Both the general purpose of the venerable Johann Arndt in writing his “True Christianity,” and also his own character and spirit, will be best exhibited by submitting to the reader a statement referring to his personal history. He was born, December 27th, 1555, in Ballenstädt, a town in the Duchy of Anhalt, where his father, Rev. Jacob Arndt, long labored as the chaplain of Duke Wolfgang, and the pastor of one of the Evangelical Lutheran congregations of the place. The latter was a devout and faithful minister of the Gospel, and a wise and affectionate father. He had, from the earliest period, devoted much attention to the religious education of his son, in the performance of which holy duty he was faithfully sustained by his excellent wife. Their efforts were abundantly blessed. The son, even in his early years, took great pleasure in reading the writings of Luther, and also acquired a fondness for those of Thomas á Kempis, of Tauler, and of others who breathed the same spirit of devotion. That this feature of his religious character did not undergo any essential change in his riper years, appears from the circumstance that he was one of the first who collected, arranged, and republished the religious tracts of Stephen Prætorius, a Lutheran divine of an eminently devout spirit. These were subsequently re-edited by Martin Statius, who prefixed the title: Spiritual Treasury (Geistliche Schatzkammer), to the collection. This book of devotion was highly prized by Spener, has often been reprinted, is found in many German households, and well deserves to be translated, and thus made accessible to the English religious public.
§ 2. In his tenth year Arndt lost his father, but the orphan soon found friends who, in the good providence of God, enabled him to continue the studies which he had commenced with distinguished success under the guidance of his father. After completing his preparatory education in the schools of Halberstadt and Magdeburg, he proceeded, in the year 1576, to the university of Helmstedt, which had recently been established. In the course of the following year, 1577, he went as a student to the university of Wittenberg, soon after the official recognition of the principles embodied in the Formula of Concord (published in 1580), by which that institution received a strictly Lutheran character, and every tendency to any other doctrinal system was successfully arrested. It was here that he formed a very close union, first as a student, and then as a personal friend, with the eminent Polycarp Leyser, the elder of that name, whose firmness and devotion in sustaining the distinctive features of Lutheranism have assigned to him a high position in the history of his Church.—After Arndt had, even at this early age, acquired distinction as an accomplished private lecturer on Natural Philosophy, etc., as well as on the Epistle to the Romans, Leyser furnished him with an unusually favorable recommendation to the professors in Strasburg. This city, the government and population of which were exclusively Lutheran, had not yet been subjected to that great calamity which afterwards befell it, when the despot and bigot, Louis XIV., incorporated it with the French monarchy, and by assigning undue privileges to papists, and adopting other tyrannical measures, opened an avenue for the introduction, not merely of an inferior Romanic language, but also of the errors and superstitions of the Church of Rome.
§ 3. Arndt continued his theological studies in Strasburg, under the direction of Prof. Pappus, who was also distinguished for his devotion to the genuine Lutheran faith. In the year 1579 he proceeded to Basel, where, under the gentle sway of Sulcer, the Lutheran faith had acquired influence and authority. In this city he was temporarily engaged as the tutor of a young Polish nobleman; the latter, on one of their excursions, when Arndt had accidentally fallen into the Rhine, succeeded in seizing his sinking preceptor by the hair of his head, and thus became the means, in the hands of God, of saving a life of incalculable value, designed to prove an ever-flowing source of blessings to the Church.
§ 4. During this whole period Arndt occupied himself with the study of medicine, in connection with his strictly theological studies; it is possible that he would have ultimately chosen the practice of medicine as the business of his life, if a severe illness had not intervened. After his recovery, he believed it to be his duty to renounce his personal tastes, and he thenceforth consecrated himself entirely to the service of the Church. His medical and chemical occupations, although not abandoned, were afterwards regarded by him only as a recreation.
§ 5. He returned, in 1581 or 1582, to his native place, and labored for some time as a teacher, until he was called by his prince, Joachim Ernest, to be the pastor of the congregation in Badeborn, a village in the Duchy of Anhalt; he was, accordingly, ordained in the month of October of the same year. It was here, too, that he was married, October 31, 1583, to Anna Wagner, the daughter of an eminent jurist, with whom he passed the remaining thirty-eight years of his life in unclouded domestic happiness. She was a devout Christian woman, who cheered and encouraged Arndt amid his many cares, alleviated every burden to the extent of her ability, and was always regarded by him with tenderness and gratitude. They were childless; but many an orphan found that their hearts could overflow with love towards the young and destitute—a love as full of warmth as beloved children have ever experienced parental love to be.
§ 6. In this first pastoral charge of Arndt, the unhappy state of affairs subjected him, particularly during the latter part of the seven years which he spent in it, to a “Lutheran martyrdom,” as Tholuck expresses himself (Herzog. Encyk. I., 536). The duke, John George, who now reigned (a relative of the palsgrave, or count palatine, Casimir, a zealous Calvinist), after various inward struggles, abandoned the Lutheran faith, and, in the year 1596, publicly adopted the Reformed faith, a few years after the transactions to which we now refer. Even Protestant rulers, who had not yet learned the theory that a union of church and state can operate only perniciously, perpetually interfered in the internal affairs of the church.—At this period it was the custom of Lutheran pastors, when they administered the rite of Baptism, to follow the liturgical form which prescribed “exorcism.” This feature of the whole baptismal form, which was introduced as early as the third century, or even earlier (before the days of Tertullian and Origen), consisted simply in a sentence adjuring the evil spirit to depart from the subject of Baptism. The early practice had, like others, been gradually associated, after the rise and development of popery, with superstitious ideas, such as was also the case with the Lord's Supper, until it assumed an absurd and even revolting form. At the period of the Reformation, Zwingli and Calvin (Inst. IV., c. 15, 19; c. 19, 24) rejected the whole form of exorcism. Luther and Melanchthon, on the other hand, after discarding the popish excrescences, believed that the scriptural doctrine which the early form involved or suggested, authorized the retention of the practice, when restricted to a very plain and simple formula, expressive of a scriptural truth.—Now, at that period, as it is well known, unfriendly feelings, engendered by various causes, existed to a certain extent, between the heads respectively of the Reformed and the Lutheran churches, in consequence of which even harmless customs which none would, under ordinary circumstances, either advocate or condemn with partisan feeling, assumed a confessional character. Such was the case with the purified and simple Lutheran baptismal sentence containing the “exorcism.”