THE following sketches, taken from the records of one of the greatest awakenings in the history of Christendom, may, it is hoped, serve a double purpose.
Firstly, to prove that the great truths taught by the Protestant Reformers can be received, assented to, defended, and maintained with a zeal amounting to acrimony, and yet leave the heart dead, cold, and godless, bringing forth in the life the fruit of pride in orthodox religion, self-righteousness, bigotry, and bitterness ; or, on the other hand, may be maintained by those who use liberty as an occasion to the flesh, and glory in the name of Protestants whilst sunk in the sensuality of heathenism.
Secondly, to prove that the second Reformation—the Reformation of dead Protestantism—was not accomplished, as was the Reformation of the sixteenth century, by the preaching of forgotten truths, and the casting aside of human errors, but by recalling the souls of men to the same great truths as those taught by the Protestant Reformers, convicting men of having received these truths only as theological doctrines, instead of acting upon the blessed call of God by coming as lost sinners to the living Saviour.
And as the highest truth, if received only as a doctrine, leads to the lowest state of soul of which fallen man is capable, we cannot wonder at the dark ages which followed the glorious flood of light poured out in the sixteenth century far and wide, and for a time received into the hearts of those who turned from Romanism to Christ Himself.
The reformers of Protestantism had not to say, " Forget the errors you have been taught." On the contrary, their message was this : "You have never believed the truths you have been taught ; you have learned them, and repeated them in creeds and catechisms ; you have argued about them, and dissected them, and fought for them, and made of them a pedestal upon which you climb to look down on your Roman Catholic neighbours ; but you have never received them from the mouth of God into your own hearts. You have talked about regeneration, and have not been born again ; you have talked about justification, and have not known your need of it ; you have talked of the Holy Spirit, and have never been moved by any force beyond that of your own nature ; you have overlooked and lost and forgotten that which cannot be argued about or used as a theological weapon—the immeasurable love of God to you who are dead in trespasses and sins ; you have talked of the atonement, but you have not known your own guilt which needed it, nor have you received remission of your sins through the precious blood of Christ ; you have disputed about His work and Person, but you have not seen Him, nor known Him. And He who loves you in your coldness, your deadness, your ignorance of Him, has sent you another call, as when in the wide valley of Ezekiel He breathed His life into the dead forms which had no breath in them, though they were no longer the dry bones of former days. He tells you that to have your lamps and to have no oil in them is to be shut out at last from the marriage feast. You have the letter that killeth ; He would have you to receive the Spirit that giveth life."
Let us then cease to wonder at the strange, dark picture of Protestant lands, where the fear of the Lord was taught by the precepts of men, whilst their hearts were far from Him. And let us see to it that we are ourselves taught by the Spirit who alone can teach, and make that, which is otherwise a form of doctrine only, the power of God unto salvation to him who believeth.
And, as to him that bath more shall be given, we find that the reformers of Protestantism in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and, thank God, in the nineteenth centuries were eventually taught by Him many blessed truths not yet disinterred from the rubbish of ages by the reformers of Roman Catholic Christendom in the sixteenth century. Let us be thankful that such reformers have been and are, and that by their means we can at last form some true conception of that which Paul was taught in the third heaven, of that which he longed with such intense conflict of heart to make known to his beloved brethren at Ephesus and Colosse and the regions beyond. Let us not be as our fathers who refused the witnesses of God, but as the few who hailed them and believed them and loved them, whether as "the quiet in the land," or as " Methodists," or by whatever name of reproach they may still be known amongst us.
The following records have been compiled almost entirely from German sources, chiefly from Ritschl's Geschichte des Pietismus (three volumes), Goebel's Geschichte des Christlichen Lebens in der RheinischWestpalischen Evangelise/len Kirche, H eppe's Geschichte des Quietismus und der Mystzk, Kerlen's Life of Tersteegen, and Tersteegen's own writings, including those now long ago out of print. Papers in Raumer's Historisches Taschenbuch have also been useful, especially those relating to the Princess Elizabeth of the Palatinate ; and use has also been made of further references to her in Penn's Journal of his Travels in Germany. Freytag's Bader aus der Deutschen V ergangenhei t has supplied the sketches of the state of Germany during and after the Thirty Years' War, with occasional portraits from Biedermann's Deutschland im Achtgehnten .7ahrhundert.