BRITISH AND FOREIGN

EVANGELICAL REVIEW.

MARCH 1853.

ART. I.-JOHN ALBERT BENGEL :

THE LUTHERAN CHURCH AS HE FOUND IT-HIS LIFE AND LABOURS.

Ir is precisely a century since this rare combination of scholarship and grace was removed from the Church below; and yet far from being on the wane, his name at this day stands as high perhaps in his own country, the classic land of biblical criticism, as ever it did, and those who seldom concur in any thing else bear testimony alike to the merits of Bengel. While such scholars as Winer do homage to his philological attainments, the sweet odour of his expositions at Sabbath evening prayermeetings perfumes the pages of Hengstenberg on the Revelation; and while his close walk with God, and the calm, clear elevation of soul which this imparted-though freely expressed in spiritual hymns and other exercises which none but the children of God can appreciate-are discernible in his critical writings only by that unction which his countrymen are wont to style the mystic element, there is not a scholar in Germany who does not readily assign him the credit of being the first to detect among the manuscripts of the Greek Testament, over which he bent with rare interest and critical sagacity, a relationship in their characteristic readings, giving them the now-established name of families, and distinguishing these into the Asiatic and the African-the only classification which, after all the recensions since proposed, seems now in possession of the field. In this country, however, where a deeper sympathy with his peculiar cast of mind might be expected to exist, the number of those whose acquaintance with Bengel goes much beyond the name is comparatively small. The high testimony borne to his immortal "Gnomon" by Archdeacon

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Hare, in his "Mission of the Comforter," the few gems from that casket which adorn some of our recent theological works, and the recommendation of it by some professors to their students, have probably helped to bring it anew into notice. The sale, indeed, of the third Tübingen edition (1835–36), and the recent issue of a fourth from the same press, and with a London imprint (1850), evince the growing popularity of that work. But the obligations of the Christian world to this admirable man can be estimated only by those who have studied his life and writings in the light of the age to which they belong, and have observed with what elements of enduring value they are charged; how amid the decaying formalisms of the Lutheran Church, the reactionary but unsteady pietism in which the breath of a new life was fondly hailed, and the incipient rationalism which sprang out of the exhausted remedy, Bengel steered his course, holding and teaching the faith of his Church without its wretched technicalities, diffusing around him the warmth of a living piety without the peculiarities of the pietistic school, and in the critical principles which he formed for himself, and advocated from the press, liberal even to suspicion, without a tincture of the new rationalism which was so soon to deluge theological Germany.

Transition-periods in the history of the Church, such as that in which Bengel lived, while they are fraught with instruction to after times, are peculiarly trying to those whose lot is cast in them, and bring out in a strong light the character of such as take any prominent part in the business of them. We should not greatly err, for example, in tracing the accession of Tertullian in his later days to the Montanists in a good measure to the decaying supernaturalism of the Church piety, which in the third century had lost much of its apostolic simplicity and warmth-the Phrygian fervour of the new sect operating upon the fiery temperament and ascetic tendencies of the Carthaginian presbyter; and on the same principle, as Tertullian himself became ultimately more moderate, so his party in Africa melted away in the warmth of that great western luminary which, rising at Hippo, soon provided within the Church what earnest piety had been seeking without it. The case of Grotius furnishes another illustration of the influence of times and circumstances upon the character and actions of public men. The growing leanings of that great man towards the Church of Rome in his old age-leanings which but for his death would probably have ripened into open secession-were doubtless only a development of character, under the influence of the malign atmosphere in which he had passed his best days, that of a rapidly degenerating semi-pelagian party, and his

subsequent political connection with the court of France.* As for Bengel, he was no public man, in the usual sense of that term. Nearly thirty years of his life were spent at Denkendorf, a small town in Würtemburg, as a divinity tutor; and though he was ultimately raised to the highest ecclesiastical dignities in the Lutheran Church, his life to the last was quiet and unobtrusive,-nor was he known even to his own Church at large, save through his academic chair and his literary works. And yet, to apprehend at this time of day what Bengel was and what he did, some knowledge of the state of the Lutheran Church when he came upon the stage is indispensable. And as some of the facts of the following sketch are accessible to few, and they are pregnant with instruction independently of their bearing on the more immediate subject of this paper, we shall, even at the risk of limiting our space for the discussion of other topics, endeavour to place before our readers the singular elements which were successively developed in the bosom of the Lutheran Church from the time when it obtained an independent footing till the birth of Bengel.

Foremost among these elements, as first in time, must be placed dogmatic Lutheranism. For more than a century after the German Reformation was established, perhaps the most humiliating spectacle which Protestant Christendom presented was to be seen in the favoured land of its birth. The history of the Lutheran Church during that period has yet to be written in our language, if indeed it be worth writing. The materials for it are scarcely to be had in this country. Hardly any of the works indispensable for it are to be found in our public libraries; and even in Germany, though church histories are abundant, and monograms on almost every subordinate topic, it would be a matter of some difficulty to collect the materials from which these are drawn. They are in truth petrifactions. Yet even as fossil remains of an extinct period, a certain melancholy interest attaches to them, showing as they do how political devices and sectarian passions can jointly succeed in undoing, under pretext of maintaining and developing, the noblest work of God.

It was the misfortune of the German Church that the imperfections of its two leading Reformers were too vividly stamped upon it. In the struggle with Rome, the lion of the Reformation did the work of God to admiration. His stout heart was doubtless given him for that purpose. But in controversy with his fellow-Reformers about his unhappy sacramental

See his Letters, extracts from which will be found in Hallam's Literature of Europe, third edition, vol. ii., pp. 312–316, note.

crotchet, Luther showed the fierceness, with little or none of the generosity, of the lion. Witness the Marburg Conference, when his Hoc est corpus meum was rather flung in the face of his opponents than calmly weighed, when he refused Zwingle's hand, though held out to him with tears, and when with bitter petulance he commended the magnanimous Zuricher, with Ecolampadius, and the whole Swiss party, to the uncovenanted mercies of God.* As to Melancthon, whose services in the cause of the Reformation can hardly be over-estimated, besides being long under complete bondage to Luther on the subject of the Sacrament-as appears by the early editions of his Loci Communes, and his letters-he had himself strong traditional leanings, as his conduct in reference to the Interim too plainly showed, for years after his soul had been set free on the subject of justification and kindred truths.† Dread of

* Niebuhr makes a strong statement when he says, "Luther took his stand upon tradition. He sketched out no new outline. He only cleansed it from what, according to his own notion of the original, were defacing additions. Hence sprang his doctrine of the Eucharist."—(Life and Letters of B. G. Niebuhr, 1852, vol. ii., p. 124.) But on the sacramental question, at least, beyond all doubt his original was tradition, and the touches which it received at his hand, instead of improving it, merely substituted an unintelligible figment for a gross contradiction.

His Letters-of which the completest and most beautiful collection is that of Bretschneider, in the Corpus Reformatorum, 4to, 1834, &c.-curiously illustrate the injurious influence of Luther over his gentle spirit for many years in regard to the Swiss Reformers and their views. On the 4th May 1527, for example, he wrote to Spalatin, "I have hardly any news to give you, but the arrival of many cartloads of books on the sacrament by Zwingle, Ecolampadius, and Bucer, now filling every library with profane and deadly attacks upon this one doctrine. They urge this single point as if piety depended upon no other doctrine. Zwingle has even written a threatening letter to Luther."-(No. 440.) From Luther's own description of this letter, charging it with "pride, calumny, doggedness, hatred, and all malice, though couched in the choicest terms," it is easy to see how intense was the prejudice of our two Reformers at that time against the Swiss.-(Compare No. 525.) A few months before the Marburg Conference, Melancthon wrote to Ecolampadius himself (No. 598), expressing firmly his doctrine of the real presence, but in a style highly respectful. After this, however, when Zwingle was doing his utmost to get liberty from his civil protectors to undertake the dangerous journey to Marburg, Melancthon lent himself to a piece of discreditable finesse, writing to the Elector's son (No. 607), and through him to the Elector himself (No. 608), to urge him to prohibit Luther and himself from going to Marburg. This the Elector very properly declined to do.-(See his Letter, No. 612. Bretschneider gives them in the German originals. See also Dr M. D'Aubigné, Hist. of Reform., iv., pp. 72, 73, Oliver & Boyd.) After the conference, Melancthon wrote to the Elector's son, to the Duke of Saxony, and to several of his friends, an account of the proceedings, all in nearly the same terms, not very creditable to his impartiality. (No. 637, &c.) In one of these letters he says, "Our adversaries seemed milder (leniores) than I had imagined;" but in another, he changes the term into "much more phlegmatic" (multo frigidiores). And as an illustration of this, he says, "They vehemently insisted we should recognise them as brethren. See their stupidity! While condemning us they want nevertheless to be treated as brethren! But this we declined." Thus, because the Swiss, though they could not swallow Luther's fantastic notion on the sacrament, desired at least the right hand of fellowship from their Wittemberg brethren, the very proposal was construed into indifference about their own views. And in his letters to the princes, Melancthon tries to justify this miserable refusal. His nature, however, was essentially noble, and in January 1530, not long after this, we find a letter beginning "Viro optimo, Johanni Ecolampadio, patri suo in Christo."--(No. 658.) Still, the prejudice held on; for in June of that same year, a humiliating correspondence took place between the Landgrave on the one hand, and Melancthon and Brentius on the other; the Landgrave entreating them, for the sake of the common cause and the love of Christ, to give up their unbrotherly treatment of the Swiss, and quoting Scripture against them with touching force, while they in reply do their poor best to justify their having nothing to do with them (No. 718-720); and until about 1532,

being identified with the Swiss seemed perpetually to haunt both Luther and Melancthon, and to dictate too many of their measures. They boasted to their common enemy how totally they differed from the southern heretics, and how execrable they deemed their views, in the vain hope of propitiating towards their isolated selves the rage of those who sought only to fan their dissensions, the more easily to destroy them both. At the diet of Augsburg, at which Melancthon's Confession was presented as the creed of the Protestants, the noble one drawn up by Bucer, called the Tetrapolitan,* though presented at the same time, was ignored by the high party, and the Swiss deputies themselves were avoided in the city as vipers. In the truce of Nuremberg, by which, when the empire was menaced by the Turks, the free exercise of their religion was conditionally granted to the Protestants, they were required to disclaim all connection with the Sacramentarians, as the opponents of Luther's views came to be styled; and, by heartily agreeing to this, Luther put all Protestants who could not go into his peculiar notions on this point under the imperial ban. Two years before, he had given his assent to the League of Smalcald, on the express understanding that those states which adhered to the Tetrapolitan Confession, or in other words to the Swiss views, should not be embraced in it; and they were excluded accordingly. The disastrous consequences of this step are sufficiently known; and Melancthon's remark at an after period-that God had kept them from uniting lest the strength they would thereby have acquired should make them forget their dependence upon Himself-reads more like a satire upon their infatuation than a devout reflection. The history of the Church of Scotland, however, a century after that, furnishes a melancholy parallel to this infatuation. It puts on the guise of zeal for God, but it is nothing better than a specious form of human infirmity. Churches are as slow as individual Christians to learn the lesson of the wise man, "Be not righteous overmuch, neither make thyself overwise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself?"

On the death of Luther, who in 1546 fell asleep in Jesus, the lead of course devolved upon Melancthon; and now began to be seen what sad work the imperfections of these

when a change begins to appear, which by degrees issued in a feeling the very opposite, Melancthon's whole correspondence breathes a decidedly hostile tone towards the Swiss.

* Printed in Niemeyer's "Collectio" (1840), pp. 740-770. For obvious reasons it was handled much more severely than Melancthon's, by Faber and Eck, who were appointed to refute it.

+Bucerus et Capito "-writes Brentius, 15th July 1530-" superioribus diebus huc ad Augustam venerunt, quibuscum ad aliquot horas de sacramento contuli. Ambeunt et colloquium cum Philippo. Sed hoc hactenus recusavit, et petit, rem agi literis, ne suo colloquio aperto NOSTRAM causam gravet."-(No. 777.) Melancthon himself afterwards admitted that this was his reason for avoiding them.