The replies were still directed against Deism, as in England or France. It is not till later in the century that rationalism appears. When however it arose, writers were not wanting who opposed it. The history of the German theology has been treated so largely in Lectures [VI]. and [VII]. that it is only necessary to indicate the steps. The early deistic rationalism of Reimarus and Lessing met its opponents in contemporary writers named in the notes to Lecture [VI]. The critical rationalism of Eichhorn and Paulus was really answered by the later critics, as was shown when we noticed that criticism gradually abandoned their view, and rescued itself from their extravagant opinions (p. [257] seq.), while the dogmatic rationalism which was connected with it was dispersed by the discussion on the province of the supernatural already described (p. [418]). In the present century the aspect of the attack and of the defence has changed. The question had been as to the existence of the supernatural.
In the present the question has been, If the supernatural be admitted, what is the capacity of man to discover it by the light of feeling or reason respectively, without revelation? Therefore, while in the last century it was important to show that the supernatural exists, and that the religion that taught it was not deception; in the present the endeavour has been, to bring men from the supernatural to the biblical, and to make them feel that the Christian religion is not a mere mistake. Thus they have been led from the natural to the supernatural; from the supernatural to the revealed; from the ideal to the historic.[1085] The steps of this process in the present century have been twofold:—the philosophical Christianity of Schleiermacher, and the revival of biblical religion. Neander has been already adduced (p. [364]) as the type of the Christian movement which sought to unite the two: wishing to appropriate that which he believed, he strove to present Christianity as the highest form of the religious life; as a life based on a doctrine; the doctrine itself being based on a revealed [pg 473] history. It must suffice thus to have indicated, without tracing into detail, the apologetic literature which has been partly named in the Notes of the lectures, and may be found by consulting the references there given.
In all ages the purpose of Evidences has been conviction; to offer the means of proof either by philosophy or by fact. In arguing with the heathen in the first age, the former plan was adopted; the school of Alexandria trying to lead men to Christianity as the highest philosophy: in the middle ages the same method was adopted under the garb of philosophy, but with the alteration that the philosophy was one of form, not matter. In the later middle ages the appeal was to the Church: in the early contests with the Deists to the authority of reason, and to the Bible reached by means of this process; in the later, to the Bible reached through history and fact: in opposing the French infidelity the appeal was chiefly to authority; in the early German the appeal was the same as in England; in the later German it has been a return in spirit to that of the early fathers, or of the English apologists of the eighteenth century, but based on a deeper philosophy; an appeal to feeling or intuition, and not to reflective reason; and through these ultimately to the Bible.
Note 50. p. [373]. On The History Of The Doctrine Of Inspiration.
The subject of the history of inspiration has been named both in Lect. [III]. and [VIII]. It may be useful therefore to point out the sources for the study of it.
The history of it is briefly sketched in Hagenbach's Dogmengeschichte, § 32, 121, 161, 243, 292. A valuable catena of passages relative to the primitive doctrine of inspiration is given in Mr. Westcott's Introduction to the Gospels, Appendix B. second edition, 1860; and a continuation of the history to more recent periods in Dr. Lee's important work on Inspiration, especially in Appendices C and G; and in Tholuck's Doctrine of Inspiration, translated in the Journal of Sacred Literature, July 1854.
It appears that the theories held respecting inspiration in different ages may be arranged under three classes:
1. The belief in a full inspiration was held from the earliest times, with the few exceptions observable in occasional remarks of Origen, Jerome, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Euthymius Zigabenus (in the twelfth century).