Febronius. See Hontheim.
Fecht, JoHANN, a German theologian, was born at Salzburg December 26, 1636, and studied at several German universities, especially Tubingen and Heidel- berg. In 1666 he became pastor of Langendenzlingen, and court preacher at Durlach in 1668. He after- wards became professor of theology at Rostock, where he died May 5, 1716. He was a voluminous writer, delighted in controversj', and was especially bitter against the Pietists. Among his publications are, Leciimes Theologicae (Rostock, 1722) : — Compendium Universce Theologim (Leips. 1744) : — ^;j;;ara<«s cvd suj>pl. hist, eccles. scec. xvi. Gass calls him a " most learned and fruitful divine, and much read, long after his death." — Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Gcnerale, xvii, 246 ; Gass, Geschichte der Prot. Dogmaiik (Berlin, 1862, iii, 148).
Feder, Johann Michael, a Roman Catholic the- ologian, was born at Oellingen, near "VVurzburg, in Bavaria. In 1785 he was appointed extraordinar}^, and in 1786 ordinary professor at the universitj'. From 1804 to 1811 he was first librarian of the univer- sity library. He died in 1824. Feder was one of the most prolific writers in the Roman Catholic Church of Germany, though none of his works are of special im- portance. They are chiefly translations from the Greek (Chrysostom, Cyril, Theodoret), Latin (works of Cicero, Cornelius Nepos, Vincent of Lerin), and French. He revised the translation of the Biblt by
Braun, and contributed to a number of the Roman Catholic periodicals of Germany. A complete list of his publications is given in the Thesaurus librorum ni cathoUc(B (Wurzb. 1848). — Herzog, Real-Encyklop. iv, 344 ; Wetzer u. Welte, Kirchen-Lex. iii, 928. (A. J. S.)
Federal Theology (L&t. fcedus, a compact; adj. faderalis), a method of stating divine truth, accord- ing to which all the doctrines of religion are arranged under the heads of certain covenants God has made with men. We set forth (I.) the doctrine, as stated by its advocates; (II.) its history.
I. Doctrine. — The fundamental idea of the sj'stem is that man has always stood towards God in the rela- tion of a covenant, though a covenant of a peculiar character. The ordinary idea of a covenant, which is that of a mutual compact between one or more parties, each bound to render some benefit to the other, is ob- viously excluded ly the nature of the case. Where God and man are the parties, the benefits must be all on one side and the obligations on the other. The re- lationship must be determined and be imposed upon man by God in his right of a sovereign ruler. And 3'et it is something more than a mere law or promise. It involves, indeed, a law which man has no right to disobey ; but superadded to this is a promise of bene- fits vastly disproportioned to the merit of obedience, a limitation of the time and circumstances of the pro- bation on which all is made to depend, and the repre- sentation of many b}^ some one as their natural head. There is even a virtual implication of mutual consent and obligations, for on the one hand God gracioush^ binds himself to the performance of certain engage- ments with the view of securing results that shall man- ifest his glor}"- ; and man freely consents when, with this understanding, he enters upon a course of obedience. Such a promise on God's part, suspended upon the performance of a condition on man's, is a covenant. The advocates of this sj'stem have usually made but two such covenants : viz. 1, that of nature or of works ; and, 2, that of grace. These have been successive in their revelation to man, since the former was an ar- rangement before the Fall, and the latter was not made known until after that event ; and yet the latter must have been agreed upon before all worlds, where- as the former could not have been formed until the cre- ation of man ; and some contend that those who refuse their consent to the covenant of grace must necessarily remain, even now, under the obligations and penalties of the covenant of works. In both we have the same contracting parties, God and man ; the same blessing to be attained, eternal life ; and the same requirement of perfect obedience; but they differ, inasmuch as thu covenant of grace is a dispensation of mercj"^ to sin- ners, is through a divine Mediator, and secures the blessings of eternal life without the possibility of a failure.
1. The covenant of nature, or of teorks, is nowhere spoken of under that name, but is supposed to be more than once alluded to in the Scriptures. Some have thought they had discovered an express mention of it in Hos. vi, 7: "They, like Adam, have trans- gressed the covenant" (compare Job xxxi, 33; Psa. Ixxxii, 7). The apostle often speaks of the law of works in contrast with the law of faith, of the two covenants (Gal. iv, 24), and not nnfrequently of an old and a new covenant. It is not denied that bj' these expressions he usuallj' meant the Mosaic or Sinaitic dispensation, in distinction from the evangelical; but it is thought that such a dispensation could be desig- nated a covenant of works only because it was a re- publication of a moral law to be a rule of conduct, but not a covenant of life, for a particular nation. The contrast and resemblance Vv-hich Paul also draws be- tween the first and the second Adam (Rom. v, 12-21 ; 1 Cor. XV, 45) would seem to have no meaning with- out the understandin:; of a covenant M-ith our great