Notes
116. This appeared occasionally in Dutch Pietism and then under the influence of Spinoza.
117. Labadie, Teersteegen, etc.
118. Perhaps this appears most clearly when he (Spener!) disputes the authority of the Government to control the conventicles except in cases of disorder and abuses, because it concerns a fundamental right of Christians guaranteed by apostolic authority (Theologische Bedenken, II, pp. 81 f.). That is, in principle, exactly the Puritan standpoint regarding the relations of the individual to authority and the extent to which individual rights, which follow ex jure divino and are therefore inalienable, are valid. Neither this heresy, nor the one mentioned farther on in the text, has escaped Ritschl (Pietismus, II, pp. 115, 157). However unhistorical the positivistic (not to say philistine) criticism to which he has subjected the idea of natural rights to which we are nevertheless indebted for not much less than everything which even the most extreme reactionary prizes as his sphere of individual freedom, we naturally agree entirely with him that in both cases an organic relationship to Spener's Lutheran standpoint is lacking.
The conventicles (collegia pietitatis) themselves, to which Spener's famous pia desideria gave the theoretical basis, and which he founded in practice, corresponded closely in essentials to the English prophesyings which were first practised in John of Lasco's London Bible Classes (1547), and after that were a regular feature of all forms of Puritanism which revolted against the authority of the Church. Finally, he bases his well-known repudiation of the Church discipline of Geneva on the fact that its natural executors, the third estate (status æconomicus: the Christian laity), were not even a part of the organization of the Lutheran Church. On the other hand, in the discussion of excommunication the lay members' recognition of the Consistorium appointed by the prince as representatives of the third estate is weakly Lutheran.
119. The name Pietism in itself, which first occurs in Lutheran territory, indicates that in the opinion of contemporaries it was characteristic of it that a methodical business was made out of pietas.
120. It is, of course, granted that though this type of motivation was primarily Calvinistic it is not exclusively such. It is also found with special frequency in some of the oldest Lutheran Church constitutions.
121. In the sense of Heb. v. 13, 14. Compare Spener, Theologische Bedenken, I, p. 306.
122. Besides Bailey and Baxter (see Consilia theologica, III, 6, 1; 1, 47; 3, 6), Spener was especially fond of Thomas à Kempis, and even more of Tauler-whom he did not entirely understand (op. cit., III, 61, 1, No. 1). For detailed discussion of the latter, see op. cit., I, 1, 1 No. 7. For him Luther is derived directly from Tauler.
