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Untitled Article
tend partly to the very different directions which it has taken , partly to the men by whom the impulse has been given , and partly to the degree ot approbation which their respective opinions have obtained . For if these are not discriminated , but ajl deviations from the system of the church are thrown together under the title of * a mass of pernicious opinions , ' ( according to the energetic expression of the English theologian , ) gross injustice is committed , and ignorance of theology and its history betrayed . Even a superficial knowledge of its history , since the middle of the preceding century , would have furnished a four-fold distinction in the investigations respecting Christianity .
First , there were some , in whose opinion revelation altogether was nothing but superstition , Jesus either a well-meaning enthusiast or an impostor , and Christianity a mass of errors , and who therefore thought they were doing a meritorious act in undermining its authority and exposing its weakness . These were the successors of the English and French Freethinkers , of whom , however , there were in Germany very few , and not one theologian among them . To this class belong Wiinsch ( the author of Horus ) and the jurist Paalzow . A second class is formed of those who wished to promote natural religion at the expense of Christianity , who admitted the historical existence
of Jesus , but no divine operation of any kind in his religion , and thought they could explain its origin and the events of his own life entirely by natural causes . They , therefore , represented the life of Jesus as a romance , himself a member or secret societies , and treated the Holy Scriptures as merely human books , which have been preserved by accident , and in which no word of God is contained . To this class belonged chiefly C . F . Bahrdt , who was , indeed , originally a theologian , but was soon removed from his office ; the
laymen Reimanls , author of the Wolfenbiittel Fragments , and Venturing author of the History of the great Prophet of Nazareth . Perhaps Brennecke may be reckoned in the same class . A third and very different class is formed by those whom we commonly denominate Rationalists . They agree in rerecognizing in Christianity an institution at once divine , beneficent , and intended for the welfare or mankind ; in Jesus , a messenger of Providence ; and they believe that in the Scripture a true and eternal word of God is contained , which is destined to be preserved and diffused by means of Scripture .
They only deny that in this there has been any supernatural and miraculous agency of Goa ; they consider it to have been the object of Christianity to introduce into the world , to establish and to diffuse , a religion , to which reason is capable of attaining , and they therefore discriminate in Christianity the essential from the non-essential , the local and temporal from that which is of perpetual validity . To this class belonged among philosophers Steinbart , Kant , and Krug ; among theologians W . A . Teller , Loftier , Thiess , Henke ; and of living authors , J . E . C . Schmidt , de Wette , Paulus , Wegscheider , Rohr . Lastly , there is a fourth class , who regard the Bible as in a higher sense a divine revelation than the Rationalists do , assuming an agency of God in making it known , different from his ordinary Providence , while
they at the same tune carefull y distinguish the periods of this divine instruction , and rest the divinity of the gospel more on its internal evidence than on miracles , and especiall y discriminate between the doctrine of Scripture and the belief of the Church , reform the latter according to the word of God , and subject revelation so far to the test of reason , that they hold that the former should contain nothing that is contrary to , though it may what is above reason . This is the ground on which Doederlein , Morus , and Reinfrard took
their stand , and which Ammon , Schott , Niemeyer , Bretschneider and others continue to occupy . It is not less necessary to attend to the degree of credit enjoyed by the respective defenders of these four classes of opinions , and the extent to- which they have been adopted by the theologians of Germany . The fancies of Bahrdt and Venturini , the attack of the Wolfenbiittel Fragments , Ec ^ s explanation of miracles from natural causes , and Brennecke ' s hypothesis ' that our Saviour lived twenty-seven years on earth after his supposed ascension , never obtained much currency , and have been long con-
Untitled Article
834 Review . —State of Religion in Germany .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1827, page 834, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1802/page/50/
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