i. The Arminian doctrine was a via inedia be- tween the Socinian and the orthodox doctrine. The Arminian theologians adhered to the doctrine of the Trinity, but maintained that the Son, as begotten of the Father, was essentially subordinate, though still a Person within the Deity. They also maintained the full humanity of Jesus. Though one with the Son or Logos, He lived a truly human life ; He had a human body and a human soul, and, according to Curcellseus, a human personality. The union with the Logos appeared in the com- munication to Jesus of Divine spiritual powers, but only of such as were possible to a creature. While they held His actual sinlessness, they denied His impeccability. Had they carried out their con- ception logically, they could scarcely have halted short of Socinianism.
Before the close of the century the Arminian Christology had multitudes of adherents, not only in Hollann but also in Switzerland and England. In the latter country Deism had already begun to undermine the Trinitarian and Christological doc- trines, and Arminian and even Arian views were widely spread within the Church. The whole ten- dency of the period was towards a more frankly humanitarian view of Christ's Person ; and leading representatives of thought, like Milton, Locke, and Newton, whose sympathies were with the Christian faith, were estranged from the orthodox rendering of the Christian verities. The great variety of view, prevailing both in the Churches and beyond them, indicated the approaching dis-
solution of tiie old dogma, while as yet the rationalism of the age had little to set in its place.
5. In this as in other centuries. Mysticism pur- sued its own path, and attbrded to some minds relief from the high and dry dogmatism of ortho- doxy. Starting from the true thought of the affinity of God and man, the Mystics tended either to lose sight of the historical Jesus entirely, or to see in Him but one manifestation of the eternal Word. Jacob Bohme may be taken as their noblest representative. Bohme stood too near to the Christian faith to sublimate Christ, and see in Him nothing more than the type of a universal incarnation ; but history and dogma are but the material of his all-mastering sjieculation. The Trinity represents for Bohme the thought that God has life and movement, that He is no abstract, changeless entity apart from the world, but a living God, working in and through all, the source and goal and spirit of all, the unity in which all contradictions are resolved. He interprets the dogma in a variety of ways. The Father is the abyss ; the Son is the first forthgoing of desire in the form of will ; the Spirit is the eternal out- breathing of that will. Or, the Father is the originating will, the Son is the power of love which the will generates in determining itself, and the Sjjirit is the will's eternal outgoing. Or again, the Father is the source of all powers. Himself the one all-inclusive power ; the Son is the heart and kernel of all powers ; and the Spirit is their living- movement. But Bohme sees the Trinity every- where : in the soul of man (power, light, and the spirit of understanding), in plants (power, sap, peculiar virtue), nay, in all things that conceivably exist — even in the burning candle with its heat, light, and ascending air. In similar ways Bohme descants on the Person of Christ, — His double birth, in time and in eternity ; His double body, the heavenly and the mortal. In spite of their in- coherence, one may gather from Bohme's writings a suggestion here and there, but so far as definite ordered thought goes, his vagaries resemble the play of shadows on a wall. His meaning may be profoundly spiritual, but his language is a perverse interweaving of physics and chemistry with ethics and theology.
In no century was the rabies theologica more pronounced. The scholastic extravagance of the orthodox doctrine did not fail to work injuriously and sometimes disastrously on the religious life, while the intellectualism of the more critical circles did not directly serve the growth of religious piety. For the evidence of true and sincere devotion to Christ in this age we must look rather to the obscure and humble in the Churches, who found sustenance for their souls in a faith that surpassed all formulas, and which no scholasticism or criticism could rob of its transcendent power.
Literature. — Planck, Gesch. der prot. Theologie von der Con- cordien/ormel bis in dieMitte des achtz. Jht.\ Schneckenburger, Vergleichende Darstelluivj des Luther, u. Reform. Lehrbegriffs ; Dorner, Doctrine of the Person of Christ, div. ii. vol. ii.; Schultz, Gottheit Christi ; A. R6ville, The Deity of Jesus Christ ; G. Bonet- Maury, Des origines du Christianisme unitaire ; A. B. Bruce, The Humiliatlnn of Christ ; artt. in PI{E'-> on ' Kenosis,' ' Coniinunicatio Idiomatum,' and on the various theologians referred to. J. DiCK FlEMIN(;.
CHRIST IN MODERN THOUGHT. — 1. The modern spirit. — (1) Its genesis. — The modern sjiirit manifests its ciiaracteristic modes of thought by contrast with the media'val age. It carries to tiieir ultimate result the tendencies that produced the Reformation and the Revival of Letters. It has revealed itself in positive and distinctive form only in our own day and after a long process. A brief general statement of the course that process took will serve to indicate at once its legitimacj- and