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When Semler published his "Abstract of Church History," he sent a copy to Spangenberg; and Spangenberg returned the compliment by sending him the latest volume of his "Life of Zinzendorf." At these friendly meetings with learned men the Brethren never argued. Their method was different. It was the method of personal testimony.
Let him only read Petavius and the different Patristic and Ecclesiastico -historical tracts of Semler, and have no better philosophy than that of Locke, no better theology than that of Arminius and Bishop Jeremy Taylor, and I should tremble for his belief. Yet why tremble for a belief which is the very antipode of faith?
That there were two Parties, or Schools in the first Christian church, viz. the adherents of the Apostles, and the Disciples of Paul, is evident from the New Testament, and has been fully, and unanswerably proved by the learned Semler, the greatest scholar certainly in Christian Antiquities, that ever lived.
Evanson has asserted, and has proved, the spuriosness of the Gospel ascribed to John, which Semler spared, in the general wreck which he made of the authenticity of the other books of the New Testament. Mr. Evanson says, in his examination of it, what has been said before, that the speeches ascribed to Jesus in it, are most incoherent, contradictory, and falsified by well known facts. Mr.
I can never pardon it. Hear her reasons. The falling leaves made the court wet and dirty; the branches obstructed the light; boys threw stones at the nuts when they were ripe, and the noise affected her nerves; and disturbed her profound meditations, when she was weighing the difficulties of Kennicot, Semler, and Michaelis.
At the same time he was a man of excellent parts, a master at repartee, with a keen intellect and a firm will, and in every respect a born leader." Quitman, a disciple of Teller and of Semler in Halle, was a determined protagonist of German Rationalism. In 1807 this outspoken and consistent Socinian was elected president of the New York Ministerium, remaining in this office till 1825.
But it was long before any one could be found fit to bend the bow which Lessing and Spinoza had wielded. A succession of able scholars Semler, Eichhorn, Paulus, Schleiermacher Bretschneider, and De Wette were required to examine, with German patience and accuracy, the details of the subject, and to propound various untenable hypotheses, before such a work could be performed as that of Strauss.
He aroused against him all the constituted authorities, the consistories, and even the Aulic Council of the Empire, and he even succeeded in drawing along with him the chief of contemporary rationalists, Semler, who so far forgot himself as to declare that Lessing, for what he had done, deserved to be sent to the madhouse.
Another cause which stirred great animosity against Tillotson as a theological writer consisted in his partial acceptance of that principle of 'accommodation' which was afterwards made so much use of by Semler and many other German writers.
On other occasions the Brethren were visited by Campe, the Minister of Education; by Salzmann, the founder of Schnepfenthal; and by Becker, the future editor of the German Times. But the most distinguished visitor at Barby was Semler, the famous rationalist Professor at Halle. In reply we told him our convictions, and then we parted in peace from each other."
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