THIRD DIVISION. (Continued.) (continued 3)

§ 163.9. During this age various fanatical sects sprang up. In Thuringia, Stiefel and his nephew Meth caused much trouble to the Lutheran clergy in the beginning of the century by their fanatical enthusiasm, till convinced, after twenty years, of the errors of their ways. Drabicius, who had left the Bohemian Brethren owing to differences of belief, and then lived in Hungary as a weaver in poor circumstances, boasted in A.D. 1638 of having Divine revelations, prophesied the overthrow of the Austrian dynasty in A.D. 1657, the election of the French king as emperor, the speedy fall of the Papacy, and the final conversion of all heathens; but was put to death at Pressburg in A.D. 1671 as a traitor with cruel tortures. Even Comenius, the noble bishop of the Moravians, took the side of the prophets, and published his own and others’ prophecies under the title “Lux in Tenebris.”―Jane Leade of Norfolk, influenced by the writings of Böhme, had visions, in which the Divine Wisdom appeared to her as a virgin. She spread her Gnostic revelations in numerous tracts, founded in A.D. 1670 the Philadelphian Society in London, and died in A.D. 1704, at the age of eighty-one. The most important of her followers was John Pordage, preacher and physician, whose theological speculation closely resembles that of Jac. Böhme. To the Reformed church belonged also Peter Poiret of Metz, pastor from A.D. 1664 in Heidelburg [Heidelberg], and afterwards of a French congregation in the Palatine-Zweibrücken. Influenced by the writings of Bourignon and Guyon, he resigned his pastorate, and accompanied the former in his wanderings in north-west Germany till his death in 1680. At Amsterdam in A.D. 1687 he wrote his mystical work, “L’Économie Divine” in seven vols., which sets forth in the Cocceian method the mysticism and theosophy of Bourignon. He died at Rhynsburg in A.D. 1719.―From the Lutheran church proceeded Giftheil of Württemburg [Württemberg], Breckling of Holstein, and Kuhlmann, who went about denouncing the clergy, proclaiming fanatical views, and calling for impracticable reforms. Of much greater importance was John George Gichtel, an eccentric disciple of Jac. Böhme, who in A.D. 1665 lost his situation as law agent in his native town of Regensburg, his property, and civil rights, and suffered imprisonment and exile from the city for his fanatical ideas. He died in needy circumstances in Amsterdam in A.D. 1710. He had revelations and visions, fought against the doctrine of justification, and denounced marriage as fornication which nullifies the spiritual marriage with the heavenly Sophia consummated in the new birth, etc. His followers called themselves Angelic Brethren, from Matthew xxii. 20, strove after angelic sinlessness by emancipation from all earthly lusts, toils, and care, regarded themselves as a priesthood after the order of Melchizedec [Melchisedec] for propitiating the Divine wrath.―Continuation, § 170.

§ 163.10. Russian Sects.―A vast number of sects sprang up within the Russian church, which are all included under the general name Raskolniks or apostates. They fall into two great classes in their distinctive character, diametrically opposed the one to the other.

The Starowerzi, or Old Believers. They originated in A.D. 1652, in consequence of the liturgical reform of the learned and powerful patriarch Nikon, which called forth the violent opposition of a large body of the peasantry, who loved the old forms. Besides stubborn adhesion to the old liturgy, they rejected all modern customs and luxuries, held it sinful to cut the beard, to smoke tobacco, to drink tea and coffee, etc. The Starowerzi, numbering some ten millions, are to this day distinguished by their pure and simple lives, and are split up into three parties: Jedinowerzi, who are nearest to the orthodox church, recognise its priesthood, and are different only in their religious ceremonies and the habits of their social life; The Starovbradzi, who do not recognise the priesthood of the orthodox church; and the Bespopowtschini, who have no priests, but only elders, and are split up into various smaller sects. Under the peasant Philip Pustosiwät, a party of Starowerzi, called from their leader Philippins, fled during the persecution of A.D. 1700 from the government of Olonez, and settled in Polish Lithuania and East Prussia, where to the number of 1,200 souls they live to this day in villages in the district of Gumbinnen, engaged in agricultural pursuits, and observing the rites of the old Russian church.

At the very opposite pole from the Starowerzi stand the Heretical Sects, which repudiate and condemn everything in the shape of external church organization, and manifest a tendency in some cases toward fanatical excess, and in other cases toward rationalistic spiritualism. As the sects showing the latter tendency did not make their appearance till the eighteenth century (§ 166, 2), we have here to do only with those of the former class. The most important of these sects is that of the Men of God, or Spiritual Christians, who trace their origin from a peasant, Danila Filipow, of the province of Wladimir. In 1645, say they, the divine Father, seated on a cloud of flame, surrounded by angels, descended from heaven on Mount Gorodin in a chariot of fire, in order to restore true Christianity in its original purity and spirituality. For this purpose he incarnated himself in Filipow’s pure body. He commanded his followers, who in large numbers, mainly drawn from the peasant class, gathered around him, not to marry, and if already married to put away their wives, to abstain from all intoxicating drinks, to be present neither at marriages nor baptisms, but above all things to believe that there is no other god besides him. After some years he adopted as his son another peasant, Ivan Suslow, who was said to have been born of a woman a hundred years old, by communicating to him in his thirtieth year his own divine nature. Ivan, as a new Christ, sent out twelve apostles to spread his doctrine. The Czar Alexis put him and forty of his adherents into prison; but neither the knout nor the rack could wring from them the mysteries of their faith and worship. At last, on a Friday, the czar caused the new Christ to be crucified; but on the following Sunday he appeared risen again among his disciples. After some years the imprisoning, crucifying, and resurrection were repeated. Imprisoned a third time in 1672, he owed his liberation to an edict of grace on the occasion of the birth of the Prince Peter the Great. He now lived at Moscow along with the divine father Filipow, who had hitherto consulted his own safety by living in concealment in the enjoyment of the adoration of his followers unmolested for thirty years, supported by certain wealthy merchants. Filipow is said to have ascended up in the presence of many witnesses, in 1700, into the seventh and highest heaven, where he immediately seated himself on the throne as the “Lord of Hosts,” and the Christ, Suslow, also returned thither in 1716, after both had reached the hundredth year of the human existence. As Suslow’s successor appeared a new Christ in Prokopi Lupkin, and after his death, in 1732, arose Andr. Petrow. The last Christ manifestation was revealed in the person of the unfortunate Czar Peter III., dethroned by his wife Catharine II. in 1762, who, living meanwhile in secret, shall soon return, to the terrible confusion of all unbelievers. With this the historical tradition of the earlier sect of the Men of God is brought to a close, and in the Skopsen, or Eunuchs, who also venerate the Czar Peter III. as the Christ that is to come again, a new development of the sect has arisen, carrying out its principles more and more fully (§ 210, 4). Other branches of the same party, among which, as also among the Skopsen, the fanatical endeavour to mortify the flesh is carried to the most extravagant length, are the Morelschiki or Self-Flagellators, the Dumbies, who will not, even under the severest tortures, utter a sound, etc. The ever-increasing development of this sect-forming craze, which found its way into several monasteries and nunneries, led to repeated judicial investigations, the penitent being sentenced for their fault to confinement in remote convents, and the obdurate being visited with severe corporal punishments and even with death. The chief sources of information regarding the history, doctrine, and customs of the “Men of God” and the Skopsen are their own numerous spiritual songs, collected by Prof. Ivan Dobrotworski of Kasan, which were sung in their assemblies for worship with musical accompaniment and solemn dances. On these occasions their prophets and prophetesses were wont to prophesy, and a kind of sacramental supper was celebrated with bread and water. The sacraments of the Lord’s supper and baptism, as administered by the orthodox church, are repudiated and scorned, the latter as displaced by the only effectual baptism of the Spirit. They have, indeed, in order to avoid persecution, been obliged to take part in the services of the orthodox national church, and to confess to its priests, avoiding, however, all reference to the sect.484

§ 164. Philosophers and Freethinkers.485

The mediæval scholastic philosophy had outlived itself, even in the pre-Reformation age; yet it maintained a lingering existence side by side with those new forms which the modern spirit in philosophy was preparing for itself. We hear an echo of the philosophical ferment of the sixteenth century in the Italian Dominican Campanella, and in the Englishman Bacon of Verulam we meet the pioneer of that modern philosophy which had its proper founder in Descartes. Spinoza, Locke, and Leibnitz were in succession the leaders of this philosophical development. Alongside of this philosophy, and deriving its weapons from it for attack upon theology and the church, a number of freethinkers also make their appearance. These, like their more radical disciples in the following century, regarded Scripture as delusive, and nature and reason as alone trustworthy sources of religious knowledge.

§ 164.1. Philosophy.―Campanella of Stilo in Calabria entered the Dominican order, but soon lost taste for Aristotelian philosophy and scholastic theology, and gave himself to the study of Plato, the Cabbala, astrology, magic, etc. Suspected of republican tendencies, the Spanish government put him in prison in A.D. 1599. Seven times was he put upon the rack for twenty-four hours, and then confined for twenty-seven years in close confinement. Finally, in A.D. 1626, Urban VIII. had him transferred to the prison of the papal Inquisition. He was set free in A.D. 1629, and received a papal pension; but further persecutions by the Spaniards obliged him to fly to his protector Richelieu in France, where in A.D. 1639 he died. He composed eighty-two treatises, mostly in prison, the most complete being “Philosophia Rationalis,” in five vols. In his “Atheismus Triumphatus” he appears as an apologist of the Romish system, but so insufficiently, that many said Atheismus Triumphans was the more fitting title. His “Monarchia Messiæ” too appeared, even to the Catholics, an abortive apology for the Papacy. In his “Civitas Solis,” an imitation of the “Republic” of Plato, he proceeded upon communistic principles.―Francis Bacon of Verulam, long chancellor of England, died A.D. 1626, the great spiritual heir of his mediæval namesake (§ 103, 8), was the first successful reformer of the plan of study followed by the schoolmen. With a prophet’s marvellous grasp of mind he organized the whole range of science, and gave a forecast of its future development in his “De Augmentis” and “Novum Organon.” He rigidly separated the domain of knowledge, as that of philosophy and nature, grasped only by experience, from the domain of faith, as that of theology and the church, reached only through revelation. Yet he maintained the position: Philosophia obiter libata a Deo abducit, plene hausta ad Deum reducit. He is the real author of empiricism in philosophy and the realistic methods of modern times. His public life, however, is clouded by thanklessness, want of character, and the taking of bribes. In A.D. 1621 he was convicted by his peers, deprived of his office, sentenced to imprisonment for life in the Tower, and to pay a fine of £40,000; but was pardoned by the king.486―The French Catholic Descartes started not from experience, but from self-consciousness, with his “Cogito, ergo sum” as the only absolutely certain proposition. Beginning with doubt, he rose by pure thinking to the knowledge of the true and certain in things. The imperfection of the soul thus discovered suggests an absolutely perfect Being, to whose perfection the attribute of being belongs. This is the ontological proof for the being of God.―His philosophy was zealously taken up by French Jansenists and Oratorians and the Reformed theologians of Holland, while it was bitterly opposed by such Catholics as Huetius and such Reformed theologians as Voetius.487―Spinoza, an apostate Jew in Holland, died A.D. 1677, gained little influence over his own generation by his profound pantheistic philosophy, which has powerfully affected later ages. A violent controversy, however, was occasioned by his “Tractatus Theologico-politicus,” in which he attacked the Christian doctrine of revelation and the authenticity of the O.T. books, especially the Pentateuch, and advocated absolute freedom of thought.488

§ 164.2. John Locke, died A.D. 1704, with his sensationalism took up a position midway between Bacon’s empiricism and Descartes’ rationalism, on the one hand, and English deism and French materialism, on the other. His “Essay concerning Human Understanding” denies the existence of innate ideas, and seeks to show that all our notions are only products of outer or inner experience, of sensation or reflection. In this treatise, and still more distinctly in his tract, “The Reasonableness of Christianity,” intended as an apology for Christianity, and even for biblical visions and miracles, as well as for the messianic character of Christ, he openly advocated pure Pelagianism that knows nothing of sin and atonement.489―Leibnitz, a Hanoverian statesman, who died A.D. 1716, introduced the new German philosophy in its first stage. The philosophy of Leibnitz is opposed at once to the theosophy of Paracelsus and Böhme and to the empiricism of Bacon and Locke, the pantheism of Spinoza, and the scepticism and manichæism of Bayle. It is indeed a Christian philosophy not fully developed. But inasmuch as at the same time it adopted, improved upon, and carried out the rationalism of Descartes, it also paved the way for the later theological rationalism. The foundation of his philosophy is the theory of monads wrought out in his “Theodicée” against Bayle and in his “Nouveaux Essais,” against Locke. In opposition to the atomic theory of the materialists, he regarded all phenomena in the world as eccentricities of so called monads, i.e. primary simple and indivisible substances, each of which is a miniature of the whole universe. Out of these monads that radiate out from God, the primary monad, the world is formed into a harmony once for all admired of God: the theory of pre-established harmony. This must be the best of worlds, otherwise it would not have been. In opposition to Bayle, who had argued in a manichæan fashion against God’s goodness and wisdom from the existence of evil, Leibnitz seeks to show that this does not contradict the idea of the best of worlds, nor that of the Divine goodness and wisdom, since finity and imperfection belong to the very notion of creature, a metaphysical evil from which moral evil inevitably follows, yet not so as to destroy the pre-established harmony. Against Locke he maintains the doctrine of innate ideas, contests Clarke’s theory of indeterminism, maintains the agreement of philosophy with revelation, which indeed is above but not contrary to reason, and hopes to prove his system by mathematical demonstration.490―Continuation, § 171, 10.

§ 164.3. Freethinkers.―The tendency of the age to throw off all positive Christianity first showed itself openly in England as the final outcome of Levellerism (§ 162, 2). This movement has been styled naturalism, because it puts natural in place of revealed religion, and deism, because in place of the redeeming work of the triune God it admits only a general providence of the one God. On philosophic grounds the English deists affirmed the impossibility of revelation, inspiration, prophecy, and miracle, and on critical grounds rejected them from the Bible and history. The simple religious system of deism embraced God, providence, freedom of the will, virtue, and the immortality of the soul. The Christian doctrines of the Trinity, original sin, satisfaction, justification, resurrection, etc., were regarded as absurd and irrational. Deism in England spread almost exclusively among upper-class laymen; the people and clergy stood firmly to their positive beliefs. Theological controversial tracts were numerous, but their polemical force was in great measure lost by the latitudinarianism of their authors.―The principal English deists of the century were

Edward Herbert of Cherbury, A.D. 1581-1648, a nobleman and statesman. He reduced all religion to five points: Faith in God, the duty of reverencing Him, especially by leading an upright life, atoning for sin by genuine repentance, recompense in the life eternal.

Thomas Hobbes, A.D. 1588-1679, an acute philosophical and political writer, looked on Christianity as an oriental phantom, and of value only as a support of absolute monarchy and an antidote to revolution. The state of nature is a bellum omnium contra omnes; religion is the means of establishing order and civilization. The state should decide what religion is to prevail. Every one may indeed believe what he will, but in regard to churches and worship he must submit to the state as represented by the king. His chief work is “Leviathan; or, The Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil.”

Charles Blount, who died a suicide in A.D. 1693, a rabid opponent of all miracles as mere tricks of priests, wrote “Oracles of Reason,” “Religio Laici,” “Great is Diana of the Ephesians,” and translated Philostratus’ “Life of Apollonius of Tyana.”

Thomas Browne, A.D. 1635-1682, a physician, who in his “Religio Medici” sets forth a mystical supernaturalism, took up a purely deistic ground in his “Vulgar Errors,” published three years later.

Among the opponents of deism in this age the most notable are Richard Baxter (§ 162, 3) and Ralph Cudworth, A.D. 1617-1688, a latitudinarian and Platonist, who sought to prove the leading Christian doctrines by the theory of innate ideas. He wrote “Intellectual System of the Universe” in A.D. 1678. The pious Irish scientist, Robert Boyle, founded in London, in A.D. 1691, a lectureship of £40 a year for eight discourses against deistic and atheistic unbelief.491―Continuation, § 171, 1.

§ 164.4. A tendency similar to that of the English deists was represented in Germany by Matthias Knutzen, who sought to found a freethinking sect. The Christian “Coran” contains only lies; reason and conscience are the true Bible; there is no God, nor hell nor heaven; priests and magistrates should be driven out of the world, etc. The senate of Jena University on investigation found that his pretension to 700 followers was a vain boast.―In France the brilliant and learned sceptic Peter Bayle, A.D. 1647-1706, was the apostle of a light-hearted unbelief. Though son of a Reformed pastor, the Jesuits got him over to the Romish church, but in a year and a half he apostatised again. He now studied the Cartesian philosophy, as Reformed professor at Sedan, vindicated Protestantism in several controversial tracts, and as refugee in Holland composed his famous “Dictionnaire Historique et Critique,” in which he avoided indeed open rejection of the facts of revelation, but did much to unsettle by his easy treatment of them.―Continuation, § 171, 3.

THIRD SECTION. CHURCH HISTORY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.492

I. The Catholic Church in East and West.

§ 165. The Roman Catholic Church.

During the first half of the century the Roman hierarchy suffered severely at the hand of Catholic courts, while in the second half storms gathered from all sides, threatening its very existence. Portugal, France, Spain, and Italy rested not till they got the pope himself to strike the deathblow to the Jesuits, who had been his chief supporters indeed, but who had now become his masters. Soon after the German bishops threatened to free themselves and their people from Rome, and what reforms they could not effect by ecclesiastical measures the emperor undertook to effect by civil measures. Scarcely had this danger been overcome when the horrors of the French Revolution broke out, which sought, along with the Papacy, to overthrow Christianity as well. But, on the other hand, during the early decades of the century Catholicism had gained many victories in another way by the counter-reformation and conversions. Its foreign missions, however, begun with such promise of success, came to a sad end, and even the home missions faded away, in spite of the founding of various new orders. The Jansenist controversy in the beginning of the century entered on a new stage, the Catholic church being driven into open semi-Pelagianism, and Jansenism into fanatical excesses. The church theology sank very low, and the Catholic supporters of “Illumination” far exceeded in number those who had fallen away to it from Protestantism.

§ 165.1. The Popes.―Clement XI., 1700-1721, protested in vain against the Elector Frederick III. of Brandenburg assuming the crown as King Frederick I. of Prussia, on Jan. 18th, A.D. 1701. In the Spanish wars of succession he sought to remain neutral, but force of circumstances led him to take up a position adverse to German interests. The new German emperor, Joseph I., A.D. 1705-1711, scorned to seek confirmation from the pope, and Clement consequently had the usual prayer for the emperor omitted in the church services. The relations became yet more strained, owing to a dispute about the jus primarum precum, Joseph claiming the right to revenues of vacancies as the patron. In A.D. 1707, the pope had the joy of seeing the German army driven out, not only of northern Italy, but also of Naples by the French. Again they came into direct conflict over Parma and Piacenza, Clement claiming them as a papal, the emperor claiming them as an imperial, fief. No pope since the time of Louis the Bavarian had issued the ban against a German emperor, and Clement ventured not to do so now. Refusing the invitation of Louis XIV. to go to Avignon, he was obliged either unconditionally to grant the German claims or to try the fortune of war. He chose the latter alternative. The miserable papal troops, however, were easily routed, and Clement was obliged, in A.D. 1708, to acknowledge the emperor’s brother, the Grand-duke Charles, as king of Spain, and generally to yield to Joseph’s very moderate demands. Clement was the author of the constitution Unigenitus, which introduced the second stage in the history of Jansenism. After the short and peaceful pontificate of Innocent XIII. A.D. 1721-1724, came Benedict XIII., A.D. 1724-1730, a pious, well-meaning, narrow-minded man, ruled by a worthless favourite, Cardinal Coscia. He wished to canonize Gregory VII., in the fond hope of thereby securing new favour to his hierarchical views, but this was protested against by almost all the courts. All the greater was the number of monkish saints with which he enriched the heavenly firmament. He promised to all who on their death-bed should say, “Blessed be Jesus Christ,” a 2,000 years’ shortening of purgatorial pains. His successor Clement XII., A.D. 1730-1740, deprived the wretched Coscia of his offices, made him disgorge his robberies, imposed on him a severe fine and ten years’ imprisonment, but afterwards resigned the management of everything to a greedy, grasping nephew. He was the first pope to condemn freemasonry, A.D. 1736. Benedict XIV., A.D. 1740-1758, one of the noblest, most pious, learned, and liberal of the popes, zealous for the faith of his church, and yet patient with those who differed, moderate and wise in his political procedure, mild and just in his government, blameless in life. He had a special dislike of the Jesuits (§ 156, 12), and jestingly he declared, if, as the curialists assert, “all law and all truth” lie concealed in the shrine of his breast, he had not been able to find the key. He wrote largely on theology and canon law, founded seminaries for the training of the clergy, had many French and English works translated into Italian, and was a liberal patron of art. To check popular excesses he tried to reduce the number of festivals, but without success.―Continuation, in Paragraphs § 165, 9, 10, 13.

§ 165.2. Old and New Orders.―Among the old orders that of Clugny had amassed enormous wealth, and attempts made by its abbots at reformation led only to endless quarrels and divisions. The abbots now squandered the revenues of their cloisters at court, and these institutions were allowed to fall into disorder and decay. When, in A.D. 1790, all cloisters in France were suppressed, the city of Clugny bought the cloister and church for £4,000, and had them both pulled down.―The most important new orders were:

The Mechitarist Congregation, originated by Mechitar the Armenian, who, at Constantinople in A.D. 1701, founded a society for the religious and intellectual education of his countrymen; but when opposed by the Armenian patriarch, fled to the Morea and joined the United Armenians (§ 72, 2). In A.D. 1712 the pope confirmed the congregation, which, during the war with the Turks was transferred to Venice, and in A.D. 1717 settled on the island St. Lazaro [Lazzaro]. Its members spread Roman Catholic literature in Armenia and Armenian literature in the West. At a later time there was a famous Mechitarist college in Vienna, which did much by writing and publishing for the education of the Catholic youth.

Frères Ignorantins, or Christian Brothers, founded in A.D. 1725 by De la Salle, canon of Rheims, for the instruction of children, wrought in the spirit of the Jesuits through France, Belgium, and North America. After the expulsion of the Jesuits from France in A.D. 1724, they took their place there till themselves driven out by the Revolution in A.D. 1790.493

The Liguorians or Redemptorists, founded in A.D. 1732 by Liguori, an advocate, who became Bishop of Naples in A.D. 1762. He died in A.D. 1787 in his ninety-first year, was beatified by Pius VII. in A.D. 1816, and canonized by Gregory XVI. in A.D. 1839, and proclaimed doctor ecclesiæ by Pius IX. in A.D. 1871 as a zealous defender of the immaculate conception and papal infallibility. His devotional writings, which exalt Mary by superstitious tales of miracles, were extremely popular in all Catholic countries. His new order was to minister to the poor. He declared the pope’s will to be God’s, and called for unquestioning obedience. Only after the founder’s death did it spread beyond Italy.―Continuation, § 186, 1.

§ 165.3. Foreign Missions.―In the accommodation controversy (§ 156, 12), the Dominicans prevailed in A.D. 1742; but the abolishing of native customs led to a sore persecution in China, from which only a few remnants of the church were saved. The Italian Jesuit Beschi, with linguistic talents of the highest order, sought in India to make use of the native literature for mission purposes and to place alongside of it a Christian literature. Here the Capuchins opposed the Jesuits as successfully as the Dominicans had in China. These strifes and persecutions destroyed the missions.―The Jesuit state of Paraguay (§ 156, 10) was put an end to in A.D. 1750 by a compact between Portugal and Spain. The revolt of the Indians that followed, inspired and directed by the Jesuits, which kept the combined powers at bay for a whole year, was at last quelled, and the Jesuits expelled the country in A.D. 1758.―Continuation § 186, 7.

§ 165.4. The Counter-Reformation (§ 153, 2).―Charles XII. of Sweden, in A.D. 1707, forced the Emperor Joseph I. to give the Protestants of Silesia the benefits of the Westphalian Peace and to restore their churches. But in Poland in A.D. 1717, the Protestants lost the right of building new churches, and in A.D. 1733 were declared disqualified for civil offices and places in the diet. In the Protestant city of Thorn the insolence of the Jesuits roused a rebellion which led to a fearful massacre in A.D. 1724. The Dissenters sought and obtained protection in Russia from A.D. 1767, and the partition of Poland between Russia, Austria, and Prussia in A.D. 1772 secured for them religious toleration. In Salzburg the archbishop, Count Firmian, attempted in A.D. 1729 a conversion of the evangelicals by force, who had, with intervals of persecution in the seventeenth century, been tolerated for forty years as quiet and inoffensive citizens. But in A.D. 1731 their elders swore on the host and consecrated salt (2 Chron. xiii. 5) to be true to their faith. This “covenant of salt” was interpreted as rebellion, and in spite of the intervention of the Protestant princes, all the evangelicals, in the severe winter of A.D. 1731, 1732, were driven, with inhuman cruelty, from hearth and home. About 20,000 of them found shelter in Prussian Lithuania; others emigrated to America. The pope praised highly “the noble” archbishop, who otherwise distinguished himself only as a huntsman and a drinker, and by maintaining a mistress in princely splendour.

§ 165.5. In France the persecution of the Huguenots continued (§ 153, 4). The “pastors of the desert” performed their duties at the risk of their lives, and though many fell as martyrs, their places were quickly filled by others equally heroic. The first rank belongs to Anton Court, pastor at Nismes from A.D. 1715; he died at Lausanne A.D. 1760, where he had founded a theological seminary. He laboured unweariedly and successfully in gathering and organizing the scattered members of the Reformed church, and in overcoming fanaticism by imparting sound instruction. Paul Rabaut, his successor at Nismes, was from A.D. 1730 to 1785 the faithful and capable leader of the martyr church. The judicial murder of Jean Calas at Toulouse in A.D. 1762 presents a hideous example of the fanaticism of Catholic France. One of his sons had hanged himself in a fit of passion. When the report spread that it was the act of his father, in order to prevent the contemplated conversion of his son, the Dominicans canonized the suicide as a martyr to the Catholic faith, roused the mob, and got the Toulouse parliament to put the unhappy father to the torture of the wheel. The other sons were forced to abjure their faith, and the daughters were shut up in cloisters. Two years later Voltaire called attention to the atrocity, and so wrought on public opinion that on the revision of the proceedings by the Parisian parliament, the innocence of the ill-used family was clearly proved. Louis XV. paid them a sum of 30,000 livres; but the fanatical accusers, the false witnesses, and the corrupt judges were left unpunished. This incident improved the position of the Protestants, and in A.D. 1787 Louis XVI. issued the Edict of Versailles, by which not only complete religious freedom but even a legal civil existence was secured them, which was confirmed by a law of Napoleon in A.D. 1802.

§ 165.6. Conversions.―Pecuniary interests and prospect of marriage with a rich heiress led to the conversion, in A.D. 1712, of Charles Alexander while in the Austrian service; but when he became Duke of Württemburg [Württemberg] he solemnly undertook to keep things as they were, and to set up no Catholic services in the country save in his own court chapel. Of other converts Winckelmann and Stolberg are the most famous. While Winckelmann, the greatest of art critics, not a religious but an artistic ultramontane, was led in A.D. 1754 through religious indifference into the Romish church, the warm heart of Von Stolberg was induced, mainly by the Catholic Princess Gallitzin (§ 172, 2) and a French emigrant, Madame Montague, to escape the chill of rationalism amid the incense fumes of the Catholic services.―Continuation, § 175, 7.

§ 165.7. The Second Stage of Jansenism (§ 157, 5).―Pasquier Quesnel, priest of the Oratory at Paris, suspected in 1675 of Gallicanism, because of notes in his edition of the works of Leo the Great, fled into the Netherlands, where he continued his notes on the N.T. Used and recommended by Noailles, Archbishop of Paris, and other French bishops, this “Jansenist” book was hated by the Jesuits and condemned by a brief of Clement XI. in A.D. 1708. The Jesuit confessor of Louis XIV., Le Tellier, selected 101 propositions from the book, and induced the king to urge their express condemnation by the pope. In the Constitution Unigenitus of A.D. 1713, Clement pronounced these heretical, and the king required the expulsion from parliament and church of all who refused to adopt this bull, which caused a division of the French church into Acceptants and Appellants. As many of the condemned propositions were quoted literally by Quesnel from Augustine and other Fathers, or were in exact agreement with biblical passages, Noailles and his party called for an explanation. Instead of this the pope threatened them with excommunication. In A.D. 1715 the king died, and under the Duke of Orleans’ regency in A.D. 1717, four bishops, with solemn appeal to a general council, renounced the papal constitution as irreconcilable with the Catholic faith. They were soon joined by the Sorbonne and the universities of Rheims and Nantes, Archbishop Noailles, and more than twenty bishops, all the congregations of St. Maur and the Oratorians with large numbers of the secular clergy and the monks, especially of the Lazarists, Dominicans, Cistercians, and Camaldulensians. The pope, after vainly calling them to obey, thundered the ban against the Appellants in A.D. 1718. But the parliament took the matter up, and soon the aspect of affairs was completely changed. The regent’s favourite, Dubois, hoping to obtain a cardinal’s hat, took the side of the Acceptants and carried the duke with him, who got the parliament in 1720 to acknowledge the bull, with express reservation, however, of the Gallican liberties, and began a persecution of the Appellants. Under Louis XV. the persecution became more severe, although in many ways moderated by the influence of his former tutor, Cardinal Fleury. Noailles, who died in 1729, was obliged in 1728 to submit unconditionally, and in A.D. 1730 the parliament formally ratified the bull. Amid daily increasing oppression, many of the more faithful Jansenists, mostly of the orders of St. Maur and the Oratory, fled to the Netherlands, where they gave way more and more to fanaticism. In 1727 a young Jansenist priest, Francis of Paris, died with the original text of the appeal in his hands. His adherents honoured him as a saint, and numerous reports of miracles, which had been wrought at his grave in Medardus churchyard at Paris, made this a daily place of pilgrimage to thousands of fanatics. The excited enthusiasts, who fell into convulsions, and uttered prophecies about the overthrow of church and state, grew in numbers and, with that mesmeric power which fanaticism has been found in all ages to possess powerfully influenced many who had been before careless and profane. One of these was the member of parliament De Montgeron, who, from being a frivolous scoffer, suddenly, in 1732, fell into violent convulsions, and in a three-volumed work, “La Vérité des Miracles Opérés par l’Intercession de François de Paris,” 1737, came forward as a zealous apologist of the party. The government, indeed, in 1732 ordered the churchyard to be closed, but portions of earth from the grave of the saint continued to effect convulsions and miracles. Thousands of convulsionists throughout France were thrown into prison, and in 1752, Archbishop Beaumont of Paris, with many other bishops, refused the last sacrament to those who could not prove that they had accepted the constitution. The grave of “St. Francis,” however, was the grave of Jansenism, for fanatical excess contains the seeds of dissolution and every manifestation of it hastens the catastrophe. Yet remnants of the party lingered on in France till the outbreak of the Revolution, of which they had prophesied.

§ 165.8. The Old Catholic Church in the Netherlands.―The first Jesuits appeared in Holland in A.D. 1592. The form of piety fostered by superior and inferior clergy in the Catholic church there, a heritage from the times of the Brethren of the Common Life (§ 112, 9), was directed to the deepening of Christian thought and feeling; and this, as well as the liberal attitude of the Archbishop of Utrecht, awakened the bitter opposition of the Jesuits. At the head of the local clergy was Sasbold Vosmeer, vicar-general of the vacant archiepiscopal see of Utrecht. Most energetically he set himself to thwart the Jesuit machinations, which aimed at abolishing the Utrecht see and putting the church of Holland under the jurisdiction of the papal nuncio at Cologne. On the ground of suspicions of secret conspiracy Vosmeer was banished. But his successors refused to be overruled or set aside by the Jesuits. Meanwhile in France the first stage of the Jansenist controversy had been passed through. The Dutch authorities had heartily welcomed the condemned book of their pious and learned countryman; but when the five propositions were denounced, they agreed in repudiating them, without, however, admitting that they had been taught in the sense objected to by Jansen. The Jesuits, therefore, charged them with the Jansenist heresy, and issued in A.D. 1697 an anonymous pamphlet full of lying insinuations about the origin and progress of Jansenism in Holland. Its beginning was traced back to a visit of Arnauld to Holland in A.D. 1681, and its effects were seen in the circulation of prayer-books, tracts, and sermons, urging diligent reading of Scripture, in the depreciation of the worship of Mary, of indulgences, of images of saints and relics, rosaries and scapularies (§ 186, 2), processions and fraternities, in the rigoristic strictness of the confessional, the use of the common language of the country in baptism, marriage, and extreme unction, etc. The archbishop of that time, Peter Codde, in order to isolate him, was decoyed to Rome, and there flattered with hypocritical pretensions of goodwill, while behind his back his deposition was carried out, and an apostolic vicar nominated for Utrecht in the person of his deadly foe Theodore de Cock. But the chapter refused him obedience, and the States of Holland forbad him to exercise any official function, and under threat of banishment of all Jesuits demanded the immediate return of the archbishop. Codde was now sent down with the papal blessing, but a formal decree of deposition followed him. Meanwhile the government pronounced on his rival De Cock, who avoided a trial for high treason by flight, a sentence of perpetual exile. But Codde, though persistently recognised by his chapter as the rightful archbishop, withheld on conscientious grounds from discharging official duties down to his death in A.D. 1710. Amid these disputes the Utrecht see remained vacant for thirteen years. The flock were without a chief shepherd, the inferior clergy without direction and support, the people were wrought upon by Jesuit emissaries, and the vacant pastorates were filled by the nuncio of Cologne. Thus it came about that of the 300,000 Catholics remaining after the Reformation, only a few thousands continued faithful to the national party, while the rest became bitter and extreme ultramontanes, as the Catholic church of Holland still is. Finally, in A.D. 1723, the Utrecht chapter took courage and chose a new archbishop in the person of Cornelius Steenowen. Receiving no answer to their request for papal confirmation, the chapter, after waiting a year and a half, had him and also his three successors consecrated by a French missionary bishop, Varlet, who had been driven away by the Jesuits. But in order to prevent the threatened loss of legitimate consecration for future bishops after Varlet’s death in A.D. 1742, a bishop elected at Utrecht was in that same year ordained to the chapter of Haarlem, and in A.D. 1758 the newly founded bishopric of Deventer was so supplied. All these, like all subsequent elections, were duly reported to Rome, and a strictly Catholic confession from electors and elected sent up; but each time, instead of confirmation, a frightful ban was thundered forth. This, however, did not deter the Dutch government from formally recognising the elections.―Meanwhile the second and last act of the Jansenist tragedy had been played in France. Many of the persecuted Appellants sought refuge in Holland, and the welcome accorded them seemed to justify the long cherished suspicion of Jansenism against the people of Utrecht. They repelled these charges, however, by condemning the five propositions and the heresies of Quesnel’s book; but they expressly refused the bull of Alexander VII. and its doctrine of papal infallibility. This put a stop to all attempts at reconciliation. The church of Utrecht meanwhile prospered. At a council held at Utrecht in A.D. 1765 it styled itself “The Old Roman Catholic Church of the Netherlands,” acknowledged the pope, although under his anathema, as the visible head of the Christian church, accepted the Tridentine decrees as their creed, and sent this with all the acts of council to Rome as proof of their orthodoxy. The Jesuits did all in their power to overturn the formidable impression which this at first made there; and they were successful. Clement XIII. declared the council null, and those who took part in it hardened sons of Belial. But their church at this day contains, under one archbishop and two bishops, twenty-six congregations, numbering 6,000 souls.494―Continuation, § 200, 3.

§ 165.9. Suppression of the Order of Jesuits, A.D. 1773.―The Jesuits had striven with growing eagerness and success after worldly power, and instead of absolute devotion to the interests of the papacy, their chief aim was now the erection of an independent political and hierarchical dominion. Their love of rule had sustained its first check in the overthrow of the Jesuit state of Paraguay; but they had secured a great part of the world’s trade (§ 156, 13), and strove successfully to control European politics. The Jansenist controversy, however, had called forth against them much popular odium; Pascal had made them ridiculous to all men of culture, the other monkish orders were hostile to them, their success in trade roused the jealousy of other traders, and their interference in politics made enemies on every hand. The Portuguese government took the first decided step. A revolt in Paraguay and an attempt on the king’s life were attributed to them, and the minister Pombal, whose reforms they had opposed, had them banished from Portugal in A.D. 1759, and their goods confiscated. Clement XIII., A.D. 1758-1769, chosen by the Jesuits and under their influence, protected them by a bull; but Portugal refused to let the bull be proclaimed, led the papal nuncio over the frontier, broke off all relations with Rome, and sent whole shiploads of Jesuits to the pope. France followed Portugal’s example when the general Ricci had answered the king’s demand for a reform of his orders: Sint ut sunt, aut non sint. For the enormous financial failure of the Jesuit La Valette, the whole order was made responsible, and at last, in A.D. 1764, banished from France as dangerous to the state. Spain, Naples, and Parma, too, soon seized all the Jesuits and transported them beyond the frontiers. The new papal election on the death of Clement XIII. was a life and death question with the Jesuits, but courtly influences and fears of a schism prevailed. The pious and liberal Minorite Ganganelli mounted the papal throne as Clement XIV., A.D. 1769-1774. He began with sweeping administrative reforms, forbad the reading of the bull In cœna Domini (§ 117, 3), and, pressed by the Bourbon court, issued in A.D. 1773 the bull Dominus ac Redemtor Noster suppressing the Jesuit order. The order numbered 22,600 members and the pope felt, in granting the bull, that he endangered his own life. Next year he died, not without suspicion of poisoning. All the Catholic courts, even Austria, put the decree in force. But the heretic Frederick II. tolerated the order for a long time in Silesia, and Catherine II. and Paul I. in their Polish provinces.―Pius VI., A.D. 1775-1799, in many respects the antithesis of his predecessor, was the secret friend of the exiled and imprisoned ex-Jesuits. After the outbreak of the French Revolution, a proposal was made at Rome, in A.D. 1792, for the formal restoration of the order, as a means of saving the seriously imperilled church, but it did not find sufficient encouragement.

§ 165.10. Anti-hierarchical Movements in Germany and Italy.―Even before Joseph II. could carry out his reforms in ecclesiastical polity, the noble elector Maximilian Joseph III., A.D. 1745-1777, with greater moderation but complete success, effected a similar reform in the Jesuit-overrun Bavaria. Himself a strict Catholic, he asserted the supremacy of the state over a foreign hierarchy, and by reforming the churches, cloisters, and schools of his country he sought to improve their position. But under his successor, Charles Theodore, A.D. 1777-1799, everything was restored to its old condition.―Meanwhile a powerful voice was raised from the midst of the German prelates that aimed a direct blow at the hierarchical papal system. Nicholas von Hontheim, the suffragan Bishop of Treves, had under the name Justinus Febronius published, in A.D. 1763, a treatise De Statu Ecclesiæ, in which he maintained the supreme authority of general councils and the independence of bishops in opposition to the hierarchical pretensions of the popes. It was soon translated into German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. The book made a great impression, and Clement XIII. could do nothing against the bold defender of the liberties of the church. In A.D. 1778, indeed, Pius VI. had the poor satisfaction of extorting a recantation from the old man of seventy-seven years, but he lived to see yet more deadly storms burst upon the church. Urged by Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria, the pope, in A.D. 1785, had made Munich the residence of a nuncio. The episcopal electors of Mainz, Cologne, and Treves, and the Archbishop of Salzburg, seeing their archiepiscopal rights in danger, met in congress at Ems in A.D. 1786, and there, on the basis of the Febronian proofs, claimed, in the so called Punctation of Ems, practical independence of the pope and the restoration of an independent German national Catholic church. But the German bishops found it easier to obey the distant pope than the near archbishops. So they united their opposition with that of the pope, and the undertaking of the archbishops came to nothing.―More threatening still for the existence of the hierarchy was the reign of Joseph II. in Austria. German emperor from A.D. 1765, and co-regent with his mother Maria Theresa, he began, immediately on his succession to sole rule in A.D. 1780, a radical reform of the whole ecclesiastical institutions throughout his hereditary possessions. In A.D. 1781 he issued his Edict of Toleration, by which, under various restrictions, the Protestants obtained civil rights and liberty of worship. Protestant places of worship were to have no bells or towers, were to pay stole dues to the Catholic priests, in mixed marriages the Catholic father had the right of educating all his children and the Catholic mother could claim the education at least of her daughters. By stopping all episcopal communications with the papal curia, and putting all papal bulls and ecclesiastical edicts under strict civil control, the Catholic church was emancipated from Roman influences, set under a native clergy, and made serviceable in the moral and religious training of the people, and all her institutions that did not serve this end were abolished. Of the 2,000 cloisters, 606 succumbed before this decree, and those that remained were completely sundered from all connexion with Rome. In vain the bishops and Pius VI. protested. The pope even went to Vienna in A.D. 1782; but though received with great respect, he could make nothing of the emperor. Joseph’s procedure had been somewhat hasty and inconsiderate, and a reaction set in, led by interested parties, on the emperor’s early death in A.D. 1790.―The Grand-duke Leopold of Tuscany, Joseph’s brother, with the aid of the pious Bishop Scipio von Ricci, inclined to Jansenism, sought also in a similar way to reform the church of his land at the Synod of Pistoia, in A.D. 1786. But here too at last the hierarchy prevailed.

§ 165.11. Theological Literature.―The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, A.D. 1685, gave the deathblow to the French Reformed theology, but it also robbed Catholic theology in France of its spur and incentive. The Huguenot polemic against the papacy, and that of Jansenism against the semi-pelagianism of the Catholic church, were silenced; but now the most rabid naturalism, atheism, and materialism held the field, and the church theology was so lethargic that it could not attempt any serious opposition. Yet even here some names are worthy of being recorded. Above all, Bernard de Montfaucon of St. Maur, the ablest antiquarian of France, besides his classical works, issued admirable editions of Athanasius, Chrysostom, Origen’s “Hexapla,” and the “Collectio Nova Patrum.” E. Renaudot, a learned expert in the oriental languages, wrote several works in vindication of the “Perpétuité de la Foi cath.,” a history of the Jacobite patriarchs of Alexandria, etc., and compiled a “Collectio liturgiarum Oriental,” in two vols. Of permanent worth is the “Bibliotheca Sacra” of the Oratorian Le Long, which forms an admirable literary-historical apparatus for the Bible. The learned Jesuit Hardouin, who pronounced all Greek and Latin classics, with few exceptions, to be monkish products of the thirteenth century, and denied the existence of all pre-Tridentine general councils, edited a careful collection of Acts of Councils in twelve vols. folio in Paris, 1715, and compiled an elaborate chronology of the Old Testament. His pupil, the Jesuit Berruyer, wrote a romancing “Hist. du Peuple de Dieu,” which, though much criticised, was widely read. Incomparably more important was the Benedictine Calmet, died A.D. 1757, whose “Dictionnaire de la Bible” and “Commentaire Littéral et Critique” on the whole Bible are really most creditable for their time. And, finally, the Parisian professor of medicine, Jean Astruc, deserves to be named as the founder of the modern Pentateuch criticism, whose “Conjectures sur les Mémoires Originaux,” etc., appeared in Brussels A.D. 1753.―Within the limits of the French Revolution the noble theosophist St. Martin, died A.D. 1805, a warm admirer of Böhme, wrote his brilliant and profound treatises.

§ 165.12. In Italy the most important contributions were in the department of history. Mansi, in his collection of Acts of Councils in thirty-one vols. folio, A.D. 1759 ff., and Muratori, in his “Scriptores Rer. Italic.,” in twenty-eight vols., and “Antiquitt. Ital. Med. Ævi,” in six vols., show brilliant learning and admirable impartiality. Ugolino, in a gigantic work, “Thesaurus Antiquitt. ss.,” thirty-four folio vols., A.D. 1744 ff., gathers together all that is most important for biblical archæology. The three Assemani, uncle and two nephews, cultured Maronites in Rome, wrought in the hitherto unknown field of Syrian literature and history. The uncle, Joseph Simon, librarian at the Vatican, wrote “Bibliotheca Orientalis,” in four vols., A.D. 1719 ff., and edited Ephraem’s [Ephraim’s] works in six vols. The elder nephew, Stephen Evodius, edited the “Acta ss. Martyrum Orient. et Occid.,” in two vols., and the younger, Joseph Aloysius, a “Codex Liturgicus Eccles. Univ.,” in thirteen vols. Among dogmatical works the “Theologia hist.-dogm.-scholastica,” in eight vols. folio, Rome, 1739, of the Augustinian Berti deserves mention. Zaccaria of Venice, in some thirty vols., proved an indefatigable opponent of Febronianism, Josephinism, and such-like movements, and a careful editor of older Catholic works. The Augustinian Florez, died A.D. 1773, did for Spain what Muratori had done for Italy in making collections of ancient writers, which, with the continuations of the brethren of his order, extended to fifty folio volumes.―In Germany the greatest Catholic theologian of the century was Amort. Of his seventy treatises the most comprehensive is the “Theologia Eclectica, Moralis et Scholastica,” in four vols. folio, A.D. 1752. He conducted a conciliatory polemic against the Protestants, contested the mysticism of Maria von Agreda (§ 156, 5), and vigorously controverted superstition, miracle-mongering, and all manner of monkish extravagances. To the time of Joseph II. belongs the liberal, latitudinarian supernaturalist Jahn of Vienna, whose “Introduction to the Old Testament,” and “Biblical Antiquities” did much to raise the standard of biblical learning. For his anti-clericalism he was deprived of his professorship in A.D. 1805, and died in A.D. 1816 a canon in Vienna. To this century also belongs the greatly blessed literary labours of the accomplished mystic, Sailer, beginning at Ingolstadt in A.D. 1777, and continued at Dillingen from A.D. 1784. Deprived in A.D. 1794 of his professorship on pretence of his favouring the Illuminati, it was not till A.D. 1799 that he was allowed to resume his academic work in Ingolstadt and Landshut. By numerous theological, ascetical, and philosophical tracts, but far more powerfully by his lectures and personal intercourse, he sowed the seeds of rationalism, which bore fruit in the teachings of many Catholic universities, and produced in the hearts of many pupils a warm and deep and at the same time a gentle and conciliatory Catholicism, which heartily greeted, even in pious Protestants, the foundations of a common faith and life. Compare § 187, 1.―Continuation, § 191.

§ 165.13. The German-Catholic Contribution to the Illumination.―The Catholic church of Germany was also carried away with the current of “the Illumination,” which from the middle of the century had overrun Protestant Germany. While the exorcisms and cures of Father Gassner in Regensburg were securing signal triumphs to Catholicism, though these were of so dubious a kind that the bishops, the emperor, and finally even the curia, found it necessary to check the course of the miracle worker, Weishaupt, professor of canon law in Ingolstadt, founded, in A.D. 1776, the secret society of the Illuminati, which spread its deistic ideas of culture and human perfectibility through Catholic South Germany. Though inspired by deadly hatred of the Jesuits, Weishaupt imitated their methods, and so excited the suspicion of the Bavarian government, which, in A.D. 1785, suppressed the order and imprisoned and banished its leaders.―Catholic theology too was affected by the rationalistic movement. But that the power of the church to curse still survived was proved in the case of the Mainz professor, Laurence Isenbiehl, who applied the passage about Immanuel, in Isaiah vii. 14, not to the mother of Christ, but to the wife of the prophet, for which he was deposed in A.D. 1774, and on account of his defective knowledge of theology was sent back for two years to the seminary. When in A.D. 1778 he published a learned treatise on the same theme, he was put in prison. The pope too condemned his exposition as pestilential, and Isenbiehl “as a good Catholic” retracted. Steinbühler, a young jurist of Salzburg, having been sentenced to death in A.D. 1781 for some contemptuous words about the Catholic ceremonies, was pardoned, but soon after died from the ill-treatment he had received. The rationalistic movement got hold more and more of the Catholic universities. In Mainz, Dr. Blau, professor of dogmatics, promulgated with impunity the doctrine that in the course of centuries the church has often made mistakes. In the Austrian universities, under the protection of the Josephine edict, a whole series of Catholic theologians ventured to make cynically free criticisms, especially in the field of church history. At Bonn University, founded in A.D. 1786 by the Elector-archbishop of Cologne, there were teachers like Hedderich, who sportively described himself on the title page of a dissertation as “jam quater Romæ damnatus,” Dereser, previously a Carmelite monk, who followed Eichhorn in his exposition of the biblical miracles, and Eulogius Schneider, who, after having made Bonn too hot for him by his theological and poetical recklessness, threw himself into the French Revolution, for two years marched through Alsace with the guillotine as one of the most dreaded monsters, and finally, in A.D. 1794, was made to lay his own head on the block.―At the Austrian universities, under the protection of the tolerant Josephine legislation, a whole series of Catholic theologians, Royko, Wolff, Dannenmayr, Michl, etc., criticised, often with cynical plainness, the proceedings and condition of the Catholic church. To this class also, in the first stage of his remarkably changeful and eventful career, belongs Ign. Aur. Fessler. From 1773, a Capuchin in various cloisters, last of all in Vienna, he brought down upon himself the bitter hatred of his order by making secret reports to the emperor about the ongoings that prevailed in these convents. He escaped their enmity by his appointment, in 1784, as professor of the oriental languages and the Old Testament at Lemberg, but was in 1787 dismissed from this office on account of various charges against his life, teaching, and poetical writings. In Silesia, in 1791, he went over to the Protestant church, joined the freemasons, held at Berlin the post of a councillor in ecclesiastical and educational affairs for the newly won Catholic provinces of Poland, and, after losing this position in consequence of the events of the war of 1806, found employment in Russia in 1809; first, as professor of oriental languages at St. Petersburg, and afterwards, when opposed and persecuted there also on suspicion of entertaining atheistical views, as member of a legal commission in South Russia. Meanwhile having gradually moved from a deistical to a vague mystical standpoint, he was in 1819 made superintendent and president of the evangelical consistory at Saratov, with the title of an evangelical bishop, and after the abolition of that office in 1833 he became general superintendent at St. Petersburg, where he died in 1839. His romances and tragedies as well as his theological and religious writings are now forgotten, but his “Reminiscences of his Seventy Years’ Pilgrimage,” published in 1824, are still interesting, and his “History of Hungary,” in ten volumes, begun in 1812, is of permanent value.

§ 165.14. The French Contribution to the Illumination.―The age of Louis XIV., with the morals of its Jesuit confessors, the lust, bigotry, and hypocrisy of its court, its dragonnades and Bastille polemic against revivals of a living Christianity among Huguenots, mystics, and Jansenists, its prophets of the Cevennes and Jansenist convulsionists, etc., called forth a spirit of freethinking to which Catholicism, Jansenism, and Protestantism appeared equally ridiculous and absurd. This movement was essentially different from English deism. The principle of the English movement was common sense, the universal moral consciousness in man, with the powerful weapon of rational criticism, maintaining the existence of an ideal and moral element in men, and holding by the more general principles of religion. French naturalism, on the other hand, was a philosophy of the esprit, that essentially French lightheartedness which laughed away everything of an ideal sort with scorn and wit. Yet there was an intimate relationship between the two. The philosophy of common sense came to France, and was there travestied into a philosophy d’esprit. The organ of this French philosophy was the “Encyclopédie” of Diderot and D’Alembert, and its most brilliant contributors, Montesquieu, Helvetius, Voltaire, and Rousseau. Montesquieu, A.D. 1689-1755, whose “Esprit des Lois” in two years passed through twenty-two editions, wrote the “Lettres Persanes,” in which with biting wit he ridiculed the political, social, and ecclesiastical condition of France. Helvetius, A.D. 1715-1771, had his book, “De l’Esprit,” burnt in A.D. 1759 by order of parliament, and was made to retract, but this only increased his influence. Voltaire, A.D. 1694-1778, although treating in his writings of philosophical and theological matters, gives only a hash of English deism spiced with frivolous wit, showing the same tendency in his historical and poetical works, giving a certain eloquence to the commonest and filthiest subjects, as in his “Pucelle” and “Candide.” He obtained, however, an immense influence that extended far past his own days. To the same class belongs Jean Jacques Rousseau, A.D. 1712-1778, belonging to the Roman Catholic church only as a pervert for seventeen years in the middle of his life. Of a nobler nature than Voltaire, he yet often sank into deep immorality, as he tells without reserve, but also without any hearty penitence, in his Confessions. His whole life was taken up with the conflict for his ideals of freedom, nature, human rights, and human happiness. In his “Contrat Social” of A.D. 1762, he commends a return to the natural condition of the savage as the ideal end of man’s endeavour. His “Emile” of A.D. 1761 is of epoch-making importance in the history of education, and in it he eloquently sets forth his ideal of a natural education of children, while he sent all his own (natural) children to a foundling hospital.―The physician De la Mettrie, who died at the court of Frederick the Great in A.D. 1751, carried materialism to its most extreme consequences, and the German-Frenchman Baron Holbach, A.D. 1723-1789, wrote the “Système de la Nature,” which in two years passed through eighteen editions.495

§ 165.15. These seeds bore fruit in the French Revolution. Voltaire’s cry “Écrasez l’infame,” was directed against the church of the Inquisition, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the dragonnades, and Diderot had exclaimed that the world’s salvation could only come when the last king had been strangled with the entrails of the last priest. The constitutional National Assembly, A.D. 1789-1791, wished to set aside, not the faith of the people, but only the hierarchy, and to save the state from a financial crisis by the goods of the church. All cloisters were suppressed and their property sold. The number of bishops was reduced to one half, all ecclesiastical offices without a pastoral sphere were abolished, the clergy elected by the people paid by the state, and liberty of belief recognised as an inalienable right of man. The legislative National Assembly, A.D. 1791, 1792, made all the clergy take an oath to the constitution on pain of deposition. The pope forbad it under the same threat. Then arose a schism. Some 40,000 priests who refused the oath mostly quitted the country. Avignon (§ 110, 4) had been incorporated in the French territory. The terrorist National Convention, A.D. 1792-1795, which brought the king to the scaffold on January 21st, A.D. 1793, and the queen on October 16th, prohibited all Christian customs, on 5th October abolished the Christian reckoning of time, and on November 7th Christianity itself, laid waste 2,000 churches and converted Notre Dame into a Temple de la Raison, where a ballet-dancer represented the goddess of reason. Stirred up by the fanatical baron, “Anacharsis” Cloots, “the apostle of human freedom and the personal enemy of Jesus Christ,” the Archbishop Gobel, now in his sixtieth year, came forward, proclaiming his whole past life a fraud, and owning no other religion than that of freedom. On the other hand, the noble Bishop Gregoire of Blois, the first priest to support the constitution, who voted for the abolition of royalty, but not the execution of the king, was not driven by the terrorism of the convention, of which he was a member, from a bold and open profession of Christianity, appearing in his clerical dress and unweariedly protesting against the vandalism of the Assembly. Robespierre496 himself said, “Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer,” passed in A.D. 1794 the resolution, Le peuple français reconnait l’Être suprême et l’immortalité de l’âme, and issued an order to celebrate the fête de l’Être suprême. The Directory, A.D. 1795-1799, restored indeed Christian worship, but favoured the deistical sect of the Theophilanthropists, whose high-swelling phrases soon called forth public scorn, while in A.D. 1802 the first consul banished their worship from all churches. But meanwhile, in A.D. 1798, in order to nullify the opposition of the pope, French armies had overrun Italy and proclaimed the Church States a Roman Republic. Pius VI. was taken prisoner to France, and died in A.D. 1799 at Valence under the rough treatment of the French, without having in the least compromised himself or his office.497

§ 165.16. The Pseudo-Catholics.

The Abrahamites or Bohemian Deists. When Joseph II. issued his edict of toleration in A.D. 1781, a sect which had hitherto kept itself secret under the mask of Catholicism made its appearance in the Bohemian province of Pardubitz. The Abrahamites were descended from the old Hussites, and professed to follow the faith of Abraham before his circumcision. Their fundamental doctrine was deistic monotheism, and of the Bible they accepted only the ten commandments and the Lord’s Prayer. But as they would neither attend the Jewish synagogue nor the churches of any existing Christian sect, the emperor refused them religious toleration, drove them from their homes, and settled them in A.D. 1783 on the eastern frontiers. Many of them, in consequence of persecution, returned to the Catholic church, and even those who remained steadfast did not transmit their faith to their children.

§ 165.17.

The Frankists.―Jacob Leibowicz, the son of a Jewish rabbi in Galicia, attached himself in Turkey, where he assumed the name of Frank, to the Jewish sect of the Sabbatarians, who, repudiating the Talmud, adopted the cabbalistic book Sohar as the source of their more profound religious teaching. Afterwards in Podolia, which was then still Polish, he was esteemed among his numerous adherents as a Messiah sent of God. Bitterly hated by the rabbinical Jews, and accused of indulging in vile orgies in their assemblies, many of those Soharists were thrown into prison at the instigation of Bishop Dembowski of Kaminetz. But when they turned and accused their opponents of most serious crimes against Christendom, and, at Frank’s suggestion, pointing out what they alleged to be an identity between the book Sohar and the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and incarnation, made it known that they were inclined to become converts, they won the favour of the bishop. He arranged a disputation between the two parties, pronounced the Talmudists beaten, confiscated all available copies of the Talmud, dragged them through the streets tied to the tail of a horse, and then burnt them. Dembowski, however, died soon after in A.D. 1757, and the cathedral chapter expelled the Soharists from Kaminetz. They appealed to King Augustus III. and to Archbishop Lubienski of Lemberg, renewing their profession of faith in the Trinity, and promising to be subject to the pope. In a disputation with the Talmudists lasting three days they sought to prove that the Talmudists used Christian blood in their services, which afterwards led to the death of five of the Jews thus accused. By Frank’s advice, who took part neither in this nor in the former disputation, but was the secret leader of the whole movement, they now formally applied for admission into the Catholic church, and their leader now entered Lemberg in great state. They actually submitted to be thus driven by him, and 1,000 of his adherents were baptized at Lemberg. Frank was baptized at Warsaw under the name of Joseph, the king himself acting as sponsor. In all Catholic journals this event was celebrated as a signal triumph for the Catholic church. But Frank among his own disciples continued to play the rôle of a miracle-working Messiah. Hence in A.D. 1760 the Inquisition stepped in. Some of his followers were imprisoned, others banished, and he himself as a heresiarch condemned to confinement for life with hard labour, from which after thirteen years he was liberated on the first partition of Poland in A.D. 1772, through the favour of Catherine II., who employed him as secret political agent. Feeling that his life was insecure in Poland, he went to Moravia, and at Brünn reorganized his numerous and attached followers into a well-knit society, by which he was revered as the incarnation of the Deity, and his beautiful daughter Eva, brought up by her noble godmother, as “the divine Emuna.” How he was permitted, under the protection of the Catholic church, to continue here for sixteen years, playing the rôle of a Messiah, and to amass such wealth as enabled him to purchase, in A.D. 1788, from the impoverished prince of Homburg-Birstein his castle at Offenbach, with all the privileges attached to it, is an insoluble mystery. He now called himself Baron von Frank, formed with his followers from Moravia and Poland a brilliant establishment, which outwardly adhered to the Roman Catholic church, although he very seldom attended the Catholic services. Frank died in A.D. 1791, and was buried with great pomp, but without the presence of the Catholic clergy. His daughter Eva was able to maintain the extravagant establishment of her father for twenty-six years, when the debt resting on the castle reached three million florins. At last, in A.D. 1817, the long-threatened catastrophe occurred. Eva died suddenly, and a coffin said to contain her body was actually with all decorum laid in the grave.

§ 166. The Oriental Churches.

The oppressed condition of the orthodox church in the Ottoman empire continued unchanged. It had a more vigorous development in Russia, where its ascendency was unchallenged. Although the Russian church, from the time of its obtaining an independent patriarchate at Moscow, in A.D. 1589, was constitutionally emancipated from the mother church of Constantinople, it yet continued in close religious affinity with it. This was intensified by the adoption of the common confession, drawn up shortly before by Peter Mogilas (§ 152, 3). The patriarchal constitution in Russia, however, was but short-lived, for Peter I., in 1702, after the death of the Patriarch Hadrian, abolished the patriarchate, arrogated to himself as emperor the highest ecclesiastical office, and in A.D. 1721 constituted “the Holy Synod,” to which, under the supervision of a procurator guarding the rights of the state, he assigned the supreme direction of spiritual and ecclesiastical affairs. To these proposals the Patriarch of Constantinople gave his approval. In this reform of the church constitution Theophanes Procopowicz, Metropolitan of Novgorod, was the emperor’s right hand.―The monophysite church of Abyssinia was again during this period the scene of Christological controversies.

§ 166.1. The Russian State Church.―From the time of the liturgical reformation of the Patriarch Nikon (§ 163, 10) a new and peculiar service of song took the place of the old unison style that had previously prevailed in the Russian church. Without instrumental accompaniment, it was sustained simply by powerful male voices, and was executed, at least in the chief cities, with musical taste and charming simplicity. Among the theologians, the above-named Procopowicz, who died in A.D. 1736, occupied a prominent position. His “Handbook of Dogmatics,” without departing from the doctrines of his church, is characterized by learning, clearness of exposition, and moderation. From the middle of the century, however, especially among the superior clergy, there crept in a Protestant tendency, which indeed held quite firmly by the old theology of the œcumenical synods of the Greek Church, but set aside or laid little stress upon later doctrinal developments. Even the celebrated and widely used catechism, drawn up originally for the use of the Grand-duke Paul Petrovich, by his tutor, the learned Platón, afterwards Metropolitan of Moscow, was not quite free from this tendency. It found yet more decided expression in the dogmatic handbook of Theophylact, archimandrite of Moscow, published in A.D. 1773.―Continuation, § 206, 1.

§ 166.2. Russian Sects.―To the sects of the seventeenth century (§ 163, 10) are to be added spiritualistic gnostics of the eighteenth, in which we find a blending of western ideas with the old oriental mysticism. Among those were the Malakanen, or consumers of milk, because, in spite of the orthodox prohibition, they used milk during the fasts. They rejected all anointings, even chrism and priestly consecration, and acknowledged only spiritual anointing by the doctrine of Christ. They also volatilized the idea of baptism and the Lord’s supper into that of a merely spiritual cleansing and nourishing by the word of the gospel. Otherwise they led a quiet and honourable life. More important still in regard to numbers and influence were the Duchoborzen. Although belonging exclusively to the peasant class, they had a richly developed theological system of a speculative character, with a notable blending of theosophy, mysticism, Protestantism, and rationalism. They idealized the doctrine of the sacraments after the style of the Quakers, would have no special places of worship or an ordained clergy, refused to take oaths or engage in military service, and led peaceable and useful lives. They made their first appearance in Moscow in the beginning of the eighteenth century under Peter the Great, and spread through other cities of Old Russia.―Continuation, § 210, 3.

§ 166.3. The Abyssinian Church (§§ 64, 1; 73, 2).―About the middle of the century a monk appeared, proclaiming that, besides the commonly admitted twofold birth of Christ, the eternal generation of the Father and the temporal birth of the Virgin Mary, there was a third birth through anointing with the Holy Spirit in the baptism in Jordan. He thus convulsed the whole Abyssinian church, which for centuries had been in a state of spiritual lethargy. The abuna with the majority of his church held by the old doctrine, but the new also found many adherents. The split thus occasioned has continued till the present time, and has played no unimportant part in the politico-dynastic struggles of the last ten years (§ 184, 9).

II. The Protestant Churches.

§ 167. The Lutheran Church before “the Illumination.”

By means of the founding of the University of Halle in A.D. 1694 a fresh impulse was given to the pietist movement, and too often the whole German Church was embroiled in violent party strifes, in which both sides failed to keep the happy mean, and laid themselves open to the reproach of the adversaries. Spener died in A.D. 1705, Francke in A.D. 1727, and Breithaupt in A.D. 1732. After the loss of these leaders the Halle pietism became more and more gross, narrow, unscientific, regardless of the Church confession, frequently renouncing definite beliefs for hazy pious feeling, and attaching undue importance to pious forms of expression and methodistical modes of life. The conventionalism encouraged by it became a very Pandora’s box of sectarianism and fanaticism (§ 170, 1). But it had also set up a ferment in the church and in theology which created a wholesome influence for many years. More than 6,000 theologians from all parts of Germany had down to Francke’s death received their theological training in Halle, and carried the leaven of his spirit into as many churches and schools. A whole series of distinguished teachers of theology now rose in almost all the Lutheran churches of the German states, who, avoiding the onesidedness of the pietists and their opponents, taught and preached pure doctrine and a pious life. From Calixt they had learnt to be mild and fair towards the Reformed and Catholic churches, and by Spener they had been roused to a genuine and hearty piety. Gottfried Arnold’s protest, onesided as it was, had taught them to discover, even among heretics and sectaries, partial and distorted truths; and from Calov and Löscher they had inherited a zeal for pure doctrine. Most eminent among these were Albert Bengel, of Württemberg, who died in A.D. 1752, and Chr. Aug. Crusius of Leipzig, who died in A.D. 1775. But when the flood of “the Illumination” came rushing in upon the German Lutheran Church about the middle of the century, it overflowed even the fields sown by these noble men.

§ 167.1. The Pietist Controversies after the Founding of the Halle University (§ 159, 3).―Pietism, condemned by the orthodox universities of Leipzig and Wittenberg, was protected and encouraged in Halle. The crowds of students flocking to this new seminary roused the wrath of the orthodox. The Wittenberg faculty, with Deutschmann at its head, issued a manifesto in A.D. 1695, charging Spener with no less than 264 errors in doctrine. Nor were those of Leipzig silent, Carpzov going so far as to style the mild and peace-loving Spener a procella ecclesiæ. Other leading opponents of the pietists were Schelwig of Dantzig, Mayer of Wittenberg, and Fecht of Rostock. When Spener died in A.D. 1705 his opponents gravely discussed whether he could be thought of as in glory. Fecht of Rostock denied that it could be. Among the later champions of pure doctrine the worthiest and ablest was the learned Löscher, superintendent at Dresden, A.D. 1709-1747, who at least cannot be reproached with dead orthodoxy. His “Vollständiger Timotheus Verinus,” two vols., 1718, 1721, is by far the most important controversial work against pietism.498 Francis Buddeus of Jena for a long time sought ineffectually to bring about a reconciliation between Löscher and the pietists of Halle. In A.D. 1710 Francke and Breithaupt obtained a valorous colleague in Joachim Lange; but even he was no match for Löscher in controversy. Meanwhile pietism had more and more permeated the life of the people, and occasioned in many places violent popular tumults. In several states conventicles were forbidden; in others, e.g. Württemberg and Denmark, they were allowed.

§ 167.2. The orthodox regarded the pietists as a new sect, with dangerous errors that threatened the pure doctrine of the Lutheran Church; while the pietists maintained that they held by pure Lutheran orthodoxy, and only set aside its barren formalism and dead externalism for biblical practical Christianity. The controversy gathered round the doctrines of the new birth, justification, sanctification, the church, and the millennium.

The new birth. The orthodox maintained that regeneration takes place in baptism (§ 141, 13), every baptized person is regenerate; but the new birth needs nursing, nourishment, and growth, and, where these are wanting, reawakening. The pietists identified awakening or conversion with regeneration, considered that it was effected in later life through the word of God, mediated by a corporeal and spiritual penitential struggle, and a consequent spiritual experience, and sealed by a sensible assurance of God’s favour in the believer’s blessed consciousness. This inward sealing marks the beginning, introduction into the condition of babes in Christ. They distinguished a theologia viatorum, i.e. the symbolical church doctrine, and a theologia regenitorum, which has to do with the soul’s inner condition after the new birth. They have consequently been charged with maintaining that a true Christian who has arrived at the stage of spiritual manhood may and must in this life become free from sin.

Justification and Sanctification. In opposition to an only too prevalent externalizing of the doctrine of justification, Spener has taught that only living faith justifies, and if genuine must be operative, though not meritorious. Only in faith proved to be living by a pious life and active Christianity, but not in faith in the external and objective promises of God’s word, lies the sure guarantee of justification obtained. His opponents therefore accused him of confounding justification and sanctification, and depreciating the former in favour of the latter. And, though not by Spener, yet by many of his followers, justification was put in the background, and in a onesided manner stress was laid upon practical Christianity. Spener and Francke had expressly preached against worldly dissipation and frivolity, and condemned dancing, the theatre, card-playing, as detrimental to the progress of sanctification, and therefore sinful; while the orthodox regarded them as matters of indifference. Besides this, the pietists held the doctrine of a day of grace, assigned to each one within the limit of his earthly life (terminism).

The Church and the Pastorate. Orthodoxy regarded word and sacrament and the ministry which administered them as the basis and foundation of the church; pietism held that the individual believers determined the character and existence of the church. In the one case the church was thought to beget, nurse, and nourish believers; in the other believers, constituted, maintained, and renewed the church, accomplishing this best by conventicles, in which living Christianity preserved itself and diffused its influence abroad. The orthodox laid great stress upon clerical ordination and the grace of office; pietists on the person and his faith. Spener had taught that only he who has experienced in his own heart the power of the gospel, i.e. he who has been born again, can be a true preacher and pastor. Löscher maintained that the official acts of an unconverted preacher, if only he be orthodox, may be blessed as well as those of a converted man, because saving power lies not in the person of the preacher, but in the word of God which he preaches, in its purity and simplicity, and in the sacraments which he dispenses in accordance with their institution. The pietists then went so far as absolutely to deny that saving results could follow the preaching of an unconverted man. The proclamation of forgiveness by the church without the inward sealing had for them no meaning; yea, they regarded it as dangerous, because it quieted conscience and made sinners secure. Hence they keenly opposed private confession and churchly absolution. Of a special grace of office they would know nothing: the true ordination is the new birth; each regenerate one, and such a one only, is a true priest. The orthodox insisted above all on pure doctrine and the church confession; the pietists too regarded this as necessary, but not as the main thing. Spener decidedly maintained the duty of accepting the church symbols; but later pietists rejected them as man’s work, and so containing errors. Among the orthodox, again, some went so far as to claim for their symbols absolute immunity from error. Spener’s opposition to the compulsory use of fixed Scripture portions, prescribed forms of prayer, and the exorcism formulary occasioned the most violent contentions. On the other hand, his reintroduction of the confirmation service before the first communion, which had fallen into general desuetude, was imitated, and soon widely prevailed, even among the orthodox.

Eschatology. Spener had interpreted the biblical doctrine of the 1,000 years’ reign as meaning that, after the overthrow of the papacy and the conversion of heathens and Jews, a period of the most glorious and undisturbed tranquillity would dawn for the kingdom of Christ on earth as prelude to the eternal sabbath. His opponents denounced this as chiliasm and fanaticism.

There was, finally, a controversy about Divine providence occasioned by the founding of Francke’s orphan house at Halle. The pietists pointed to the establishment and growth of this institution as an instance of immediate divine providence; while Löscher, by indicating the common means employed to secure success, reduced the whole affair to the domain of general and daily providence, without denying the value of the strong faith in God and the active love that characterized its founder, as well as the importance of the Divine blessing which rested upon the work.499

§ 167.3. Theology (§ 159, 4).―The last two important representatives of the Old Orthodox School were Löscher, who, besides his polemic against pietism, made learned contributions to biblical philology and church history; and his companion in arms, Cyprian of Gotha, who died in A.D. 1745, the ablest combatant of Arnold’s “Ketzerhistorie,” and opponent of union efforts and of the papacy.―The Pietist School, more fruitful in practical than scientific theology, contributed to devotional literature many works that will never be forgotten. The learned and voluminous writer Joachim Lange, who died A.D. 1744, the most skilful controversialist among the Halle pietists, author of the “Halle Latin Grammar,” which reached its sixtieth edition in A.D. 1809, published a commentary on the whole Bible in seven folio vols. after the Cocceian method. Of importance as a historian of the Reformation was Salig of Wolfenbüttel, who died in A.D. 1738. Christian Thomasius at first attached himself to the pietists as an opponent of the rigid adherence to the letter of the orthodox, but was repudiated by them as an indifferentist. To him belongs the honour of having turned public opinion against the persecution of witches (§ 117, 4). Out of the contentions of pietists and orthodox there now rose a third school, in which Lutheran theology and learning were united with genuine piety and profound thinking, decided confessionalism with moderation and fairness. Its most distinguished representatives were Hollaz of Pomerania, died 1713 (“Examen Theologicum Acroamaticum”); Buddeus of Jena, died 1729 (“Hist. Ecclst. V.T.,” “Instit. Theol. Dogma,” “Isagoge Hist. Theol. Univ.”); J. Chr. Wolf of Homburg, died 1739 (“Biblioth. Hebr.,” “Curæ Philol. et Crit. in N.T.”); Weismann of Tübingen, died 1747 (“Hist. Ecclst.”); Carpzov of Leipzig, died A.D. 1767 as superintendent at Lübeck (“Critica s. V.T.,” “Introductio ad Libros cen. V.T.,” “Apparatus Antiquitt. s. Codicis”); J. H. Michaelis of Halle, died 1731 (“Biblia. Hebr. c. Variis Lectionibus et Brev. Annott.,” “Uberiores Annott. in Hagiograph.”); assisted in both by his learned nephew Chr. Ben. Michaelis of Halle, died 1764; J. G. Walch of Jena, died 1755 (“Einl. in die Religionsstreitigkeiten,” “Biblioth. Theol. Selecta,” “Biblioth. Patristica,” “Luther’s Werke”); Chr. Meth. Pfaff of Tübingen, died 1760 (“K. G., K. Recht, Dogmatik, Moral”); L. von Mosheim of Helmstädt [Helmstadt] and Göttingen, died 1755, the father of modern church history (“Institt. Hist. Ecclst.,” “Commentarii Rebus Christ. ante Constant. M.,” “Dissertationes,” etc.); J. Alb. Bengel of Stuttgart, died 1752 (“Gnomon N.T.,” a commentary on the N.T. distinguished by pregnancy of expression and profundity of thought; from his interpretation of Revelation he expected the millennium to begin in A.D. 1836); and Chr. A. Crusius of Leipzig, died 1775 (“Hypomnemata ad Theol. Propheticam.”)―A fourth theological school arose out of the application of the mathematical method of demonstration by the philosopher Chr. von Wolff of Halle, who died A.D. 1754. Wolff attached himself to the philosophical system of Leibnitz, and sought to unite philosophy and Christianity; but under the manipulation of his logico-mathematical method of proof he took all vitality out of the system, and the pre-established harmony of the world became a purely mechanical clockwork. He looked merely to the logical accuracy of Christian truths, without seeking to penetrate their inner meaning, gave formal exercise to the understanding, while the heart was left empty and cold; and thus inevitably revelation and mystery made way for a mere natural theology. Hence the charge brought against the system of tending to fatalism and atheism, not only by narrow pietists like Lange, but by able and liberal theologians like Buddeus and Crusius, was quite justifiable. By a cabinet order of Frederick William I. in A.D. 1723 Wolff was deposed, and ordered within two days, on pain of death, to quit the Prussian states. But so soon as Frederick II. ascended the throne, in A.D. 1740, he recalled the philosopher to Halle from Marburg, where he had meanwhile taught with great success.500 Sig. Jac. Baumgarten, the pious and learned professor in Halle, who died in A.D. 1757, was the first to introduce Wolff’s method into theology. In respect of contents his theology occupies essentially the old orthodox ground. The ablest promoter of the system was John Carpov of Weimar, who died in A.D. 1768 (“Theol. Revelata Meth. Scientifica Adornata”). When applied to sermons, the Wolffian method led to the most extreme insipidity and absurdity.

§ 167.4. Unionist Efforts.―The distinguished theologian Chr. Matt. Pfaff, chancellor of the University of Tübingen, who, without being numbered among the pietists, recognised in pietism a wholesome reaction against the barren worship of the letter which had characterized orthodoxy, regarded a union between the Lutheran and Reformed churches on their common beliefs, which in importance far exceeded the points of difference, as both practicable and desirable; and in A.D. 1720 expressed this opinion in his “Alloquium Irenicum ad Protestantes,” in which he answered the challenge of the “Corpus Evangelicorum” at Regensburg (§ 153, 1). His proposal, however, found little favour among Lutheran theologians. Not only Cyprian of Gotha, but even such conciliatory theologians as Weismann of Tübingen and Mosheim of Helmstädt [Helmstadt], opposed it. But forty years later a Lutheran theologian, Heumann of Göttingen, demonstrated that “the Reformed doctrine of the supper is true,” and proposed, in order to end the schism, that Lutherans should drop their doctrine of the supper and the Reformed their doctrine of predestination. This pamphlet, edited after the author’s death by Sack of Berlin, in A.D. 1764, produced a great sensation, and called forth a multitude of replies on the Lutheran side, the best of which were those of Walch of Jena and Ernesti of Leipzig. Even within the Lutheran church, however, it found considerable favour.

§ 167.5. Theories of Ecclesiastical Law.―Of necessity during the first century of the Protestant church its government was placed in the hands of the princes, who, because there were no others to do so, dispensed the jura episcopalia as præcipua membra ecclesiæ. What was allowed at first in the exigency of these times came gradually to be regarded as a legal right. Orthodox theology and the juristic system associated with it, especially that of Carpzov, justified this assumption in what is called the episcopal system. This theory firmly maintains the mediæval distinction between the spiritual and civil powers as two independent spheres ordained of God; but it installs the prince as summus episcopus, combining in his person the highest spiritual with the highest civil authority. In lands, however, where more than one confession held sway, or where a prince belonging to a different section of the church succeeded, the practical difficulties of this theory became very apparent; as, e.g., when a Reformed or Romish prince had to be regarded as summus episcopus of a Lutheran church. Driven thus to seek another basis for the claims of royal supremacy, a new theory, that of the territorial system, was devised, according to which the prince possessed highest ecclesiastical authority, not as præcipuum membrum ecclesiæ, but as sovereign ruler in the state. The headship of the church was therefore not an independent prerogative over and above that of civil government, but an inherent element in it: cujus regio, illius et religio. The historical development of the German Reformation gave support to this theory (§ 126, 6), as seen in the proceedings of the Diet of Spires in A.D. 1526, in the Augsburg and Westphalian Peace. A scientific basis was given it by Puffendorf of Heidelberg, died A.D. 1694, in alliance with Hobbes (§ 163, 3). It was further developed and applied by Christian Thomasius of Halle, died A.D. 1728, and by the famous J. H. Böhmer in his “Jus Ecclesiasticum Potestantium.” Thomasius’ connexion with the pietists and his indifference to confessions secured for the theory a favourable reception in that party. Spener himself indeed preferred the Calvinistic presbyterial constitution, because only in it could equality be given to all the three orders, ministerium ecclesiasticum, magistratus politicus, status œconomicus. This protest by Spener against the two systems was certainly not without influence upon the construction of a third theory, the collegial system, proposed by Pfaff of Tübingen, died A.D. 1760. According to this scheme there belonged to the sovereign as such only the headship of the church, jus circa sacra, while the jura in sacra, matters pertaining to doctrine, worship, ecclesiastical law and its administration, installation of clergy, and excommunication, as jura collegialia, belonged to the whole body of church members. The normal constitution therefore required the collective vote of all the members through their synods. But outward circumstances during the Reformation age had necessitated the relegating the discharge of these collegial rights to the princes, which in itself was not unallowable, if only the position be maintained that the prince acts ex commisso, and is under obligation to render an account to those who have commissioned him. This system, on account of its democratic character, found hearty supporters among the later rationalists. But as a matter of fact nowhere was any of the three systems consistently carried out. The constitution adopted in most of the national churches was a weak vacillation between all the three.501

§ 167.6. Church Song (§ 159, 3) received, during the first half of the century, many valuable contributions. Two main groups of singers may be distinguished:

The pietistic school, characterized by a biblical and practical tendency. The spiritual life of believers, the work of grace in conversion, growth in holiness, the varying conditions and experiences of the religious life, were favourite themes. They were fitted, not so much for use in the public services, as for private devotion, and few comparatively have been retained in collections of church hymns. The later productions of this school sank more and more into sentimentalism and allegorical and fanciful play of words. We may distinguish among the Halle pietists an older school, A.D. 1690-1720, and a younger, A.D. 1720-1750. The former, coloured by the fervent piety of Francke, produced simple, hearty, and often profound songs. The most distinguished representatives were Freylinghausen, died A.D. 1739, Francke’s son-in-law, and director of the Halle Orphanage, editor in A.D. 1717 of a hymn-book widely used among the pietists, was author of the hymns “Pure Essence, spotless Fount of Light,” “The day expires;” Chr. Fr. Richter, physician to the Orphanage, died A.D. 1711, author of thirty-three beautiful hymns, including “God, whom I as Love have known;” Emilia Juliana, Countess of Schwarzburg Rudolstadt, died A.D. 1706, who wrote 586 hymns, including “Who knows how near my end may be?” Schröder, pastor in Magdeburg, died A.D. 1728, wrote “One thing is needful: Let me deem;” Winckler, cathedral preacher of Magdeburg, died A.D. 1722, author of “Strive, when thou art called of God;” Dessler, rector of Nuremburg, died A.D. 1722, composer of “I will not let Thee go, Thou help in time of need,” “O Friend of souls, how well is me;” Gotter, died A.D. 1735, who wrote, “O Cross, we hail thy bitter reign;” Cresselius, pastor in Dusseldorf [Düsseldorf], author of “Awake, O man, and from thee shake.” The younger Halle school represents pietism in its period of decay. Its best representatives are J. J. Rambach, professor at Giessen, died A.D. 1735, who wrote “I am baptized into thy name;” Allendorf, court preacher at Cöthen, died A.D. 1773, editor of a collection of poetic renderings from the Canticles.

The poets of the orthodox party, although opposed to the pietists, are all more or less touched by the fervent piety of Spener. Neumeister, pastor at Hamburg, died A.D. 1756, was an orthodox hymn-writer of thoroughly conservative tendencies, zealously opposing the onesidedness of pietism, with a strong, ardent faith in the orthodox creed, but without much significance as a poet. Schmolck, pastor at Schweidnitz, died A.D. 1737, wrote over 1,000 hymns, including “Blessed Jesus, here we stand,” “Hosanna to the Son of David! Raise,” “Welcome, thou Victor in the strife.” Sol. Franck, secretary to the consistory at Weimar, died A.D. 1725, wrote over 300 hymns, including “Rest of the weary, thou thyself art resting now.” The mediating party between pietism and orthodoxy, represented by Bengel and Crusius in theology, is represented among hymn-writers by J. Andr. Rothe, died A.D. 1758, and by Mentzer, died A.D. 1734, composer of “Oh, would I had a thousand tongues!” In A.D. 1750 J. Jac. von Moser collected a list of 50,000 spiritual songs printed in the German language.―Continuation, § 171, 1.

§ 167.7. Sacred Music (§ 159, 5).―Decadence of musical taste accompanied the lowering of the poetic standard, and pietists went even further than the orthodox in their imitation and adaptation of operatic airs. Freylinghausen, not only himself composed many such melodies, but made a collection from various sources in A.D. 1704, retaining some of the more popular of the older tunes.―There now arose, amid all this depravation of taste, a noble musician, who, like the good householder, could bring out of his treasure things new and old. J. Seb. Bach, the most perfect organist who ever lived, was musical director of the School of St. Thomas, Leipzig, and died A.D. 1750. He turned enthusiastically to the old chorale, which no one had ever understood and appreciated as he did. He harmonized the old chorales for the organ, made them the basis for elaborate organ studies, gave expression to his profoundest feelings in his musical compositions and in his recitatives, duets, and airs, reproduced at the sacred concerts many fine old chorales wedded to most appropriate Scripture passages. He is for all times the unrivalled master in fugue, harmony, and modulation. In his passion music we have expression given to the profoundest ideas of German Protestantism in the noblest music. After Bach comes a master in oratorio music hitherto unapproached, G. Fr. Handel of Halle, who, from A.D. 1710 till his death in A.D. 1759, lived mostly in England. For twenty-five years he wrought for the opera-house, and only in his later years gave himself to the composing of oratorios. His operas are forgotten, but his oratorios will endure to the end of time. His most perfect work is the “Messiah,” which Herder describes as a Christian epic in music. Of his other great compositions, “Samson,” “Judas Maccabæus,” and “Jephtha” may be mentioned.502