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into whose hands Semler fell , harassed him with anxieties about his religious state , represented study as useless , and even sinful , and embittered the innocent enjoyments of his life . Accident , however , threw in his way a number of the classical authors whom
he had never before had an opportunity of reading ; his ardour for study , which had languished while he was under the influence of pietism , broke forth afresh ; he became acquainted with Baumgarten , and acquired a taste for theological literature ; and both these circumstances aided the re-action
which SemJer ' s native disposition made against the oppressive gloom and terror in which it had been kept . In his subsequent life , the religious experience of his youth seems to have had no unfavourable effect upon him . Indeed , it appears rather to have produced the effect which the rigour of a Calvinistic education sometimes has on
those who have afterwards had strength of mind sufficient to shake off Calvinistic dogmas , preserving in them through life a strong sensibility to religious impressions . Baumgarten , to whom Semler attached himself more
particularly on going to the University , was the most celebrated theologian in Germany , and deserves grateful mention , as the instructor both of Michaelis and of Semler , and as having prepared the way for the great revolution which , in different spheres , and sometimes with hostile nurnoses . thev iointlv acwith hostile purposesthey jointly
ac-, complished . Nothing could be more wretched than the state of theology in Germany at the close of the 17 th century . The lectures read in the Universities were upon polemical and dogmatical theology ; but biblical exegesis and ecclesiastical history were quite neglected .
Franke , whom I have before mentioned , at that time a teacher in Leipzi g , was one of the first who raised his voice against this unprofitable mode of study : but as the other party saw nothing in the Bible but proofs of doctrines , so he and his friends regarded
it only as a collection of practical precepts , and neither of them felt the necessity for that historical , philological and exegetical knowledge , without which the application of scripture , either to moral or doctrinal uses , may be only a perversion of its real sense . As opposite extremes of error , how-
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ever , sometimes point out the middle path of truth , Franke and his party were not useless to rational theology : they had the further merit of drawing on themselves so strongly the hatred of the teachers of the old school , that
some of them were expelled from Leipzig , and the University of Halle founded for their reception ( 1694 ) by the Prussian government . Here from the first , as might be expected in a newly-founded University , a more liberal spirit prevailed , and till Gdttingen arose , of still more recent date , Halle
led the way in the diffusion of rational theology . This of course must be understood comparatively : Baumgarten himself , who had been Professor at Halle from 17 ^ 4 , was far from being an accomplished theological scholar ; he had an extensive acquaintance with both civil and ecclesiastical history , and made use of the latter to throw
light upon the doctrmes of scripture ; but he neither possessed nor valued philological and critical knowledge . The greatest benefit , perhaps , which Michaelis and Semler derived from
him was , that he made them acquainted with the works of English theologians . Accustomed as we have long been to look to the Germans as our masters in theology , few perhaps are aware that they were once our scholars . We
feel an honest pride in recording , that the English Presbyterian Dissenters gave to the Germans the first idea of a rational interpretation of those parts of scripture which are most wrested to the support of orthodoxy , and that Michaelis and Semler were the
disciples of Benson , Peirce and Hallett . The altered state of things in our time is easily explained . It was not so much extensive philological knowledge which had led these excellent men to a better system of interpretation , as the necessity of defending revelation against the Deists , ( whose influence in
compelling the advocates of Christianity to distinguish between what was and what was not defensible , has not perhaps been sufficiently attended to , ) joined to that freedom of thought and investigation which is the heritage o £
Dissenters , but which can only be enjoyed by stealth in an establishment They studied the Bible assiduously , made it its own interpreter , and deduced from it , thus explained , doctrines in conformity with reason and
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€ 6 Biographical Sketch of J . S . Semler .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1821, page 66, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2497/page/2/
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