GERMAN RELIGIOUS PERIODICALS.

I. THEOLOGISCHE STUDIEN UND KRITIKEN.

THE first article (in the January number), by Schwarz of Jena, entitled, Melancthon und seine Schüler als Ethiker, sketches, with a great amount of research, and with copious reference to original sources, what Melancthon and his scholars performed in the department of Ethics. Alluding to the sixteenth volume of the "Corpus Reformatorum," which has appeared, Dr Schwarz expresses a hope that the undertaking will be supported till the completion of Melancthon's works; adding, it will be lamentable if Germany does not at once raise this monument to the man whom she justly calls her preceptor in many respects. The object of the paper is to furnish a characteristic of Melancthon as an ethical teacher, and thus supplement what had previously been written by Galle, Matthes, and others. In the first decennium of Melancthon's labours as a reformer, no room was found, says the writer, for any particular efforts on behalf of ethics. Melancthon had come to Wittenberg with a very free scientific tendency, familiar with Aristotle, and filled with admiration of him. At the instance of his teacher, Stadianus, he had formed the plan of preparing, in company, an improved edition of his works. In his inaugural address, on 29th August 1518, he speaks of it, and makes particular mention, along with Plato's republic, of the ethical writings of Aristotle. But soon, through Luther's influence, the young professor turns away with a certain aversion from philosophical studies, and from Aristotle. It is well known what deep aversion Luther had conceived to the "Father of Scholasticism." The steps which led Melancthon to his system are next pointed out by Dr Schwarz with lucid order, but at the same time with deep prejudice against predestination, the want of which in Germany, as D'Aubigné well shows, is one great cause of all her theological woes. At first, adds this writer, Melancthon was at one with Luther, in maintaining that free-will before conversion can do nothing good, and that every good work is accomplished only through God's effectual operation in man. At that time philosophy appeared so foolish to him, that he dedicated his edition of the "Clouds of Aristophanes" to his colleague Amsdorf, because philosophy was there ridiculed as it deserved. Melancthon now lived and moved in the Holy Scriptures, especially in Paut; and towards the end of 1521, appeared the fruit of his study in his "Hypotyposes Theologicæ," in which we are told he goes the length of absolute predestination, and decidedly renounces Aristotle. The writer next traces the first indications of that change in Melancthon's views, which has justly been regarded as his error, but which this writer, who asserts that ethics presuppose a different view of the will than Melancthon at first held, regards as the transition to his ethical distinction. The first certain trace of this change is found in the Scholia to the Epistle to the

Colossians, published in 1527, where Melancthon wishes to show his , or fairness, on controverted points, and says with Homer, that men grow weary of every thing, but not of strife. This is to be understood of free-will. In the Articles of Visitation, which appeared in Latin in 1527, and in German in 1528, with Luther's preface, he mentions the same topics more briefly, but almost still more pointedly. He, besides, urges the preaching of the law and of repentance. Preachers were also to make single virtues the subject of their discourses, and to combat that carnal security which leans on justifying faith. Amsdorf and Agricola took deep offence at this, and the latter, who now, for the first time, came forth with his Antinomianism, was still kept quiet by Luther. Meanwhile, Melancthon had again turned more to the study of philosophy, and to Aristotle. He published the Dialectics in 1529; and in the excellent Ratio Discendæ Theologiæ of 1530 he expresses a wish, at the conclusion, that theologians would not neglect philosophy, which many blame merely because they do not know it. Unlike his former self, he now urged the study. He confessed that it was only when he became acquainted with the pure doctrine of the gospel that he perceived aright the nature and value of philosophy, and hoped that many would agree with him. He employed the halcyon days which the year 1533 brought along with it to expel by every means the lethargy in reference to philosophy. Such were the influences, the states of mind, and the efforts, under which the preparation of the loci was completed. Collecting, as he says in the dedication to Henry VIII. of England, the main parts of Christian doctrine which he thought contributed most to the nourishment of piety, and were of use for the life and practice of believers, Melancthon executed his task in a way which of itself must have made his name immortal. Erasmus' definition of free-will was not yet adopted. Melancthon first adopted it after Luther's death. But he approximated to Erasmus, and openly avowed a mild synergism, which we are told pervades the ethical parts in which the work is so rich. So much did Melancthon now urge new obedience, that he held it absolutely necessary to everlasting life, though he ascribed no merit to it. In short, the whole tendency of Melancthon towards the end of the second decennium of his labours, went always more decidedly to ethics. He had not been able to prepare his work on physics, nor the separate work on the nature of the soul, which he had intended. But he had been led to the psychological foundations of ethics, as is shown by the work which he issued in 1538, under the title Epitome Philosophiæ Moralis. "When we put all together," says Dr Schwarz, "it appears that he had before his mind a system of philosophy in which ethics with politics in a manner formed the summit, physics in connection with metaphysics composed the foundation, psychology or anthropology was the intermediate member, and dialectics, from which he separated rhetoric, passed with him as the science of sciences which ministered to every other discipline by the principles of methodology which were to be laid down by it." This construction was in substance borrowed from the ancients, and particularly from Aristotle, but it was peculiarly modified in Melancthon, and in many respects may remind us of Schleiermacher. "If, on the other hand," says the writer, we now add the alterations which the loci underwent since the beginning of

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the fortieth year in the sense of synergism, the modifications to which Melancthon agreed on this point in the negotiations upon the interim, the growing decision with which he expressed himself on the necessity of new obedience and of good works against those who even maintained their hurtfulness, the circumspection with which he stood aloof as well from the Catholic error in justification as from Pelagianism and the extreme of Osiander, without altering the connection between justification and regeneration, it is clear that his last decennium furnished still more occasions than formerly for a proper theological system of ethics. Melancthon, however, did not himself execute it. His scholar Chyträus in 1555 made the imperfect attempt. The article then sketches the labours of Melancthon's scholars, of Chyträus, of Hemming, the most eminent of them, of Strigel and of Pezel, who in republishing the Epitome thus speaks of Melancthon: "Etsi Socrates, Plato, Aristoteles de morali philosophia multum copiose et erudite disserunt, tamen longe præfero scriptum rev præceptoris qui doctrina ecclesiæ adjutus de fine hominis, virtutibus et affectibus ita perspicue, eleganter et erudite disputat ut nemo sit in hoc genere qui eum aquare, tantum abest ut superare posse videatur."

The next article, by Dr Creuzer, entitled, Josephus und seine griechischen und Hellenistischen Führer, treats of Josephus as a man and a writer, and discusses the foreign guides to which he refers particularly in his polemics against Apion. It is an article replete with the consummate learning of this great scholar, copious quotations and references in notes opening up further side-glimpses of great interest. He says that while the Greek and Roman authors pronounced quite general opinions upon Josephus, it is since the days of J. A. Ernesti that men have entered into a deeper estimate of him as a man and a writer, and have critically weighed his character as a historian in detail. The writer says that he starts from the results of that criticism interspersing the fruits of his own study. He shows that Josephus was of priestly descent, and hence the key-note of his character was the priestly-aristocratic. To the circumstance that he belonged to the sect of the Pharisees, Niebuhr attaches remarks on his historic fidelity, stating that Josephus was a Pharisee, though a better man than the majority of them. "Hence," adds Niebuhr, "he is often untrue, and his antiquities are rich in perversions of historical facts, and in falsifications which have their origin in his enormous national pride. In his account of the Jewish war, he discovers many of the peculiarities of an oriental writer, and wherever he has to do with numbers he shows his oriental love of exaggeration." Cless, too, calls him liberal with numbers. Creuzer here shows that the latter statement must be taken with limitation, and that the numbers in the manuscripts of Josephus are often falsified. As to the orientalism, we are here told not to forget that Josephus attempted to reconcile the cosmopolitan spirit of Rome with the Hebrew particularism, and consequently to soften, as far as possible, the offensive element of the marvellous, which the east brought along with it. He desired not to write at all for the Jews, to whom, as he himself tells us in the conclusion of his Antiquities, the communication of their holy writings and ordinances, particularly in elegant Greek language, was an abomination, but for the Greeks, and mainly for the Romans, particularly for his patron and friend Epa

phroditus, whose influence had chiefly determined him to compose that work. Dr Creuzer shows by instances that in chronology he has been guilty of many a mistake, arising in part from his too great confidence in the Greek historians and chronographers. The article next alludes to the credibility of Josephus, and quotes the remark of Niebuhr that the history of the Jewish war, particularly in reference to the Roman art of war, is next to Cæsar's Commentaries the most instructive work. He is then compared with Philo. The writer next adds some remarks on Josephus' style, which he, with Ernesti and Dindorf, considers free from Hebraisms. Where these occur they are suspicious, and are as far as possible to be reduced according to manuscripts to pure Greek. He holds that Josephus imitated Thucydides, but has also appropriated the phraseology of Plato, and has much in common with Polybius. He gives instances of the descriptive power with which he could delineate both nature and life, adducing the description of the source of the Jordan (iii. 10, 7), and of the fertile fields in the neighbourhood of Jericho (iv. 8, 3). The next half of this learned paper glances at Josephus' autobiography, and at the two books against Apion; in the first of which he has to defend himself against his Jewish countryman, Justus of Tiberias, in the latter from several learned and celebrated enemies of his people. We have next an account of this Justus as he appears on the theatre of public life, as a demagogue, as a man of faction, as rising in arms, even before Josephus was named Governor of Galilee, as the author of a chronicle of the crowned Jewish kings from Moses to Agrippa, as a patriot and revolutionist, in a word, all that can be collected regarding the man and his historical work. At this point Creuzer adds that he cannot omit a remark of Photius in reference to this Justus, especially as it stands connected with the celebrated passage of Josephus which has reference to Christ. The patriarch says that, as a Jew, Justus had fallen into the universal fault of his co-religionists, in making not the slightest mention of Christ's advent and of his miraculous deeds. At this point the writer says he will not discuss Josephus' testimony to Christ, which in recent years has been a hundred times discussed, the more so as he could never comprehend how a reader of any judgment could ever hold such a passage as authentic. But he says that as Photius, in the article on Josephus, observes an entire silence upon that testimony to Christ, he must either not have found it in his copy of Josephus (though according to Gibbon's remark, iii. 16, it had already crept into the text between the time of Origen and Eusebius), or he regarded it as not genuine. And here the writer incidentally questions that passage in Longinus to which reference has been so often made, "Let there be light and there was light," and shows in what manner it must have been interpolated. He next turns to the two books written against Apion, which have been repeatedly noticed, and which in France have been made the subject of a proper monography. Creuzer here notices Josephus' judgment of the Greek historians in general, and then the testimonies given to the Jewish people by Manethon, by Hecataus, by Apollonius Mollo, and by the numerous other writers to whom Josephus refers, and gathers together from every quarter the allusions made to them. After adverting to the disputed or doubtful works, the ἐις Μακκαβαίους λογος, and the περι της του παν

Tos dias, he concludes his paper with the remark of Niebuhr, "The writings of Josephus deserve to be commended to the study of every learned man and THEOLOGIAN."

Then follows a short paper, by Vierordt, on the folding of the hands in prayer, which he alleges came first into Europe through the Germans. Then follows a paper on the Synagoga Magna, by Dr Heidenheim of Worms, who shows great power of research, but does not seem to have read Witsius de Sydnedriis Hebræorum. The writer maintains, that the existence of the Synagoga Magna is no fable, nor to be dismissed, as is so generally done, as a mere vision of the Talmudist's brain. He thinks that the exclusive office ascribed to it of closing up the canon, has led to such a view; and the object of his paper is to inquire whether we do not find a historical foundation in the canon for this synagogue. The question which he propounds is, Did there exist, subsequently to the Babylonish captivity, an institute corresponding to the accounts of the Talmud, and was it analogous to the institutions before the captivity? He answers this question in the affirmative. He alludes to the original judicial constitution which is mentioned in Numb. xi. 16, and mentions that, according to tradition, it existed from Moses to Ezra. The most certain proof for the continued existence of this institution during the time of the kings, is furnished, he alleges, by the kingdom of Israel; for traces are discovered that this kingdom was entirely constituted like the sister kingdom of Judah. (1 Kings xxi. 8; 2 Kings vi. 32; x. 1-6.) Whether this council of elders was chosen by the people from the elders of single congregations, or were appointed by lot, cannot be discovered. If we inquire into its sphere of operation, he adds, we may conclude from the previous passages that it was of a more general nature, and that they stood as a council of state at the side of the civil ruler. The priests do not seem to have been particularly represented in the council of elders. The writer finds this old institution in Succoth (Judges viii. 14), in the time of Samuel (1 Sam. iv. 3), in the time of the kings, essentially the same (1 Kings viii. 3), and calls attention to the fact that the elders, in 2 Sam. xvii. 15, took part with the people and their representatives. He maintains, that though this institution is not every where mentioned, that does not speak for its extinction. He says, that the old constitution, though it underwent many changes, was essentially preserved (2 Chron. xix. 8); that Jehoshaphat did not banish the elders from the council, but enlarged it by the addition of priests and Levites, to prevent the perversion of justice. But they must, he thinks, have returned at a later period to the original institution. Ezekiel complains, for instance, of the elders, mentions that they sat before him (viii. 1), and names the assembly as consisting of 70 men (ver. 11). Putting all the circumstances together, the writer arrives at the result, that this institution continued till the captivity, and during that period; and that after the exile it was constituted again (Ezra iv. 2, 3), not of 70, but of 120 men, composing, as he argues, the collective elders of the immigrant families (Neh. viii. 13; Ezra ii. 2-59, and viii. 1-15). In a second paper, he purposes to discuss its proper province, the duration of its existence, and its position towards the canon.

With regard to the other papers of this first Number, we have an