LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOGMAS; BY DR. AUGUSTUS NEANDER. EDITED BY DR. J. L. JACOBI. TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY J. E. RYLAND, M.A., EDITOR OF FOSTER'S LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE, AND OF DR KITTO & MEMOIRS; THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, ETC., ETC IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 1888. BT 24531 LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. H PREFACE. NEANDER'S Lectures on the History of Christian Dogmas were among those to which he attached peculiar importance, and which he felt special pleasure in delivering. His hearers will recollect with interest his vivid delineation of the great men whose forms he summoned to pass before them, and how, inspired by the power of Christian life in them, he described sympathetically the course of their development. Elevated himself by the truth and greatness of his ideas, he attracted his hearers into an admiration of their sublimity, and infused into them something of the love for those great minds which filled his own heart. When obliged to animadvert on their defects, he did it earnestly, yet as one who was fully conscious of his own. Neander, in all he performed, ever kept the Ethical in closest connexion with the Scientific. Deep truthfulness was a leading feature of his character; it held him back from wishing to advance Truth itself by disingenuous methods. Of this he gave proof, frequently and plainly, when his conduct was censured (as was often the case, down to a recent period) by those who were imperfectly acquainted with his position, or less scrupulous than himself about the means they employed. It was the truthfulness, also, stamped on his works which inspired confidence, for few Historians were so well qualified to receive and to communicate the Historical with unalloyed receptivity. His method was adapted to excite cautious deliberation, for he clearly marked the respective limits of Probability and Certainty, and when Truth was found he loved to make it fruitful by protracted contemplation; but if genuine Objectivity consists not merely in confidence of assertion but in a truthful representation of fact, seldom has it been attained by a historian in so high a degree. The temptation-one of the severest-to model History according to certain preconceived aims and opinions, whether dogmatic or not, scarcely affected him; he had overcome it beforehand by his oblivion of self, and would sometimes say, that nothing seemed easier to him, than to let historical phenomena be taken for what they were worth. And yet, possessing the feelings of a powerful soul, he was decided in his likes and dislikes; objects were not regarded by him with a cold indifference, but even in writing ecclesiastical History, he was firm in his belief that the heart made the Theologian. The same devotedness to historical fact and the same love of Truth impelled him to study the most original sources of information. He wished to learn events from their actual exhibition, and to see Persons, as it were, face to face. He fixed his steady gaze on Life in all its amplitude and depth; he penetrated, as by divination, into the hidden ground of appearances, and filled up the blank where information was wanting. If he had to treat of religious characteristics, he would sketch with cautious, but certain strokes, the outlines belonging to both Times and Persons, and from the whole of the developments would make himself master of the separate parts, especially in reference to doctrinal distinctions. Perhaps at times his apprehension of the External would be less vivid, yet his inner sense of the Christian import of events would be so much the more awake; and since he freed History from the confused multiplicity of petty details, he invested it with that meditative repose which was suited to his spirit, and corresponded to the firmness of those eternal principles of action in the contemplation of which he loved to linger. Yet, along with this simplicity and tenderness, what versatility and vividness in the conception of peculiarities! It was his favourite point of view to observe the efficiency of the one Gospel in the diversity of human gifts, and to contemplate Christianity as a divine power, which extended its saving influence to all parts of human nature. For himself, he felt most akin to those souls who by a more gentle process of conversion experienced it as an ennobling of all that was purely human; but he also knew how to estimate in their full importance the more violent agitations of a soul in which Christianity gained the ascendancy by conflict. Hence, whether he depicted the love of the Gospel in Chrysostom, or its faith in Augustin; the elevated repose of the one under the storms of outward life, or the inward conflicts of the other, we shall find an equally sympathetic interest, an equal understanding, as if each had been a reflection of his own experience. He treats with the same loving thoroughness the meditative stillness of monastic life, and the restless activity of a Boniface. His inclination led him chiefly to the original and free developments which bordered closely on the Apostolic age; but who is there, we may ask, who has traced more accurately scholastic speculation in its strictly ecclesias tical, as well as its freer forms,-in its dialectic not less than its mystic ramifications, and with a more religious and speculative insight, than He, to whom we are indebted for new views of not a few of its performances? What we have said of Neander's method of treating Persons Parties, and Circumstances, will equally apply to his discussion of particular dogmas. Assuming as an axiom that Christianity, subjectively considered, is the experience of the facts of Redemption in the heart, but that Dogmas are the intellectual expression of the Christian Life, he examines them to discover how far communion with Christ is their animating principle. Every dogma was to him the answer to a question of religious need, and he strove to ascertain what this need might be under what conditions it originated, as well as the attempt that was made to satisfy it. His patient and loving investigations were rewarded by his presenting in its native splendour the gold of divine Truth, rescued from the distorted and decaying forms in which it had lain through ages of neglect. Even in the labyrinth of the Gnostic systems, as well as under the hardest crust of Scholasticism, he could descry Christian Truth; but with joyous satisfaction he presented those developments especially, in which, as in the Protestant fundamental doctrines, the full contents of the evangelic Consciousness were to be seen in their simplest form. Yet mindful of the Apostle's words, that we have this treasure in earthen vessels, he recognised in all systems something disproportionate to the eternal contents of Divine Revelation. There alone the light was pure; everywhere else was an unequal mixture of light and shade. He believed with enthusiastic confidence in the final triumph of Truth, but he also knew the potency of Sin; a |