage
of the unity of the latter science, seems to have
produced at the time no effect, but that of extin
guishing even the sense of the necessity of pre
senting it in a form influential upon the Christian
1 Twesten, ibid.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 35
life. Abounding then in technical formulae,
(whether from the Aristotelic-scholastic philosor
phy, or from the scholastic theology) in straw-
splitting distinctions, in endless problems and
deductions, the systems of the age were rather
a massive repertorium of all which might be
accumulated on doctrinal theology, than a clear
exposition of Christian doctrine itself. No
unfavourable specimen of the method is the
" systema locorum theologicorum" of the un
doubtedly learned Calov1. Though he asserts,
that he has aimed at conciseness in the questions
discussed, the work consists of fourteen quarto
volumes ; its polemical spirit may be in some
measure conceived, in that even the first part,
whose professed subject is " the nature of Theo
logy, Religion, divine Revelation, Holy Scripture,
and articles of Faith generally," decides that the
reformed are to be reckoned among the Heretics,
who hold dangerous errors ; (Qu. 14, p. 251) and
that they are no members of the Augsburg Confes
sion ; (Qu. 2 1, p. 259) and closes with a long censure
(p. 881—1216) of the various errors of Calixtus
1 It is no sufficient apology for the defects of this age to in
sist upon the learning of many of the individuals, who are in
volved in them. In their mass of knowledge they are equal, often
superior, to those of other ages ; their deficiency was in the want
of scientific spirit, of freedom from prejudice, of comprehensive
and discriminating views, without which mere knowledge is use
less to the cultivation of science, and oppressive to its possessor.
Gerhard's loci Theologici must be excepted from- this con
demnation, as indeed he himself lived at the commencement of
this age.
D 2

36 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
and his followers. But indeed it is superfluous to
state the polemical and bitter character of the work
of one, who deemed it necessary to refute, step by
step, the commentary of Grotius. The book it
self enjoyed all the distinction of its author, until
the growing disapprobation of the love of strife,
and of a needless creation of heresies, deeply
sunk it.
The mode of arranging and of handling the
matter thus accumulated, would hardly find place
in the present argument, but that it completes the
proof of the uninteresting and abstract form with
which the whole science was invested. Two fa
vourite methods then of arrangement prevailed,
which were for the most part carried through
with unvarying uniformity ; the causal, and the
defining method. The first consisted in enquiring
upon each article what were the causae principales,
et minus principales, instrumentales, efficientes,
materiales, formales, finales, &c. (that adopted
in the above Systema of Calov) ; the second in
premising to each article a definition, which
should at the same time comprise the whole doc
trine of the Church, and all the opposed here
sies: this was then illustrated according to its
several parts, was further subdivided, or gave occa
sion to new definitions, till the whole subject was
supposed to be exhausted. Each article was thus
split into numerous theses, antitheses, distinc
tions, questions, objections, &C.1 Not the ob-
1 Twesten. 236.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 37
scurest nor the most abounding in metaphysical
terminology is the " Systema Theologiae 29 Defi-
nitionibus absolutum of J. A. Scherzer; in which
the definition concerning Christ occupies three
quarto pages in a single period. It thus com
mences, p. 172, sqq. Christus est OeavOpwirog, Deus
scilicet (etiam avrodt-og) et homo, Patri in coelis et
matri Virgini (ut Virgo revera Oioruicog et Chris
tus etiam secundum humanitatem Filius Dei na-
turalis sit,) (in terris o/noovo-iog) constans in unione
ad unam personam, (propter quam unionem etiam
secundum humanam naturam Filius Dei natu-
ralis, non adoptivus est) [alirEpi^wpi^wg, ao-vyyvTug,
aTptTTrwg, a$ia<TTa.T(og, a^wptrwc, facta, natura divina
et humana impeccabili, &C.1 Yet thesebooks satis
fied all the wants of that age ; an acquaintance
with the scholastic terminology, and the topics of
controversy, with a copious collection of Biblical
passages, whose relevance was a point of inferior
importance to their numbers was all which the
ordinary Theologian required ; and the favourite
class-book of the age, that most frequently com
mented upon, and orally expounded, was the
dryest and the most meagre, Kbnig's 2 Theologia
positiva acroamatica synoptice tractata, 1664.

1 Ap. Schrbckh, B. 43, S. 10, 11. There seem to be some mis
prints, which, not having the original, I cannot correct, but which
do not affect the object for which it is quoted.
2 Buddeus, p. 359, calls it "Skeleton quoddam sine succo et san
guine;" and adds that Kbnig heaps unnecessarily metaphysical
terms, sometimes incorrectly, and adduces irrelevant scriptural pas
sages, and he attributes its celebrity solely to the then prevalence of

38 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
" Christian morals," though separated, as above
stated, by Calixtus from doctrinal theology, with
which it had been joined rather than combined, (the
Christian duties being treated of under the head of
the "law" in a species of exposition of the Deca
logue ; the principle of Christian virtue under the
article of Sanctification and the new Obedience1;)
made, as a science, no progress, and was, for the
most part, but a relic of the old casuistry 9. One
work alone (Schomer's Specimen Theologiae Mo-
ralis, 1690) contained any traces of scientific me
thod. The rest are very moderate productions. "In
the midst of the vehement Theological contro
versies (says the ecclesiastical historian 8) which
Scholastic Theology. The works which, according to Twesten S.
237, are best calculated to give an image to the Doctrinal Theology
of that period, Quenstedt's Theologia didactico-polemica, of the
larger, and Baier's Compendium, of the smaller, " are destitute,
not indeed of diligence, acuteness, order, and precision, but of un
prejudiced scriptural interpretation, philosophical depth, and reli
gious warmth." Quenstedt accounts all, even the most distin
guished Theologians, as heretics, who differ in any point, however
slight, from those of Wittenberg.; Baier can scarcely be under
stood without a previous thorough knowledge of the then contro
versies. Budd. ibid.
i Twesten, p. 235.
3 Schrbckh, B. 42, p. 558.
3 Schrbckh, B. 43, p. 86. Buddeus states the same fact and
the same ground for the degeneracy and defects of books of
edification. Fuit ceteroquin jam seculo sexto eatemporum infe-
licitas ut in certamina et intestinas dissensiones raperentur prae-
stantissima ingenia; unde contingebat ut qui vitffi morumque
prsecepta inculcabant, minus sapere viderentur. Contemptus
ejusmodi librorum, (he adds,) inde auctus est, quod pauci rem

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 39
then divided the whole Evangelical Church, was
neither time nor room for the scientific treating
of theological moral."
A scholastic age has but little feeling for his
torical enquiry; the neglect, which it experienced
in the age of the original schoolmen, again re
curred. What did exist was either a mere justifi
cation of Protestantism, or historical notices of
the contests between the Lutherans and the Re
formed ; or if more extensive, a catalogue of
heretics, which, because opposed to the then
orthodoxy, were now also condemned. Yet, for
the most part, in the 17th century, the study of
ecclesiastical history was, as Spener again com
plains, at least at the Universities, extinct. The
evil consequences of this neglect were subse
quently severely felt ; history and historical cri
ticism broke upon the age, in which the system
began to give way, with a dazzling and perplexing,
because unaccustomed, light ; they were thought
to be, (as indeed every science has been in its first
imperfect commencement,) and indeed were in
their then state of cultivation, adverse to Revela
tion. Ignorance of ecclesiastical history had nega
tively also a detrimental effect ; to minds engaged
solely in speculation, and accustomed to no system
foreign to their own, Christian antiquity wore a
strange and unintelligible aspect ; unable to divest
serio agere, plurimi contra aut ad gloriolam aut ad lucrum cap-
tandum, aut ut mori recepto aliquid darent, talia scribere crede-
rentur. Isag. 588.

40 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
themselves of modern ideas, or to transport them
selves into times externally so different, the past
was to them as a sealed book, and was laid aside
without further investigation ; the pride of sup
posed superiority above all preceding times, (the
natural consequence of re-awakening energy com
bined with this ignorance of what antiquity pos
sessed of deeper truth,) was thereby nourished and
promoted. Yet was this pride the basis of many
of their errors : hence arose the presumptuous
contempt with which sentence was passed upon all
earlier modes of expression of Christian feeling ;
hence doctrines, in which the most pious men of
old had found the source and nourishment of
their piety, were, in the name of eternal reason,
determined a priori to be prejudicial even to mo
rality; and hence the various and confused dreams
of the perfectibility of Christianity. A large por
tion, also, of Christian evidence was lost, from the
consequent failure to understand the manner, in
which the influence of Christianity exerted itself.
Equally a consequence of the same neglect was the
positive error of, unconsciously at least, theorizing
on events, ideas, persons, of antiquity, as if in
all respects similar to those of modern times ;
with a little modification, the well-known severe
terms of Gbthe would apply to many besides the
wretched Bahrdt, Da kam mir ein Gedanke von
ungef ahr, So redete ich, wenn ich Christus ware '.
The Theological sciences, whose application
1 In his Bahrdt.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 41
forms the basis of practical Theology, being thus
perverted or obliterated ; the exposition of Scrip
ture, and Christian doctrine converted into pole
mics; ecclesiastical history, so pre-eminently the
magistra vitae, and Christian Moral, forgotten;
it could scarcely be but that this crown, as it
has been justly called, of all theology ' should
equally suffer. From the nature, however, of
Pastoral Theology, those two portions alone
which partake of a scientific character, the pul
pit and catechetical instruction, can furnish
results sufficiently definite or universal, from
which to attempt, without risk of injustice, to
form an estimate of the general condition of the
whole church. Each of these was injured by the
predominant importance attached to controverted
points. Elementary instruction, as far as other
interests permitted it still to be cultivated, was
perverted from its proper object, the communica
tion of the essentials of Christianity, to the en
forcement of the system of the Church in the
immense compass of its abstract articles. Illus
tration and defence of contested points displaced
the inculcation of vital truths in their practical
import; the inexperienced mind was oppressed
and bewildered by the exposition of points which
belonged only to systematic Theology8; the er-
1 Schleiermacher Darstell. des Theol. Studiums, § 8.
! See Schrbckh (43, 154.) who mentions that in the illustra
tion of many Catechisms of this age, one, or even several oc
tavo volumes, filled with a complete doctrinal system, were
employed.

42 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
ror, at all times natural to the human mind, of
regarding religion as a matter of memory, was
rendered almost inevitable by the indiscriminate
mode in which the whole sum of doctrine was
propounded. Yet more common, however, was
the opposed extreme, by which catechizing, was
either, as in the original scholastic age ', neglect
ed, or was committed to subordinate persons, as a
mere mechanical labour. In Saxony, which more
indeed than the rest of Germany was the seat of
a dead orthodoxism, it was not without much
ridicule that Spener, when appointed Court-
Preacher and member of the Consistory at Dres
den, revived it2; not without the taunt that
" the elector had sent for a Court-Preacher, and
had received a school-master." Yet to this failure
of catechising, whatever success unbelief had
among the lower and middling classes (positive
unbelief was, however, among them rare) is far
more attributable, than to any direct attempts of a
later unbelieving clergy or of profligate Rational
ist writers3. The house was swept and gar-
1 Catecheticse Theologise, says Buddeus (Isag. p. 332,) eo
tempore quo scholasticum illud regnum floruit, nulla fere habita
fuit ratio; ideoque hinc inde qusedam solum ejus vestigia depre-
hendere licet. Id quod, (he truly adds, and it is a warning cri
terion for every age,) corruptee admodum ac depravatae hisce
seculis ecclesiae documentum praebet luculentum.
3 Schrbckh, ibid,
3 This subject will occur more fully hereafter ; here it may
suffice to notice that Bahrdt, the only one of the infidel writers
who had any influence on the middling classes, was no Theolo
gian. His frivolity and charlatanism, combined with powers of

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 43
nished ; it was abandoned, empty, and undefended ;
it remained but for the master to enter in. The
coldness of unbelief is preferable to the luke-
warmness of such a state, in that it is more easily
recoverable. Not neglected, indeed, but for the most part des
titute of practical spirit, was the other ordinary me
dium of Christian instruction, the pulpit. The dif
ferent proportions which the several parts of divine
service bear in Germany, (where the prayers, in
cluding the hymns, occupy a much smaller space,
and much less of Scripture is read than among
ourselves), have from the beginning given a pri
mary importance to this ministerial intercourse
of the pastor with his flock ; and this the more, as
the occasions of these addresses are more fre
quent, in that they are delivered at all the occa
sional services, — baptism, marriage, burial of the
dead, and the public confessional on the day pre
paratory to the participation in the communion,
as well as at confirmation, and in the ordinary
service of the Lord's day. Luther, accordingly,
who knew and assigned it its importance, pu
rified it from all its previous defects, and pro
vided in his Kirchenpostille, which he deemed
his best work ', a model for future preachers. The
interest of polemics seems, however, soon to have
imagination and an easy style, gave him, for a time, access and
popularity among the superficial, who were willing to be deceived.
He had, however, no share in the Theological revolutions of the
period. 1 Schrbckh, 39. 460.

44 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
swallowed up every other ; nor, with the excep
tion of Mathesius, does the name of any distin
guished preacher occur among the successors of
Luther. Of those who wrote on the theory of
Christian oratory, a disciple of Melanchthon's
alone, Hemming *, extended his views beyond
the mere external arrangement. The history of
every controversy after the Reformation gives the
proof that intemperate disputation on abstract
questions had largely displaced Christian instruc
tion. Early in the seventeenth century this be-.
came systematic ; the preacher not unnaturally
taught that, in which alone he had been himself
instructed, and which he had been inured to think
of primary or exclusive importance ; he delivered
it in the same scholastic terminology in which he
had himself received it 2. Not orthodoxy, then,
was wanting in the sermons of the seventeenth
century, but the developement of that orthodoxy
in its influence on Christian practice. Moral, when
preached, being separated from implied, equally
as from express, reference to the Christian truths,
was dry and barren ; and the acknowledgment of
these truths manifested itself solely in the refuta
tion of heretics. The sermons printed by James
Andrea, minister at Erlangen, 1568, may furnish
a specimen of the usual subjects of these dis
courses. They consist of four divisions ; 1. Of
the division between Lutherans and Papists;

¦J In his Pastor, 1566. See Schrbckh, 464.
Other defects are mentioned by Schrbckh, ib.

2

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 45
2. Of the Church of Christ and the Zwinglians ;
3. Against the Schwenkfeldians ; 4. Against the
Anabaptists. To shew the spirit of these pole
mics, may suffice the following commencement of
those of Artomedes of Konigsberg (1590) on the
Lord's Supper. " Against the holy Communion
war two raging armies of the incarnate devil ; on
the one side the ungodly Papists, on the other
the over- curious and conceited Calvinists. The
wretched heathen Ovid is a better theologian
than our Calvinists." There follow yet stronger
and more offensive expressions. The style was
equally repulsive. The ordinary divisions were a
dry grammatical exposition of Scriptural texts,
and a polemical or so-called practical application,
equally uninteresting and uninfluential. It is of
course impossible to multiply instances ; suffice
one of Hermann of Brieg in Silesia, on the Gos
pel of the day, the history of Zacchseus. The
text selected was, " He was little of person."
The division of the sermon was, 1. The word
" He" teaches us, "personse qualitatem;" 2. " was,"
" vitae fragilitatem ;" 3. " little," " staturse parvita-
tem." The practical application was, 1. Zacchseus
est informator de varietate operum Dei ; 2. conso-
lator parvorum ; 3. adhortator ut defectum nos
trum virtute compensemus. There were indeed
some splendid exceptions of men, as Arndt1,
J. V. Andrea, and J. Gerhard, who kept aloof from
1 Arndt's " True Christianity" was the substance of his ser
mons. His lectures on Luther's Catechism are also a memorial
of his practical piety. 6

46 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
polemics, and whose piety has been venerated by
every subsequent age, and has edified many other
churches1. " But these instances," adds the his
torian, " besides that they were exceptions from
the usual course, influenced the whole but little ;
and Homiletie Remained a science almost entirely
unknown to those who deemed that they most
excelled in its."
More, however, of the scientific and practical
defects, or rather offences, of the theological pre
paration of that age, may be learnt from the testi
monies of two men of very different characters,
Spener and Thomasius ; the former a divine,
mildly mourning in heartfelt pain over the decay
of piety, and of the practical study of theology ;
the latter, the celebrated reformer of the evange
lical ecclesiastical law, with some, though not un
deserved, mockery. Spener, in his Pia Desideria,
and the preface to Dennhauer's Hodosophia, gives
the following account of the preparatory and pro
fessional studies of theologians. " In the semi
naries for the most part, Latin alone is taught ;
Greek extremely seldom ; Hebrew not at all :
persons come to the Universities without having
an idea of the nature of Theology, which is consi-
1 Gerhard's Meditations is, with Arndt's Christianity, among
the few books which have been valued by every age and country.
Buddeus (ib. 588.) mentions translations into German, French,
English, Polish, and Swedish.
3 Christian rhetoric, the art of preaching, of Christian persua
sion and instruction. .
3 Schrbckh, ib. 468.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 47
dered a mere matter of memory ; hence all prayer,
all meditation, all attention to a holy life, is want
ing. Philosophy is a dry scholastical assemblage
of formulas ; to it is most time devoted. Philo
logy is almost unknown. Many theologians do
not understand the New Testament in Greek.
The most important Theological science is thetik
(doctrinal Theology in its confined sense) ; scrip
tural grounds for the doctrines are not deemed
necessary. Scriptural interpretation is learnt after
entering on the office of preacher, in order to
write the expository part of the sermon, which
contains a mere dialectical explanation. Next to
thetik is polemic1 the most important science,
though it is melancholy to contend against error
when one knows not the truth. And if polemic
must be carried on, yet should it be as in the state*
where one class only is engaged in war. Ethics
are not taught at all ; homiletie consists only in a
philosophical schematism, how a sermon is logi
cally to be arranged." The remarks of Thomasius
are conveyed in the following description of a
candidatus theologiae 2. " He has for two years
1 " Joined with doctrinal Theology," (says Schrbckh, describ
ing this age, 39. 482, sq.) " was polemic theology considered the
highest dignity of the theologian ; and, under a biblical expres
sion, ' to carry on the wars of the Lord,' was the field in which
he most readily appeared, fully armed for the defence of the pro
vince entrusted to him. That such a constant readiness and inT
clination to fight, often, as in the political world, brought on wars
which might easily have been avoided, cannot be denied."
2 " In his Freyrauthige lustige und ernsthafte, jedoch Vernunft-

48 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
studied the Aristotelic philosophy ; in the third,
positive theology; in three more, that of the
schoolmen; and in the four last, which he has
spent at the University, polemic : he has held a
long disputation on the use of metaphysics in the
refutation of heretics ; is able, by means of those
different species of theology, the concordance, and
the skeletons, to give, at an hour's preparation, a
well constituted sermon ; is employed, besides, on
a refutation of that infernal book, Ric. Simonis
Critical History of the Old Testament ; but in
practical or moral theology is an entire stranger."
No wonder then that Spener should meet at least
with assent in his earnest regrets, which he ex
pressed* however, with his peculiar mildness1:
" That the clergy needed an entire reformation,
and so much the more, in that their defects were
not acknowledged ; that many of them were wholly
strangers to earnest inward piety, conceiving that
every thing was comprised in skill in religious
disputation; that much foreign useless matter,
many needless niceties, had been introduced into
theology ; whence many theologians, when they
attained an office, could make no use of what they
had learnt ; that it was necessary to study holy
Scripture with much more diligence than had

und Gesetzmassige Gedanken fiber allerhand, fiirnemlich aber
neue, Biicher." ap. Schrbckh, 42, 561.
1 See the observations of Weism. ib. 1168, sq. where, in
praising Spener's great wisdom and moderation, he mentions that
many thought rather, that he did too little than too much.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 49
been hitherto done, to put a due limit to reli
gious controversies, and to educate and form
future ministers upon an entirely different plan,
reminding them, that much more depended upon
a pious life than upon their diligence and study ;
lastly, that sermons should be made more useful1."
No wonder that H. Miiller should speak against
the four dumb church-idols, the font, the pulpit,
the confessional, and the communion-table 2 ; or
that the result should be that described by the
truly pious, able, and learned Joh. Gerhard,
" that the most diligent church-goers were guilty
of the most reckless practices; but if one did
not admit them to be good Christians, they
threatened an action for libel, and whoever re
commended earnest Christianity, was termed Pha
risee, Weigelian, and Rosecrucian 3."
Such a system could not endure ; it contained
within itself the seeds of its own dissolution ; a
1 Pia desideria ap. Schrbckh, ib. p. 549.
a The censures passed upon him by Joh. Miiller of Hamburg
for these expressions seemed, even to those times, captious and
unjust. Fateor (says Weismann, ib. p. 1143) multum hujus
viri existimationi apud me detrahere acta ejus eristica, et planfe
superflua, cum optimo Viro, H. Mullero, cui plures alii et cele-
bres nostrse Ecclesise Theologi assistebant contra censuram Ham-
burgensem. Cp. Buddeus, who mentions some of his defenders,
and says, that his writings omnium fere promeruerunt calculum,
(ib. 590.) H. Miiller's Erquickungsstunden, especially, long
continued to be one of the principal practical works of Germany.
s The evidences on this head will hereafter be occasionally in
creased by the incidental mention of some of the innovations in
doctrines which thj ultra-Lutheran party opposed.
E

50 CAUSES OP THE LATE RATIONALIST
re-action was almost the unavoidable conse
quence, unless some one, or some succession of
men, gifted with Luther's pious and discriminat
ing mind, should establish a separation between
this accumulation of narrowing human definitions
and the simple truths of the Gospel, should re
place by the influential faith of the heart the
barren contentious scholasticism, by which the
understanding alone was occupied, or rather was
distracted. It was the natural effect of a system,
in itself partly untenable, and of which every un
tenable point was developed to its utmost extent
by other deductions and hypotheses, to provoke
the inconsiderate rejection of a whole, whose
every part was maintained with equal decision,
and as of equal importance; it was the direct
tendency of the endless disputes about abstract
points, in which the different parties were agreed
about nothing, but that unquestioned certainty
might be arrived at, and that they were each in
possession of that certainty, that distaste and
doubt of the whole should be engendered ; it was
the natural consequence of so vast a system of
abstract doctrine, apparently influential in the
production of discord alone, that the authority
of the whole should be questioned : to what pur
pose, it would be asked, should so vast a body of
doctrine be made known to mankind, some of
which in its own nature can have no influence;
and the rest has none ? doubt of the whole would
further be excited by the manifestly weak or
distorted basis, upon which muck was rested;

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 51-
aversion would be created by some unscriptural
doctrines, repugnant to the nature of God x ; opr
position by the intolerance of their supporters 2 :
there are few probably who would not have been
confirmed in their difficulties by such an anta
gonist as Goze, who seems to have sought a
triumph over, rather than the conviction of his
sceptical, but probably more Christian3 opponent.

It may suffice to mention that of the eternal condemnation
of the heathen, which appears to have been generally held by
the orthodox. This appears more strikingly from the fact that
Schrbckh uniformly mentions as a peculiarity in the system of any
doctrinal writer, even a doubt of its truth, than from any number
6f instances with which I may myself have met. To give one
instance, Schrbckh names as a freedom of opinion in Spener,
unexpected in his times, and which, therefore, was interpreted to
his injury, that " he doubted not that even out of the Evangeli.
cal Church, not children only, but many of maturer age, would
be saved." (Theol. Bedenken ap. Schr. 43, 281.) The mainte
nance of the contrary opinion gave rise to one infidel work at
least, Eberhard's Neue Apologie des Socrates ; even Ernesti ex
presses a doubt whether the happiness of virtuous heathens and
Jews be consistent with the importance of the Christian Revela-
tion. Neue Theol. Biblioth. 1. B. S. 105. 5. B. S. 359.
9 This is mentioned by Schlegel also (Kirchengesch, 5. B.
S..247.) as one of the causes of the unbelief of the 18th century
in Germany.
3 I know not any man whose scepticism gives one more pain,
excites more regret, than that of Lessing. His works manifest a
conscientious desire after truth, a struggle to extricate himself
from his difficulties ; he first pointed out the impregnable bulwark
of religion against all scientific objections, which has since been
philosophically justified, that the foundation, the original seat of
religion is in the feeling, not in the understanding. Without
subscribing to every thing contained in the following passages, it
E 2

52 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
Other causes actually coincided, but these fur
nished a well prepared soil for the seed of unbe-

may be permitted to cite them, to shew what the heart of the in
dividual was, whom the unhappy circumstances of his time, and
the intolerance of his opponents seem mainly to have driven into
scepticism. They are collected in the often-quoted work, Twes-
ten's Dogmatik, p. 19. Under the word " Religion," (in his post
humous works) he says, " The many works which in modern
times appear in defence of the Christian religion, are open to the
objection, not only that they prove very ill what they undertake
to prove, but that they are quite contrary to the spirit of Christi
anity, in that its truth is such as rather to be felt, than to be made
an object of intellectual knowledge." (Collectan. Werke, Th.
16. S. 305.) Hence, (observes T.,) he makes a clear distinction be
tween the Theologian and the Christian; the former, he supposes,
may be perplexed by certain objections, which threaten to shake
the props by which he would support religion, " but what do this
man's hypotheses, and explanations, and proofs, concern the
Christian ?" He possesses already the Christianity which he
feels to be so true, and in which he himself is so blessed. When
the paralytic experiences the beneficial shocks of the electric
spark, what matters it to him whether Nollet, or Franklin, or
neither, be in the right ? (Zusatze zu der Wolf. Fragm. Werke,
Th. 5. S. 18.) To the same purport against Gbze. (Th. 6. S. 16.)
" Even supposing one should not be able to remove all the objec
tions, which reason is so busy in making against the Bible, yet
religion would still remain undisturbed and unconcerned in the
hearts of those Christians, who had attained an inward feeling of
its essential truths." Again, Axiomat. (Th. 6. S. 77.) " He,
whose heart is more Christian than his head, pays not the
slightest regard to those objections, since he feels what others
content themselves with thinking." (cp. S. 139, at greater
length.) " This appeal (adds T.) to the feeling of the facts of
inward Christianity is Lessing's leading idea in the contest with
Gbze ; and how much he was in earnest, might be shewn from
many passages of his writings, and the whole frame of his mind."

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 53
lief, under whatever immediate circumstances it
might be planted.
The first opposition to this system, however,
came from other quarters. It seems as if it were
not until other methods had been employed in
vain, that the storm of unbelief was allowed to
burst over so much of this fair portion of the
Christian Church ; not until they had refused to
return from the light of their self-kindled fire, to
the sun of pure Christianity ; that that sun was
for a time obscured to them, in order that the
temporary privation might make them more
deeply feel its value, and benefit by its light and
warmth and healing.
In the very beginning of the 17th century, the
destructive effects l of the existing system in sub
stituting dialectic disquisition for practical Chris
tianity, had been felt by two theologians, Praetorius,
minister of Salzwedel, (ob. 1610), and the ever-
memorable and pious Arndt. (ob. 1611). The lat
ter alone had a very wide permanent influence2, of
ib. p. 20. The late Rennell (Notes on the Conversion of Count
Struensee, p. 20,) and Coleridge. (Aids to Reflection, p. 136,)
have given seasonable advice to those, who think that in the
reception of Christianity the intellect alone is concerned.
1 Arndt's -" true Christianity" was occasioned by the prevailing
corruptions; its object was to shew that " true Christianity con
sists in the manifestation of a true, living, active, faith, in genuine
piety, and the fruits of righteousness." Buddeus in the passage
following that quoted Sup. p. 38. n. 3. assigns the exclusive
polemic as the source of these corrupt manners.
2 Spener, however, in his candid judgment of Prsetorius,
mentions the " very many instances of pious and orthodox men,

54 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
which, however, as is generally the case of the most
extensive usefulness, the largest results were late,
and long after his own personal removal1. In his
life-time> though he united all the humility and
mildness of Spener with the firmness in which
the latter was deficient, though he entered not
into the polemics of his time, and his exertions
were calculated to replace, not to overthrow, the
existing system, he was the object of dislike and
persecution. Even while these exertions were
limited to the exercise of his ministry, he was ac
cused of the heresy of requiring from Christians
Angelic perfection, and of practising alchemy ;
his extensive benevolence was attributed to the
discovery of the philosopher's stone. The clergy
of Brunswick issues warnings against the " poison"
of Arndt2. The immortal work on" True Chris
tianity," (1605), which was translated into every
language of Europe, and has been valued by pious
minds of every succeeding age, did but increase
the hostility. A host of antagonists charged him
with heresy, termed his writings jugglery, -him
self an unlearned presuming fool 3. L. Osiander
who, next to Scripture, ascribe almost all their Christian know
ledge to him." ap. Weism., 1193.
1 Weism., 1178. S. 8.
s Weism., ib. 1175.
8 The names of some of his opponents may be found in Weism.
1 176, and Budd., ib: 614. Though a few were distinguished in the
controversies of their time, they have long been forgotten. They
were mostly inferior, even in learning, to the great man whom
they reviled. See Schrbckh 39,450, and Weism. 1174, who

CHARACTER OP THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 55
pronounced, that they could not be read by the
ignorant without risk of salvation ; that they were
full of heretical poison, pestilential, abounding in
Papism, Calvinism, Flacianism, Schwenkfeldian-
ism, and Weigelianism 1. He accused him of
blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and of ascrib
ing the agency of God to the devil ; by others
were added Osiandrism, Paracelsism, and the use
of the language of the mystico-chemical philoso
phers 2 ; it was made a crime that he did not bind
himself, in his religious teaching, to the symbo
lical formulae ; he was charged with using expres
sions in common with earlier mystics or fanatics,
who had spoken against a bare outward Church
formalism3. These imputations in part refuted
themselves, in part did not need refutation ; he
was cleared of all error of moment by subsequent
divines of his own Church4; and his own valuable
speaks of his " eruditio plane singularis et arcana etiam in par-
tibus doctrinse Theologiam non concernentibus." The source of
the accusation was, that he did not employ it in the same osten
tatious and unedifying manner which was usual in the sermons of
the time. (See Schrbckh, ib. 464.)
1 In his " Theolggisches Bedenken und Christlich treu-herzig
Erinnerung, welcher Gestalt Arndt's wahres Christenthum nach
Anleitung des Heiligen Worts zu betrachten sey." 1623. Weis-
mann, however, mentions, that he is said to have retracted at
the approach of death, (ib. 1176.)
2 Mosheim.c. 17. 11. 2. 1. 39. Weismann, 1. c.
3 Vater, p. 258 — 9. Weism. (p. 1177), as well as others ap.
Budd. 613, doubts not that he conferred a benefit on the Church
by extracting and combining with Scripture what was really solid
and useful in the mystic or practical authors.
* Besides others who vindicated him, among whom was the

56 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
work has, in better times, produced far more than
a mere negative testimony. His principal imme
diate influence, however, seems to have been
among the laity l : upon the system of the German
Church he acted most extensively through the
formation of the mind of Spener, whose character
was principally framed by the early study of
Arndt's " True Christianity 2," in combination with
two English works.
The thirty last years, however, of the half-cen
tury, which intervened between the death of
Arndt and the commencement of Spener's public
exertions, witnessed an attack upon the system on
the scientific side, which, however its immediate
operation was annihilated by the heat of the par
ties, prepared for its subsequent downfal by lead
ing to historical enquiry, to a better scriptural in
terpretation, and to a more practical view of con
troversy. valuable J. Gerhard, who regarded him as a second parent,
(Weism. 1177) the praise of the otherwise bigoted Hulsemann,
the bitter opponent of Calixtus, of Dannhauer, (at first prejudiced
against Luther as well as against Arndt,) and of M. Geier, who
attributes to his work his own real Christianity, will be above sus
picion of undue attachment. (Weism., ib. cp. Budd. 614.)
1 Two highly-gifted authors, however, were formed by him ;
Scriver (Superintendant at Magdeburg, died at Quedlinburg,
1693, as first court-preacher,) whose Seelenschatz, or Consi
derations on Doctrine and Morals,, was one of the most valued
edifying books of the time: (Schrbckh, B. 42. p. 87.) and H.
Miiller of Rostock, already mentioned.
* Spener mentions that Arndt was the only modern besides
Luther, whom he quoted by name in his preaching, (ap. Weism.
1192.)

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 57
Nearly coincident with the conclusion of the
unequalled horrors of the thirty years' war, (a
war whose length and miseries might long before
have been closed but for the disunion of the two
Protestant parties, and the jealousy of a Lu^
theran court-preacher and adviser of Joh. George
I. of Saxony1), was the signal for the Syncretis-
1 The principles expressed on this occasion, alone, entitle it to
notice. M. Hoe von Hoenegg, the individual in question, per
suaded his patron, that " an union with the Papists was better
and safer than one with the reformed," (Leyser Bedenken daruber
von Hoe herausgeg, 1619. &c. ap. Henke, iii. 487.) and that Bo
hemia " should not be exposed to be devoured by the Calvinistic
Antichrist;" (Hoe's letter in Unschuld. Nachr. (1714.) S. 39.
ap. Henke, ibid.) which confirms the statement of the experienced
Cardinal Bentivoglio, (many years employed by Rome in Flan
ders and France,) that the Lutherans were more disinclined
to the Reformed than to the Romanists. (Lettres de Ben
tivoglio, p. 42.) Hoe, though moderated by the necessities of
the times during the conference of Leipzig, (1631), resumed
his former tone when hopes of a separate Lutheran peace re
appeared, wrote against a hundred points, in which the Re
formed held erroneous, nay, Arian opinions, (Unvermeidl. Ret-
tung wider das Oraculum Dodonaeum, &c. 1635), and dis
suaded from every effort to procure their religious freedom. (Henk.
ib. 491.) The Reformed, as their theology remained free from
formularism to a much later period than that of the Lutherans,
and unbelief found consequently a much slower access among
them, so were they throughout more tolerant. Public recon
ciliation was never hindered by them ; private polemics were but
seldom bitter. Besides the resolution of the famous Synod of
Charenton (1631), the conference of Cassel (1661) was approved
of by the most distinguished theologians even of the Dutch
Church ; (see authorities ap. Henk. iv. 276.) and at the very time
that Hoe was making the above exertions, Pareus wrote to pro
mote the concord of the two churches, met, however, with refu-

58 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
tic 1 controversy given by Buscher in his work
tations only from the Lutherans. (Henk. 3. 485; Schrbckh, 40.
194.) The name of Evangelical was denied them, (Wittenb.
Bedenken, ap. Henk. 4. 279.) The conference of Cassel was
condemned by most Lutherans, by some as a conspiracy to be
tray the truth to apostasy and ungodliness, (Henke, ib. 277-9.)
though it asserted only, that the difference of the two churches
did not affect the foundation of faith nor salvation, (ib. 275.)
In the same spirit they had rejected the proposals for peace from
the Synod of Lissa (1645) as treacherous; (Consil. theol. Witteb.
i. 527) and in conformity to the response of the University of
Wittenberg, refused, at the ensuing conference with the Roman
ists at Thorn, to unite in worship with the Reformed. (Henke,
ib. 257, 8.) In Brandenburg, the so called Nominal- Elench us,
or the preaching by name against the characteristic doctrines of
the Reformed, was held part of the duty of the clergy; (ib. 279.)
and many of them abandoned their functions and their land sooner
than comply with the moderate requisition of the wise and excel
lent Elector, Frederic William the Great, that both parties should
abstain from invidious deductions from the Confessions of the
other, &c. ; and that the Exorcism at Baptism should be omitted,
when requested by both parents, (see ap. Henk. 280, 1.) Among
these zealots one regrets to see Paul Gerhard, the author of the
most beautiful and pious hymns in the German Church. To close
these painful instances, in Swedish Pomerania, where were no Re?
formed, an order from the local authorities, suspending declama
tions against them, and erasing from the Liturgy the petition,
" Repress the Turks, Papists, and Calvinists," was annulled by
application to Stockholm ; and the intermarriage of a Lutheran
with a Reformed declared inadmissible, (more such cases in Bal-
thasar von d. Eifer d. Pommern gegen d. Reformirten ap. Henk.
ib. 283.) Some knowledge of the relation of the two cnurches is
necessary both to understand the vehemence of the opposition to
Calixtus, and as one specimen of the state of polemics in the
Xutheran Church.
1 An invidious meaning was given to the term Syncretism by
means of a false etymology, as if its promoters wished for a mix-

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 59
against Calixtus ; " CryptOrPapismus novae theolo-
giaeHelmstadiensis." (1639.) Seldom has any one
been so much misunderstood, partly perhaps from
his own unguardedness \ but principally from the
passions of his opponents, as this great and penetra
ting man. Incidental expressions in works, of which
the substance alone* was his, were caught up and
imputed as heresies; real positions3 perverted,
and made to bear upon some existing or extinct
heresy; his anxiety to promote Christian charity
converted into indiflerentism. Though his office
<,
ture of religions. It implied the reverse ; for it was used, in its
original sense, of union in a great common object notwithstand
ing existing differences, having been first employed by Greek
.authors, of similar conduct in the " Cretans."
1 See Weism. p. 1195. §. 3. Possessed of great talent, and
taking comprehensive views, he was not aware until too late
that every expression would be thus sifted.
3 This was the case with most of his works : among them the
-Epitome Theologiae was published, from his lectures, unrevised,
and without his knowledge. In this occurred once, and once
only, the expression, that " God could only be called indirectly,
improperly, and per accidens the cause of sin ;'7 alluding to the
passages in which God is said to harden men's hearts. An im
pious sense was given to the phrase, whereas it implies, that God
cannot, in any proper sense, be called the author of sin. (See
Weism. ib. p. 1260.)
3 Much occasion of offence was, for instance, taken at his
-allowing to the fathers of the five first centuries a secondary au
thority in fundamental articles of faith. This, which in fact in
no respect differed from the practice of all Protestant writers,
who have uniformly referred to the agreement of the early fathers,
as witnesses of the primitive faith, was imputed to him as involv
ing the Romanist error of setting human authority co-ordinate
.with Scripture. (See Weism. ibid. p. 1195, 6.)

60 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
as teacher of theology was conferred upon him for
his success in controversy with a Romanist ', and
though by one of themselves2 he is named as
their ablest antagonist, his Lutheran brethren
charged him with secretly favouring them ; though
he wrote against the distinguishing doctrines of
the Reformed, and even represented them to be
self- contradictory 3, he was accounted to belong
to them ; Arianism and Judaism * were imputed
1 The Jesuit Aug. Turrianus had nearly effected the conversion
of a young nobleman of Brunswick, but withdrew after one day's
conference with Calixtus. Calixtus was then twenty-seven,
Schrbckh, 39. 690, 1.
3 Bossuet Traite de la Communion sous les 2 espfeces, p. 1.
§. 62. p. 12. Calixtus' works immediately upon this subject were,
those on the Sacrifice of the Mass, on the Infallibility of the Pope,
on the Marriage of the Clergy, (a treatise of considerable historical
research, and the first upon the subject), and especially the Di-
gressio, qua excutitur nova ars Bart. Nihusii, written upon the
sophistical position then popular among French theologians, that
the Catholics, by right of prescription, had no occasion to prove
their doctrines, but that the Protestants, as plaintiffs, must dis
prove them, and that from the simple words of Scripture without
inferences. This, however, was by no means the sole subject
of the work, it gave occasion to lay down general principles
proving the unjustified introduction of several of the distinguish
ing Romanist doctrines, &c.
, 3 Disput. xi. de Ccena Domini, p. 247, sq. and more generally
in the Annott. et Animadvr. in Confessionem Reform. Thorunii
in Colloquio A. 1645 oblatam, &c. 1655.
* These charges were brought by Weller, " Teutsche Probe."
Scharff of Wittenberg imputed to him enormous errors against
the Trinity, and almost Photinianism ; and so others. (Weism. ib.
1096, 7.) In the same spirit Reinboth was accused of an ap
proximation to Socinianism and Atheism, for holding that the

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 61
to him, because he thought that the doctrine of
the Trinity was not revealed with equal clearness
in the Old as in the New Testament; nor was,
under the old dispensation, necessary to salvation.
Such, however, and others, though the subjects,
were not the ground of attack ; they were the
channels in which it flowed, the stream which
filled them was his supposed indifference to the
distinguishing doctrines of Lutheranism. It would
now scarcely appear credible that this charge of
indiflerentism arose, not in any of the attempts,
which have been renewed from time to time in
every country, to unite different confessions ; (this
Calixtus thought then impossible, or at least dis
tinctly stated, that he did not aim * ;) but in the
endeavour to revive a mutual Christian feeling,
by recalling to mind, that, however important the
points of disagreement, still both Lutheran and
Reformed, nay, the Romanist, held all the doctrines
necessary to salvation. Beyond this Calixtus did
not go ; he shewed by his writings and by his ac
tions his value for the Lutheran doctrine ; but he
did wish, that amid this diversity the ground of
unity should not be forgotten; that, amid the
names of Lutheran, Reformed, and Romanist, that
of Christian should not be obliterated ; nor in his
very widest assertion,' that all doctrines necessary
doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son was
not a necessary article, nor prescribed in the ancient Creeds.
Henk. iv. 264.
1 See Schrbckh, 704, sq. Weism. ib. 1203. sq.

62 CAUSES OP THE LATE RATIONALIST
to salvation are contained in the Apostles' Creed,
(however in shallower minds such a maxim may
at different times have been a cloak for indiffer-:
entism) was there any undervaluing of the main
Christian doctrines ; since it was evidently not a
mere abstract belief in the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, but that of the doctrines therein involved,
which he understood. This meaning he has him
self sufficiently explained1. The conference at
Thorn, between the two Protestant bodies and
the Romanist Church, where his presence as co
adjutor of the Reformed delegates, at the request
of the Elector of Brandenburg, gave ground to
lasting offence, had in view only the same general
object, that a better acquaintance with each
other's principles might diminish the bitterness
of discord 2. Half the evils of controversy would
indeed cease, did the mass of each party derive
their knowledge of the tenets of their opponents
from any other source than the refutations on
their own side, Calixtus promised the same as
sistance to some of the Lutheran delegates, but
1 Calixtus' meaning is clear from other passages, where he ex
presses the same sentiment in different language, as, that all a
Christian need believe in order to salvation was contained in the
ancient creeds and decisions of the councils ; that whoever agreed
With these doctrines of the ancient Church, he was in heart united
with him, &c. (Digress, de arte nova, p. 462, sq. ap. Schrbckh,
39. 697.) See especially the principles developed in the De To-
lerantia Reformator.
2 The points of controversy were in this conference neither to
be attacked nor defended, but to be explained; the word " dis-

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 63
was, by means of others, rejected1. In this Chris
tian career he was acting on the principles and
according to the oath of the professors of his Uni
versity to promote Christian peace 2, and, from
his personal knowledge of the character of the
different confessions in various countries3, his
mind became alive to the existence of the same
great doctrines in all, to which his contemporaries
had been deadened by exclusive attention to
points of controversy. The endless struggles in
pute" was not to be used ; it was to be a fraterna collatio, a
colloquium charitativum. It had also the result, that the Re
formed Church, especially that of Brandenburg, did here form
the Confession, called, from the conference, that of Thorn.
(Schrbckh, 39. 509—12. Henk. iv. 256-9.) After this confer
ence many of the orthodox party ceased to regard Calixtus as
an evangelical teacher. (Schrbckh 39. 702. fg.)
1 Schrbckh, 39. 703.
2 Mosh. c. 17. ii. 2. § 21. Weismann says that Helmstadt had
always exerted a greater freedom of opinion than other Univer
sities, which accordingly denied to its theologians the character
of pure and genuine Lutherans, contrary to their own protesta
tions. The non-reception of the Formula of Concord seems in
part to have contributed to this difference ; the doctrine of the
ubiquity of Christ's body, whose rejection appeared to the Luthe
rans of that formula to involve an approximation to the Re
formed doctrine, was not only not admitted, but expressly set
aside by Luther in one of his later works, (quoted by Calixtus
de Tolerantia Reformator. ap. Schrockh. 39. 497.)
3 He studied the practical character of the reformed confession
in Holland, in England, (where he derived much benefit from
Casaubon, and his attention was directed to the study of the fa
thers by the English bishops), and in France. At Colin, where
practical Romanism was most fully exhibited, he employed six
months. (See his life in Schrbckh, -39. 689-91.)
6

64 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
which Calixtus became involved, prevented his
giving a better direction to theological study by
the complete digestion of his own comprehensive
views, and limited his immediate influence nearly
to the countries where the Formula of Concord
had not been introduced l ; yet many of his opi
nions produced enquiry2; historical investiga-

1 Such as Holstein, Brunswick, and part of Hesse Nurnberg.
The whole University of Helmstadt coincided with Calixtus ;
among whose members Conring, the most distinguished and most
variously cultivated of the learned of his country, (Schrbckh, ib.
707) through his influence with different princes, by whom he
was constantly consulted, was enabled to remove many of the
imputations circulated against him. The duchess Anna Sophia
procured admission for theologians of his school into Branden
burg, (see authorities ap. Henke, iv. 271-3.) In Saxony, on the
contrary, among other places, no one who had studied at Helm
stadt was preferred, without abjuring the so-called Calixtian
principles. (Answer of Fred. Will, of Brand, ap. Henk. ib. 280.)
Among other attempts of a similar character, most worthy of no
tice is that of Calov, who endeavoured, by means of a new symbo
lical book, to exclude the Calixtians from the Lutheran Church
and the religious peace. (See Weism. ib. 1205-6. Henke, iv. 268.)
Even in Kbnigsberg, where they were protected by the Elector
of Brandenburg, all the influence of his disciples was destroyed
by the vehement opposition of Mislenta, popular tumult excited,
and even an honourable burial refused to M. Behm, who would
not unite in decrying them. (Hartknoch Preuss. Kirchenh.
S. 609. ff. and others ap. Weism. ib. 1205. Henk. iv. 268-9.)
* His view, for instance, on the Revelation of the doctrine of the
Trinity in the Old Testament, and on the supposed necessity of its
being believed under the former dispensation, led naturally to in
quiry into the now almost obliterated distinction of the two cove
nants, and into the gradual character of revelation; the limitation
which he introduced into the doctrine of inspiration, confining it

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 65
tion * and a sounder scriptural interpretation
commenced, through his example, instruction, or
principles ; his fragment on the study of theology
contained and illustrated his valuable and large
views on the nature of the necessary preliminary a
acquirements, as well as on the compass and order
of the different branches of the science itself; and
in the separation of essentials front non-essentials,
his warnings against needless controversy, and
his opposition to a dead faith 3, he directly pre- .
to the essentials of religion, and admitting the existence of minor
errors of transcription, must tend to a simplification of the exist
ing theory ; his exclusion of the doctrines of universal religion
from the sum of Christian truths, would naturally lead to more
defined ideas on Revelation, &c. &c. (See Schrbckh, ib. 706.)
1 To this Calixtus contributed theoretically by the sketch in
the Apparatus Theologicus (in which there occurs an expression,
very remarkable for those times, that " without the knowledge of
ecclesiastical history, no theologian deserves the name,'' see the
Epitome of the Fragment, in Schrbckh, ib. 400-2.) and practi
cally, by his own example in his different controversial works,
which communicated itself to his scholars and disciples. (See
Henke, ib. 255.) This historical character of the school, as far as
its influence extended, weakened the dominion of formularism.
2 His own Commentaries were indeed very imperfectly pub
lished, yet his Apparatus Theolog. shews at large the combined
service of philology and philosophy in biblical interpretation ; and
Hackspan, one of the best commentators of the age, was his
disciple. 3 To this place belongs the controversy " whether good works
were necessary to salvation," for maintaining which his colleague
Horneius was termed Papist, Majorist, Anabaptist, and severely
condemned by Wittenberg, Jena, and Leipzig. Calixtus, to
avoid ambiguity or offence, employed other terms ; yet because
he urged as a motive to chastity, (in his Historia Josephi) that
F

66 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
pared the way for the exertions of Spener. Re
markable is it also, in proof of the ill effects of the
existing controversies, that the persons, who in
this century most promoted the advance of theo
logical science, were either pupils of Calixtus, or
of the same uncontentious disposition \
The present controversy was estimated by men
of high talent2 entirely unconnected with party ;
salvation might be endangered by the contrary sins, this exhorta
tion was converted into the position that chastity, (and thus good
works,) were necessary to salvation, and the same imaginary
heresies supposed to be involved. (Weism. ib. 1198, 9.)
1 Among the former may be mentioned the celebrated Hack-
span, Durr, (the first expander of the science of Christian moral)
and the elder Fabricius ; among the latter John Gerhard, (whom
Bossuet calls " le troisieme homme de la Reformation apres
Luther and Chemnice," Hist, des Var. T. 2, p. 455.) and to
whom Du Pin preferred Melanchthon alone, (Biblioth. des
Auteurs separes de la Comm. de l'!Eglise Rom. T. ii. p. 74, sqq.)
but who was frivolously depreciated by many Lutheran contem
poraries, (Schrbckh, ib. 443. ; Budd. Isag. i. p. 353, sq.; Weism.
ib. 1127.) Tarnov, Glassius, M. Geier, Sagittarius, Kortholt,
S. Schmidt, Reuchlin; of the same spirit were the few, who
presented striking exceptions to the decayed and lifeless system
of preaching, — Arndt, J. V. Andrea, Herberger, — and of the
learned theologians, J. Gerhard and Glassius. (See Schrbckh,
ib. 464—9 ; on J. V. Andrea there is a very interesting Memoir
in Weism. ib. 1131— 8.)
? These were the celebrated Glassius and Musaeus. The opinion,
which the former was commissioned by Ernest the Pious of
Saxe Gotha to deliver on the points of controversy, was pub
lished after his death ; and is " almost the only work (says
Schrbckh, 43. 250.) which furnishes a correct and moderate
estimate of the controversy." Museeus, first in his lectures, esti
mated candidly the meaning of the expressions upon which the
charges against the Calixtians were founded, (Weism. p. 1206.)

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 67
these virtually acquitted Calixtus ; the only effect,
however, of their candour was, to divert the con
test in part against themselves ; it was continued
against the younger Calixtus, who possessed nei
ther the talents, the learning, nor the temper of
his father, and had degenerated into mere mutual
revilings, before it sunk in the deeper interest of
that with Spener and his followers.
Spener's endowments, (though he was possessed
of considerable learning ',) were rather of a moral
and religious, than of a high intellectual nature.
and was consequently charged by a disciple of Calov with 93
errors in the most essential doctrines ; (Schrbckh, ib. 251.) as
those of Calixtus had varied from 80 to 120. (Schrbckh, 39. 706.)
These he refuted point by point, satisfactorily shewing their vexa-
tiousness, and the danger which resulted to the Church from thfe
wanton multiplication of controversy. (Weism. p. 1207.) Calov
after Calixtus' death, refused to use the term " beatus C,"
alleging that he must on the same ground speak of B. Bellar-
mine, B. Calvinus, B. Socinus, &c. (Weism. p. 1148.) and at
Wittenberg, in a dramatic piece, Calixtus was represented as a
fiend with horns and claws, (quoted by Henk. iv. 271.)
1 Early intended for the pastoral office, he studied principally
at Strasburg and Basle under Seb. Schmidt, (the best Scripture
expositor of his time, and whose works are even now useful)
Dennhauer and Buxtorf, Hebrew and other Oriental languages,
history, and especially the interpretation of Scripture. His inti
mate study of Grotius' treatise De Bello et Pace, his being the
author of the first considerable treatise on heraldry, (of which two
editions were published,) and his delivery of lectures and holding
disputations at Strasburg and Basle on geography and history,
logic, and metaphysics, are indications of a more extensive know
ledge not confined merely to actual theology, (see Schrbckh,
B. 43, S. 256. Canstein Leben Speners, §. 4, 5.) Still his best
powers were given to theology, and much more to religion.
F 2

68 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
Even his sermons owed their attractions solely to
their pure biblical and practical character. Those
among his qualifications which approached most
nearly to gifts of nature, a sound judgment1, and
a practical intuitive insight into the point upon
which each question turned, were in him moral
qualities. Through these endowments principally,
combined with his own religious experience and
his study of the history of the Church, he was
enabled to see precisely what were the defects in
its then state ; his piety and religious zeal, sup
plied without pretension, in the regular perform
ance of his functions, an example of the remedy
for those defects. On these two points, then,
turns the extensive, though from external cir
cumstances still inadequate, reformation, which
he was enabled to effect. He did not claim for
himself the character of a reformer, and was
perhaps on that very account, in those turbulent
and intolerant times, the more calculated to be
one. TOo fully penetrated with the importance
of the truths, whose neglect he deplored, in the
slightest degree to compromise them for an un
sound peace, yet was his manner of stating them
conciliating and mild; confiding in the power
of those truths, when stated, to make themselves
acknowledged and felt, he withheld as much as
possible his own individuality from mingling with
them ; he lived, as long as his opponents permitted
him, for the discharge of his own duties alone,
1 Leben Sp. S. 38, 9.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 69
trusting that either the fruits of their right dis
charge might kindle others to like exertions, or
that God would raise up others, who might carry
into effect upon a more extensive scale that
reform, whose necessity he proclaimed, but in
which he himself was content to act a subordinate
part. The alarm and jealousy were thus avoided,
which might have resulted from bolder and
more direct attempts. The princes of Germany
valued and favoured him1. Enemies he had,
from envy, from the unpalatableness of the truths
which he promulgated, from his undervaluing the
mere intellectual orthodoxism of his day, from his
discovering that among the many things, on the
laborious acquisition of which the orthodox theo
logians prided themselves, the one thing needful
had been forgotten ; but no one became Spener's
enemy from any presumption or failing of his
own. The following extract from a private letter2
to a friend gives much insight into the Christian
1 Witness his first unsolicited invitation to Dresden as first
court preacher; and that subsequently to Berlin, when the displea
sure of the Elector of Saxony at the earnestness of his preaching
had emboldened his antagonists, and made his office painful; the
confidence of the Elector of Brandenburg in entrusting to him
all the theological appointments of the newly-erected University
at Halle, (Schrbckh, ib. 271.) and the invitation to resume his
office at Dresden, (1698), at the very time that the divines of
Saxony were declaiming against his deviations from the doctrines
and constitution of the Evangelical Church. (Ibid. p. 282.)
* Published at Halle three years after his death, in the collec
tion of his occasional writings and letters, entitled Theologische
Bedenken, 32 Th. S. 305. (1708). This and the following ex
tract are quoted by Schrbckh, B. 43, S. 264.

70 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
mildness and humility of Spener's character, as
well as into the principles upon which he acted.
" To set myself up as a reformer of the Church
were a folly, which I do not allow myself to
entertain ; I know sufficiently my own weakness,
that I have received neither the wisdom nor
strength for such a task. Let me then be con
tented to be numbered among the voices which
encourage those to work a reformation, whom the
Lord may have endowed with the ability thereto.
For such a work then I need no followers, nor to
draw others to me. Yet neither am I required
to break with those Theologians, of whom I may
either myself think and hope well, or who at least
do not openly oppose the truth. Rather is it my
aim to retain their good feelings in any way
which is not contrary to my conscience ; whether
that their coinciding with me may make my own
work succeed better, or that they may be thereby
encouraged to a more diligent discharge of their
office, or that they may not be seduced wickedly
to oppose the Christian intentions of others.
All which ends are in conformity with the glory
of God. On the other hand I see not how
it could be justifiable, wantonly to drive such
needlessly to oppose themselves." Nor was this
feeling of his own insufficiency momentary; it
is expressed yet more fully, and therefore with
more evident humility, in a letter to another
friend, (1678) ». " I know well not only that the
work of Reformation is not the work of one man,
1 Schrbckh, ib. S. 226.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 71
but that, whatever may be the purpose of the
Lord towards his Church, I shall neither be the
chief agent, nor one of the chief; since he has
not bestowed upon me the talents thereto. More
honour already than I deserve is it that my
God has so far blessed my " pia desideria," that
they have sounded sufficiently loud to awaken
and encourage many, — not to learn of me, but to
reflect further on the subject according to the
powers which they have from God." Of his in
adequacy, which he here mentions in general terms,
he assigns the grounds in another letter. " I find
in myself a want of erudition and of natural qua
lifications, deficiencies which I observe in the
execution of my functions, so that I am ashamed
of being so little able to help myself. How then
would it be, were I to undertake a thing so great ?
Especially am I deficient in the power of the
Spirit from above, which is, alas ! very weak ;
and my natural timidity even in small matters is
difficult to overcome ; nor can I do any thing
which requires a truly heroic courage, but if the
Lord of our Church design yet more to bless it,
so that besides possessing true doctrine it should
be brought generally into a sound condition, the
agents must be very different from me and such
as me." The agency of Spener, then, principally
arose from the influence of his example, in the
restoration of a more instructive and influential
mode of preaching and of catechizing, and in the
institution of those Unions for the promotion of
piety and of Christian knowledge, which received
the title of Collegia Pietatis ; from his writings,

7£ CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
and from the communication of the same spirit to
others, especially to the Theologians of Halle.
The previous state of the pulpit has been
already described. The evil was too universal
to be felt. There was not light sufficient to make
the darkness visible. Spener's reform commenced
in the omission of the superfluous parade of dry
learning, of unpractical controversy, of self-dis
play, and of the cramped mechanism of the
Arrangements. His preaching was a simple but
energetic developement and application of the
Gospel. It is indeed no slight proof of the
dominion of controversy in preaching, that in
one of his earliest sermons, (1667) ' on the neces
sary precautions against false prophets,' even he
gave offence by including the Reformed among
them '. The error was not repeated. Nor is the
sensation excited by one, shortly subsequent, " on
the false and insufficient righteousness of the
Pharisees," in which he developed the incorrect
ideas of many Christians on virtue and holiness,
as if these consisted in the mere avoiding of
gross vices, less a proof of the necessities of his
times. Many there first learnt the insufficiency
of unfruitful faith without amendment of the
heart; some, unwilling to have their imagined
security disturbed, refused again to enter his
church2. Spener indeed did not cultivate one
portion alone of the Christian system ; he did
not dwell exclusively on favourite doctrines, but
1 Schrbckh, ib. 262. Spener retained his regrets for this
action even in his last sickness. (Leben S. 138.)
s Schrbckh, 1. c.

CHARACTER OF GERMAN THEOLOGY. 73
proposed the whole of Christianity. His three
years' courses of sermons ' contain severally, Gos
pel doctrine, Gospel duty, the consolations of
Gospel faith. In the second especially, he taught
not merely, as inexperienced moral teachers, that
the duties were to be performed, but how ; what
facilitated, advanced, or hindered them2. Spe
ner's anxiety to render belief practical is further
evinced by his venturing to omit assertions, which
were abused by fleshly mindedness and indolence,
but to the letter of which an indiscriminating
Orthodoxy clung ; such as that " No one can at
tain to the perfection which the divine law re
quires :" "in the act of justification, on the part
of man, faith alone is concerned without good
works," and by the revival of the often contested
doctrine, that " good works are necessary to sal
vation V It was, namely, one of Spener's main
objects to remove the confidence in the dead faith,
which the series of controversies had fostered*.
The publication of these sermons, aided by Spe
ner's living example, formed a new era in Chris
tian preaching ; the causes of the unfruitfulness
of the former method became thus manifest : the

1 They were published while Spener was at Dresden, 1688.
2 Schuler. 1. c. S. 22. fg. Allgemeine Biographie,Th.6, S. 319.
fg. 417, fg. ap. Schrbckh, B. 43. S. 163.
' Mosheim, C. 17, P. 2, S. 2. c. 1. § 31. Not however that
Spener held that justification was other than the free gift of God,
but that good works as the fruits of faith were contained in it.
4 See Lbscher, one of Spener's bitterest antagonists, as quoted
by Schrbckh, B. 43, S. 289.

74 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
widest sphere however was opened to the pure
biblical instruction of Spener, when theoretically
as well as practically inculcated and exemplified
by the first theologians of Halle, who united the
offices of Professors and of Christian Ministers.
The defects of the catechetical system have
been already noticed. Spener aimed at, and suc
ceeded in, restoring the sense of its importance,
which had been felt by every class even of the
earliest Reformers *, and had been earnestly in
culcated by Luther, and in giving it a more in
structive and practical character. The first he
effected by undertaking its duties himself, when
his high station in the Church did not make it a
part of his office ; (both as Senior of the Evange
lical Ministerium at Frankfort, and as first court-
preacher and member of the Upper Consistory at
Dresden, whence in the latter office he could
more effectually further it in others.) In both
places he infused so much interest into his in
structions, that even grown persons gladly availed
themselves of them3. To the improvement of
1 It is interesting and singular to see the practice independently
revived by the Vaudois, by Wickliffe, and by Huss, after it had been
nearly obliterated since the sixtK century : (Budd. ib. 334, sqq.)
and the circumstance adds to the proof, that Protestantism had
its rise in the religious wants of Christians, not in intellectual
difficulties, or in the much-praised scientific advancement of the
age. Science aided indeed the Reformation, but was not its
source; it can, and has as much perhaps assisted Romanism.
Erasmus was more learned than any of the Reformers, yet was
not himself one.
2 Schrbckh, ib. 151, fgg.

CHARACTER OF GERMAN THEOLOGY. 75
the mode of catechising he contributed princi
pally by his " simple explanation of Christian
doctrine according to the order of [Tuther's3
lesser catechism;" (1677.) a full and clear expo
sition of the sum of Christian faith, in reference
to Christian life, with well-selected scriptural
proofs 1. His object in this work was to give a
specimen how unpractised Christians might be
taught, not by a mere mechanical exertion of the
memory, but by developing their newly-acquired
knowledge in their own language. He warned
consequently against any mere adoption of his
own model ; he added tables, explanatory of his
method, the more clearly to shew how little a
mere adoption, or servile imitation, was neces
sary2. The science of catechetical instruction,
which has since been expanded, owes its existence
to this work of Spener's. Immediately connected
with this improvement of elementary instruction
was his revival of the rite of confirmation, whose
solemnity and influence in the German Church
now far exceeds that generally observable in our
own ; but which, until Spener, had sunk into
neglect, as a supposed remnant of Popery 3.
Spener's widest influence, however, was derived
from the institution of the much-questioned " col
legia pietatis." The object of these at their first
commencement, was to expand, explain, and ap
ply the discourse of the preceding Sunday. He
1 See Budd. ib. 336.
8 Schrbckh, ib.
3 Henke, iv. 519.

76 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
had felt, in common probably with every prac
tical minister, the inadequacy of any instruction,
in which the people were mere recipients, either
in imparting religious knowledge, or in giving an
individual effect to what was delivered generally.
In these meetings, which were commenced with
prayer, part of the sermon was repeated, ques
tions were asked by Spener to ascertain how far
it had been understood, or proposed to him by
any of the men present, not to satisfy curiosity,
but to promote practical piety. These meetings
continued to be conducted upon the same prin
ciples, when a passage of Scripture was laid as the
basis instead of the sermon1. The free commu
nication and the knowledge of the wants of the
congregation re-acted upon the usefulness of the
pulpit. These meetings were approved of by his
colleagues, were in conformity with the symboli
cal books, praised by the Universities, and consult
ed even by Ben. Carpzov, who was subsequently,
from envy, the great enemy * of Spener. In the
Articles of Smalcald (III Th. Art. 4.) it is said,
1 Schrbckh, ib. S. 257.
2 Carpzov's subsequent enmity arose in the disappointment of
his expectation that the office at Dresden, which was given to
Spener, should have been filled by himself or his brother. (Leben
Sp. S. 118.) His brother actually was the successor of Spener.
(Vater, 368.) This inconsistency, which Calovius shared with most
of Spener's.opponents, was excused by the idle distinction of a
' Spener prior et posterior,' though Spener continued to act uni
formly to the end, and all his plans of reformation had been already
developed. (Niemeyer die Universitat Halle nach Ihrem Einfluss
auf gelehrte u. prakt. Theol. S. 32.)

CHARACTER OF GERMAN THEOLOGY. 77
" Brotherly conferences out of the word of God,
among the people, are a valuable aid to Christian
advancement:" and B. Carpzov declared, with
reference to these times, " The advantages of
these meetings cannot be told, especially when
the hearers thus communicate with their teach
ers; for unquestionably a common man learns
more from one such meeting, than from ten ser
mons1." The example thus given speedily spread ;
similar meetings were instituted in other places,
as Essen, Augsburg, Schweinfurt, Giessen, &c. ;
and though, in the place of their original institu
tion, misrepresentation diminished their influ
ence2, in others they may have been inconsider-
1 In his " Auserlesene Tugendspruche." Another passage is
adduced by Lange Antibarb. T. 11. p. 171. " This wish of those
enlightened and celebrated theologians, Dannhauer and Dors-
cheus, a zealous divine, (whom may God long continue to his
Church) has not only very earnestly urged in his Pia Desi-
deria, but has even shewn how Collegia Pietatis may be formed
where there are no Universities, and laymen be admitted to
speak in them. Whether they do well who despise them, and
thwart them to the utmost of their power, when they might
much promote them, time will shew." A similar opinion of
Sagittarius is quoted by Weism. 1230, and others are mentioned
generally. 9 Schrbckh 1. c. mentions generally, that these meetings were
removed twelve years afterwards, at the requisition of some am
bassadors, into the Church, where the hearers having no longer the
liberty of speaking, much of their usefulness of course fell away.
In some places they were introduced without the superintendance
of the minister, were naturally attended with irregularities, and
suppressed under the name of conventicles. But these abuses
were no necessary consequence of the institution, and Spener
amply defended himself in a separate work, 1677, and in his

78 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
ately introduced, and were forbidden, yet they
continued long a blessing to the Church, and were
the means of recalling many, even of the learned,
from the inventions and disputes of the schools,
to the basis of a more fruitful theology, in piety
and the study of the Scriptures *. On these were
also founded the Collegia Biblica, which formed
part of the widely-felt utility of the University of
Halle. Of Spener's writings many have already been
occasionally mentioned. The most extensively
useful were, perhaps, the Pia Desideria, and the
works in vindication or explanation of it 2. It is
no slight proof of the mildness of Spener's cha
racter, that a production containing such bold,
" Allgemeine Gottesgelahrtheit," (Walch Einl. in d. Religions-
Streitigk. 1 Th. S. 560, fg.) nor was he directly attacked on this
head until after his death (by Lbscher, Timotheus Verinus, 2 Th.
S. 112. fg.)
1 Twesten, p. 163. The University of Giessen, which in the
later contests with the Pietists adopted the milder side against
that of Rostock, seems to have long felt the influence of this ear
lier institution. Henke, Th. 8. S. 37.
3 Buddeus bestows however great praise not only upon the wri
tings mentioned, but upon his expositions of Scripture, especially
one • libellum plane aureum,' in which Spener collected and ex
plained the passages of Scripture abused by worldly men to encou
rage a false security, (Isag. p. 1479.) and his " de natura et gratia,"
(on the difference of actions derived from man's natural powers,
and those proceeding from the influence of the Holy Spirit,) " in
which he was the first who abandoned the intricate, and often
useless, questions of the schools, and made the enquiry through
out practical." (Ib. 592.) Lange says that even for the quicken
ing of the natural intellect, there could be no better whetstone
than Spener's writings. Anmm. zu. Sp. Leb. S. 38.

CHARACTER OF GERMAN THEOLOGY. 79
unwelcome, and sweeping truths, could have been
so written, as to give so little offence, and to call
forth at first universal approbation \ Spener re
ceived innumerable letters of thanks for this
work ; and not only the celebrated Kortholt, but
even B. Carpzov, praised him for it. Yet Spener's
censures extended to every branch of the Lu
theran Church ; he complained, that of the magis
tracy few knew what Christianity was ; that, at
the most, they only provided for the maintenance
of the hereditary system ; and that many hindered
the good which religion might produce. That
the order of the clergy required a thorough re
form; that many lived in profligacy ; many taught
the letter only of Scripture ; that numbers were
such strangers to real earnest piety, that one
zealous for it was looked upon as a Papist, Qua
ker, and Fanatic ; that an immoderate value was
attached to mere forms ; that the clergy were
looked upon as a caste of priests, like those of
Rome, and wished to become so ; that many
deemed a mere peace from external enemies the
most blessed condition of the Church, and there
fore studied alone the means of subduing them,
controversy. He dwelt also on the vices of the
laity2. His proposed cure was extensive; his
1 Henke, 3. 516. The testimonies of many of the most dis
tinguished theologians were adduced by Spener himself, in a sub
sequent defence of Pietism, Griindl. Beantwortung des Unfugs
der Pietisten, c. 1. § 15. fgg.
2 Undoubtedly the whole of this lamentable state of the Church
is not to be attributed to the contentious and unpractical theo-
6

80 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
views relating to the education of the clergy have
been already named ; on religious controversy
especially, he timely warns, that right disputing
about religion, even if free from irritation, is not
sufficient, but must be accompanied with the ap
parent desire of improving the opponent, and of
teaching him the wholesome application of the
truth maintained1. Yet of all the positions in
this work, two2 alone, and these incidentally only
logy. The fearful excesses and the extremes of misery of the thirty
years' war had demoralized and degraded Germany : still the
state of religious teaching and religious education prevented the
application of the remedy, which a better religious instruction
might have afforded. No slight degree of misery fell upon Ger
many in the last desolating war ; yet was the greater earnestness of
mind, which this created, among the principal means of reviving
religion ; but unbelief is, for the most part, more reclaimable than
a dead and contented orthodoxism.
1 See the extract in Schrbckh, ib. S. 289, fgg.
2 These were, the one, Spener's favourite maxim, that " the
theology of an unregenerate person was no real theology," but
only a philosophising about divine things ; which had been main
tained, unquestioned, by his instructor, Dannhauer, and by many
others. " Pietistica posthac sententia vocata est, et periculosus
error," says Weismann, " quod mille forsan Theologi nostrates,
tanquam gravem et arduam veritatem docuerunt." (Hist. Eccles.
p. 1214, sq. where some authorities are quoted.) It was first op
posed by Dielefield, a deacon in Nordhausen, 1679, and subse
quently by the opposite assertion of Lbscher, " that the ministry
of an unconverted teacher was just as beneficial as if he were
converted ;" in support of which he appealed to the so-called
gratia ministerialis, by which God was supposed uniformly to
bless not only the administration of the Sacraments, " though
administered by evil men," but their teaching also. With regard
to the latter, Lange might well term this gratia ministerialis an

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 81
connected with its import, were at the time at
tacked, and the theologians of Saxony continued
to praise his orthodoxy, until the displeasure of
the Elector of Saxony, at his earnest, but strictly
official 1, remonstrances, made opposition accept-
absurd and pernicious fiction. (See Spener Allg. Gottesgel.
Fr. 1,2. Lbscher Timoth. Verimus, 1 Th. S. 281. fg. Pacho-
mii Synops. Logom. Pietist, c. 1. qu. b. p. 5. ap. Schrbckh, ib.
p. 287, 8.) Yet Spener's maxim in other words, that no real
theology can be conceived without piety and religious interest,
no one would now think of questioning. Then, however, it was
found to contain Pelagianism, Arminianism, Calvinism, Soci-
nianism, &c, (see ap. Weism. ibid.) The other point related to
the anticipation of better times, when Romanism having sunk,
and the Jews having been converted, Christianity should attain
a fuller and more glorious development ; these cheering expecta
tions Spener distinctly separated from the millenniary dreams of
apocalyptic writers ; he expected no earthly, no distinct kingdom,
no kingdom of glory, which should replace the kingdom of grace ;
none, which should endure a precise period of ten centuries ; but
according to the analogy of the history of religion, and of Chris
tianity itself, he did anticipate, that after the long contest which
it has carried on, and in which it has been gaining successive
victories, its conquest should be yet more manifest, that accord
ing to the prophets, a time should come " when the knowledge of
the Lord should cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea."
(See Spener's Behauptung der Hoffnung besserer Zeiten, 1693 ;
his Vindication, 97 ; his Letzte Theologische Bedenken, 3 Th.
S. 73; Lbscher's Timoth. Ver. 1. Th. c. 1. and others ap.
Schrbckh, ib. S. 291, 2. Spener's Leben, S. 137.) Yet among a
large portion of Spener's opponents, these hopes were deemed no
better than the grossest conceptions of Chiliastic fanatics, were
thought to overthrow the fpundations of the faith, and the whole
sum of Christian doctrine; to lead to seditions and tumults,
&c. &c. (Weism, 1225.)
1 Spener was his Confessor. Weism. p. 1168, says, Summam
G

82 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
able. From that date much of Spener's time was
consumed in self-defence. Not only B. Carpzov
then wrote against him, but the University of
Wittenberg maintained its character by setting
forth two hundred and sixty-four errors which
were to be found in his writings ; twenty-five of
these relate to the symbolical books Y ; of the rest
prudentiam, modestiam, gradationemque scrupulosissimam in
sacro suo officio in Aula gerendo observavit B. Spenerus, at ne
sic quidem causam, non suam, sed Dei, perficere potuit.
1 The allegations against Spener with regard to the symbolical
books, as far as they were allegations, have been justly reckoned
by Zeltner among the Anti-pietistic Logomachies, (under the
name of Pachomius, Synopsis Logomach. ut vulgo vocant Pietisti-
oarum, a. 59. 72, fg.) Spener acknowledged that these books con
tained divine truths, he believed them free from errors in doc
trine, yet he justly thought that confusion and symbololatry alone
could arise from terming them " inspired," (as comprising doc
trine originally given by inspiration) which his opponents required
of him. (Weism. ib. 1226, fg. Budd. ib. 474, fg. Schrbckh,
ib. 191, fgg.) In the much agitated question of the use of the
quia or the quatenus in the subscription of the symbolical books,
which Spener did not originate, but which he was called upon to
decide, he wished only that those, who for conscience sake de
clined the apparently stricter formula, might be allowed to
employ the " quatenus ;" yet he himself always used the former.
Indeed the two formulae mutually imply each other ; no conscien
tious man could subscribe to articles, " so far as they agreed
with Holy Scripture," who did not believe that in their princi
ples, that in all essentials, they did so agree ; nor can it be
thought that every individual, who subscribes them " because
they so agree," necessarily binds himself to every incidental ex
pression, so that he agree in the principle. As to the value of the
symbolical books, Spener said, that " none held them in greater
respect, treated and inculcated them on their hearers with greater
diligence than those who were reproached as Pietists, and

CHARACTER OP THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 83
many illustrate the character of the orthodoxism
of that period ; it was deemed erroneous then,
that he considered a holy life as absolutely neces
sary, since without it no one could have a true
faith ; that the truth and sincerity of the repent
ance was indispensable to the validity of abso
lution; that in all absolution a condition was
implied ; that the intention to reform was a pre
paration for repentance; that all revenge was
forbidden ; that the Scripture was no power of
God, so long as it was neither read nor heard ;
that the Greek of the New Testament was, in
different books, more or less elegant, the Holy
Spirit having conformed himself to the style
of each writer l ; that Holy Scripture was
then only a source of religious knowledge,
when it was understood according to the mean
ing of the Holy Spirit ; that ministers were
mere guides to the real teacher, the Holy Spi-
that the whole question was not about the real value, use, esti
mation, or authority of the symbolical books, but about their
abuse by certain Theologians to charge heresy upon unmeriting
and orthodox men.'' (ap. Weism. 1227.) Neither did his fol
lowers diminish the respect attached to them. (Schrbckh, ib. 193.)
The neglect of the symbolical books was the effect, not the cause
of change in doctrine.
1 This extraordinary hypothesis, which, in a manner read
mitted human individuality in the composition of the Scripture,
at the same time that it denied it, became predominant, when
the difference of style and of the purity of the language in the
different books had been put beyond question by the progress
of criticism ; in Spener's time the admission itself was thought
to derogate from inspiration.

84 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
rit, and Christ in him; that believers are, in
matters of belief, free from all human authority ;
that heretics, out of that Church, might possess
faith, real love, the Holy Spirit, and eternal hap
piness ; that much might be learnt and imitated
from the Reformed, the Romanists, the Anabap
tists, Quakers, and other parties ; that the new
man was not less nourished by the bread and wine
in the Lord's Supper, than the natural man by
the natural bread and wine, &c. &c \
Yet notwithstanding the vindications of him
self thus extorted, in which, however, Spener
still manifested the same practical and conciliat
ing spirit, his indefatigable industry enabled him
to maintain an almost incredibly large correspon
dence on all the subjects which mainly occupied
his long life, manifesting a very deep acquaint
ance with the necessities of the Church, and a
sound judgment on the means of meeting them.
Through these he exerted no merely temporary
influence over a large portion of the German
1 The title is curious: " Christ-Luthrische Vorstellung in
deutlichen aufrichtigen Lehrsatzen, nach Gottes Wort und d.
Symbol. Kirch enbuchern, sonderlich d. Augsb. Conf., und unrich-
tigen Gegensatzen aus Hrn Spener's Schriften, zur Ehre des
grossen Gottes, Erhaltung der Gbttlichen Wahrheit, auch Beylage
der Augsb. Conf. u. d. and. symbol. Biicher, geistlichen Verein-
barung d. aufrichtigen Theologen, treuer Warnung der recht-
glaubigen Lutheraner, u. s. w. aufgesetzt u. publicirt von den
Theologis in Wittenberg." Well might a theologian of those
days say with a sigh, " in more nunc positum esse apud multos,
ut lubentius centum haereticos, quam unum faciant Christianum."
(ap. Weism. 1215.)

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 85
Church. Four quarto volumes were published
¦in his life, besides those which were subsequently
collected1. At Berlin, also, as well at Dresden,
he maintained in his own family and formed
many, who continued to act after his death iri
the same principles.
Spener, then, both by his direct improvements,
by his revival of Biblical enquiry and historical
investigation, by his concessions that other com
munions might in some respects be more correct
than the Lutheran, by his disapprobation of some
rites in his own Church 2, by the admission that
though it was clear from fundamental errors, it,
as little as any other Church, could be free from
1 The principal subjects of this collection were, the best me
thod of Theological learning; Christian doctrine and moral,
especially the promotion of piety; the explanation of Biblical
passages ; cases of difficulty in the Christian ministry ; the ne
cessary improvements in the Church, and the safest mode of
their execution ; Ecclesiastical • law ; the general and particular
state of the Church ; Christian principles of conduct towards
Ghristians of a different persuasion ; judgments on a great num
ber of remarkable men and their opinions ; " a treasure of prac
tical observations, and admonitions, for Theologians, Ministers,
and Christians, of many ranks." (Allgem. Biogr. 6ter Th. S.
444, fg. ap. Schr. ib. S. 130.)
2 Of Confession, for example, as it then existed, (Letzte Theol.
Bedenken, 3 Th. S. 723.) he says that " almost all conscien
tious preachers looked upon it as a burthen, and that he himself
was glad from his heart that he had now nothing to do with it."
Exorcism at Baptism he termed an useless ceremony, which
might easily prove cause of offence, and might well be abolished.
(Theol. Bed. 1 Th. S. 157, fg.)

86 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
all1, and by the spirit of enquiry to which these
principles gave rise, shook, incidentally, the sup
posed infallibility and perfection, which was vir^
tually ascribed to the old system, and upon which
its security rested. His immediate followers
carried on practically the improvements whose
theory he had given, and through the erection of
the University of Halle obtained an extensive
and influential field of action.
The bitter polemics of the Lutherans of Wit
tenberg2, (whither the Prussian students, and es
pecially those of the Mark, had for the most part
been wont to repair) suggested to the Elector of
Brandenburg, who wished for concord, the erec
tion of an University, nearer, and more peaceful.
Halle was already a place of education, and was
adopted at the recommendation of Thomasius,
who had withdrawn thither, having been removed
from Leipzig by the persecutions of the ortho
dox Theologians 3. The three who at first com
posed the Theological faculty there, Francke,
Anton, and Breithaupt, had all more or less, de
rived their spirit from Spener ; Anton and Breit-

1 Theol. Bed. 3 Th. S. 706, fg.
4 Above thirty years before, Fred. Will, the Great had been
obliged, on the same grounds, to refuse to prefer any Theologi
cal students educated at Wittenberg. (Henke, iv. 279.)
3 These were excited by his defence of Francke, and his justi
fication of intermarriage between the Lutheran and the Reformed,
in the course of which he gave offence to Casp. Lbscher of Wit
tenberg, who procured his removal. (Henke, iv. 542, fg.)

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 87
haupt had been formed by him at Frankfort ; the
zeal of Francke for the promotion of piety had been
furthered, and its character determined, by a two
month's residence with him at Dresden. Immedi
ately upon his return, he, as a subsidiary teacher
(privatim docens) at Leipzig, as well as Anton, had
held Biblical lectures, and presided at the meet
ings of the students for the study of Scripture l.
These were continued for some months unno
ticed ; the numbers mounted to some hundreds ;
many of the hearers became distinguished for
the exemplariness of their life ; and though some
may not have been free from peculiarities, an in
vestigation instituted in consequence of calumny,
fully acquitted them of misconduct *. The Uni
versity reported the blamelessness of the lec
tures, yet Francke was suspended, though Thoma
sius, and Sagittarius, entirely unconnected with
him, wrote in his defence. The meetings were
continued by Schade, and severer measures fol
lowed 3 ; Pietism, as it was then first called, was
1 The Magistri were allowed in the feriee caniculares to read
theological lectures. (Kanst. ebend. S. 119.)
2 The principal accusations against Francke were, that he had
spoken against philosophy and disputation, and had maintained
that the Christian's happiness began on earth ; those against the
students, that they had burnt their abstracts of the lectures,
spoken ill of polemic, &c.
3 The so-called Pietistic students were deprived of their
pensions ; any one who attended one of these meetings was re
fused his testimonials, excluded from any office, &c. yet the
Leipzig Protocol names nothing fanatical which had taken place
in them. It must be observed, that the name of Pietists was
not assumed by themselves, but given to them, sneeringly, by

88 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
forbidden, and a harsh contest carried on, prin
cipally by Carpzov, until the erection of the
new University allowed the reform to be pursued
undisturbed, though not unopposed '.
The free circulation of talent or merit, which
has ever taken place through every part of Ger
many, independent of the accident of the spot of
its first formation, gave more importance to the
new institution, than would, perhaps, in this
country be generally conceived. Halle became,
like Geneva of old> the heart from which the
impulse of the new principles became felt in
every part of the system. In the first thirty years
of its institution, 6034 Theologians had been
admitted into it, besides the thousands which
were educated at the numerous schools supported
in the Orphan-House founded 2 by Francke. An
their opponents, who themselves took that of the Orthodox.
(Schrbckh. 43. 272.) f
1 The next year, (lv95), produced the Wittenberg Manifesto
against Spener ; and Carpzov, in a second Programm which
he wrote against him, did not hesitate to term this mild and
peaceful man a procellam ecclesise, tempestatem pacis, turbonem
religionis, nay, a Spinozist. The irritation against Spener did
not cease even with his death ; it was a question at different Uni
versities whether the term " beatus Spener" could be used.
Professor Fecht, of Rostock, published a work, " De beatitu-
dine mortuorum in Domino," in which he decides that this could
be said of the extremely impious, who die without any external
mark of repentance ; of all sinners but those who die in the com
mission of gross sin (Par. 18.) but not of Spener. (See at length
in Kanstein's Leben. S. 109—117.) Others, who decided simi
larly, are mentioned generally by Weism. 1168; the contrary
was even declared sinful. Niemeyer, ib. S. 32.
' This establishment, which was commenced by Frauckc, in

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 89
institution, which collaterally perfected, by the
opportunities which it afforded for catechetical
instruction, the practical character of the ministers
educated at Halle1. The usefulness of these
preparations was further promoted by the estab
lishment of Kanstein, a disciple of Spener, for
the printing of Bibles, (by which much more
than two millions of Bibles, and a million of
Testaments have been circulated), and that for
the printing of Christian writings and for the
cheaper sale of books of education.
The plan pursued at Halle was conducted by its
first founders on the principles of Spener, the same
as those of the earlier Reformation ; a recurrence
from human forms and human systems to the
pure source of faith in Scripture ; a substitution
of practical religion for scholastic subtleties and
unfruitful speculation. On these two points
then, the promotion of scriptural study and of
the practical direction of the several theological
sciences, turns the peculiar method of the instruc
tion of Halle. Scripture interpretation again
1 697, with seven gulden (14 sh.) so much increased before his
death, that 600 children were supported daily, 2000 instructed,
120 teachers maintained. It was a pattern for many others, and
a nursery for instructors in the schools of every class (Henke, iv.
548, fg.) Yet even this institution did not escape the censure
of the orthodox party ; e. g. V. E. Lbscher Unsch. Nachr. and
Meyer, (ap. Henke, ib.) The Danish Missionary Institution was
subsequently erected there, and the interest in the extension of
the Gospel abroad was influential, as it always is, in promoting
its domestic progress.
1 Niemeyer, ib. S. 53. fg.

90 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
became as among the first Reformers, the root of
theological study. It was theoretically promoted
by the lectures ' of the highly-gifted and learned
Francke, on the " Principles of Interpretation/'
which tended, at least negatively, to free it from
the subserviency to doctrinal systems, both by
their own extensive immediate influence, and as
the foundation of the work of Rambach, which
was nearly exclusively employed for almost half a
century 2. Though the principle of the analogy of
faith was still held as the basis of right interpret
tation, its abuses were in some measure checked
both by positive restrictions, and by the simpli
fication of the system itself; and though on the
other side the predominantly practical character
may, by directing the search to a higher spiritual
meaning beyond that of the letter, have minis
tered occasion to subsequent arbitrariness, yet
Francke does not seem to have intended more
than the acknowledged and important truth, that
a deeper and more spiritual study will ever find
a deeper truth in Scripture, or than the legiti
mate employment of analogical application. With
this theory of biblical exposition, were united
lectures on all the principal parts of the Bible,
embracing principally the practical side; a course
not to be judged of according to the usual
character of practical commentaries, in which
1 The Manuductio ad lectionem Script. Sacrse, frequently
reprinted in German and Latin, and in the latter language even
in England.
2 Schrbckh, 42. 614.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 91
the topics dwelt upon are rather united with,
than deduced from the text. Independent study
of Scripture was further encouraged by the
successive correction of passages in Luther's
version, (remarkable as the first published1 at
tempt in the same language), an attempt which*
in Francke, can only indicate anxiety 2 for their
better understanding, and freedom from the pre
vailing timidity, which an adherence to system
had engendered. Of lasting service, finally, for
the extension of Biblical knowledge, were the
Collegium Orientale Theologicuni, and the Semi-
narium Ministrorum Ecclesiae, of which the
former, besides promoting the study of the lan
guages connected with the Old Testament, and
giving rise to the first critical edition of the
Hebrew Bible 3, contributed to the propagation of
1 That which the learned Saubert commenced at the command
of August, Duke of Brunswick, 1665, was broken off in the
midst of 1 Sam. 17, at the death of the Duke, and even the
published part suppressed (Schrbckh 42, 598, Henke, 3, 285,
fg.) so completely, that Buddeus, ib. p. 112, supposes it never
to have been published. Calov and others raised a clamour
against it before they had seen it, and its continuation was pro
bably prevented by the influence of one of the polemic preachers
removed from Brandenburg.
2 It gave rise, however, to bitter invectives against Francke,
from Meyer, Beck, and others of the orthodox party. Meyer
entitles one of his, " a warning to students not to be led astray
by Francke's work ;" in another he calls this work " a temptation
of Satan, by which he endeavours to cast into yet worse confusion
the on every side persecuted Church." See on the controversy
Budd. p. 1360, sqq. Walch Religions-streitigk. 1 Th. S. 731, fg.
* That of J. H. Michaelis, completed by the assistance of

92 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
Christianity among the Jews and Mohammedans \
The same practical character was given by Breit-
haupt and Freylinghausen to doctrinal studies ;
after the example of Spener, all scholastic, and
even unbiblical terminology, except what^ was
admitted by the universal church, was excluded,
and the long-forgotten element of Christian ex
perience was by the former restored 2. In moral
theology, though as yet little cultivated as a
science, the declarations of this school in the
Adiaphoristic controversy, that no action was
to the individual who performed it indifferent,
evinced a deeper insight into the principles of
Christian action 3. Polemic again was taught by
Breithaupt and Anton, (Vater S. 366), which is even now of use;
the same institution also gave birth to the valuable work of
J. H. and C. B. Michaelis on the Hagiographa.
1 See J. L. Schulze in Francken's Stiftungen, B. I. S. 209,
ap. Vat. S. 365.
2 Freylinghausen in the Grundlegung der Theologie, Buddw
p. 362; on Breithaupt's Instit. Theol. see Budd. p. 361. and 390,
3 On this as on every other occasion, in which this controversy
has been renewed, both parties appear to have forgotten the
principle which seems to lie in the precepts of St. Paul, that,
though nothing is indifferent to individuals, many things are so,
except to individuals; the character of the action depending
entirely upon the influence which it exerts' upon the mind of the
person performing it, some of them may have more tendency
than others to produce an ill effect, and thus lose to a certain
degree the character of &Sid<popa, yet none but the individual
himself can know whether they have that effect, and therefore
though a minister may warn of their tendency, they must still in
each case remain matters of private judgment. In the present
case, however, not merely the usual topics of this controversy,
but the pleasures of the appetite, the desire of honor, glory, riches,

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 93
Anton, according to the beautiful view of Spener,
in which every real heresy was considered as it
originated in moral defects ; the heretic was
regarded as one labouring under a disease ; the
teacher recollected, that though exempt from
this, he was not free from other diseases, and
endeavoured to restore him as a friend, not to ha
rass him as an antagonist. The greatest change,
however, was in the science, whose better culti
vation was one great object of all these, pastoral
theology : the defects of the former century had,
in the orthodox school, become confirmed in the
commencement of this ; what was then custom, had
now become law ; the train of grammatical, histo
rical, polemical, expositions of the text, was now
fixed in the elementary treatises; they varied
only, in that now the fivefold practical applica
tion consisted in the polemic against the pietists.
The style was full of the same pedantic display
and unnatural conceits ; and as if to prevent the
possibility of free-exertion of mind, the artificial
plans of arranging the discourse were now inva
riably determined; and ingenuity and strength
were wasted and perverted in arranging the
same text according to the greatest variety of
methods \ The practical character of the whole
and pre-eminence, were placed by the orthodox party among
things indifferent, see Weism. p. 1250.
1 These were swelled by the often-mentioned J. B. Carpzov
to 100; some of them were named from the mode of treating
the text, some from the inventor, some from the university where
they were the most used, e. g. Leipzig, Helmstadt, Konigsberg,
6

94 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
theology of Halle must necessarily introduce
better principles ; method, style, and illustration
were no longer valued for themselves, but as
means ; a right and faithful application of Scrip
tural Interpretation, Doctrinal Theology, and
Christian moral to catechetic and pulpit instruc
tions, were a main object of the Collegia Biblica ;
the previous system,, whose defects originated in
an entire misconception of the preacher's office,
fell at once l among those who became acquaint
ed with a more living Christianity ; that, by which
it was replaced, was guarded against its natural
deflection, a neglect of all rules, by the scientific
developement of Lange and Rambach 2, as it was
Wittenberg, (Schuler, 1 Th. S. 180, fg.; 2 Th. S. 8, fg. ap.
Schrbckh, 43, 160-1 .) To apply 50 of these plans to a single
text was considered a meritorious performance ; Lbscher indeed,
according to Schrbckh, reduced them to 25, but " those he re
tained were in their execution not much better than the rest,"
(Id. ibid.)
1 The vain display of pedantic learning seems to have been
among the most deeply rooted evils ; against this Francke and
Freylinghausen, (both distinguished preachers, and the latter
Considered as the best model of his age, see Knapp, Francken's
Stiftungen, 2 B. S. 305.) opposed the principle of Luther, who
" in Wittenberg did not preach to the 40 doctors or magistri
who might be there, but to the crowd of young people, children,
and populace." — " To them," added Luther, " I preach; to
them I conform myself; according to their wants I speak; if
the rest like it not thus simply, the door stands Open." Francke
in his lectures refers to the example of our Saviour, who had
indeed in the Pharisees learned hearers, yet told them in what
they were wanting, in terms as simple as could be used.
2 Rambach was one of the most active and efficient disciples of
the school of Halle ; though not possessed of an original mind, nor

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 95
practically realized in the preaching of Francke
and Freylinghausen. Two apparently slight in
novations, the alternation of continuous explana
tions of large portions of Scripture1 with the usual
synthetic preaching, and the occasional selection
of passages not contained in the appointed sec
tions of the Church, as subjects of the discourses,
are too obvious improvements to have been
noticed, but that the general adherence to all the
defects of the hereditary system implies the
more decided practical character in those who
perceived them. The doubt of the sufficiency
of these pericopae, which had been continued as
they had existed in Germany previous to the
able to strike out new views, he has well embodied in a scientific
form the practical principles of his school. He was widely in
fluential in his life at Halle, Jena, aud Giessen, and was referred
to even by Mosheim as the best model for general preaching.
(Schrbckh, ib. 170.) His Wohlunterrichteter Catechet, 1,722,
and his Erlauterung fiber die Prsecepta homiletica, a posthumous
work, were long the best and favourite treatises in each depart
ment. Lange's work was the Oratoria Sacra ab artis homileticse
vanitate repurgata.
1 The advantages of this species of lecture, alternating with
discourses on set subjects, are sufficiently obvious, and have been
witnessed by the author in. Germany ; the most fruitful source
of mistakes in doctrine, the interpretation of texts independent
of and contrary to the context, to which so great occasion is
given by the division into verses, is thereby, and thereby alone
can it be, checked; the understanding of Scripture in private
study is materially facilitated ; the habit of investigating its mean
ing, and of considering its varied references, is substituted for a
mere perusal of its letter; the instruction conveyed is more
easily recollected, being as it were incorporated with the passage
explained.

96 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
Reformation1, but which both limited the know
ledge of Scripture, and the subjects of the dis
courses, and interfered with the natural connec
tion and the order of these subjects, was re
ceived as a mark of alienation from the Lu
theran Church2. Spener's principles of catechis
ing, (the Socratic method) again were expanded
by Rambach, and the, readiness acquired in the
practice of the Orphan-house added to the supe-.
riority to the teachers of Halle. This practical
theological tendency was furthered by private
intercourse of a corresponding character; at
regularly recurring seasons of the week, the
character of a theologian, as a servant of the
Church, the necessity of not forgetting the one
thing needful amid the earnestness of intellectual
study, was illustrated and impressed ; the circum
stances promoting or advancing right theological
studv^ere discussed; the scientific and practical
elements were blended in the Collegia Biblica;
other meetings were held, in which the pro
fessors were consulted as fathers ; so that most
students were known personally to them ; theolo
gians of evil lives were recommended to em
brace some other profession.
1 Budd. Isag. 1343, 1412, 1426, sq. some evils attending them
are briefly alluded to, ib. 1430.
2 E. g. in Lbscher's diss. Anticalviniana de pericopis Evang.
et Apostol. The pericopae for the morning service being mostly
taken from the Gospels, and a large proportion being accounts
of miracles, the subjects of Christian instruction must, where
there was no evening lecture, if the pericopa be adhered to, be
either omitted, or very artificially connected with the text.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 97
The influence of this system was, for a time,
felt not in Germany alone, but in Denmark, in
Sweden, even in Greece, in mount Athos ;
teachers of youth, and ministers were sought
from Halle, in every part of Germany ' ; others
were kindled by their example, and the plans
of benevolence as well as the piety of Halle were
extended in the places, whither they were invited 2-
The" bodies, thus organized, long continued to
exist, and indeed never wholly lost their influ
ence, though the master-movement, which had
first given them impulse, slackened, and in
great measure ceased, with the death of Francke,
and the first founders of the school. The same
spirit more or less influenced C. B. Michaelis,
the younger Francke, Freilinghausen, the elder
Knapp, (" cujus vita," says his biographer Nbs
selt 3, " commentatio seternitatis fuit ;") Callen-
berg, (the pious founder of the institutions for

1 Niemeyer, 1. c. S. 53.
2 Vid. inter al. Niemeyer, 1. c. S. 58.
3 Sammlung Nbsseltsch. Aufsatz. von Niemeyer, S. 192, where
the character of this perfect Christian is at large described. The
separation, however, of the theoretical and practical side of
Theology had already commenced, and diminished the influence
of G. Francke, Knapp, and Gallenberg. (On the two last see
Semler's Lebensbeschreibungi 1 Th. S. 87. fgg.) The unaffected
and pure piety of Knapp obtained him veneration even from
those, whose scientific requisitions he did not satisfy ; yet, though
he possessed respectable learning, his influence appears, . even in
the account of Nbsselt, to have been principally practical. On
Francke and Callenberg, see also Niemeyer, der Univ. Halle,
S. 72. fg. II

98 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
the conversion of Jews and Mohammedans,) and
Baumgarten. Yet in part the times themselves
were altered ; a too predominant cultivation of
the mere understanding had commenced even in
the latter days of Francke, as himself complains 1 ;
the antagonists against whom the school had to
contend, were differently and more scientifically
formed ; in part also the system itself was liable to
misrepresentation, in part exposed actually to
suffer both from scientific and moral degeneracy.
Of the liability to mis-statement, their Pseudo-
Lutheran opponents had fully availed themselves.
Not only had they excited popular violence 2, and
obtained the interposition of civil interference to
suppress the "schools of piety3;" but had dili-
1 In a lecture, 1709, upon the difference of the present and
former students of Theology.
2 A« in the tumults at Hamburg, where Meyer (formerly Pro
fessor at Wittenberg,) irritated by Spener's official remonstrances
on his life, having first attempted to impose a new formula of sub
scription upon Spener's brother-in-law, Horbius, preached against
him as a lying prophet and priest of Baal ; so that Horbius
having once escaped at the risk of life, was obliged to leave the
city by night. See Vater, 360. Henke, iv. 525. fgg.
3 Henke gives, from Walch's Religionsstreit. and the Pantheon
Anabaptistar. et enthusiast.* thefollowing list of places where edicts
were published against the Pietists : Wolfenbiittel, (1692) ; Gotha,
(1697); Zelle, (1698); Hannover, (1703); Bremen, (1705)!
Stutgard, (1706) ; Nurnberg, (1707) ; Zerbst, (1709) ; Hannover
again, (1710 and 1711); Berlin, (1711); and says that the list, in
' Germany, might easily be increased. It was also proscribed in
Sweden and Denmark ; (Henk. S. 528.) in Wolfenbiittel even some
clergy were forbidden to meet to read the Scripture together, and,
on refusal to comply, were removed to lower stations ; in Erfurt

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 99
gently confounded their tenets, principles, and
objects with those of the wildest and most dis
graceful fanatics, whose appearance always tar
nishes and obstructs, and seems indeed an evil
almost inseparable from, any great and sudden re
vival of religion. It were scarcely credible, but
for the knowledge that every fanatical sect was
classed, with Wickliffe, under the same title of
Lollard, and that Luther had some difficulty in
separating his cause from that of the Anabap
tists, that the immediate and pure followers of
Spener should have been identified by their oppo
nents with the most wretched and abandoned
fanatics of their times, that the degrading ex
cesses of the deeply-sunken view of Butler 1 should
have been deprecated under the title of Pietism.
Old and new titles of heresies were put in requi
sition to stigmatize the school of Halle ; Pelagian-
ism, Socinianisni, Jesuitism, Schwenkfeldianism,
Osiandrism, were, with many others, found 2 united
¦all meetings to read the Bible were forbidden under penalty of a
fine of 151. ; and when Sagittarius, writing in defence of Francke,
asserted that Pietism was only a living Christianity, the Elector
of Saxony wrote to the Duke of Weimar to inform him of, and
to request him duly to punish, his unquiet Professor Theologise.
1 This was done by the above-named Meyer, then Gen. Super
intendant in Pomerania ; and Breithaupt and Francke were com
pelled to disclaim all connection with these miscreants. (Walch,
Th. 11. S. 769. ap. Vat. 367. Henke, 8.-40,41.) They answered;
that the faculty of Halle had nothing to do with those called
Pietists in that report, but that it were " better that the name
were altogether omitted."
2 Henke quotes (iv. 520, 521) the following titles of treatises
H 2

100 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
in their principles; and though, following the
example of Spener l, they earnestly opposed them
selves to every manifestation of a schismatical
spirit, they were invariably charged with a Phari
saical separatism. More dangerous, however, than
external violence, were the liabilities to degene1
racy in the system itself. The abuse lay so close
to the use, the means employed were in such close

against the Pietists. Meyer de Pietistis veteris ecclesise— de So-
cinianismo Pietistarum — de fraternitate P. et Jesuitarum—
Loescher de Schwenkfeldianismo in Pietismo renato — Edzardi
Machiavellus.Pietisticus. — Bilcher Rathmanna redivivus. — Fech't
de Pelagianismo a Lutheranor. doctrina depulso— epistolse anti-
praedestianse. — Wernsdoff- Osiandrismus in Pietismo redivivus,
&c. . According to the definition of Schelwig, another oppo
nent, " Pietism is a sect, instituted and promoted by Spener, of
Anabaptists, Schwenkfeldians, Weigelians, Rathmanniaris, La-
badists, Quakers, and other fanatics, (under the pretence of a
new Reformation and of the hope of better times) for the haras
sing and final destruction of the Church attached to the Augs
burg Confession, and the other symbolical books." Weism.
ib. 1211.
1 Spener uniformly and earnestly set himself against the Phari
saical separation, which occasionally manifested itself, even in
the earlier period of his ministry. (Schrbckh, 43. 265.) His
principles may be partly collected from the extracts already given,
partly from his, " der Klagen iib. d. verdorbene Christenthum
Missbrauch u. rechter Gebrauch." Frft. 1684, 1696, (cp. his Theol.
Bedenk. Th. 1. S. 634. Consil. P. iii. S. 517.) Towards the end
of his life, Spener equally opposed the too general declamations
of Schade against the Confessional as tending to produce di
visions. It were easy to multiply instances or authorities ; suffice
the brief statement of the ecclesiastical historian ; " Never did
Spener, or any of his genuine disciples, favour separatism in the
Church." (Schr. ib. 285.)

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 101
connection with principles, where self-deception
is most easy and most dangerous, they required
for their exertion the combination of such varied
gifts ; (not deep piety alone, but sound judgment,
and extensive knowledge of human nature,) that
decay and abuse were much to be apprehended,
as soon as the comprehensive mind, which first
set them in action, was withdrawn. All religious
forms, and especially those expressive of religious
feeling, have a tendency to lose the spirit by which
they were originally animated ; this may again be
revived, but in the mean-time the employment
of the form alone, whose significance is either
insensibly changed or wholly lost, produces in those
who use it, a more or less conscious hypocrisy.
The whole history of the Church furnishes the
proof, that every new strong awakening of religious
feeling brings with it a peculiar form of express
ing that feeling; it gives, too, the painful con
firmation, that in all cases the form has been con
tinued, when the spirit, which produced it, is
departed. The same phenomenon is found in in
dividuals as well as in classes ; the language of
early days is frequently retained, while the feel
ing, which produced that language, exists only in
reminiscence of those times. This aberration is
the more injurious, in that, while the conscious
hypocrisy generally invests itself in the mere ex
ternal peculiarities or practices, which in the first
instance arose from religious principle, the com
paratively, and often almost wholly, unconscious
consists in the adherence to the language which

102 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
originally expressed deep religious feeling, or for
which either other ideas are imperceptibly sub
stituted, or those before entertained are, for a time
alone, renewed. The temporary feeling, excited by
the recurrence to these forms, induces or facili
tates, self-deception ; the use of the forms, desti
tute of their spirit, deadens, yet further, that spirit
in the individual. The form, in which the re
awakened Christianity exhibited itself in the time
of Spener, may be considered in contrast with
the subsequent deflections, under the heads of
the language and actions, in which it expressed
itself, and of the means of its preservation or
extension. In none of these are the first founders
of the Pietistic school open to censure. The re
ligious language of Spener and Francke possesses
all the copiousness, and purity, and life, natural
to minds deeply penetrated by their subject, im
bued with the treasures of Scripture, and suffi
ciently enlarged to reject no expressions, by
whomsoever they might have been before used,
which furnished a pure vehicle of Christian sen
timent and Christian devotion. The unpractical
formulae of the school alone were set aside, other
language, whether of the orthodox or the mys
tics, but especially from the pure and rich foun
tain of Luther, was, under this single limitation,
equally admitted; and the deadening effects of
uniform or systematic expression were thus ob
viated. The later Pietists contracted, instead of
expanding and perpetuating, this system ; on the
one hand they limited their riches by a too hasty

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 103
rejection of much of the moral language of the
orthodox school, as well as of the expressions of
the Moravians, who had arisen from among
them ; on the other, the original freshness of the
stamp of their own was worn away, and what
had once conveyed the " free spirit" of Spener
became as technical and lifeless as the phraseo
logy of the orthodox, to which it had been op
posed, and more pernicious, from the very depth
of its original significance. A mere vague and
general meaning was attached to what had ori
ginally conveyed definite Christian ideas. II.
The means adopted to preserve and extend this
spirit were, as above stated, meetings for the
practical study of Scripture, for mutual consul
tation and assistance, and more than ordinary
domestic and public devotion. The strongest
hold of formalism is in the very means employed to
promote devotion : great watchfulness is requisite
against self-deception, from considering them as
more than means ; great discrimination in the re
commendation of these means to others. In both,
lamentable mistakes were committed by the later
members of this school ; hypocrisy was engendered
by the too great stress laid upon private edifying
and Christian conversation ; their indiscriminate 1
1 This indiscriminateness manifested itself in the anxiety to
induce all the students, on their entering the University, to par
ticipate in all these meetings, without regard to the stage of
Christianity in which each might then be ; and in the ill estima
tion in which those were held, who omitted them when inter
fering with their studies. The failure to perceive that these

104 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
and too frequent employment, where the mind
was yet unprepared to profit by them, the use of
" strong meat" where "milk" alone could nourish,
produced, often, re-action and disgust ; in other
cases religious conversation was engaged in as a
mere act of duty, and as a test of religion ; and
the probably but half-conscious, hypocrisy, which
employed the expressions, without a correspond-.
ing feeling, of religion, deadened the heart. III.
The actions, finally, in which the religious spirit
manifested itself were in part only liable to per
version ; neither the zeal for plans of benevo
lence, nor the resignation of expensive gratifica
tions to promote them, which distinguished the
school of Halle, nor the highly-^prospered efforts
to extend Christianity among the heathen, . were
well susceptible of it. The degree of value,
however, attached to the abstinence from amuse
ments, whose character is derived solely from
their influence upon each individual, (the so-called
ASta^opo,) became a source both of self-deception
and of breaches of Christian charity ; a deflection,

meetings were for that, and for most, ages, too crowded, seems
scarcely credible. On the Sunday there were, one with the citizens,
two in the afternoon with the Professors, (also purely practical,) one
in the family in the evening, each lasting an hour, besides the three
times attending divine service. Much of the character of the
later system of Halle, and of its incidental disadvantages, may
be collected from Semler's autobiography ; from this it appears,
that when the attendance at these meetings began to be valued
for its own sake, the perfect rectitude of the means employed to
induce attendance was not always regarded.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 105
invariably occurring, as soon as the abstinence
is regarded as being in itself a Christian duty.
A legal yoke is then substituted for Christian
freedom ; and things, in the first instance acknow
ledged by the party itself to be of subordinate im
portance, become the tests of Christian progress.
It thus became common to exclude from the
communion persons known to have danced, or to
have played at cards 1. The great object, lastly,
of the early school, the promotion of practical,
living Christianity around them, became a mere
external duty, and being consequently pursued
mechanically, alienated, too often, instead of
winning to the Gospel.
It has been necessary to go through this pain
ful detail, both as it is fruitful in admonition to
our own, to all, times, and in that without it,
the want of resistance from the school of the
Pietists to the subsequent invasion of unbelief
would be unaccounted for. It is obvious, however,
that these observations relate to the diminution
of its influence in its original seat, not to the
branches, which in its earlier state it had sent
forth. These may have been, and doubtless
were, permanently as well as extensively influen
tial, though the result of their insulated exertions
1 Among other cases a Graf von Reuss (born 1717.) issued
an edict to this purport. Mutual opposition seems to have
occasioned the opposite excesses of the two parties ; on this
ground alone can be explained the blasphemous measure of
an orthodox preacher, who published a formula of prayer to win
at cards.

106 CAUSES OF' THE LATE RATIONALIST
cannot be presented by history 1. It is the mis
fortune of the history of all religion, that the
silent but by far the largest influences which it
exerts, those of individual and private life, can
form no portion of the annals of mankind. An
unfair, a very inadequate, too frequently an unfa
vorable, representation can alone result from the
exclusive contemplation of the great phenome
na, which public history records; the cases, in
which religion has been made by bad men the
instrument and the plea of ambition, the Inqui
sition, the devastation of America, the dragon-
nades of France, the expatriation of hundreds
of thousands from that land, can be, and have
been, faithfully recorded ; of the blessings which
it has produced not the thousand thousandth
part is known to any but to Him, to whom alone
all hearts are open ; who has seen the evil and un
disclosed passions, which it has, in silence, over
come ; the sorrows it has cheered ; the difficult
duties it has given strength to perform ; the
kindly and benevolent feelings which it has pro
duced ; the hearts, in which the love of God has
created, expanded, hallowed the love to man.
A few such cases, a few of its great results, we
are allowed to see, to weigh down the record of
incidental evil ; the immeasurably greater pro
portion is reserved for that day, in which all
secret good, as well as secret evil, shall be disco
vered. Privacy is often the condition, as well as
1 See Niemeyer, ibid. S. 56.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 107
the natural element, of religious good. As the
value of the great and fearful element, whose uses
are so essential to us, is generally felt most in its
privation; at other times, perhaps, we think chiefly
of it, where it is most visible, in its destructive
effects, in the devastations of the storm, or the
conflagration of our cities, and forget, or cannot
calculate, the innumerable hearths which it in
silence cheers, the thousand comforts or necessa
ries of life, to which it is essential ; so, and much
more, is it with that spiritual fire, which first kin
dles into being the noblest energies of our nature,
which, realizing, in a higher sense the heathen
fable of man's formation, converts the sordid, in
animate, though well-formed, mass of clay, into
a living spirit, warming and enlightening and
purifying the best affections. By far the greater
proportion of its influences can be known to
none ; and even of the slight proportion, which
admits of being manifested in external action,
most are witnessed but by few, in the narrow
sphere of their immediate influence ; collectively,
none know them.
For the conduct of those, who, for worldly
ends, in conscious hypocrisy, assumed the lan
guage, habits, and exterior of the Pietists, these
are, of course, no farther responsible, than as,
by adopting injudicious and insufficient tests,
they may have facilitated the imposture. It
afforded, however, large scope for misrepresenta
tion and misconception. Opportunities for this
deception occurred in Halle itself, and yet more

108 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
in some of the courts of the lesser German
princes K At Halle, so soon as a particular tone
or language came to be considered as indications
of Christian piety, they were, of course, in many
instances, adopted by students, who wished to
obtain the offices at the disposal of the in
structors. At some courts the use of the lan
guage, which had received the supposed stamp of
piety, facilitated the advance, not only in ecclesi
astical, but even in civil, offices. The hollowness
thus occasioned was discovered at the death of
these mistaken promoters of piety ? when the tone
of the court forthwith resumed its genuine and
undissembled character 2.
It now remains only briefly to mention the
scientific deflections to which the system was ex
posed. It is the natural and universal tendency
of every school, on the one hand, to convert
what was originally a predominant only, into an
exclusive, character ; on the other, gradually to
lose sight of and to omit what at first occupied a
subordinate, though essential, place. The aim
of Spener, Francke, and the first Pietists was, we

1 Among these were the courts of Graf Heinrich II. von
Reuss; Graf von Stollberg-Wernigrode ; Duke Ernest of Saal-
feld; Prince August of Mecklenburg; and the King of Den
mark. Great weight having been attached to the power of
making long extemporary prayer, as a sign of real conversion, a
Duke of Coburg required the masters of schools to utter these in
his presence, as a test of their fitness for advancement.
1 This was especially visible at the courts of Wernigrode and
Saalfeld.

CHARACTER OP THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 109
have seen, to give theology a practical charac
ter ; though they endeavoured to promote true
science, still the practical results were their
main object. The deflection, of course, was, in
those who maintained the strict character of the
school, that the practical character of Theology
became all in all ; that science was either lightly
regarded or despised ; in others, such as the in
many respects valuable Baumgarten, the scien
tific element too largely predominated. The se
paration was the more natural, in that the two
parts, the scientific and the religious interests,
were rather united than blended in the first
founders of the school.
Through these unhappy deflections, great as
was the temporary influence of the first institu
tion, permanent the benefits communicated in a
narrower circle by individuals whom it had sent
forth, and the indirect influence of its first teachers,
when the irritation of party feeling was with
drawn, upon many who cannot be counted among
its adherents, it was disabled, as a body, from
opposing any effectual resistance to the inunda
tion of unbelief, or from diminishing the rigidness
of prejudice by which this re-acfion was in part
produced. The rapid decay of this attempt to
reform the barren orthodoxism by a recurrence to
practical and unspeculating Christianity increased
the apparent hopelessness of such a re-animation.
The fanaticism coincident, and by the enemies of
the- effort identified, with it, alienated from the
wish for a remedy. The rationalist tendencies

110 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
of the age were promoted by this treble exhibi
tion of the aberrations of belief, through which
it was presented to the superficial or the pre
sumptuous, as a speculative system, oppressive
to the intellectual without communicating energy
to the moral powers, as the garb of hypocrisy,
or the dream of a bewildered imagination.
Science was inlisted against it not only by its
self-confidence in its own strength, but by the
perversion in the orthodox, the contempt in the
pseudo-pietist and fanatic, bodies, the opposition
by all.
There was indeed one body of men ', who,

1 The chief characteristics of this class are clearness of views,
good judgment, and well-digested learning, yet without either
distinguished acuteness or depth of mind, or broad and general
principles. As repertoria of information, their works are conse
quently valuable ; they filled up some of the details of science,
but were unable to advance its limits, or to give it a secure and
large basis. The theological system might have received through
their means a beneficial simplification, had a sufficient interval
elapsed to permit it to be imperceptibly modified, but its character
was too little pronounced to have much effect in the violent
collisions which followed. Of the individuals mentioned Buddeus
is duly appreciated among us, Mosheim is unfortunately principally
known by a most unfaithful translation of one, and that not his
best, work, from which a false estimate alone can be formed of his
intellectual, moral, and religious character. The author has found,
from collation, the original in so many cases offensively coloured
and disguised by gratuitous interpolations of epithets, or of whole
sentences, that collation seems to him absolutely indispensable,
wherever it is of importance to know the precise sentiment or
statement of Mosheim. A close translation would probably
reduce the work to half its present size. Mosheim, -besides his
6

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. Ill
though not belonging to the school of the pietists,
would never have existed without their collision
with the opposed system, such as Buddeus,
Mosheim, Pfaff, &c. men of great learning, and
practical minds, who acted beneficially in a limited
sphere, and who would have been an ornament
to any existing party, but who did not possess
sufficient calibre or comprehensiveness themselves
to form one, to give a permanent direction to the
character of the age, or to satisfy the whole intent
of its scientific requisitions. Their existence is
however to be accounted among the benefits con
ferred by pietism, and they form a memorable
historical phenomenon in the course of the new
theological developement. More directly ema
nating from the Pietists was the school, which,
descending from Bengel and Storr, remained amid
increasing degeneracy, as witnesses of the prac
ticability of- the union of a deep piety, genuine
orthodoxy, and scientific investigation ; and who
while they candidly admitted into their system
the real advances of theological science, in part
works on Ecclesiastical History, which first raised the science in
Germany above the character of a chronicle, and furnished an im
partial estimate of the character of the opposed parties, was the
author of several commentaries on Scripture, which, without great
depth, were valuable for a good developement of the connection in
each book. His work on Scriptural Moral, though not sufiiciently
scientific, has much that is valuable ; his sermons long remained
models of pulpit eloquence. (Schr. 41. 168. 43. 169. fg.) Pfaff
commenced a reform in the mode of treating the types of the
Old Testament, in Doctrinal Theology, and in the principles of
Ecclesiastical Law.

112 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
successfully opposed the illegitimate innovations
incidental to its earlier stages. Though some
intellectual deficiencies limited their immediate
influence, they were to a certain degree the pat
terns, as well as the precursors of what a maturer
age is now richly completing. In their own times,
even their moderate corrections of the faults of
the received system were regarded with suspicion
and refutations \
Before passing to the last systematic struggle,
which the orthodox school had to encounter pre
vious to the final conflict, two men of very different
character, but both in some measure connected
with the Pietists, may be mentioned, each of
whom effected some alteration, if not in the sys
tem itself, yet upon the opinions of the times ;
Arnold and Thomasius. It affords, indeed, in it
self, no small presumption of the untenableness
of that system, that no attack was made upon it,
(even previously to the altered character of those
days, which witnessed its dissolution,) without
producing some corresponding impression. Ar
nold originally belonged to the Pietists. A gloomy
mind, and a want of sufficient confidence in Him,
to whom all is possible, made him resign his Pro
fessorship at Giessen, from despair of producing
any amendment in the dissolute habits of the stu
dents, yet unable, as he expresses it himself, to
endure to see hundreds, who should hereafter
have the cure of souls, but who never appeared
' See Semler Lebensbeschreibung, 2 Th. S. 146.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 113
yet to have had a thought of their own. He
afterwards applied his vast learning and ingenuity
to the reform of ecclesiastical history ; yet, mis
led by his dislike of the orthodoxism of his own
days, and of the fruitless and wanton multiplica
tion of heresies, as well as of the injustice uniform
ly perpetuated towards any whom the prevailing
Church had on any occasion stamped as heretics,
he manifested scarcely less partiality to all who
had been so denominated, than had hitherto ex
isted against them. There was, however, enough
of truth in his views to shake the previously pre
vailing opinion, that the party, which succeeded
for the time in establishing their own orthodoxy,
was always in the right. The influence of Tho
masius, (as, indeed, the general character of
his mind was more calculated to destroy than
to build up,) was rather exerted in the demoli
tion of detached prejudices, and in the promo
tion of a greater freedom and independence of
thought, than in producing any comprehensive
innovation in the system. The bitterness, vehe
mence, and occasional buffoonery of his satire,
was deservedly a further obstacle to his success.
He removed, however, many insulated errors *,
1 Such were the importance of church ceremonies not ordained
by Christ or the Apostles, (in his " Rechte Evangelischen Fiirsteii
in Mitteldingen oder Kirchencarimonien"), the right of civil inr
terference in matters of faith, except as far as concerns the
public peace, (Das Recht Evangelischen Fiirsten in Religions*
streitigkeiten,) the opinion that heresy implied perverseness of
will, or was penal, (ob Ketzerei ein straf bares Verbrechen sey, and
I

114 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
and by the overthrow of the dominion of the'
Aristotelic philosophy prepared the way for the
dominion of that of Wolf.
The previous conflicts had acted rather in di
minishing the extent than in changing the cha
racter of the orthodox school, in detaching some
portion of its empire, than in any change of its
own internal constitution* The Wolfian philo
sophy was received into the system itself, and with
the temporary appearance of adding to its strength,
contributed, ultimately, to its fall. It seems, in
deed, to have been the fate of every successive
philosophy in Germany, to be at first indiscrimi
nately opposed by the Theologians, and then to
have been unduly admitted into their own science.
Experience, and a surer ground of faith has now
shewn them the right place of philosophy, as an
auxiliary science, and subdued the hostility with*
" vom Rechte Evangelischen Fiirsten gegen d. Ketzerei,") and
rnany other points derived from, or connected with, these. He laid
the .foundation for the removal of numerous others by the study
of ecclesiastical history, both for itself, (cp. Niemeyer, Univ.
Halle, S. 47,) and as necessary for the understanding of ecclesi
astical law ; (Hochstnothige Cautelen, welche ein studiosus Juris;
der sich zur Eriernung der Kirchenrechts-gelahrtheit vorbereiten
will, zu beobachten hat.)' Schrbckh, 42. 542. 548. He was
opposed at the time by the . theologians, especially by the oft-
named Ben. Carpzov, but his services have since been acknow
ledged with gratitude, and himself styled the reformer of eecle*
siastical law, (Schrbckh, ib. Henke, iv. S. 252. 537, fg. 577,
%£¦) ^ may be added, that he first removed in Germany the
heathenish superstitibn of witches, sorcery, &c. so frequent a
source of cruelty, the denial of whose truth B. Carpzov had
declared a punishable offence. (Henke, ib. p. 581. fg.)

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 1J5
out producing the yet more unnatural identifica
tion1. The principal opposition, with which
Wolf at first met, was from the Pietists, among
whom he taught at Halle. The great importance,
which he ascribed to the employment of his
science in Theology, appeared to be dangerous ;
his adoption of Leibnitz's, ff predetermined har-"
mony" to involve the admission of fatalism ; his
1 There are at present but few representatives of this system,
such as Daub and Marheinecke, who have converted doctrinal
theology into the philosophy of Schelling and of Hagel, and
De Wette, who is too much influenced by that of Fries. As
Bretschneider has placed Sehjeiermacher in this class, and the
charge has been introduced into this country, it is but justice (to
that great man who, whatever be the errors of his system, has
done more than (some very few perhaps excepted) any other, to
the restoration of religious belief in Germany, to oppose to this
assertion that of hjs distinguished and independent disciple,
Twestgn. (Ib, S, 199.) « Is it apprehended that the Nature-
philosophy, amid its pretensions to absolute knowledge, will
not respect the independence of the religious .conyiction, and
only admit Christianity as far as it can introduce into it its own
positions, or interpret it as a symbolical representation of them I
through Schleieriaaeher has the peculiar and independent source
pf religion in the hurnan jnind, and the original difference of
philosophy and doctrinal theology been set in so clear a light,
that the invasion of the province of .either by the other seems
thereby to be adequately guarded against,'' It were contrary
also (to a maxim laid down by Schleiermacher himself, ff The
endeavour to introduce philosophical systems into theology is
generally at variance with a correct interpretation of Scripture."
Kurze DarsteJUing des jtheologiscJieu Studiums, p. ,51, a work,
which., with a few great defects, is full of important principles
and comprehensive views, and which will form a new era in the-
plpgy whenever the principles which it furnishes for the eultiv-ation
§f jthg gevgraj Geological .sciences shall he acted upon.
I 2

116 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
rejection of some former methods of proving the
existence of a Deity, to lead to atheism. Though
he was, however, himself banished, through the
combined representations of the Theologians of
Halle and of some individuals at Berlin, his sys
tem, through its clearness, definiteness, syste
matic spirit, and consistency, which satisfied the
philosophical wants of the times* gained ground
continually, and was further cultivated and
developed by the adherents whom it acquired.
Through these it maintained its ascendancy until
near the 18th century. Within a few years after
the banishment of Wolf, the first attempt was
made by a theologian (Canz ' of Tubingen) to in-

1 In his Usus Philosophise Leibnitianse et Wolfianae in Theolo-i
gia. 1728. The theological faculty of Tubingen destroyed all
•the copies of the third part of this Work, which they could find.
Canz was followed by Reinbeck, who had great influence in all
matters of religion in Prussia under both Frederics ; (he wrote
" philosophic considerations upon the Augsburg Confession,"
Hvhich were continued by Canz and Alwahrdt ;) by Ribov, Pro
fessor at Helmstadt and Gbttingen, author of the " Institutions
' Theologiae dogmaticee methodo demonstrativa traditae," in which
however he confines himself to the doctrines common to natural
with revealed religion ; by Schubert at Helmstadt and Greifs-
wald; Carpov at Weimar; Darjes at Jena, who applied the
Wolfian mode of proof without limitation to revealed doctrine,
and neglected Scriptural evidence. Thus the eternity of future
punishment was to be demonstrated by Schubert : Darjes thought
to establish the doctrine of the Trinity by algebraical formulae,
(Tractatus philosophicus, in quo pluralitas personarum in Deitate,
qua omnes conditiones, ex solis rationis principiis methodo ma-
thematica demonstratur. 1735.) while Carpov applied the method
in all its strictness to the whole existing system ; suffice that the

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 117
troduce his system into Doctrinal Theology;
others quickly succeeded ; and these established
in different parts of Germany, at Gottingen,
Helmstadt, Berlin, Greifswald, Weimar, Jena, &c.
formed different centres, whence it extended its
influence by their oral instruction as well as by
their writings. Notwithstanding the unques
tioned Christian principles of its author, its recep-?
tion tended to bring on the destruction of more

Trinity, the nature and origin of the soul of Christ, his concep
tion, the imputation of Adam's sin, the incarnation of the Son
of God, and the redemption of mankind thereby effected, the
state of his soul after death, &c. were hence to derive their
proof. (" (Economia Salutis N. T. methodo scientifica ador-
nata," in four 4tos.) This last, though opposed, was defended by
very many ; while none saw the extent of the evils of the system.
(Schrbckh, 43, S. 28—37. Schlegel, K. G. vi. 102—108:
Henke, vii. 55.) The " Tentamen Theol. dogm. methodo scienr
tifica pertractatae" (1741. three 8vos.) of Wyttenbach, though a
Swiss divine, had much influence, and was even used as a com
pendium for lectures in Germany. (Schlegel, S. 108, 109.) - The
evils of this system, as summed up even in the AUgemeine Deutsche
Bibliothek, B. 2. S. 183, were, the introduction of philosophical
positions into the system of religion ; the equalizing what was
certain or probable, problematical or established, what was
left obscure in Scripture with what was clear ; the neglect or
arbitrary application of Scripture interpretation, the philoso-.
phizing with, not always out of the Scripture ; " so that had
this method been- continued, Scripture had no longer been the
source of religious knowledge, but at most, a witness only, which
was to confirm by its evidence the conclusion which was already
arrived at." Crusius, though in part opposed to this system, did
hot improve it ; Scriptural proof occupied an equally subordinate
place; the mode alone of philosophizing was changed. (Schrbckh,
ib. S. 41.) The author, however, survived his system.

118 causes of The late Rationalist
than the system which it was called in to support*
and to the encouragement of Rationalist princi
ples. The faulty portions, indeed, of the pr«*
vious" system alone, would directly suffer from the
spirit of deeper and more accurate investigation
nurtured by this philosophy ; yet indirectly it
promoted many habits of mind, in part already
existing, through which Christianity itself could
not but be affected or mistaken. The disposition
to give to reason not a negative merely, but a
positive3 decision in matters of faith was fostered
by the habit of proving revealed doctrine by alge
braical formulae, or by philosophical grounds ; the
abstract mode of treating its subjects aggravated
the evi],s of the existing system, already too
exclusively speculative ; uncertain philosophical
tenets and hypotheses Wfere introduced into the
system of doctrine, as if equally established with
Scriptural truth ; the requisitions, which Chris
tian evidence can be called upon to satisfy, were
obscured by the confusion of mathematical and
moral proofs; a large portion of that evidence
lost by the exclusive appeal to the intellect ; and
finally, the already diminished consciousness of
the positive doctrines of Christianity was yet
further weakened by the fabric of natural The
ology, formed by this system through the mere
omission of what, in the prevailing religious
ideas, was peculiarly Christian, and the substitu
tion of proofs from reason for those from Scrip
ture ' ; a skeleton, deprived of the form, and
1 Twesten, S. 185.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY I.N GERMANY. 119
beauty, and life of the once animated being. The.
ground-work of a bare deism, or naturalism, was
thus already laid.
To sum up briefly then the internal state of
things in Theology, at the moment when the
struggle with the united and condensed efforts Q$
unbelief of every age and of every country wag
about to commence, we find the result to be, an
abstract and unpractical system, in which error
was mingled with truth, yet these so blended
together, that the practicability of a separation
was scarcely seen either by the supporters or
by the opponents, and the untenable human
additions, advanced more prominently and de
fended as equally essential with the divine basis :
we find the truths themselves presented1 in a dry
dialectic form, destructive of their life and in
fluence, and no distinction made between the rejec*
tionof the received mode of stating and explaining
them, and the abandonment of the doctrines thus
stated; none between those which are essen
tial to Christianity, and those which, though
forming part of its system, would if rejected,
disfigure, but not destroy it : and, {which was the
foundation of those perversions,) the maintenance
of the letter of the whole system, as a sum of
credenda, viewed as in itself the object of Reve
lation, without reference to the practical reli
gious value ; the efforts to make them practical re
garded as hypocrisy or fanaticism, and the school,
who had begun the undertaking, degenerate ; the
real proofs of the truths themselves overwhelmed

120 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
and choked by a multitude of others, of evident
invalidity, yet regarded as altogether essential
to the maintenance of those truths ; true science
and free inquiry abandoned and opposed ; Scrip
ture scarcely felt to be the basis of religious
truth, nor studied in order to discover it, and the
right understanding of Scripture itself perplexed
by wrong principles and obscured by the neglect
of history ; the knowledge of the nature, objects,
and influence of Christianity, lost through the
want of that best comment upon it, a Christian
life, and the defect not even objectively supplied
by the study of its past existence.
To this condition of Theology, must be added
the moral and intellectual circumstances of the age :
its moral character was such as might be antici
pated from neglected education, and the defects in
Christian teaching and Christian ministry, — frivo
lity, self-gratification, and corrupted morals l ; nor
was its intellectual character, though more difficult
to condense, from the variety of the elements of
which it was composed, less adverse to the subsis
tence of Christianity. It is indeed rare, either in
individuals or nationally, that a state of strong ex
citement is not accompanied by a diminution of
religious feeling; the absorbing gratification of
active mental creation jars the tone of mind
essential to the Christian influences ; a feeling of
self-confidence and self-satisfaction is generated,
unfavourable at least to that deep sense of man's
1 Schlegel, v. 246.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 121
dependence, his insufficiency, and his necessities,
which draws him to his God, and his Redeemer.
Not the pursuit of science in itself, not the depth
of speculation, but the engrossing power which
they exert over the unaccustomed mind, (and to
such an one only are they thus unhealthy,)
interferes with the harmonious and proportionate
developement of the. intellectual and religious
faculties. In the present instance, the impulse
appears originally to have been given by the
Leibnitz-Wolfian philosophy : this, without great
speculative depth, imparted new energy to the
German mind, as being the first effort to produce
a self-originated and native system of philosophy ;
the eminent distinctness, precision, and force,
which it in part discovered, in part communicated
to, the German language, both rendered that
language a fitter instrument for other exertion,
and enabled it, (as language always does,) itself to
re-act upon the activity of the mind : the study
of history was revived and reformed through the
views of Thomasius, and the acquaintance with
our own literature: a number of highly-gifted
minds were roUsed in every department, and
German literature, in many branches at least,
sprung with unexampled rapidity from infancy to
maturity. Had a religious spirit been already
there, this revival might have contributed, like
the first and great re-awakening of literature in
Europe, to the vindication and purification of
the Evangelical belief; in the actual event, it
furnishes an additional proof, that however re-

122 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
animated science aided in, it was not a principal
source of the Reformation. Like the shower, it
may aid the seed to vegetate, but the seed it is
not ; the ground being now unprepared, it gave
luxuriance to the natural productions, which
choked it. The incidental causes which made a
suddenly revived, and therefore as yet unsound;
study of history especially injurious have been
already hinted. It was the unsound part of the
Wolfian philosophy also which was injurious.
These intellectual defects were again strength
ened by the moral faults of the age. The conceit
and absence of moral earnestness, then extensively
prevalent, greatly promoted the natural liability
of times of newly kindled energy to over-rate all
supposed discoveries, and to depreciate indiscrimi
nately every thing which before existed ; to prefer
extent to depth of investigation, and to be dazzled
consequently by every specious noyelty. For a
time, at least, every hypothesis opposed to the
strictness of the previous system, was assured,
among a certain class, of a favourable reception ;
and though this disposition had ultimately the
collateral advantage, that the truth was more
clearly ascertained, through the examination of
every imaginable opposed theory, as well as
through the modifications which itself occasionally
obtained from the persevering sifting of views, at
first unpromising, the first result was the introduc
tion into theology of much that was shallow and
capricious. TJie evils however, wjfaich occurred
must not be entirely ascribed to a prevailing love

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 123
of innovation, being in part attributable to the
contrary error of the previous and contemporary
orthodox school, which refused altogether to listen
to any theory at variance with its own, or the re*
suits of whose enquiries was a priori certain.
The collision, however, to Which the German
Theology must, it appeared, be necessarily ex^-
posed, might perhaps have been still deferred ;
the regeneration, by which it was to be restored,
have been effected without this great struggle,
but for circumstances connected with the reign
of Frederic the Second. The extreme popula
rity given by the authority of that monarch to
French literature, at that time universally tinged
with a flippant unbelief, even in works not pro
fessedly written in mockery of religion ; the re
ception of French unbelievers at his court and
as his companions, some of them (such as the
wretched La Mettrie and Voltaire,) the most reck
less and unprincipled ; and the countenance given
in an admiring nation by his own professed
opinions, aided strongly to determine in this
direction the existing frivolity. Frederic, when
he saw the moral effects of the extended unbe
lief, in vain repented 1 that he had contributed to
its propagation. The disposition thus engender-
1 It has been 'related to the author by one likely to be accu-
rately informed, that Frederic shortly before his death, in expres
sing his regret at the altered condition of his dominions in this
respect, professed that he would gladly sacrifice his best battle,
could they but be restored to the state in belief and in practice in
which he had found them.

124 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
ed was fostered by translations of the writings
of all the principal deists of our own land.
The attack upon Christianity had been carried
on more systematically l in our own, than in any
other, country ; the necessity of a revelation, as
well as the validity of the several evidences for
its truth had been successively disputed by men,
some of whom possessed no ordinary acuteness:
the course, which had been here adopted, was
eminently calculated, from the similarity of its
general character and of its defects, to promote
the direction which the German mind was taking;
inasmuch as the greater part of the early English
unbelievers had been carried into unbelief partly
by the same intellectual defects, partly by similar
unhappy circumstances in the Church itself.
The sunken state of Christianity through thq
civil wars, and the controversies of embittered

1 There is scarcely a point in the whole compass of Christia
nity or of Christian evidence which was not, in a regular progres
sion, sifted by the English Deists. Herbert, by substituting a
natural theology for revealed doctrine, and by assigning man's
natural instinct as the source of his knowledge of truth, the uni
versality of the reception of those truths as the test of their being
thus derived, laid a broad foundation for all the theories and
criticisms of his successors. The distinctive character of the
Christian miracles had been disguised by Blount ; the morality
of the Gospel criticised from a false point of view by Shaftes
bury ; the evidence from miracles and prophecy had been sepa
rately, (and therefore, as evidences, unfairly) judged by Woolstoi)
and Collins ; the theory of rationalism had been proposed with
plausibleness, consistency, and roundness, though without depth,
byTindal.-

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 125
parties, induced in Lord Herbert of Cherbury,
the leader of the English Deists, the attempt to
remedy the unpracticalness of the existing system,
by converting Christianity into a mere scheme of
Ethics ; they had led Toland to deny all higher
truths of Revelation, and had inclined HobbeS
to transform Christianity into a mere instrument
of state policy. The similar consequences of
the thirty years' war, in which, as in England,
Religion was made the watchword, and to whose
prolongation the contentions of religious parties
had in part contributed, produced among many
of the Germans a similar disposition. The con
stant appeal to the rationality of the system of
Christianity which led Tindal to conceive of it as
a mere "republication of the Religion of Nature1,"
was extensively encouraged in Germany by the
translation of the works of the earlier English
Apologists, and by the partly allied character of
the orthodox school. The erroneous conceptions
of inspiration and of prophecy, and the conse
quent failure to understand the connection of the
two covenants, together with the exclusive ap-

1 Tindal himself refers to a passage of Sherlock, in which this
expression occurs, as well as the assertion that the laws of Chris
tianity are a clear exposition of that original religion. Neither
Bishop Conybeare nor Foster in their answers (which, however,
are the most celebrated which appeared) pressed the necessity of
the Christian revelation, but the former contented himself with
shewing that it formed an useful addition to the religion of nature
through its positive laws, the latter that its system of morality
was superior to that naturally discovered.

126 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
peal to the intellect in the proposition of the evi
dences, which had confused to Collins the argument
from prophecy, gave a ready access to his criti
cisms when transferred into the German Church.
The depth of thought and of moral earnestness
accordingly which guided Lord Herbert of Cher-
bury 1 in his search after the source of truth in
the human mind, the acuteness of Toland*
and of Hobbes, and the ability evinced in de
tached criticisms by Collins and Morgan3, ex-
1 Much moral as well as intellectual reflection is implied in the
confession of Lord Herbert, that the understanding is an insuffi
cient source of knowledge in divine things, as well as by his
directing his mind to consciousness, (or as he called it instinct)
as the only independent ground of such knowledge. The errors
in the application of this truth he shared in common with Jacobi,
with whom his general character has much similarity ; yet not
withstanding these errors, he is entitled to a high degree of
respect from the earnestness of his religious as well as from his
intellectual character.
2 It is remarkable in Toland that he was first carried on by
the consecutiveness of his speculations to the only consistent
system of unbelief, Pantheism. Locke says of him that but for
his love of distinction he would have faeen a great man ; and
Leibnitz, whose anriotationes subitaneaB ad Tolandi Librum
(1707) are the best of the 50 refutations which appeared against
him, praises his acuteness.
3 Morgan put together with greater minuteness than any other
fhe historical critical difficulties, and was much used both by
the French and German unbelievers ; (the most of Voltaire's
objections, which do not originate in his own unprincipled inven
tions, are derived from Morgan and Tindal.) He manifested also
no ordinary acuteness in the doctrinal objections which he ad
duced, while he won through his greater candour ; from Collins
Whole sections have been transcribed into modern doctrinal works

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 127
erted greater influence, and that upon minds less
frivolous or less morbid, than those acted upon
by the wit and audacious falsehoods of Voltaire ',
or the diseased sensibility of Rousseau. Imitators,
but for the most part with few original additions,
were stimulated in Germany itself. Transla
tions of our earlier English Apologists opposed
to these works did but aggravate the evil, and
increase the rationalist tendency 2 ; partly because
they had themselves been in some degree tacitly
acted upon by the systems which they opposed,
partly as being too exclusively intellectual, and
lastly, because from the different stage in which
German Theology then stood, their very defences
contributed to expose some of its untenable, but
of Germany ; his work obtained its credit from the previous mis
conceptions of prophecy, as a mere historical description of the
future, and the confusion of prophecy and foretelling therein
involved. 1 As unbelief assumed a different character in each of the
three nations according to the ruling turn of mind in each, so
had each its separate class of readers : the French unbelievers,
from the unsystematic character of their minds, and from their
recklessness about the establishment of any fixed principles,
followed individual objections into a minuter detail, but without
reference to any general theory ; they aimed at destroying, without
attempting to replace, Christianity ; the English Deists from the
predominant practical character of our nation, were generally de
termined in their investigation by what appears to be of moral
practical importance ; the German, who, from his more specular
tive character, pursues enquiry for its own sake, followed his system
with more consistency whithersoever it led him.
2 This is especially remarked by Twesten, S. 189, 90. and is
indeed the view of the most observing minds of Germany, '
6

128 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
unyielded, points. It will appear scarcely credi
ble to one unacquainted with those times, to
what degree these agencies were furthered by a
review established by Nicolai. Its object was to
recommend every book opposed, not merely to
Christianity, but to every earnest character of
mind, while it passed over in silence, or hejd up
to scorn, every work which favoured a belief in
Revelation K With little recommendation, ex
cept peculiarities of style, and the favourable
disposition of its readers, its dicta were consider
ed as oracles ; and its party succeeded with no
better means than their bold claims to the ex
clusive possession , of ' sound reason/ and the
audacity with which they accordingly decided
upon Christianity, to drown any voice raised in op
position, to brand any antagonist as an intolerant
enemy of illumination, if not as a Crypto-Catho-
lic. This shallowness was promoted by the
substitution of the rightly-called " Popular Phi
losophy," for that of Wolf, through such writers
as Garve, Eberhardt, M. Mendelssohn, and
Basedow. Incapable of deep or consistent specu
lation, they laid "sound common sense," (the
usual refuge of shallowness, or of deficiency in
speculative powers) as the basis of their philo
sophy, and of their criticisms of Christianity ; a
superficial empiricism was the ground-work of
that mere shadow of Natural Religion, to which
they reduced Christianity : and they themselves
1 It commenced in 1768, and grew to 48 4to. Volumes.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 129
scarcely suspected the precariousness of their
own arbitrary structure, now that they had
undermined the foundation of positive belief, and
were consequently astonished at the Spinozism
of Lessing, and at Jacobi's vindication of its con
sistency for the mere understanding. A shallow
theory of Eudaimonism stood at the head of their
system. " Happiness was the highest destination
of man, the end to which it was the purpose of
God to lead him ; an intelligent pursuit of happi
ness its morality, and to find one's own happiness
in that of others, the most elevated virtue, to
which it rose V
Theology, however, declined only gradually, by
successive generations, and even at last but par
tially, into this school of unbelief. The form
which itself latterly assumed, was not the cause
but the result of this collision with unbelief, which
its earlier stage had tended by reaction to pro
duce. Not only did the first theologians, who in
cidentally, or by too exclusive or partial a follow
ing up of their systems, gave occasion to the
superficializing or the rejection of Christian doc
trine, Baumgarten, Ernesti, and Michaelis, them
selves still firmly adhere to them, but some even
1 Twesten S. 193, in whose words much of the immediately
preceding statement of the external auxiliary causes of unbelief
is conveyed ; they do not rest, however, on his authority alone,
but are in Germany universally regarded as occasionally con
tributing to unbelief; more, however, than the circumstances,
which incidentally called into existence what was already formed,
they cannot in their own nature be.
K

130 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
of their next disciples, as Semler and Morus, did
not altogether abandon any fundamental article.
The course, in which this declension was com
pleted, was rather such as might have been ex
pected from the previous mere intellectual con
ception of Christianity, the gradual deadening of
the ideas peculiarly Christian, the unperceived
substitution of mere moral doctrines, which bore
more or less analogy to those of Christianity
which were now longer understood, and finally
the attempt to conciliate Rationalism by bringing
down Christianity to its low and carnal standard,
than that of direct and intentional opposition.
The seed withered because it had no root in the
heart. Each theologian attempted and strained
to maintain as much of Christianity, as his own
gradually altered tone of mind enabled him to
understand ; it was the natural and almost neces
sary consequence of a mere objective contempla
tion of Christianity, destitute of the insight
afforded by personal experience, that the objects
themselves should become gradually more and
more faint and indistinct, until tJhey at length
faded from the sight, or were mingled, in the in
creasing dimness, with others to which, viewed
from that distance, they bore more or less simi
larity. It has often been the case, not in nations
merely but in individuals, where early Christian
education has not been further developed by active
religion, that Christian doctrines have first lost
their freshness and vividness, and that finally,
though habit has retained the same names, im-
6

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 131
paired religious perception has substituted far
other and far lower meaning than that which
they once possessed, when they were felt as well
as acknowledged. If under ordinary circumstances
they often continue apparently the same, the con
tact with unbelievers, or the mistaken attempt to
recommend Christianity from a partial and com
promising point of view, invariably discovers, as
it often promotes, the half-conscious deviation.
Of the first Theologians who prepared for
the new system, Baumgarten, who was a real
Christian, though gradually chilled by the exclu
sive love of the mere scientific element of Theo
logy, was chiefly influential by the introduction
of English Theology of a freer, but very negative
and superficial character ; by the promotion of the
study of history through the translation of English
works ; and by accustoming his disciples to de
part from the traditional method, through the
application of the form of the Wolfian system
to the different branches of Theology. By this
last innovation, especially, the Scriptural fresh
ness, which Doctrinal Theology and Scriptural
Interpretation had recovered in the school of the
Pietists, was in that same school in a different
mode destroyed. The tabular method, the dia
lectic precision, the abstract language, which he
employed, humanized and straitened the divine
truth ; the fulness of the Christian ideas admits
not of being compressed into narrow logical
formulae; the free and living spirit, which ani
mated its language, evaporated in the minute
K 2

132 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
dissection of this dialectic anatomy. Many of
Baumgarten's disciples l were led by this method
to a mere cold intellectual conception of Christia
nity; and Semler, whose naturally ardent mind
was capable of deeper impressions, inherited from
his teacher only the views of reform, which
Baumgarten recommended as necessary2, but
felt himself too old to execute, and which Semler,
from the inaccurate and unsystematic character
of his mind, ill, because imperfectly and partially,
developed. Equally faithful to the sum of Chris
tian doctrine remained Ernesti, even in his later
years, when it had already been pared down by
theologians to a mere " republication of the Re
ligion of Nature." In him, however, the evil
effects of a mere external conception of Christia
nity were yet more apparent. His revival of the
" grammatical," as opposed to the doctrinal, in
terpretation of Scripture, was indeed a great and
very beneficial change ; a change for whj^h the
1 Besides Semler, many of the principal innovators, as Biisch-
ing, Teller, Spalding, Eberhardt, Steinbart, &c. had been pupils
of Baumgarten. (Niemeyer, d. Univ. Halle, S. 104.) The in
fluence of Baumgarten was greater probably than that of any
other individual ; almost all the theological students of Halle,
(never fewer than between 5 and 600, and often more,) attended
his lectures ; the attachment to the letter of his lectures was so
great, that they were not only at the time transcribed by most of
his pupils verbatim, but were published after his death with diplo
matic accuracy, different MSS. being collated and even minute
variantes noted, according to the several years of the delivery of
the lectures. Even Baumgarten's bodily defects were imitated.
(Niemeyer Ebend. S. 77, 81.)
I Semler Lebensbeschr. ap. Niemeyer, S. 104.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 133
German Church must long be grateful to him, in
that it has restored the principle of the Reforma
tion, that not human system, but the clear word
of God in the Scripture, is the basis and norm
of faith. Too exclusively intent, however, on
the introduction of the classical rules of inter
pretation, he slighted the historical element : and
destitute of the key which would have opened to
him the fuller riches of Scripture, he forgot that
every new religion must form to itself a new
language, that in order to convey new truths,
words already in use must indeed be employed
to connect them with the previous ideas of man
kind, but that the signification of these words
must be modified, that they must be re-cast,
re-moulded, in order to receive the stamp
of the newly communicated truth. The appli
cation of classical language in its full strictness
to the records of Christianity, could but convert
them into a document of mere human speculation.
That Xoyog signified " reason," and " wisdom"
in the classics, was a very superficial, as well as
an entirely mistaken, ground for supposing that
in St. John it meant nothing more than the
wisdom of the communication made to man.
The effect of this mistake is seen in its full
perniciousness in his immediate followers >.., " Re
generation" was supposed to signify " the mere
reception into a religious society ;" the doctrine
1 E. g. Fischer (who was indeed no theologian, but did in
fluence theology) Proluss. de Vitiis Lexicon N.T., Schleusner, &c.

134 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
of the influences of the Holy Spirit became,
more or less, a certain attaining of praiseworthy
qualities with the (often merely external) assist
ance of God; the iv elvai with the Father, an
unity of disposition or of will.
A similar failing, arising from the same source,
is manifest in Ernesti's mode of vindicating re
ceived doctrine. Thus in claiming inspiration
for the books of the Old Testament, he even
admits the supposition, that they may not be
calculated for all mankind, that they did not tend
to the improvement of the human heart. He
acknowledged their temporary value for the Jews,
but did not feel their direct importance for
Christians1. In the school of experience of
Luther, he would have learnt the analogy of dif
ferent parts of the life of most Christians to the
two different stages of the Law and the Gospel ;
he would have felt the necessity of the law, even
now, as a state of preparatory discipline to bring
us to Christ.
The adherence of Michaelis to the established
system, and his respect for religion is probably
mainly to be attributed to the impressions made
by the intercourse of the Pietists, among whom
he was educated by his father, the excellent J. H.
Michaelis. Too light-minded, as himself says,
to adopt their tone of pious feeling, he yet re
tained an external conviction of the truth of

' Neuester Theol. Bibliothek, B. 2. S. 440. fg. in his critique
upon Semler's " Enquiries on the Canon of the Old Testament."

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 135
Christianity, endeavoured to remove objections
by new theories, and much to the surprise of his
younger contemporaries, held to the last many
parts of the older system, which had been modi
fied or laid aside. Throughout are the pernicious
consequences of his mere outward persuasion
manifest. Destitute of that conviction, which
can alone give a comprehensive insight into the
real character of Revelation, and the harmo
nious relation of its several parts, he had no
guide which might enable him to perceive what
might be safely admitted, without detriment to
the system itself; he consequently, according to
the usual error of persons taking only a partial
view, frequently opposed the objection, instead
of the principle, upon which the objection was
founded; endeavoured to remove it by theories
in conformity with mere human systems, and
strengthened it equally by his concessions, and
by his own inadequate and arbitrary defences \
1 There is no work probably of Michaelis, at all touching upon
religious subjects, to which these observations do not apply;
" the Commentaries on the Laws of Moses," and " the Notes
on the Old Testament," are full of these perverted applications
of mere civil, often of modern, principles, unfounded theories and
low views ; his translation of the Bible indicates his common-place
conceptions of Scripture : his " History of the Resurrection"
evidences occasionally both his wrong principles of defence, and
a readiness, which he seems to have deemed praiseworthy, to
abandon his previous belief, in case it should be found to be false ;
his commentary on " the three most important Psalms concern
ing Christ" is a specimen of his failure, from want of enlarged
views, to see the right principles of exposition, and the arbitrary

136 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
To a mind possessed of no enlarged principles,
every minute difficulty obtained an intrinsic and
perplexing force ; his belief was a reed, ready to
be shaken by every fresh breeze ; all which had
been previously won, seemed again staked upon
the issue of each petty skirmish, and in the very
descriptive comparison of Lessing on this sort of
combatants, he was like the timid soldier who loses
his life before an outpost, without once seeing the
country of which he would gain possession \ The
theories and unsound criticisms to which he was consequently
driven, &c. Deep insight into religion were indeed inconsistent
with the intemperate habits and low moral character of Michaelis,
which defiled his books occasionally, and still more frequently his
lectures, with obscenity. It is a very characteristic trait of
Michaelis's mind, that he himself records' his having asked his
father on his death-bed, which of the Lexica of Castelli he
thought the best. (Pref. to Mich. Syr. Chrestomathie.) One may
very consistently acknowledge the service, which Michaelis, and
even Paulus, has rendered, by contributing to place the histo
rical circumstances of Scriptural narration more before our eyes,
to put us more in the situation of contemporaries, and to render
the mode of conception less abstract, and yet esteem the manher
in which they have done it pernicious, and derogatory to
Scripture. 1 Such, according to Lessing, was the conduct of theologians ;
the Christian he compares with the bold conqueror who, neglecting
the fortresses on the frontier, at once takes possession of the land.
" Never," he says, " will any one arrive at a belief in the Christian
Revelation who thinks he must first clear up this or that doctrinal
or historical minutia, before he accepts the . substance ; rather
will he only ever accept all the several historical truths, who has
first gained possession of the inward holy truth, and not the de
tails." In this he was preceded by our great Bacon, who com
pares such defenders or enquirers to one, who, in order to light up

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 137
disadvantages, however, to which he thus exposed
the defence of Christianity, were the least evils of
the system ; far more resulted from the common
place views of the persons, actions, institutions>
and doctrines of Scripture, to which it gave rise :
not only the theories of Eichhorn, (his pupil)1 con
structed on the assumed human origin of every
phaenomenon in revealed religion, but even the
low and vulgar tone of mind, in which Paulus de
graded every thing spiritual and divine in the
Gospels to the sphere of civil every- day life, the
mean and earthly principles which he attributes
to its actors, (by which far more injury has been
produced than by the soon exploded and now
almost forgotten explanations of the miracles,)
seem but the natural and inevitable consequence
of this exclusion of religion from the theories of
Michaelis. Theology, thus already on the decline, natu
rally sunk still further, though in very different
degrees, in the next generation ; in Semler, the
pupil of Baumgarten and of Ernesti ; in Morus,
the inheritor of Ernestis principles; and in
a large hall, were to place a light in every corner, instead of one
great central light, which should illumine every the most distant
part. 1 The pursuit of novelty, to the comparative disregard of truth,
which was the besetting temptation of this original and elegant,
but ill-regulated mind, revenged itself upon him ; more fertile in
new theories than any of his contemporaries, he survived to see
the last extorted from him. His errors, however, must not be
set to the account of German Theology, since he was a philoso
phical; not a theological, Professor.

138 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
Eichhom and Koppe, the disciples of Michaelis.
Of these Morus and Koppe superficialized still
further the Christian ideas; Morus especially,
devoid of any settled principles, though in his
Epitome of Christian Doctrine he opposed none
of the Christian doctrines, led the way to their
subsequent rejection, by his representations of
the uncertainty of the conflicting views ; yet
more perhaps by the arbitrary principle, which
this hesitation caused him to propose in his
doctrinal lectures, that so much only should
be retained as tended to moral improvement.
What was described to be thus uncertain, his dis
ciples, naturally very inadequate judges of what
was really practical, of course laid aside.
Not only however was there in these men no
direct opposition, but the influence even of Semler,
the most direct founder of the innovating school,
lay more in the principles which he introduced, and
in his own intellectual defects, than in any direct
rejection of fundamental doctrines. The piety of
his early days accompanied him in some measure
through life, and became in his later years
still more decided. His intellectual character
was a singular combination of great advantages
and great defects. On the one hand he possessed
amazing retentiveness of memory, and very con
siderable acuteness : on the other he was entirely
devoid of all philosophical talent, all power of ex
tensive survey, of clear perception, and of accu
rate reasoning. His extensive reading supplied
consequently only a mass of facts and ideas, which

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 139
floated indistinctly before him ; his acuteness sug
gested continually a number of minuter combina
tions, which his mind was not sufficiently syste
matic to correct or limit by reference to the whole
subject to which they related, or to perceive the
consequences to which they led. When in his
latter days he saw how his principles had been
developed by others, he repented that he had gone
so far1. Against the Wolfenbiittel Fragments
he wrote with earnestness ; he opposed conscien
tiously, and prevented the appointment of Bahrdt
as Professor at Halle : he preserved himself (how
ever difficult the mode may be to understand)
from the results of his own scientific investigation,
by what he called his " private religion," (the re
ligion apparently of feeling, whose separate and
independent validity he wished to establish) ; and
some of his theories, which have been most exten
sively abused, seem to have owed their character
to the indefiniteness and obscurity with which he
conveyed them. In his treatises on dsemoniac
possessions 2 there was nothing in any wise dero-
1 Niemeyer, Semler's letzte'Ausserungen iiber religiose Gegen-
stande, S. 9. He thought, however, that in an age which had
been more adapted to the reception of these views, they could
have been developed without injury.
2 Semler came upon this subject not in the way of mere specu
lation, but to remove an injurious superstition, through which an
hysterical person had been treated by a clergyman of high office
near Wittenberg as actually possessed. Semler's first treatise
went no further than to disprove present possessions, admitting
the moral influence of evil spirits ; his subsequent essay propos
ed only to prove that daijxovi.'Cf>^voi need not, any more than

140 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
gatory to the Evangelists, much less any thing im
plying any 'accommodation' in Christ; yet his
undistinguishing contemporaries pronounced the
opinion to be irreconcileable with faith and piety,
or proceeded1 to deny the existence of any agent
of evil superior to man. The indiscriminate stiff
ness of the preceding age yet survived sufficiently
to perpetuate the reaction which it had caused ;
and a shallow generation, accustomed by the still
continued mode of handling the subjects of Theo
logy, to regard them as mere theoretical pro
blems, seems to have thought, that the only mode
of recovering liberty was to depart as widely as
possible from the system which had fettered them.
Every hint was eagerly seized, and under the pro
tection of a certain correspondence with the views
of those whose only aim was to attain that free
dom of enquiry2, which is an essential principle of

Sai/iovav, &c, in classic Greek, signify more than a " raging
phrenzy," while he allowed that some narrations implied a stronger
external or internal agency of the evil principle. Yet these
treatises produced such works as the " Disquisitio an Adaemo-
nismus cum fide et pietate Christiana conciliari possit.'' Tub.
1763. The subject occupied subsequently, very unprofitably and
unpractically, but to a wide extent, the German pulpit.
1 E. g. Teller's Worterbuch. ¦
2 A good view of the previous stiffness of the German Theo
logy may be collected from the second part of Semler's Autobio
graphy, in which he describes the progress of the developement
of his own views, S. 121. fgg. We find then, in the province of
Biblical Criticism, not only the letter, but the very variantes,
(Kri, Chethibh,) of the text of the Old Testament supposed to be
inspired, and this immutability of the text to be indispensable to

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 141
Protestantism, others found admission, who dif
fered from them in their first principles, as well
the truth of Christianity; bolder critics, as Simonis and Le
Clerc, accounted among evil-intentioned antiscripturarii ; (S.
121-3.) the divine origin of the Hebrew points and accents
maintained ; the possibility of errors of transcription rejected ;
the Hebrew text considered as the norm of all versions, (S. 123.)
yet the fable of Aristeas still retained; (S. 128,.) the imaginary
pre-eminent sanctity of the Hebrew language, and other inven
tions of the Rabbins, inherited ; any innovation regarded as a
petulant opposition to the agreement of the universal Church.
(S . 1 30-2.) Every merely historical book of the Old Testament, as
Ruth and Esther was further considered equally indispensable and
essential to the beneficial reception of Christianity with those of the
New Testament, and the discovery of Christ in all the books of
the Old Testament to be a truth essential to religion, the basis of
all interpretation, and the criterion of its soundness. (S. 135 —
144.) The perfect purity of the Greek of the New Testament was
vindicated ; (S. 126.) the relative value of its documents, which
Luther, as well as the early Church, had acknowledged, was oblite
rated, and inspiration regarded as a mere mechanical act. (S. 161.)
In Ecclesiastical History, the principles on which it had been
cultivated in the Romish Church were still perpetuated ; there
prevailed an indiscriminate panegyric of the -early orthodox, a
severe condemnation of all the heretics of the first five centuries,
without an historical acquaintance with either; it was yet full of
exaggerated accounts of the early persecutions and martyrs : and
(here equally as in the case of Gibbon) the indiscriminate ad
mission of the later miraculous legends, and among these even of
the least credible class, those by which the orthodoxy of one of
conflicting speculations was to be established, endangered the
reception of the miracles of the first introduction of Christianity.
The whole study was confined for the most part to what related
to the external society. (S. 154 — 161.) Symbolical, as well as
doctrinal, theology, needed also extensive simplification, though
the limits of a note will not allow even a condensed exhibition
of this portion of the subject.

142 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
as in their object, but were included in the same
category by the adherents of the traditional scheme.
Science, unnaturally separated from Theology,
whose end should be a scientific statement of divine
truth, became its foe. It was from this cause
alone, that the revival of historical interpretation
by Semler became the most extensive instrument
of the degradation of Christianity. The princi
ple, that an historical religion cannot be under
stood without the history of the era of its intro
duction, that no writing can be fully understood
without a knowledge of other contemporary writ
ings, which fully develope the ideas, to which it
self occasionally alludes, which it modifies or cor
rects, nor without a clear view, whether collected
from itself or from exterior sources, of the persons
with reference to whom it was originally written,
and the circumstances which immediately occa
sions it, is so obviously correct, that in this coun
try, where the circle of expounding Scripture by
the system which has been founded upon it, has
never been systematically adopted, the contest
about the " Historical Interpretation " must be
matter of surprise, and, until explained by pre
vious circumstances, of perplexity. The princi
ple had already in part been developed by Baum
garten : the unsystematic and unclear mind of his
disciple saw neither the limits, by which it must
in its own nature be circumscribed, nor the other
principles by which it must be conditioned. The
fundamental errors of Semler's application of it
are the same which have already been noticed in

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 143
Ernesti ; the same exclusive adherence to his
single principle, the same failure to perceive the
connection1 of the Christian with the Jewish reve
lation, as the completion of .this earlier education
of mankind, the same inability to discriminate
between what was principally intended for con
temporaries, and what is directly also of eternal
value ; they were derived in part from the same
source, the want of that deeper insight into the
nature of the religion, which a constantly improv
ing personal Christianity alone can give. Such
1 This connection of the two dispensations had been in great
measure obliterated by the Orthodox system, partly from over
looking the gradual character of Revelation, and finding every
thing already fully revealed under the preparatory covenant, partly
from the neglect of the historical interpretation : the study of the
Apocryphal books, or of Philo, which supply a necessary link in
the chain, by shewing how revealed truth had, during the tem
porary cessation of any new discoveries, been developed by hu
man reflection in conformity to the earlier Scriptures, had been
altogether neglected ; the revelation in the New Testament had
consequently become insulated and abstract ; and Semler's prin
ciple, that " Revelation must consist of purely unknown truths,"
" that it was unworthy of it to say anew what had been already
said," was a natural consequence of this system. It was this
dogma, however, which most injured- Semler's great principle of
historical interpretation. It followed from this that Revelation
could not be merely confirmatory, that whatever in it did agree
with what previously existed, was mere fi/yicara/3aeri£ ; that what
ever had been previously taught by the Pharisees, (though in fact
indirectly derived from the earlier revelation,) could form no part
of the later communication. On the same principles, however,
even the meagre portion, yet left, of that scheme of truth, which
was destined to regenerate mankind, must be still further re
duced.

144 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
inexperience alone could convert the everlasting
contrast of aapE, and irvtvpa into the mere tempo
rary contrast of the Judaizing and narrowing con
ception of Christianity, with the freer views which
St. Paul taught ; have divided consequently the
books of the New Testament into those in which
the o-ap£„ and those in which the nvivfia, predomi
nated, or have conceived that the sole object of
the Epistle to the Romans, was to oppose the par
ticularism of the Jews, and to prove that the hea
then also might attain eternal life. The theory
of accommodation was an unavoidable conse
quence of this perverted form of historical inter
pretation. Still more injurious would the same
system obviously be to the right understanding of
the Old Testament, while the inducement to apply
it was increased, by the inability of Semler to com
prehend an extensive scheme, and by the greater
faultiuess of the system, which he could not but
oppose. The confusion, further, which the ortho
dox system of Doctrinal Theology had introduced
between essentials and non-essentials, biblical
truth, and human developement or mode of state
ment, and the want in Semler himself of the deep
Christian knowledge, and clearness of thought,
which would have enabled him to unravel it, ren
dered his vast study of Christian doctrine in its
earlier forms an inextricable labyrinth, a mere
source of perplexity and uncertainty. The mind,
long accustomed to derive its Christian knowledge
from the mechanical study of the letter of a con
fined form, had lost the clue, which would have

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 145
enabled it to trace in this variety pf statements,
and in what, to a superficial mind, appeared to be
contradictions, the unity of the same spirit mani
festing itself in various forms, according to the
character of the individuals through whom it was
conveyed, The former school had found in the
Bible itself all the subsequent developements,
which later speculation on its truths had subse
quently, often indeed rightly and consistently,
evolved : a superficial age, dazzled with the sud
denness of the discovery, that parts of the re
ceived system were by time alone thus developed,
and convinced only of the untenableness of that
system, employed itself in remarking and accu
mulating the apparent differences : the higher
unity in which much of this discordance would
have harmonized, lay beyond their sphere. Doc
trinal Theology assumed consequently in this
school a critical and negative, rather than a posi
tive, character : the sum of doctrine, considered as
certainly fixed, gradually diminished, the deve
lopement of the connection even of the general
truths of Religion became less frequent, and in
the energetic description of the often-quoted au
thor, who has, with the deepest insight, and
soundest judgment, traced the whole course of
doctrinal Theology, " they cleared with great
exertions the site of the overthrown palace from
the encumbering heap of ruins ; they dug deep
trenches to bring better materials to light ; but
as if their strength were exhausted with these
efforts, they left it to each individual to put toge-
L

146 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
ther a petty hut for his own use, if he should find
the foundations still safe, and the materials ade
quate to the purpose ; or, if they undertook the
trouble for him, it was but a temporary construc
tion, which, in its turn, was again to be laid in
heaps 1." Against these principles and this con
duct of Semler, (which, it must again be repeat
ed, arose from no indisposition to the doctrines 2,
but originated in his sense of the necessities of
Theology, and were perverted only by the indis
tinctness of his views) little opposition seems to
have been made, (at least none is recorded,) though
they led to the ultimate temporalizing and annihi
lation of every thing peculiarly Christian in the
system ; while long-enduring contests were excited
by his partial deviation from the received opinion
on dsemoniacs, or from his doubts with regard to
some few of the least important biblical books,
1 Twesteri's Dogmatik, S. 244.
3 That part of Semler's autobiography, which relates to his
views in doctrinal Theology, (2 Th. S. 220, fgg.) indicates great
earnestness of mind, and a practical object ; and leaves, in com
mon with every other part of this interesting piece of self-observa
tion, a very favourable impression of his piety and conscientious
ness. A misinterpretation of the word ' liberalis,' in Semler's
Apparatus ad liberalem N. T. interpretationem, has given rise to
misconceptions of his character in several English authors, and
especially the late valuable Conybeare; (Bampton Lectures.)
Semler did not hereby mean that false spirit which casts aside,
under pretence of liberality, what from its own altered character
it no longer values, but he wished to characterize his own theory,
founded solely on the results of historical investigation, and
free and independent of the previously established doctrinal
system.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 147
with regard to which, in the early Church, free
scope had been permitted to difference of opinion.
The orthodox school guarded with vigilance the
number of the repositories of their treasures, but
were unable to detect the substitution by which
these treasures were deprived of their value. It
is also remarkable, (as far as may be inferred from
the yet very imperfect and inadequate history of
the times,) that the opponents of succeeding
aberrations were, with a few splendid exceptions,
principally the practical clergy. These, in whom
their difficult practical duties perpetuated the
sense that something more was necessary than
doctrinal speculation or a religion of nature, and
thus kept alive the spirit of piety awakened by
Spener, remained doubtless, to a very wide extent,
unaffected by the contagion around them.
Scriptural doctrine having thus been converted
into speculation by one party, superficialized by
another, and treated as uncertain and vague by
a third, there remained but one more declension,
to which, under the then circumstances, all these
systems tended, the final amalgamation namely of
Christianity with the more earnest of the systems
by which it was opposed, but to which it had been
gradually approaching. What was left of Chris
tianity was too little substantial to present any
obstacle to this now natural union ; nor is there
any reason to doubt the assertion of the author1 of
1 Steinbart Philosophische Unterhaltungen zur weitern Auf-
klarung der Gliickseligkeitslehre Heft. 3. 1786.
l2

148 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
this last measure, that his object was to lead the
sceptics of his time to the acceptance of Christi
anity. One of the most pious of his opponents *
regarded his enterprize as a sincere, though un
happy, attempt to conciliate such of his contem
poraries as felt the necessity of religion, but either
knew not, or doubted, pure Christianity. The
character of Steinbart seems to have been deter
mined partly by a too ascetic early education,
partly by the habit jof a mere intellectual and
subtle consideration of Christian truth, which was
engendered by the study of the over-refining me
thod of Baumgarten 2. The two elements of re
ligious-scientific knowledge were in him never
combined. The perusal of Voltaire, which at first
produced pain and disquiet, gained a gradually
increased influence over his exclusively intellec
tual conviction ; and while his early education
preserved in him a regard to virtue with a gene
ral reverence towards God, and the study of the
apologetic works of Locke and Foster infused a
respect towards Christ, the perception of the
errors, which the reference to experience alone,
as the sole source of Christian knowledge, had
occasioned in his pietistic teachers, fostered in
him the far more dangerous tendency altogether
to neglect it. . His system consequently, though
sincere, was miserably shallow. As happiness in
1 The excellent Lavater in Pfenninger's Christl. Magazin.
2 See the account of Steinbart in Schlegel. B. 6. S. 523.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 149
his view is the only object proposed to man, so
are human passions the only impediment ; and the
sum of the benefits conferred through Christianity
is, that it promotes that happiness by awakening
the reflection of mankind to their real and com
mon good, and by the removal of the idea of arbi
trary requisitions on the part of God, which im
pede the right working of reason, and perplex the
natural conscience ; that it contains a perfect sys
tem of moral ; strengthens through its authority
the natural suggestions of reason by the knowledge
of the superintendance of God, by the hope of
future rewards, and by the employment of prayer ;
gives an insight into the predominance of present
good, and an anticipation of unbounded progress
in various perfection. All deeper views of the
holiness of God, of the spiritual degeneracy, and
spiritual capabilities of man, and of the meaife
by which the lost energy may be restored, every
thing in Christianity peculiarly Christian, and
even the more earnest aspirations of the natural
man, are wanting : " The system of pure philoso
phy, or Christian doctrine of happiness1" was nei
ther philosophy nor Christianity, but served, after
having been much disputed, to reconcile them in
the degraded state in which they then existed 2.
1 See the abstract of the above-mentioned work, ap. Schlegel,
S. 527, fgg.
2 Lessing, as he was throughout opposed to the shallowness of
the popular philosophy, speaks also strongly against this unnerv
ing of Christianity, with a view to render it acceptable. " For
merly," says he, " a wall of partition was drawn between Theo-

150 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
The two most distinguished of his opponents,
Seiler and Sixt, Steinbart maintains, differ only in
words from himself1.
The work was now completed; and until a
more earnest spirit should re-awaken the suscep
tibility for, and the need of pure Christianity, the
gradations of the several classes mattered but
little ; whether, as Nosselt and others, they de
prived the doctrines of Christianity of their high
and efficacious import, or Socinianized them with
Teller and Spalding 2, or rationalized them with
logy and Philosophy, behind which each might hold on its own
course. What is done now 1 They break the wall down ; and,
under the pretence of making us rational Christians, make us
irrational philosophers." Lessing compares further the theolo
gians of this class to the master of a house, who, while he reviles
the thief, himself throws his goods out of window, so that he has
$ily to fetch them.
1 In his " Philosophische Unterhaltungen," Heft. 1, ap. Schle
gel, S. 545.
8 Both Teller and Spalding belonged to a secret institute, (of
which Mendelssoln, Nicolai, and other adherents of the popular
philosophy, were also members), whose object was to re-model
religion, and alter the form of government. Both, however, saw
the necessity of proceeding slowly, and wisely confined themselves
to the unnerving Christianity, by substituting common-place
moral notions for its energetic doctrines, declaring these to be of
importance only to the Theologian, or polemizing against them
under the title of the oriental idioms of the New Testament. Thus
unnerved, it would collapse at once, or at least offer no resistance.
Thus they exchanged the doctrine of the influences of the Holy
Spirit for the moral endeavours after improvement with the ex
ternal assistance of God : for " regeneration" was adopted " re
solution to lead a new life ;" for " sanctification," " moral im
provement ;" for being " actuated by the Holy Spirit," " to live

CHARACTER OP THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 151
the followers of Steinbart : nor can that mode of
dismissing the evidences of prophecy and mira
cles, which, without expressing any unbelief in
them, considered them as valid only for former
times, well be considered as any additional step.
It was but casting away the shell when the seed
of future fruit was already gone. Buttresses,
massive as these, were needed to aid in the sup
port of the important fabric, as it once had stood,
but to what avail to leave them when this was
shrivelled up and dissolved 1
The object of this Essay, which is but to hint
the probable efficient causes of the temporary re
ception of rationalism into German theology, and
the points of its gradual declension, not to give a
view of that theology generally, has necessarily
produced an almost exclusive attention to the
dark side of the picture. Yet it would be an un
just and untrue representation, if it were not dis
tinctly stated, that this outline is intended to
convey only the predominant character of the
age, that many at all times were found, in whom
the struggle of contending opinions produced al
ready its ultimate destination, — that of separating
evangelical truth from scholastic systems, and of
in conformity to reason." Spalding had most influence through
his essay on the Utility of the Preacher's Office ; Teller, through
his Lexicon to the New Testament, of which six editions were
circulated. These, however, were among the rarer instances of
practical clergy, who actively engaged in the promotion of the
new system, as they are among those of men, who were actuated
by impure, not merely by shallow, views.

152 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
grounding it upon a firmer basis ; who, though
they could not dispel the gathering darkness, still
sent forth even beyond the comparatively narrow
Sphere, which they directly illumined, the beacon-
light of truth, and were instrumental in transmit
ting the sacred torch to an age where it could
shine more freely, and more unimpeded. It would
be unfair moreover to omit the mention of such
men as Klopstock and Claudius, who, though not
theologians, exerted an extensively beneficial influ
ence upon their own and succeeding times ; Klop
stock, yet more by the Christian piety of his Reli
gious Odes, than by his far famed epic ; Claudius,
by a very rare and happy union of distinguished
talents and rich imagination, a genuine, though
not deeply speculative, philosophical spirit, with
the purest simplicity of mind, and a depth of
Qhristian feeling and piety, which communicated
its own chastened holiness and practical character
to every subject which it treated. *' Out of the
fullness of the heart the mouth spoke," and there
fore spoke naturally and to the heart. This Chris
tian piety shed throughout an unobtrusive light,
which was often principally perceived in the rich
ness, and life, and truth, which it gave to the
objects more immediately prominent. Nor is the
love, with which the works of this genuine Ger
man author have been ever since cherished by his
nation, a slight proof of the Christian disposi
tion existing.
It does not belong to a brief sketch to give a
detailed account of all the individuals who were

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 153
borne along by, and swelled the tide of innova
tion. None of these later followers contributed
any original views ; the torpid influences of the
popular philosophy, the proud and self-compla
cent satisfaction in the triumph which they were
gaining, the increasing efficacy of French lite
rature in the extension of the reigning French
frivolity, indisposed to any deeper inquiries,
which might endanger their tranquil possession
of the exclusive claim to " sound reason.", A
system which originated in the mere negation of
what preceded, in a mere abstraction of its deeper
thoughts, could not in itself produce any thing
positive. This hollow composition between rea
son and belief stifled for a time the longings of
nature, which a more consistent and uncompro
mising system never fails again to recall ; the
emptiest and most timid schemes of unbelief a»e
ever the most dangerous to Christianity ; they are
palliatives, which while they deaden the mind,
and cast over it a paralyzing torpor, conceal the
extent of the disease, and suspend the deeply-
inlplanted wish for its real removal. The first
new energy was consequently given by one far
more opposed to the popular philosophy than to
an historical revelation. A minute account then of
the innovating theologians would present only a
series of modifications of the leading classes, dif
fering in the degree in which they unnerved
Christianity, or as to the portions of it, which they
admitted into their religion of reason, but agree
ing in their general principles ; .and the survey,

154 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
though necessary in a history, which would repre
sent the state of German Theology during this
period, and appreciate the extent of the existing
evils, would in the present case, where the object
is merely to trace the outline of the general
eourse, only serve to distract the mind by advert
ence to subordinate points. Still less is it neces
sary to mention the different critical investiga
tions with regard to the authenticity of several
of the books of Scripture: these furnish but
rarely, or at most only incidentally, any indication
of the dispositions of the enquirers. The faith of
the Christian depends not upon the reception of
the one or the other book of Scripture ; and it has
been a supposition pregnant with mischief, that any
doubt respecting an individual portion of the sacred
volume necessarily implies a diminished value for
its whole contents, or a weakened reverence and
gratitude towards its divine Giver. The enqui
ries in Germany, though occasionally carried on
upon wrong principles, seem generally to have had
truth for their object, have contributed to the
firmer and better-grounded establishment of seve
ral books, and to the better classification of all ;
and one instance at least, the anxiety evinced by
practical as well as scientific Theologians to vin
dicate to its author what all Christianity has de
signated as ' the evangelical, the spiritual Gospel,'
implies no slight interest in the truths which it
pre-eminently contains K
1 Within a short time after Bretschneider's collection of objec-

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 155
Two men, however, must be mentioned, belong
ing to this age, to whom much attention must be
given in any view of the course of the final de
velopement of this crisis ; who, (though the one
seems to have remained embarrassed to the last
by the perplexing conflict of the different systems
in Theology and Philosophy, the other, though he
defended Christianity, knew it not in its depth,
and defended it consequently on wrong princi
ples,) both contributed to its re-establishment, and
both contain, at least in the germ, many of the
ideas, whose subsequent expansion and scientific
justification has led to a correcter conception, a
readier admission, and a deeper foundation, of its
truths : — Lessing and Herder. It is difficult to
appreciate how far Lessing stood within Christi
anity : how far his high value for it went beyond
an objective esteem for its contents : how far Ms
conception of "its internal holy truth" enabled
him to overcome his historical and doctrinal diffi
culties and his inclination to Pantheism, and to
tions or difficulties relating to the genuineness of St. John's Gos
pel appeared, no less than fourteen answers were published ; and
the point is now established to the satisfaction of Bretschneider
himself, in common with the rest of Germany ; it would, however)
be very unjustifiable to ascribe to Bretschneider any other motive
than that which he assigns in his original work, the wish to bring
the question to an issue : where doubts have acquired a general
prevalence, it is an unquestionable service to collect those doubts
as strongly as they are capable of being put ; the only result of
the desultory answers with which, till this is done, vindicators
often content themselves, is to produce an unjustified and uncon
vinced conviction.

156 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
appropriate it to himself independently of its his
torical basis. A too predominant indulgence of
the taste for elegant literature and the arts, in
which he was so great a master, seem to have
enervated in him the moral earnestness, and pre
cluded him from the self-knowledge, necessary for
a thorough and satisfactory examination ; and
though he perhaps rightly, preferred Pantheism
to the then existing systems, he had neither bold
ness to take the " saltum mortalem," by which
Jacobi escaped it, nor a philosophy sufficiently
deep to see the deficiencies of Pantheism itself1.
The contentions of his times increased to him the
difficulty of perceiving what formed the substance
of Christianity itself. Yet whatever place he may
himself have occupied, he rendered considerable
services to Christianity. Some of these have al
ready been occasionally mentioned; it might suffice
to add that he restored the key to the right under
standing of the Old Testament, as the preliminary
education 2 of the human race, and removed the su
perficial objections against the particularism of the
earlier revelation, and the omission of a future state;
and which was yet more important, the change
which he mainly produced in the too abstract sys-

1 In his essay iiber die Natiirliche Religion he explains Chris
tianity by means of Pantheism.
s In his concise but deep and much-containing essay, " fiber
die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts." A Christian would
indeed defend some things differently, and the Pantheistic scheme
lies as the basis ; it has, however, much that is valuable.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 157
terns of evidence of the then Apologists, and his re
ferring to the Bible itself as its own best, or, as
he held, its only, advocate \ He further, in oppo
sition to a presumptuous philosophy, pointed out
the limits of the empire of reason, by admitting,
that though reason must decide whether a given
system be a revelation or no, yet if it find in that
revelation things which it cannot explain, this
should rather determine it for it than against it.
Lessing, however, though he exerted a consider
able influence upon Theology, came only inciden
tally in contact with it ; the dryness, with which it
was cultivated at Leipzig, whither he was in his
youth sent to study, seems to have deterred, him
from making it a professional pursuit. The ser
vices also which he rendered were, it seems, rather
external to Christianity, in preparing the way for
a higher order of Christian apologetic authors,
than any direct illustrations of its truths. Herder,
on the other hand, though, from the predominance
of imagination in his mental character, his own
views were rather dim and distant conceptions,
than any full realizations of the truths which
flashed across, rather than dwelt upon his mind,
promoted variously their subsequent reception;
the natural simplicity and deep feeling of his
mind enabled him, partially at least, to under
stand much of the deeper contents of the Chris-
1 The only book, says Lessing often in his controversy with
Gbze which is, properly speaking, written in behalf of the truth
of the Bible, or which can be written for it, is the Bible itself. .

158 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
tian documents, which the satisfied self-sufficiency
of his contemporaries had pronounced to be the
mere temporary disguise of the eternal truths of
reason : through his genuine oriental spirit he was
enabled to penetrate and to shew the fuller mean
ing of much in the Old Testament, which their
partial and unhistorical rationalism had neglected
or despised, as mythos or unmeaning exaggera
tion. The entire insight which Christian experi
ence would have given, was indeed here also
wanting ; his early education by one of a repul
sive, gloomy, and austere spirit, had alienated his
mind, of which feeling and imagination were the
chief characteristics, from the more earnest con
templation of Christianity ; his natural character,
strengthened by this alienation and by his devotion
to classical literature and the belles-lettres, led
him to view it chiefly on its aesthetik-moral side,
to defend it from its loveliness rather than as the
only way to holiness. Still, amid this generally
mistaken direction of his endeavours, a suscepti
ble mind, as Herder's, could not but frequently be
penetrated with a deeper consciousness ; and ac
cordingly, not merely in his earlier works 1, before
the love of reputation made him imperceptibly
enter into a compromise with the spirit of his
times, is there much useful, many a sentiment full
1 Such are especially die alteste Urkunde des Menschen-
geschlechts ; die Briefe das Studium der Theologie betreffend ;
die Anmerkungen zum N. T. aus einer neueroffneten morgenlan-
discher Quelle.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 159
of Christian meaning, and much correct concep
tion, but even in his later writings, where every
thing seems to float in a dim mist, so that a con
temporary 1 compared them to a distant cloud, of
which one could not distinguish whether it were
a cloud, or a city with inhabitants, is many a hint,
which may be pursued to clearer and enlarged
views. These men, however, wrote principally for a
succeeding generation ; their own age was too
deeply stamped with its empiric-rationalistic cha
racter, to be much alive to minds so unlike their
own. A deep impression was first made by one,
who, in the province of philosophy itself, shewed
the nothingness of the boasted pretences of the
popular philosophy, to build a system on the
grounds of ' sound human reason.' Before Kant,
German philosophy had been content to specu
late, without entering into the previous question,
how far human reason is capable of attaining any
certain knowledge in things not cognizable by
the senses. This enquiry Kant was induced by
the scepticism of Hume to institute, and the re
sult to which his investigations led him was, that
" speculative intellect" cannot prove that the
ideas, at which it arrives, are more than ideas, that
its objects have any objective, independent, exist
ence2. Speculative intellect then failing, Kant

1 Garve.
8 The object of Kant's enquiry was, wherein consists the con
stitution of our mental nature previous to all experience, what in
6

160 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
tried the way of practical intellect. Here he
found as an absolute universal principle, the ' cate
gorical imperative' in man, the consciousness of
a fundamental law in his nature, that he ought to
realize that which is prescribed by the moral law,
so that the. maxims of his will on each occasion
might serve as the principles of an universal legis-
it exists purely, or a priori ? The three fundamental powers of
mind, by which ideas are conveyed to us, are, according to his
Kritik der reinen Vernunft, perception, understanding, and in
tellect. In perception, all which exists a priori, is time' and space :
these however are merely conditions of our power of contem
plating external objects ; exterior to us they are nothing. Under
standing is, according to Kant, the power of reducing the mani
fold objects of perception under generic heads. The summa
genera of these (the Categories) in that they comprize all the ob
jects of perception, introduce unity and connection into the sub
jects of contemplation ; and thence results experience. Intellect,
lastly, embraces the pure conceptions, which lie beyond all expe
rience, called ideas. Of these the most'universal, the highest and
purest, is the Unconditional and Absolute. Of this there are
three classes : 1 . The absolute unity of the recipient of the im
pressions, when detached from all accidents. 2. The absolute
unity of all <j>aii>6fj.eva, in the whole succession in which they
are presented. 3. The absolute unity of all objects of con
ception. In the first of these respects, the fundamental idea of
the intellect is Psycologic, and denotes the soul ; in the second
Cosmologic, and denotes the world ; in the third Theologic, and
denotes God. These three ideas, he proceeded, which are merely
subjective and relative, had been considered as something objec
tive, as objects existing external to ourselves, and thereupon had
been constructed a rational Psycology, a transcendental Cosmo
logy, and a natural Theology; in a word, metaphysic: sciences,
the existence of whose object cannot be proved, in that ' specu
lative intellect' cannot shew that these ideas are more than
ideas.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 161
lation. This universal principle, it appeared*
exists independently of any thing external ; its
universality Kant assumes as an established fact j
that every rational being namely is conscious of
this unconditional unlimited law, and then most
Strongly, when his inclinations are in contradiction
to it. If then this law have a real existence, in
order that practical intellect may not be in con
tradiction with itself, it must have a right to
assume as postulates whatever is necessary to its.
reality, These postulates are, according to Kant,
free-agency, immortality, and the existence of a
personal God. Free agency, as the indispensable
condition of all morality ; immortality, because if
this law really exist in man, there must be a capa
bility of its realization ; but man can only make
an imperfect approach to its full realization in
this life, therefore there must be a continued per
sonal existence, during which he may make an
endless approach to the highest degree of it, per
fect holiness. This law further, though it admit
of nothing exterior to itself as a motive to its
.completion, comprises in the idea of its fulfilment
the idea of happiness proportionate to the degree
of its fulfilment, and consequently requires the
existence of a perfect moral being, Author and
Governor of the world, who should allot this
blessedness. In brief, that if there be no God, no
free agency, no immortality, this law will involve,
a contradiction. The present is not the place to point out the
defects in the postulates of £his system, in conse*
M

162 ' CAUSES OP THE LATE RATIONALIST
quence of which it was afterwards overthrown,
but solely the influences of the system itself upon
Theology. These were for the time injurious,
but permanently beneficial. Its ill effects result
ed from its positive side ; the idea of God was
lowered, and became grossly anthropomorphic,
in that he appeared to exist not for himself, but
in order to allot the degree of blessedness, which
man by his compliance with the moral law might
deserve. The moral law occupied the place oft
and became, God: all the relations of man to God,
(except as far as he was the distributer of rewards)
and consequently all prayer, ceased : a cold intel*
lectual system of dry morality was substituted
consequently for religion. Especially pernicious
was the (only short lived) system of moral inter
pretation, by which Kantian moral ideas were
substituted for Christian doctrine. Kant, though
he held that the belief of pure reason was the only
foundation of an universal and true Church, saw
that a Church could only be actually erected
among mankind through a positive revealed le*
gislation, that there must consequently be an his*
torical Church-belief : " This however must be
united to the ' moral belief by an uniform inter
pretation in a sense which agrees with the uni-i
versal practical rules of a pure religion of reason.''
This interpretation, he confessed, might ofteh ap
pear, often be, forced,- if considered iri relation to
the text of the revelation ; yet must it be pre*
f erred to the literal, which contained merely theo
retical truth. The only real truth according to

CHARACTER OP THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 163
Kant, is such as can be found in human reason;
what lays beyond it could be no object of con
ception, and therefore must be prejudicial to man,
in that it would make him neglect known truths
to pursue unknown '. The old error of the Gnos-
tical interpreters in the early. Church was thus
revived, an example set for the subsequent idenr
tification of Scripture doctrine with the results
of speculation, and, for the time, the Scriptures
valued only as the vehicle, the Founder of Christian
nity only as far as he was; a teacher, of morals
analagous to that of Kant. This mode of expo
sition, however, though for the time theoretically
much approved, was precluded from any perma^
nent practical ascendancy, by the firmness which
the historical-grammatical interpretation had now
acquired. It exerted, however, finally a salutary

1 This system was contained in his " Die Religion innerhalb der
Granzen der reinen Vernunft." According to this theory, the
doctrine of the Trinity became symbolical of the three funda
mental points of universal religion, that there is a holy law-giver,
a holy benefactor, a holy retributor ; the doctrine that " the
blood of Christ makes us pure," yielding, according to the views
of this school, no practical results, the blood as containing the
vital principle/ was to be explained of the life, and the meaning
of the expression was to be; that when, through a community of
life with Christ, his life had penetrated and united itself with
gurs, and we had conformed ours to his, we became pure. The
moral practical feeling, or tact, was in each case to supply the
practical result, where the point in revelation did not furnish it ;
none such being «. g. to be obtained, according to these theorists;
from the curses upon David's enemies, this moral tact was ti>
perceive that undet these enemies were designated his passions.
M 2

164 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
influence on that "system, by recalling the im
portant principle of the Reformation, that a bare
stiff philology, or an historical knowledge, which
perpetually hovered around without ever reach
ing its object, were no sufficient keys to the
meaning ef Scripture. It cannot, on the other
hand, be considered a disadvantage, that rationa
lism, which had before been a desultory aggregate
of mere negations, began to assume a definite and
scientific shape : a philosophic basis was indeed
thereby given to the a priori objections against
miracles and prophecy ; yet the temporary evil
was more than counterbalanced by the attempt to
construct a system of its own ; since the more it
attempts this, the more visible will ever become
the superiority of Revelation, the more manifest
its own intrinsic emptiness. The benefits con
ferred by the Kantian philosophy resulted more
immediately from its negative, ultimately also
from its positive, side ; from the former, not only
by the destruction of the Wolfian demonstrative
method, and the annihilation of the presumptuous
shallowness of the popular philosophy, but in that
by shewing the inadequacy of speculative reason
in matters uncognizable by sense, it led many,
who were not bound by the fetters of the new
philosophy, to listen to the voice of nature, the
revelation of God within them, and to seek as the
direct result of consciousness, the truths which
speculation was unable scientifically to justify;
a course, which it was expected by many l that
1 See Immanuel ein Buch fin Juden und Heiden. Berlin 1802.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 165
Kant himself must have adopted. Nor is there
any point at which the mind, which had resolved
upon this step, could consistently rest, short of
the acceptance of Christianity itself. On its posi
tive side, the uncompromising strictness, with
which it pronounced the full and complete reali
zation of the perfect moral law to be the funda
mental principle of our nature, re-awakened the
moral consciousness from the slumber into which
it had been cast by the enervating system of
Eudaimonism ; and though man wearied him
self for a while in the endeavour to fulfil this law
in his own strength, the more vivid the percept
tion of its claims became, and the more that man
was in consequence disquieted through the inade
quacy of his own fulfilment of them, the more
earnest must be the longing after a higher assist
ance, after a reconciliation with himself and with
Jiis God : the " Categorical Imperative," was, as
the law of old, an initiating instructor which led
him to Christ1. The fuller acquaintance with
the moral nature of man, at which this philo
sophy arrived through a more persevering specu
lation upon the human mind, shewed also, espe
cially in the- acknowledgment of an in-dwelling
disposition to evil, that a deeper philosophy was
more in harmony with the depth of Christian
truth8. A preparatory education, however, on
- ' Twesten, S. 218..
t 2 The first treatise in his " Die Religion innerhalb der Granzen
der reinen Vernunft," is on " the radical evil of Human Nature;."

166 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
an extensive scale must be slow ; and the Kantian
philosophy reigned for a considerable time undis
puted and unmodified in every department of
science1. History and doctrinal theology were
alike under its sway, and suffered for the time
the more from the absoluteness of the dominion
-by which it enchained the mind. Yet where this
system was comprehended in its depth, and not
merely verbally followed, it did evince its ten
dency to produce a return to the essential truths
of the Gospel, as in one Theologian especially,
whom Kant esteemed among his best disciples
and his friend 2.
Additional energy and activity of mind was
produced by a bold disciple of Kant, who com
pleting Kant's system on its negative side by a
correct inference, which it is strange that Kant
the second on the claims of the good principle to the dominion
over man ; the similar claims of the evil principle, the struggle
between them, and what the New Testament teaches of man's
fall into sin, and of the means by which he may free himself from
the dominion of the evil principle.
1 Hamann, (a man whose worth was not appreciated by his
contemporaries, but who possessed a very philosophic as well as
religious mind), and Herder especially, complain of the dry
scholastic method which this system introduced, as did Johann.
von Miiller with reference to history.
2 Staudlin, who first treated the system of Christian doctrine
on the principles of Kant, which, however, he by no means ser
vilely followed. The doctrinal theologians of the pure critical
philosophy, were chiefly Tieftrunck at Halle, 1791 — 6, Schmidt.
at Jena, 1797, and Amnion at Gottingen, 1797 ; who, however,
in the later form of his work, the Summa Theologiee Christianse,
1803, employed it only negatively. Schrbckh, 43, 65 — 71.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 167
himself overlooked, founded thereon his Own.)
The groundwork of Fichte's system was the same
as Berkeley's. If, according to Kant, the predica
ments which we ascribe to things are merely the
results of our own subjective impressions, and we
know not what the things in themselves are, but
they are an unknown quantity, which the humaa
mind has invested with properties, according to
the necessary laws under which it contemplates
them, it was an obvious question, how do we
know that such things exist at all, exterior to our.
own minds, that this unknown, quantity is more
than the qualities which result from the laws of the
human mind ? The conclusion of Fichte then was,
that the whole material world has no existence
exterior to, ourselves, that it only appears to us
to exist in consequence of certain laws of our
mind. This material appearance he accounted
for, from the essential nature of the human mind.
God, according to him, the infinite Ens, exists
through the finite thought of finite spirits. Finite
thought is the existence and image of the infinite
Ens. Finite thought, however, if limited to.
itself, would be dissipated and become a nothing;
to give it reality and life, there must be a con-?
trast in itself; hence infinite thought, coming
into existence in finite, places together with
thought a something, by which thought may be
confined. This is the material world, which ap
pears as something external, so that with each
gelf is necessarily united a not-self, a contrast to
self. The life and activity of human thought

168 CAUSES OP THE LATE RATIONALIST
consists then, in a continued endeavour to break
through that by which it is confined, partly
theoretically, by penetrating and thinking through
the objects, and thus appropriating them to
thought, and as it were, converting them into it ;
partly practically, by raising itself above all the
laws of the not-self, so that man lives from and
for himself. This system was useful in producing
energy, yet this energy was in the first instance
confined to abstract thought, and it engendered
a proud high-mihdedness both theoretically and
practically ; theoretically in the contempt of all
material science, of every thing but abstract
thought, practically in. that it attributed to man
a freedom which belongs only to God, and thereby
produced a most unbounded egotism l.
-. A new element was introduced into Germany
by the nature-philosophy of Schelling. Fichte
had endeavoured to solve the contrast of matter
and spirit by denying the existence of the former,
and transferring the contrast to the mind ; Schel-
ling's problem was to remove it essentially. He
attributed as real an existence to the material as
to the ideal empire of things, so that the empire
of material things was only a different mode of
expression of the immaterial. Spirit, by thinking
matter through, frees it as it were from its con-
1 Fichte's system may be collected best from Fichte'ns Ap
pellation an das Publicum fiber die ihm beigefugte Beschuldigung
des Atheismus, 1791. Anweisung zum seligen Lebeh,.'1806.
Schilling's Darlegung des wahren Verhaltnisses der Naturphilo1
sophie zur verbesserten Fichte'schen Lehre. 1806, . . •- :

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 169
finement, in that it looses its spirit. In that;
however, the laws of matter are the expression
of spirit, the spirit only becomes conscious of
itself^ in that it thinks matter through and ap
propriates it ; so that the whole employment Of
speculation upon external things is only a self-
affirmation. God accordingly cannot be consider
ed as a mere unity, but can only be conceived as
^living God, in that he has a contrast in himself;
the removal of which is his life. The unity of God
has consequently continually revealed itself in plu
rality, spirit in matter, that the plurality may extri
cate itself into unity, matter be exalted to spirit;
and be freed. The system of Schelling produced
indirectly as well as directly a great revolution ;
while the activity and independence of mind, which
it much contributed to rouse, precluded those
parts within itself, from which danger might be ap*
prehended to the Christian system, from exerting
that universal influence which the Kantian philo
sophy had exercised, it excited a vivid conscious
ness of the universal presence and agency of°a
Jiving and infinite being ; and thereby overthrow
the dead barren idea of an epicurean deity at a
distance from, and without connection with, the
world, and the unworthy deduction of the infinite
froriTthe finite. By the introduction of contem
plation, instead of mere abstract thought, it
awakened a deeper, mode of seeking after know
ledge than was admitted by the previous systems ;
and in the direct province of theology it acknow
ledge^ or introduced, that susceptibility for truths
beyond the compass of intellectual speculation,

170 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
which those systems had effaced. " It has partly
again acknowledged, in part it has, though dimly,
anticipated a deeper meaning in the ideas of the
Christian Theology, which had been entirely con
cealed from the common view. To many it has
been a point of transition to a Christian convic
tion ; to many it has restored the courage to
undertake a scientific defence of Christianity;
and has exerted an influence favourable to it
even upon systems at variance with itself1/'
Jacobi acknowledged the consistency of these
systems, as also of Pantheism, but could not
acquiesce in their results ; he therefore opposed
to them the doctrine of immediate consciousness
in divine things. He maintained that there
must be an immediate certainty of knowledge
in regard to the deity, (whether it be termed
feeling, or consciousness, or intellect,) whereas
speculation only arrived at this knowledge
immediately : that this immediate conscious
ness taught man to believe in God, as a being
different from and in contrast with himself, in the
freedom of man, in personal continued-existence,
and in the objective existence of evil 2. The part
'. l Twesten, S. 198. who instances Fichte; comp. Schelling, Ver-
haltniss der Naturphilosophie zur verbesserten Fichte'schen Lehre
Tub. 1806. This system was itself but little directly admitted into
doctrinal theology ; the above-mentioned work of Daub is the
only instance; and even that (according to Twest. S. 200.) is
among the most visible proofs of the commenced independence
•of doctrinal theology from the schools to which the authors are
addicted. 8 See especially his Einleitung fiber Gdttliche Dinge.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 171
of Jacobi's system unfavourable to revelation
was the extension of the same principle to
historical information, as being equally mediate
with speculation, and therefore as little capable
of conveying real knowledge. Jacobi accordingly
accepted only the idea of the truths of revelation,
not their historical basis. He forgot that his four
truths are no where to be found, exterior to
Christianity, as indeed through it they first ac
quire their practical importance ; he failed to per
ceive the ground of this fact, that though the
acknowledgment of his truths does lie deep in
human nature, in consequence of its yet remain
ing likeness to the divine, they must now be
cleared up by the aid of Revelation, and that to
man in his present state, other truths beyond
these four are necessary.
The latest form of rationalism established itself
as the result of these systems ; but from these
same systems has its untenableness, both in
its positive and negative sides, been beyond all
question established ; and in its strictest contrast
to revelation it has nearly disappeared1. The
support which it before claimed for its positive
contents from speculation or from " sound human
reason," has been withdrawn by the overthrow of
the Wolfian and Popular Philosophy ; the most
of its adherents built therefore, (though in a
very different spirit from its excellent author) on
. * Among theologians, the only remaining adherents of any
note of the strict rationalistic school are Wegscheider and Rohr.

172 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
the principle of Jacobi, on consciousness as the
source of knowledge in divine things, and thereby
disabled themselves from effectually attacking
the believer in revelation, or from defending them
selves against the Pantheist. Of the believer in
revelation they could no longer require, that he
should establish by reason truths which lie be
yond reason, since they confessed themselves,
that they could not establish by reason free-
agency, human personality, &c. which they yet
continued to hold; the Pantheist on the other
hand maintained against the rationalist, as he did
against the believer in revelation, that the unprov
ed truths of the deist were merely the product of
subjective self-deception, derived from the ascrip
tion, of human qualities and human feelings to
the deity. The shallowness of his conceptions
of moral evil, which produced his denial both of
the original declension of man, and of the neces
sity of the means for his restoration, which
Christianity contains, were exposed by the system
of Kant : the anthropomorphic views of God, as
a mechanical contriver of the world, which, like
the human author of a machine, he was imagined
subsequently to have left to carry on the work
for which it was designed, (on which views the
distinctions between the mediate and immediate
agency of God, the so-called interruptions of the
laws of nature, &c. and the consequent criticisms
of revelation were founded,) were annihilated by
the philosophy of Schelling. . The rest of the
system of rationalism was too mere an abstrac-

CHARACTER OP THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 173
tion of Christianity, deprived of its radiancy and
warmth, long to endure ; its criticisms. of revela
tion the same as those which our invaluable
Rutler has shewn can be consistently urged only
by the Atheist or the Pantheist. That milder
form, which, according to the scholastic distinc
tion, admits things above, but not those contrary
to, human reason ', rather incidentally and occa-f
sipnally, than in its own nature, agrees with the
pure Rationalism, and stands within or without
Scriptural Christianity, according as the Christian
doctrines appear to each individual who adopts it,
contrary or not to that reason ; but even among
those, who on this ground yet remain strangers to
the main Christian doctrines, there exists, in very
many at least, that deep moral earnestness, which
must in time bring them to their acknowledge
ment. The final issue of this great developement is
yet too incomplete, the extensive re-animation of
a living Christianity too recent, the degrees in
and the forms under which it has often been re
stored, too various, to allow a stranger now to
pronounce upon either the causes or the extent of
1 The reality of this distinction has been questioned by some
moderns, as if what was above, were also contrary to, reason ;
yet " not to belong to, not to be within the province of," is no
more equivalent to the " being opposed to," than "not to love,1'
is " to hate." In saying that a thing is contrary to reason, we
acknowledge that it lies within the cognizance of that faculty ;
in saying that a subject is above it, we ascribe to it a different
order of things^ for which reason has no criterion.

174 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
that restoration, or to express any opinions upoii
the individuals who have been, under providence,
the means of that restoration. From the very
advanced state of theological education in Ger
many, a vast influence is at all times in active
agency, of which no conception can be formed
either from its printed literature, or from a resi
dence at a limited number of universities. By
far the largest portion of German The*ology is A
floating capital; so that no just estimate can be
made from the printed works of any theologian,
of the extent or variety of his usefulness, while
a great proportion will always remain, who arc
the instruments of a widely diffused blessing, to
which their embodied theology bears not the
remotest proportion : still more difficult is it for
a stranger, especially- for one, who Jias- only- wit
nessed in his own country a scrupulous ad-^
tierence to a received system, to see how far
much which is contrary to his own views may
hot only not be injurious, but, in a different
state of things, even beneficial to the essentials
of Christianity. Much that appears to be danger-*
ous in a system, which has not been- in all its
parts deeply examined, is found in a more ad
vanced stage to be useful or necessary : the wind,
which might be fatal within a narrow channel,
serves only to bear onward more prosperously in
its way the vessel which has taken a freer and
a bolder course.
Without however venturing to define the
causes, or name the instruments of this great
6

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 175
ren6vation> the gains of this long arid perilous
Career are in part obvious ; the banishment of a
reliance upon the mere letter of a received
System, of a mere intellectual conception of
Christianity, of a deadening formularism, of the
undervaluing of Scripture in behalf of an over-
refined human system, of an uncharitable pole
mic, which partly rivetted the attention upon
mere collateral or subordinate points, partly obli
terated the import of the most momentous truths ;
(acting as these evils did on practical as well as
scientific theology), and the renewed and ener
getic life given by the opposite of all these
aberrations, are on the purely religious side an
immeasurable, inestimable, gain ; on the scientific
side the principles established in each theological
science, and its more comprehensive and juster
cultivation, have been productive of yet greater
benefit to theology than even the enlarged and
correcter knowledge, which has resulted from the
continued investigations produced by these col
lisions ; many theories (as those on the principles
of interpretation) which were partially developed
by different minds, and injurious while partial,
have in their more enlarged application become
^favourable to the purer development of Scriptural
truth: many weak points, which before were
stumbling-blocks in the reception either of
Revelation or of the essentials of Christianity, „
have been removed or replaced : it has indeed
-been necessary to examine deeply the founda
tions of Christianity, but thereby has the rock

176 CAUSES OP THE LATE RATIONALIST
upon which it rests, been again discovered from
amid the accumulation of human theories by
which it was concealed, but which yielded to the
first shock of the storm or the flood : while in the
well-founded confidence, which past experience
has given to the German enquirer, there is a rich
promise, that the already commenced blending of
belief and science, without which science becomes
dead, and belief is exposed to degeneracy, will be
perfected beyond even the degree to which it was
realized in some of the noblest instruments of the
earlier Reformation. Nor is it any slight advan
tage (compared to its earlier state) that no investi
gation is now entered upon with that hesitating
timidity, which contemplates the results with re
ference only to an existing human system, thereby
producing an unconscious bias to blink the diffi
culties by which the wished-for conclusion is op
posed, and becoming unsusceptible for that portion
pf truth, which may exist in a scheme at variance
with one's own. Controversy, whether within or
without Christianity, would have been spared
much of its bitterness, have been sooner ended*
and produced richer and earlier results, had this
candour been more uniformly exercised.
How soon these great results may be fully
realized can be known only to Him, " in whose
power are the times and seasons'' of his Church*
Yet in contemplating the probability of their
arrival, it must be recollected that the individuals
employed in their acceleration must be weighed,
not counted ; that every individual who has extri-

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 177
cated himself from the mazes of unbelief, as many
of these have done, is not only a witness to others
pf the living force of Christianity, but is himself
so much the firmer and more energetic a minister
of the faith which he has won ; that many, who
themselves still stand short of a perfect Scriptural
faith, are yet in various measures and degrees enT
gaged in promoting its final renovation; that
there may be the same Christian feeling in very
different forms of expression, or that the basis
may exist, though the intellectual developement
of it may be impeded by the intricacies of an ear
lier-admitted system of philosophy x ; and that, in
the sceptical struggle after truth, of many who
are yet in doubt with regard either to the essen-)
tial doctrines of Christianity, or to revelation
itself, there may be often more of the Christian
spirit, than in an unhesitating traditionary belief.
The final issue of this crisis may be impeded by a
mistaken political interference, which can now
only create re-action, or engender hypocrites ; or,
in a lesser degree, by the distractions and irregu
larities produced by the intervention of foreign
religious bodies 2 ; yet it seems neither too san-
1 Though the mention of living authors has been for the most
part purposely avoided, one may, it is believed, safely instance
De Wette, as' one whose really Christian faith is only obscured
by his adherence to the Friesian Philosophy.
. 2 From the author's personal knowledge of Germany and from
the views of some very Christian practical clergy of that country,
of whom he enquired, he is strongly assured that such interference
N

178 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
guine nor presumptuous to hope that the time is
not far distant when the religious energy, now
widely visible in Germany, shall produce its fruits,
and the Evangelical Church, strengthened by the
increasing internal unanimity, fortified against
error by past experience, and founded on a Scrip
tural faith, shall again, in religious as well as sci
entific depth, be at least one amongst the fairest
could only retard the object which it wishes to promote; that it
would not only increase the suspicions of Sectarianism and Schism,
under which the revival of a living Christianity has already been
calumniated, but that it would necessarily introduce disorder and
division, and might both occasion direct political interference,
fender individual opposition more plausible, and alienate the un-
discriminating. It is perhaps a natural feeling in a time of strong
excitement, for each individual to think that too much cannot be
done, or that his own exertions if earnest cannot be mis
applied ; and in this country especially, a feeling, analogous to
that energetically described by the Greek historian, seems to
be revived, that nothing can be well done which English piety
and English charity are not concerned in promoting. The au
thor doubts not the goodness of the motives of the members of
the " Continental Society ;" but it might be well if they would
re-consider whether their interference is not likely to produce a
diminution of Christian charity, whether it be in itself justifiable,
and whether it would not imply a firmer faith in, Him, who has
promised never to desert his Church, to leave the German Church
under the care of those pastors whom He has raised up in it, in
stead of intruding, uncalled, into a foreign fold. The author
must repeat that the statement of these sentiments arises not
from any doubt of the piety of the objects of the Continental So
ciety, whose members are personally unknown to him, but from
the conviction that their exertions in Germany are unnecessary,
and would be prejudicial.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 179
portions of the universal Church of the Re
deemer. It may be permitted, in confirmation of these
hopes, to present the view given by the valuable
author, already so often quoted1, remarking only,
that Theologians form but a very small propor
tion of the second class described, and that as
Theology was the last department which felt the
influence of the inroad of unbelief, so likewise has
it naturally been the first to recover itself; that
moreover, even as far as Theology is pre-eminently
considered in any portion of this picture, the view
of the author, from the character of his own mind
and the nature of his subject, seems principally
to have been directed to those developements, in
which philosophy has been most influential, and
where a pure renovation of Christian faith, though
often deeper, would perhaps in its own nature be
slower ; and that one may be justified, therefore,
in forming brighter expectations of an earlier con
clusion, than he in the midst of the struggle has
ventured to anticipate.
" The mass of the Lutheran Church, the people
namely, as they were but little affected by the de
fects of the old Theology, so have they also been by
the revolutions of the new 2 ; if there have been at-

1 Twesten, S. 216— 220.
E The author may be permitted to remark in confirmation, that
he has heard more than one sermon founded upon rationalist prin
ciples, and stating incidentally rationalist views, of which he had-
N 2

180 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
tempts to adapt it to them, yet have not the inno
vations been able to penetrate either very deeply
or very generally ; the people has, on the whole,
remained true and attached to the faith Of their
fathers. The religious ideas seem indeed to have
lost in strength and efficacy ; the habits,' the whole
form of domestic and public life no longer express

reason to know that the positive evil passed by wholly unperceived
by the congregations; in several cases where these had been more
prominently promulged, the congregations had; through their own
biblical knowledge, been able to correct them, and in some had
even insisted on the removal of their preacher. In general, how
ever, the effects of rationalism .upon the pulpit were solely to pro
duce dry moral discourses, or if a different meaning were attached
and attributed by the preacher to the doctrinal terms which he
yet retained, - the congregations, in whom their former faith was
kept alive by the study of the Scripture, and the hymns of a more
pious age, which Germany possesses in such rich abundance, con
tinued to understand them in their original Christian meaning.
Among the lower classes, the unchristian publications, directly
manufactured for them, found but little access ; and the author
was 'informed, on enquiring upon this subject, in one Prussian
University where the lowest class could without exception read,
that. the Bible and the Hymn-book were alone actually read. It
may be added, that in several places where an attempt has been
made to substitute new hymns for the public use, in which the
Christian doctrines were modernized, or omitted, it has been suc
cessfully resisted by the congregations. It is, however, upon the
whole, due to the German clergy to state, that though there may
have been some flagrant instances of the violation of pastoral
duty, the defects have not, upon the whole, been different in kind
from those, which have often resulted from a dead orthodoxism ;
the effects have been negative rather than positive, rather the
withholding of more nutritious, than the substitution of. unwhole
some, food.

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 181
the same uniform reference to the Christian ideas,
which they formerly did : worldly-mindedness,
deficiency in faith and in piety, may have gained
ground ; yet perhaps it is only, that what formerly
lay concealed under a scrupulous adherence to
forms now displays itself more openly. Let
but the evangelical faith again be energetically
preached, the evangelical congregations will ap
pear more readily than many now dare to hope^
Not so much a reanimation as a new arousing of
the already existing life is necessary ; it is a condi
tion like that of the chrysalis in the coverings of
the pupa ; the old formations have been dissolved,
the anatomist sees within the larva nothing but
shapeless matter ; yet there do lie within it the
preparations for a new organization, wherewith
the ;being, unfolded into a higher class, goes forth
from its envelopements.
" "With regard to the learned and cultivated
classes, at least a certain tolerance towards the
faith of the Church has revived, among many a
reverence and a' need of it. It has been perceived,
that the' way which has been hitherto trod led to
no blessing ; the illumination has not produced its
vaunted fruits ; philosophy has not justified the
confidence with which it was exultingly greeted ;
after the foundation of positive faith had been
undermined, in many, very many, the general
truths of the so-called natural religion sunk in the
ruins; the unsatisfactoriness of ascepticism is now
felt, which conceals itself perchance under loud-

182 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
sounding phrases, but deceives not the experi
enced, who has been tried in the struggles of life,
and which deserts its adherent without consolation
in the presence of death. We have become con
vinced, that by the side of the many systems,
which in part without any great expenditure of
intellect and of originality, have yet found appro
bation or been tolerated amongst us, that of the
old Church, which is inferior to no other in con
sistency and depth, may with honour maintain its
place ; whoever consequently undertakes to de->
fend it, has at least (with the exception of a few
journals and a few individuals, the representatives
of an earlier period), no longer to anticipate the
common contempt and the hostility of all the self-*
deemed wise ; and if the larger number, like the
Athenians of old, (Acts xvii.) reserve the further
investigation for another time, yet is there here and
there another Dionysius the Areopagite among
them, who finds here what he had hitherto sought
in vain.. " It must further be acknowledged, that even
among those who yet remain estranged to the
faith, the respect for moral duty, the feeling
for what is good and noble has not diminish
ed; rather has it been animated and elevated
by that very philosophy, to which the majority.
of the opponents of the ancient system of the
Church is attached. Those who deny or doubt
every. thing else, deny not that morality deter
mines the worth of man; there is no one who

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 183
would not be ashamed of a theory which regarded
duty as subordinate to interest, virtue to enjoy
ment. Moral systems, which refer morality to
the mere impulse after well-being, would now
meet with no success : the taste of the age has
withdrawn even from favourite authors, who
seemed to sanction less strict principles. This
moral earnestness which animates all men of the
better order among us, is an important point for
the preacher of Evangelical Christianity, with
which to connect its truths ; for their reception
depends upon a moral disposition; the stricter
the system of morality becomes, the less can there
fail a feeling of the necessity of reconciliation
and of a higher assistance, which can only be
realized in Christ : as the law formerly, so may
now the categorical imperative be a preparatory
instructor to lead to Christ.
" To this must be added, what we have before
mentioned, the more favourable direction which
science has taken. Mere empiricism and mate
rialism have vanished from the schools of philo
sophy ; the religious ideas are indeed differently
explained and interpreted, but they are acknow
ledged every where ; the disposition has ceased
to ascribe reality only to that which admits of
demonstration ; the understanding and the will
are no longer accounted the only modes in which
the activity of the mental powers can exert itself;
the claims of the feeling, the peculiar organ of re
ligion in man, remain no longer unregarded.

184 CAUSES OF THE LATE RATIONALIST
" On the other hand a different spirit is aroused
in historical studies also. The time is past in
which Christian antiquity furnished materials
only for the exercise of critical acumen, with
Which there was no sympathy, from which the
mind was too estranged to, be able to obtain from
jt a pure historical picture ; the mind has. ceased
to.be susceptible only for what coincides with
certain prevailing opinions ; it has learnt the
abstraction from self, necessary for the full recep-*
tion of the impressions of history. Much has
thus become intelligible to us, which hitherto
was as a sealed book, and in the same proportion
has it been brought nearer to us ; we feel our
selves attracted by the character and the efforts
of antiquity ; we can transport ourselves, into
their feelings, and modes of conception ; we can
derive pleasure and improvement from the ex
pressions of their Christian sentiments. . By these
means has that pride been checked, through which
our age deemed itself raised so far above every
thing which preceded it ; what our ancestors
have transmitted to us as the fruit of their exer
tions, is no more rejected without further exami
nation as valueless ; but the duty of respecting,
and of faithfully preserving it, is acknowledged,
wherever it was not founded on transient circum
stances of the . time, but expressed the fundar
mental ideas of Christianity and Protestantism,
At the same time, however, the investigations in
(Scriptural interpretation : and : in history have
10

CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY IN GERMANY. 185
cleared away much, which hindered the right
understanding and free appropriation of these
ideas; the essential has been separated from the
non-essential and accidental, the indifferent and
unimportant has been brought back . tq its true
value ; the genuine traits of Evangelical Christia-t
nity are become more clearly prominent, since
that has been removed through which it was
thought to help out, or to adorn, the portrait ; so
that there is nothing to deter any one from ac
cepting it, in whom there is found an internal
alliance with its spirit.
" The ground then is prepared ; it remains
only that the seed of a living faith be cast into it.
The fields are ready to harvest ; only may the
Lord of the harvest send his labourers ! And
why should we not put our trust in him, who
has planted, propagated, preserved Christianity
among circumstances so much more difficult ?
He, whose assistance our Church has experienced
in so many a severe contest, will not desert it
even now, whether he presently send one, who in
the spirit and power of a Luther shall quickly
turn the hearts, and bring back the minds of the
fathers to the children, or whether it lie in his
purpose that the crisis shall slowly unfold itself,
and the religious life should gradually recover a
sound and healthy state. Many appearances of
the times point to a deeper, more universal,
awakening of belief. If this be derived from the
right source, then in a short time the undecided

186 CAUSED OF THE LATE RATIONALIST, &C.
will become determined ; the wavering, firm; the
eold, warm; the lukewarm be borne along; and
those foreign intermixtures be separated, which
here and there create a suspicion of the good cause
even in the minds of the well-disposed, and give
to the adversaries a plausible ground of deprev
eiating or of opposing it."

THE END.

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