1850.] Hottinger, Spanheim, Basnage. 63 published and unpublished sources for the purpose, with the liberality of princes and cities to support his undertaking. This work, which forms. an epoch, exhibits in thirteen volumes as many centuries of the Christian era, each century in sixteen sections, with the express design of justifying the Reformation and confuting the Papacy. The Centuries found such approval, that for a hundred years after, it was counted sufficient to compile text-books out of their material and in their spirit. In the dogmatic works of the seventeenth century however, particularly in GERHARD'S Loci theologici, and in QUENSTEDT's Theologia dogmatico-polemica, we find collected, under the same controversial view, a vast mass of material for dogmatic history, which is still in part of great worth; while among works treating of single periods, the most important place belongs to SECKENDORF's History of the Reformation. In the Reformed church, JOHN H. HOTTINGER of Zurich, proposed to furnish a counterpart to the Centuries. His work6 shows great knowledge, particularly of the East, also order and love for truth, but is unequal, five volumes being given to the sixteenth century alone, and drags in much foreign matter according to the taste which then prevailed, the history for instance of Jews, Pagans and Mohammedans, notices of remarkable natural phenomena, as foretokening the fortunes of the church, earthquakes, locusts, famines, floods, monstrosities, eclipses of the sun and moon, etc. FREDERICK SPANHEIM, of Leyden, grounded his Summa historiae eccl. (A. D. 1689) on an accurate use of sources, and searching criticism, having in view also the confutation of Baronius. The two Frenchmen, JAMES BASNAGE,7 minister at the Hague, and SAMUEL BASNAGE,8 minister in Zutphen, wrote with controversial reference, the first to Bossuet, the last to Baronius, both proposing to show, but especially James, that the true church of Christ has never failed, and that it has had true witnesses at all times. With far better success, however, the Reformed church, the French especially, cultivated during the seventeenth century, in controversy with the Roman Catholic theologians, particular parts of history, shedding light on patristic antiquity, the course of the Papacy, and the period of the Reformation, with profound learning and keen penetration, though not indeed without some controversial bias. Such monographies, still of great value in part, reflect credit on the names of HosPINIAN and HEIDEGGER among the German Swiss; BEZA, DU PLESSIS MORNAY, PETER DU MOULIN, DAVID BLONDEL, JEAN DAILLE In 9 voll. Tig. 1655-67. 7 Histoire de l'église depuis Jésus Chr. jusqu'à présent. Rotterd. 1699. Annales politico-ecclesiastici, etc. 1706, 3 voll. (reach only to A. D. 602). (Dallaeus), CL. SAUMAISE (Salmasius), JEAN CLAUDE, ISAAC BEAUSOBRE, among the French; archbishop USHER, H. DODWEll, J. PEARSON, W. BEVERIDGE, GILBERT BURNET, JOSEPH BINGHAM, GEORGE BULL, W. CAVE, J. E. GRABE,9 and later the Dissenter NATH. LARDNER, among the English, who directed their main attention to the government and antiquities of the church, with an eye to the Presbyterian controversy, as well as to that with Rome. § 9. (2) The Pietistic Period. The next epoch after the Magdeburg Centuries was produced by GOTTFRIED ARNOLD (†1714), a friend and follower of SPENER, for a short time professor at Giessen, by his "Impartial History of the Church and of Heretics from the beginning of the N. Testament to the year 1688," (Frankf. 1699 f.), which precisely reverses the principle that reigned before. Instead of the prevailing church, he made the sects rather to be the channel of progress for the Christian life, and is the historian accordingly of unchurchly separatistic religion. This grows out of the decided practical tendency of Pietism, and the resistance it suffered from Lutheran orthodoxy. Arnold placed the essence of Christianity in experimental personal piety, which seemed to him at home with the oppressed and persecuted minority, while the reigning visible church, Protestant as well as Catholic, was felt to be more or less an apostasy. The orthodox church historians of the seventeenth century also took part, indeed, with the Albigenses and Waldenses, with Wickliffe, Huss, and other "witnesses of the truth," in the Middle Ages, against the reigning Catholicism. Arnold, however, carried the same way of thinking back also into the first six centuries, or at least to the age of Constantine, as well as forward into the Protestant church; which of course made a very material difference. Still he could not carry out absolutely his own principle. Being a pious man, and holding fast to the essential doctrines of the Reformation, he stood more in harmony at bottom with the ancient church orthodoxy, than with the Gnostics, Arians, Pelagians, and other such sects, although he espoused their cause as far as possible. Thus bent on showing fair play however, as no historian before, to all sorts of heretics and schismatics, particularly to the Mystics, for whom he had a special predilection, Arnold fell into the most gross wrong towards the representatives of orthodoxy, ascribing to them the basest motives, and aspersing their character in A German Lutheran originally, who passed over to the Episcopal church (†1711). 1850.] Milner's Church History. 65 every possible way; so that his work, in contradiction to its own title, is a passionate party interest against the Catholics, and still more against the orthodox Protestants, most of all the Lutheran church. It makes a most gloomy impression, and is adapted to upset all faith in one holy apostolical church, to undermine confidence in God's presence in history, and in the ultimate triumph of good, and to promote in this way a hopeless skepticism. Many Pietists indeed were highly pleased with the History of Heretics, and the celebrated THOMASIUS of Halle, who stands halfway between Pietism and the "Aufklärung," proclaimed it the best of books next to the Bible. SPENER however was by no means satisfied with it, and the orthodox Lutherans, CYPRIAN, for instance, VEIEL, CORVINUS, GÖTZ, LÖSCHER, FAUSTKING, WACHTER, exposed a mass of perversions and errors in it, matching its intemperance in some cases however with the intemperate passion of their replies.10 Arnold at all events has the merit of having introduced a new way of looking at the sects, and of having laid special stress on the relation of church history to the purposes of piety. He was the first also, who wrote in the German language instead of the Latin, though in that tasteless periwig style, it must be confessed, full of half and whole Latin. isms, which characterizes the period after Mitz down to Bodmer, and makes it the most gloomy in the history of German literature. By the side of Arnold may be placed, in some sense, the later English historian JOSEPH MILNER, († 1797), a pious minister of the English Episcopal Church. His Church History, in five volumes, reaches to the Reformation, on which he is specially full, and follows the current division by centuries. He too saw in the sects, even in the Paulicians and Catharists, the main bearers of piety, and in the Middle Ages accordingly, which find very poor favor at his hands, by far the most room is given to the Waldenses. He too wrote for edification, in the spirit of Methodistical piety, which is intimately related to that of the Pietists, though it has less sympathy with the inward contemplative life and the different forms of mysticism. Greatly surpassed by Arnold in learning and original research, Milner excels him on the other hand in popular style and in fairness towards the reigning Church of the first six centuries. Pope Gregory, the Great, for example, fares much better in his hands. His aim moreover is exclusively practical, leading him thus to pass over entirely all subjects that serve not the purpose of edi 10 These writings may be found quoted in the third volume of J. G. WALCH'S Bibliotheca Theologica selecta. Jenae. p. 129, sqq. They appear at large, with re. plies and illustrations, in the third volume of the Schaffhausen edition of Arnold's History (1742). fication, after his own narrow view, such as church government, most theological controversies, the scholastic and mystical divinity, sacred art and learning. He proposes to exhibit only the spiritual life of the invisible church.11 Milner's work accordingly is almost entirely free from controversy, which abounds with Arnold, and is so far much better suited for practical and popular use, a work still worthy indeed of recommendation. Nay, we may even say that it was the best church history of this sort, till NEANDER again raised into credit the interest of practical piety, the truth in Pietism and Methodism, only on a vastly more liberal scale indeed and with immensely greater knowlecge, without consigning other interests for this reason to omission or neglect. § 10. (3). The Pragmatic Supranaturalistic Period. The third form of Protestant church history, here named, resulted from the conjunction of the two previous principles, the Old Orthodox By supranaturalism in the historical sense,12 we un and the Pietistic. "Or as he himself says in his introduction: "Nothing but what appears to me to belong to Christ's kingdom, shall be admitted, genuine piety is the only thing, which I intend to celebrate. He was right so far in styling his work, “An Ecclesiastical History on a new plan." How onesided his views of piety were, however, may be seen in his judgment, for instance, of Tertullian, of whom he says: "Were it not for some light which he throws on the state of Christianity in his own times, he would scarcely deserve to be distinctly noticed. I have seldom seen so large a collection of tracts, all professedly on Christian subjects, containing so little matter for useful instruction." (Vol. I. Boston ed. p. 220). When on the other hand, he exalts Cyprian so high, defends him against the reproaches of Mosheim, and places him far above Origen, he is inconsistent with himself, since Cyprian was formed throughout on Tertullian's writings, making them his daily food, and contributed more than any of the older fathers to the development of the principle of Catholicism, the hierarchy in particular. He was in fact the first who saw in the Roman See the cathedra Petri, and the centre of church unity (unde unitas sacerdotalis exorta est,) or at least the first who distinctly spoke of it in this way. Augustine, Anselm, and Bernard, Milner owns as truly pious men, and dwells upon them with delight; but still he presents them only on one side, so far namely as they seem to agree with his own theory of religion; their decidedly Catholic features, he either overlooks altogether, or else treats them as accidental, merely outward appendages, which are to be excused in them on the ground of the reigning spirit of their age, whereas in truth they enter most intimately and influentially into their whole system of teaching and manner of life. 12 For in the doctrinal and philosophical sense the old orthodoxy, and every Christian theology indeed, is also supranaturalistic; that is, it rests upon the view that Christianity is a supernatural revelation; while Rationalism allows no such revelation, either declaring it impossible, or else in its undue estimate of man's powers, his reason in particular, holding it to be of no use. 1850.] Supranaturalistic Period. 67 derstand the last outshoot of the Protestant orthodoxy, that tendency namely in theology, which under the influence of Pietism and Liberal Christianity relaxed considerably from the strict and exclusive orthodoxy of the seventeenth century, took refuge in the Bible simply instead of the church symbols, and in a number of its representatives approached itself, the very threshold of Rationalism. The church historians also of this period accordingly, including some who date before the proper supranaturalism, show no longer the old stiffness and severity; confessional controversy and horror of heretics, in whom Arnold had found so much good to celebrate, fall more and more into the background, and make room for a conciliatory irenical spirit, of which an example had been previously given, in several monographies, by CALIXTUS, that man so actively persecuted by the orthodox zealots of the seventeenth century. The effort prevails to do justice to all parties; and in truth the works of a Mosheim, Schröckh and Walch, must be allowed the praise of an impartiality, which belonged to neither of the schools before noticed. This virtue however, it must be owned, loses itself at times in doctrinal indifference and latitudinarianism. We style the period Pragmatic, in view of its reigning method. It had come to be required of the historian namely, from the time of Mosheim and Walch, that he should proceed pragmatically; that is, that he should not simply relate events, but investigate also their causes psychologically in the secret springs and inclinations of the human heart, for the purpose of making history practically useful. This gave the treatment of it a very subjective character, especially in time under the hands of the Rationalists, the reference of events being for the most part to very external, accidental and arbitrary causes, as their supposed principle and reason. In the diligent explanation of these subjective factors, sight was lost of the claims of the objective idea, and in the end, of the highest and most sacred power in history, the all-ruling providence of God, the spirit of Jesus Christ immanent in his own Church. Here it is to be remarked, that since the middle of the last century our science has been cultivated and advanced almost exclusively in Germany, by the Lutheran or more lately the United Evangelical Church especially, whilst in other Protestant countries it has made no progress whatever. Among works of a universal character is to be mentioned first, CHR. E. WEISMANN'S Introductio in memorabilia ecclesiastica historiæ sacræ N. T. etc. (Tübingen, 1718), distinguished for its pious, mild spirit, its quiet, moderate tone, its predilection for the school of Spener and the better Mystics, and its regard to practical ends in the selection of its matter. He was soon eclipsed however by the celebrated chancellor of |