15.  A like dispute has threatened of late to disturb the peace in the Churches of the Augsburg Confession.  Some Masters of Arts in the University of Leipzig gave private lessons at their homes, to students who sought them out in order to learn what is called ‘Sacra Philologia’, according to the practice of this university and of some others where this kind of study is not restricted to the Faculty of Theology.  These masters pressed the study of the Holy Scriptures and the practice of piety further than their fellows had been wont to do.  It is alleged that they had carried certain things to excess, and aroused suspicions of certain doctrinal innovations.  This caused them to be dubbed ‘Pietists’, as though they were a new sect; and this name is one which has since caused a great stir in Germany.  It has been applied somehow or other to those whom one suspected, or pretended to suspect, of fanaticism, or even of hypocrisy, concealed under some semblance of reform.  Now some of the students attending these masters had become conspicuous for behaviour which gave general offence, and amongst other things for their scorn of philosophy, even, so it was said, burning their notebooks.  In consequence the belief arose that their masters rejected philosophy:  but they justified themselves very well; nor could they be convicted either of this error or of the heresies that were being imputed to them.

16.  The question of the use of philosophy in theology was debated much amongst Christians, and difficulty was experienced over settling the limits of its use when it came to detailed consideration.  The Mysteries of the Trinity, of the Incarnation and of the Holy Communion gave most occasion for dispute.  The new Photinians, disputing the first two Mysteries, made use of certain philosophic maxims which Andreas Kessler, a theologian of the Augsburg Confession, summarized in the various treatises that he published on the parts of the Socinian philosophy.  But as to their metaphysics, one might instruct oneself better therein by reading the [84] work of Christopher Stegmann the Socinian.  It is not yet in print; but I saw it in my youth and it has been recently again in my hands.

17.  Calovius and Scherzer, authors well versed in Scholastic philosophy, and sundry other able theologians answered the Socinians at great length, and often with success:  for they would not content themselves with the general and somewhat cavalier answers that were commonly used against that sect.  The drift of such answers was:  that their maxims were good in philosophy and not in theology; that it was the fault of heterogeneousness called [Greek:  metabasis eis allo genos] to apply those maxims to a matter transcending reason; and that philosophy should be treated as a servant and not a mistress in relation to theology, according to the title of the book by a Scot named Robert Baronius, Philosophia Theologiae ancillans.  In fine, philosophy was a Hagar beside Sara and must be driven from the house with her Ishmael when she was refractory.  There is something good in these answers:  but one might abuse them, and set natural truths and truths of revelation at variance.  Scholars therefore applied themselves to distinguishing between what is necessary and indispensable in natural or philosophic truths and that which is not so.