Cfceotogia dBermanica, OTRONG Son of God, Immortal Love, ^-J Whom we, that have not feen thy face, By faith, and faith alone embrace, Believing where we cannot prove. Thou feemeft human and divine, holieft The higheft, manhood Thou ; Our wills are ours, we know not how, Our wills are ours to make them Thine. O Living Will that flialt endure, When all that feems fliall fuffer fliock, Rife in the fpiritual Rock, Flow through our deeds and make them pure. That we may lift from out the duft, A voice as unto him that hears, A cry above the conquered years, To one that with us works, and truft With faith that comes of felf-control The truths that never can be proved, Until we clofe with all we loved And all we flow from, foul in foul. TENNYSON. dSermanica : many fair 3lfneament0 of Utoim 'flTrutfc, anli fattt) foerp loftg and lofcelp t^mff0 toucljing; a perfect 3Ufe EDITED BY DR. PFEIFFER FROM THE ONLY COMPLETE MANUSCRIPT YET KNOWN. TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY SUSANNA WINKWORTH. With a PREFACE by the Rev. CHARLES KINGSLEY, Reftor of Everfley, and a LETTER to the Tranflator by the CHEVALIER BUNSEN, D.D., D. C. L., &c. LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS. 1854. PREFACE. O thofe who really hunger and thirfl after and righteoufnefs ; who therefore long to know what righteoufnefs is, that they may copy it : To thofe who long to be freed, not merely from the punifhment of fin after they die, but from fin itfelf while live on earth and there- they ; who fore wifh to know what fin is, that they may avoid it : To thofe who wifh to be really juftified by faith, by being faith and who made jufl perfons by ; cannot fatisfy either their confciences or reafons by fancying that God looks b vi Preface. on them as right, when they know themfelves to be wrong, or that the God of truth will ftoop to fictions (mif- called forenfic) which would be con- fidered falfe and unjuft in any human court of law : To thofe who cannot help trufting that union with Chrift muft be fomething real and fubftan- tial, and not merely a metaphor, and a flower ofrhetoric : To thofe, laftly, who cannot help feeing that the doctrine of Chrift in every man, as the Indwelling Word of God, The Light who lights every one who comes into the world, is no peculiar tenet of the Quakers, but one which runs through the whole of the Old and New Teftaments, and without which they would both be un- intelligible, juft as the fame doctrine runs through the whole hiftory of the Early Church for thefirft two centu- Preface. vii ries, and is the only explanation of them ; To all thele this noble little book will recommend itfelf and ; may God blefs the reading of it to them, and to all others no lefs. " As for its to orthodoxy ; evangeli- cal" Chriftians Martin Luther's own words ought to be fufficient warrant. For he has faid that he owed more to this, than to any other book, faving the Bible and Saint Auguftine. Thofe oa the other hand, to whom Luther's name does not feem a fufficient guarantee, muft recollect, that the Author of this book was a knight of the Teutonic order; one who confidered himfelf, and was confidered, as far as we know, by his contemporaries, an orthodox member of the Latin Church ; that his friends and difciples were princi- pally monks exercifing a great influence viii Preface. in the Catholic of their Church days ; that one of their leaders was appointed by Pope John XXII. Nuncio, and overfeer of the Dominican order in Germany; and that during the hundred and feventy years which elapfed be- tween the writing of this book and the Reformation, it incurred no ecclefiaf- tical cenfure whatfoever, in generations which were but too fond of making men offenders for a word. Not that I agree with all which is to be found in this book. It is for its noble views of righteoufnefs and of fin that I honour it, and rejoice at feeing it publimed in Englifh, now for the firft time from an edition bafed on the perfect manufcript. But even in thofe points in which I mould like to fee it altered, I am well aware that there are ftrong authorities againft me. The Preface. ix very expreffion, for inftance, which moil ftartles me, "vergotfet," deified or made divine, is ufed, word for word, both by Saint Athanafe and Saint Auguftine, " the former of whom has faid : He became man, that we might be made " God;"* and the latter, He called men Gods, as being deified by His grace, not as born of His fubftance."-)- There are many pafTages, moreover, in the Epiftles of the Apoftles, which, if we paraphrafe them at all, we can hardly paraphrafe in weaker words. It feems to me fafer and wifer to cling to the letter of Scripture : but God forbid that I mould wifh to make fuch a man as * Ai>Tog ETrwSf<u9nj<rv iva vpsis 007ro<r)5oi/*v. Athan. Orat. de Incarn. Verbi. Tom. i. page 108. dixit t Homines Deos, ex gratia fua deificatos ; non de fubftantia fua natos. Aug. in Pfalm. xlix. (Ed Bened. Tom. iv. page 414.) x Preface. the Author of the Theologia Germa- nica an offender for a word ! One point more may be worthy of remark. In many obfcure paflages of this book, words are ufed, both by the Author and by the Tranflator, in their ftridt, original, and fcientific meaning, as they are ufed in the Creeds, and not in that meaning which has of late crept into our very pulpits, under the in- fluence of Locke's philofophy. When, for inftance, it is faid that God is the Subftance of all this things ; expreffion, in the vulgar Lockite fenfe of fubftance, would mean that God is the matter or fluff of which all are things made ; which would be the groffeftPantheifm: but " Subftance" in the true and an- cient meaning of the word, as it ap- in pears the Athanafian Creed, fignifies the very oppolite; namely, that which Preface. xi Jiands under the appearance and the matter that virtue of which a ; by thing has its form, its life, its real exiftence, as far as it have and thus in may any ; aflerting that God is the Subftance of all things, this book means that every thing (except fin, which is no thing, but the difeafe and fall of a thing) is a thought of God. So again with Eternity. It will be found in this book to mean not merely fome future endlefs duration, but that ever-prefent moral world, governed by ever-living and abfolutely neceflary all are laws, in which we and fpirits now; and in which we mould be equal- ly, whether time and fpace, extenfion and duration, and the whole material univerfe to which they belong, became nothing this moment, or lafted end- leffly. xii Preface. I think it neceflary to give thefe cau- tions, becaufe by the light of Locke's philofophy, little or nothing will be difcerned in this book, and what little is difcerned, will probably be utterly mifunderftood. If any man wimes to fee clearly what is herein written, let him try to forget all popular modern dogmas and fyftems, all popular philo- fophies (falfely fo called), and be true to the letter of his Bible, and to the inftin&s which the Indwelling Word of God was wont to awaken in his heart, while he was yet a little unfo- child and then let be phifticated ; him fure that he will find in this book germs of wider and deeper wifdom than its good author ever dreamed of; and that thofe great fpiritual laws, which the Author only applies and that often inconfiftently, to an afcetic Preface. xiii and pailively contemplative life, will hold juft as good in the family, in the market, in the fenate, in the ftudy, ay, in the battle-field itfelf ; and teach him the way to lead, in whatfoever ftation of life he may be placed, a truly man- like, becaufe a truly Chriftlike and Godlike life. CHARLES KINGSLEY. Torquay, Lent) 1854. Hiftorical Introduction. BY THE TRANSLATOR. HE Treatife before us was difcovered by Luther, who firft brought it into notice by an Edition of it which he publifhed in 1516. A Second Edition, which came out two years later, he introduced with the following Preface : " We read that St. Paul, though he was of a weak and contemptible pre- fence, yet wrote weighty and powerful letters, and he boafts of himfelf that ' his fpeech is not with enticing words ' of man's device,' but full of the riches xvi Hiftorical of all knowledge and wifdom.' And if we confider the wondrous ways of God, it is clear, that He hath never chofen mighty and eloquent preachers to fpeak His word, but as it is written: ' Out of the mouths of babes and fuck- lings haft thou perfected praife/ Ps. viii. 2. And again, 'For wifdom opened the mouth of the dumb, and made the tongues of them that cannot fpeak elo- quent/ Wifdom x. 21. Again, He blam- eth fuch as are high-minded and are of- fended at thefe fimple ones. Con/ilium ' a at inopis, &c. Ye have made mock the counfel of the poor, becaufe he put- teth his truft in the Lord,* Pf. xiv. 6. " This I fay becaufe I will have every one warned who readeth this little book, that he mould not take offence, to his own hurt, at its bad German, or its crabbed and uncouth words.