2

ances of individual writers, but even the very composition of the canon. They preferred to be inconsequent rather than to be fettered, and gave to Faith an authority co-ordinate with that of Scripture. But their successors regarded Faith as the exclusive product of Scripture, and dependent for its authority on Scripture only. They turned the inspirationdogma into "an iron formula, a painful juridical fetter of conscience to be imposed on Christians to the detriment of fresh religious life and the destruction of a just appreciation of the Bible." And thus they directly impaired the authority of Scripture. For "as incredible praises given to men," says Hooker," "do often abate and impair the credit of the deserved commendation, so we must likewise take great heed lest by attributing to Scripture more than it can have, the incredibility of that do cause even those things which it hath abundantly to be less reverently esteemed!" "It is," says Richard Baxter, "the Devil's last method to undo by over-doing, and so to destroy the authority of the Apostles by over-magnifying."

Rathmann of Lübeck (1612-1628) tried to make a stand against these errors. He argued that to restrict all real communication with God to a study of the Scriptures, to confine to them the agency of the Holy Spirit, and to endow them with the living powers of the Deity was to dishonour Christ and the Holy Spirit, and to put fellowship with an impersonal thing in the place of fellowship with a living Saviour. He called the Scriptures "a passive instrument, the light of an object, instrumental, historical." But his truer views were indignantly rejected. The theological faculties of six universities, ascribing to Scripture an inherent efficacy for salvation, condemned him as a Calvinist, as a despiser of

4

The commentators of the Reformed Churches (Calvin, Beza, Zwingli, Bucer, Mercer, &c.), were more independently exegetical than the Lutheran commentators (Musculus, Chytraeus, Brentius, Bugenhagen, Bullinger, &c.), who proved Lutheran dogmatics by digressions (see Göbel, Die Rel. Eigenthümlichkeit d. Ref. und Luth. Kirche, Bonn, 1837; Tholuck, Verm. Schriften, ii. 330).

2 Hagenbach, Hist. of Ref. i. 161.

3 Eccl. Pol. bk. ii. c. 8, § 1.

Wittenberg, Königsberg, Helmstädt, Dantzig, Jena, Leipzig.

the external word, as a sympathiser with Schwenckfeld and with mystic fanaticism. In their system the sole work of the Holy Ghost is to give us assurance that the doctrines of Scripture are true. Chemnitz seems to deny the possibility of faith in Christ unless it be preceded by faith in the whole. of Scripture as undoubted truth. We soon arrive at such superstitious phrases as that the writers of Scripture are "amanuenses of God, hands of Christ, Scribes and notaries of the Holy Spirit;"1 not even instrumental authors, but only “living and writing pens."2 Holy Scripture is described, not as the record of revelation but as revelation itself. Christianity, which existed so many years before a single Gospel or Epistle had been written, was robbed of its power. In defiance of every historic fact the inspiration of the Apostles was regarded as the annihilation of their proper individuality. This sort of dogmatism became more and more pernicious. God's presence and providence in the history of the world. were practically ignored. The Bible was spoken of as "a divine effluence," "a part of God." Nitzsche even seriously discussed whether Holy Scripture could be called a creature, and decided that it could not. The Old and New Testaments were treated as one book, of which all the words and every word were immediately dictated. The view fell far below that of the wiser Rabbis, who at least distinguished between different grades of inspiration. It was a revival of the worst form of that Talmudic φλυαρία καὶ ματαιότης,4 which said that Jehovah had dictated every letter of the Torah from "I am the Lord thy God," down to "Timnath was the concubine of Eliphaz." Men like Maimonides, Abarbanel, Qimchi, had long seen that such inventions can only be maintained by degrading casuistry.

1 So Gerhard. Quenstedt says, "Scriptura est infallibilis veritatis fons, omnisque erroris expers, omnia et singula sunt verissima. . . sive dogmatica, sive moralia, sive historica, &c."

2 "Calami Spiritus sacri dictantis." Gregory the Great seems to have been the first to give currency to this bad phrase. So Calovius, Systema, i. cap. 4, ii. cap. 1, and passim. Compare Hollaz, Exam. Theol. p. 73; Calov. System. i. 594; Quenstedt, Theol. Didact. i. 55. Differences of style, &c., were accommodations" of the Spirit (id. i. 76). 3 Hollaz.

4 Gregory of Nyssa.

2

And thus the old ecclesiastical authority, which Luther had so decidedly rejected, was brought back. Even the impius orthodoxus was supposed to be illuminated ex opere operato by the reading of the Scriptures.1 Questions about genuineness and integrity were held to be irrelevant because, according to Calov, the Church had decided, or, according to Quenstedt, because each book sufficiently proves its own canonicity. "To correct even acknowledged errors in Luther's translation was regarded as 'dangerous;' nay, the very typographical errors of his editions were to be left intact-a sure sign of what kind of faith was being set up."3 Although Jerome had so freely pointed out the cilicisms of St. Paul, Quenstedt, Hollaz, Calov, and the Wittenberg faculty in 1638 decreed that to speak of barbarisms and soloecisms in the Greek of the New Testament would be a blasphemy against the writers of Holy Scripture, and against the Holy Ghost.* Orthodox purists thought that the very doctrine of inspiration was imperilled unless the inspiration was conveyed in perfect Greek. Hebraisms were only the desire of the Holy Spirit to assimilate the style of the Old Testament to that of the New. Hellenistic Greek, according to Pfeiffer, is simply Holy Greek-a form of speech peculiar to God." The Formula Consensus Helvetica (drawn up in 1675 by F. Heidegger and

1 Dorner (ii. 134), to whom I am here chiefly indebted, refers to Tholuck, Das Kirchl. Leben, i. 65.

2 Protests against this confusion came specially from the mystics. "The external word is the human voice, in which there is included no divine virtue" (Schwenkenfeld, Ep. 79). "If thou sayest among the inexperienced that the letter is God's word, thou art . . . a deceiver" (Weigel, Postills, i.). But as far back as the eighth century the eminently orthodox Father, St. John of Damascus, had said, "We apply not to the written word of Scripture the title due to the incarnate Word of God." He says that when the Scriptures are called Aoyía eoû, the phrase is only figurative. Disput. Christiani et Saraceni (see Lupton, St. John of Damasc. p. 95).

3 Thus Luther-under his current title of Megalander-was erected into a sort of Pope, while the Lutherans were diverging most widely from the spirit of his writings.

Quenstedt censures Beza for not having held this view (System. i. 84).

5 Pfeiffer, Hermeneutica Sacra, c. 8; Dubia Vexata, pp. 457, 87. The same views were maintained by Walther (Harmon. Biblica), Buxtorf (Anticritica), Wasmuth (Vindiciae), Calov, &c. (see Meyer, Gesch. d. Schrifterkl. iii. 295), and by Samuel Clark in his Divine Authority of the Holy Scriptures, 1699; and John Owen. They were rejected by Ussher, Voss, Hody, Casaubon, Grotius, Bellarmine, Clericus, &c.

Turretin 1) laid it down as the doctrine of the Church that the very vowel points and accents of the Hebrew Bible were divinely inspired.2 The Holy Spirit, it was seriously maintained, had altogether abdicated His agency to the written word. Such were the prevalent views of the current opinion which called itself "orthodox" in France, in Holland, and in Germany, both among the Lutheran and the Reformed Churches. We can now scarcely repeat such statements without an apology for irreverence. And yet for the correctness of these serious misapplications appeal was made to the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit-an appeal which often sounds "like a horrible irony."4 Even among the Romanists-as was proved by the able and learned works of Richard Simon, of Calmet, even of Bellarmine-freer views had begun to prevail-views less burdensome to the consciences of men, less dishonouring to the majesty of God.5 Thus did the Post-Reformation Theologians repeat the old error of the Scribes and Pharisees. They were not faithful enough to believe that the Divine Revelation could stand without the dense hedge of human dogmas which they erected in its defence. They idolised the record to such an extent as wholly to miss its essential meaning. They strangled all spiritual life, or at any rate impeded all spiritual growth, by the tight-wound swaddlingbands of polemic orthodoxy. They turned Christianity into a theology and forgot that it was a life. They wrote folios full of theological hatred about problems as to which Christ

1 Kurz, ii. 264.

2 Bleek, Einleit. 126. Calovius, who has the melancholy honour of having made most dogmatic statements of this epoch in their most absurd and objectionable form, said "It is impious and profane audacity to change a single point in the Word of God, and to substitute a smooth breathing for a rough or a rough for a smooth."

3 As, for instance, in Seb. Schmidt's Collegium Biblicum Prius (V. T.) et Posterius (N. T.), 1670.

4 Reuss, Gesch. d. Heil. Schriften, ii. 295.

5 We may be thankful for the gulf of difference between the truthful moderation of our VIth Article, "Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation," and the wild extravagance of the Form. Consensus Helvetica, "Hebraeus codex tum quoad consonas, tum quoad vocalia, sive puncta ipsa, sive punctorum saltem potestatem, OEOTVEVOTÓS." The older reformed confessions (e.g. Conf. Gall. art. 5, "complectens quicquid requiratur; Conf. Betg. art. 7, "Credimus

Scripturam

omnem

Dei voluntatem complecti), contrast favourably in this respect with the later.

1

was silent; they persecuted as heretics those whom He would most have loved.

Of course under such a system true exegesis became impossible. The tone of it became petty, jealous, unspiritual, and it was perpetually hunting after" emphases" which were purely imaginary. Some fragments of former truth were indeed preserved in Hermeneutic treatises; but they were repeated without being utilised. In historic, archaeological, and linguistic researches, amid much that was absurd and irrelevant, there was some accumulation of materials for the understanding of Scripture. But a fettered and suspicious exegesis is always sterile, and the living power of Scripture, together with all progress in its comprehension, ceases when it is turned into an idol. The only works, and the only commentaries of this epoch which still retain any vitality are, with all their faults, the works of men like the Arminians, Grotius, Le Clerc, and Spencer; the Cocceians, Lampe, Vitringa, and Van Til; the Pietist Bengel, and the freer critics like J. J. Wetstein and G. A. Turretin, by whom orthodox theology felt itself injured, and against some of whom it directed its most indignant anathemas.

English Christians were happily insulated from the incessant bickerings of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches. The active intercourse with the Continent in the days of Luther and Calvin-the days when Beza, Bucer, and Peter Martyr had exercised so large an influence in Englandwere followed by a period of isolation, in which the English Church was almost exclusively occupied with her own concerns. Jewel had died in 1571, and Hooker in 1600; but she produced during the seventeenth century and the first half

1 "Die eingeschüchterte Wissenschaft... tractirte geringfügige Dinge mit dem lächerlichen Apparat einer pedantischen Gelehrsamkeit" (Reuss, Gesch. d. Heil. Schrift. ii. 296)." "If the enquiry is to be free, it is impossible consistently to prescribe its results." Thirlwall, Charges, i. 61.

2 Such treatises were very numerous. Among them were Gerhard, De Interpr. S. Script. 1610; Glassius, Philolog. Sacr. 1623; Rivetus, Isagoge, 1627; Pfeiffer, Herm. Sacr. 1684; Dannhauer, Idea Boni Interpretis, 1642; L. Meyer, Philosophia Scripturae Interpres. 1666 (by a friend of Spinoza); Francke, Praelectiones Hermeneuticae, 1717; Rambach, Inst. Hermen. 1720.