"WethereH, William, an English clergyman, was born in 16(10, and became minister at Scitnate in 1640, in which capacity he continued until his death in 1684.
/Wetherill, Samuel, a preacher of the Society of Free Quakers, was born at IJurlington, N. .!., in 1713, and removed to Philadelphia in early youth, where he spent the remainder of his life. He was a prominent manufacturer of that city as well as a preacher. He wrote, An Apology for the Reliyious Society called Free Quakers : — a tract on the Divinity of Christ: — and other works. See AUibone, Diet, of Brit, and Amer. A uihors, s. V.
Wetmore, Izrahiah, an American clergyman, was born in 1729. He graduated at Yale College in 1748; became minister at Huntington, Conn. ; and died in 1798. See AWibon^, Diet, of Brit, and Amer, Au- thors, s. V.
"Wetmore, James, a Protestant Episcopal clergy- man, was graduated from Yale College in 1714. He was ordained the first Congregational minister in North Haven, Conn., in November, 1718, but in September, 1722, declared in favor of the Church of England. He immediately went to England, obtained orders, and re- turned in 1723 as catechist and assistant to the Rev. William Vesey of New York. In 1726 he becatne rec- tor of the Church at Rye, N. Y., where he continued un- til his death, May 15, 1760. He published Quakerism a Judicial Infatuation, and other controversial works. See Sprague, Annals of the Amer. Pulpit, v, 16.
■Wette, WiLHELM Martin Leberkciit de, an em- inent German theologian and critic, was born .Jan. 12, 1780, at Ulla, near Weimar, where his father. Job. Au- gustin, was pastor. He began his pursuit of learning at a time when German literature was in its highest glory, and in a region where its foremost representatives sojourned. In the school at Buttstiidt he was greatly embarrassed by lack of money. Thence he went to the gymnasium at Weimar, where Bcittiger was rector and Herder ephorus. His theological course was taken at Jena, where Griesbach, and still more Paulus, exercised a stimulating influence over him, and developed in him a taste for independent study of the Scriptures.
De Wette's earliest essay in literature was a critical dissertation on the book of Deuteronomy (.Jena, 1805), and his next, Contributions to New-Test. Introduction (Beitrdr/e zur Kinleilun.g in das N. T.). In these works De Wette abandoned the attempt to explain the mira- cles of Scripture as natural occurrences, and took the ground that they are mythical events. To establish this position he undertook to show that the historical books of the Bible are of much more recent origin than ecclesiastical tradition teaches; that especially the Pen- tateuch is composed of fragments, the earliest of which originated in the time of David, and the latest, the book of Deuteronomy itself, in the reign of .Josiah ; and that many persons were engaged in the compilation of these books. As .1. S. Vater, of Halle, had just published sim- ilar opinions, De Wette was obliged to revise his book and delay its publication until 1806, when the first vol- ume of Beitrdye in's A Ite Test, appeared. The second volume appeared in 1807, and was remarkable for its development of the theory that the Chronicles are not drawn from the same source in which the books of .Samuel and Kings originate; but that the writer of the Chronicles had made use of Samuel and Kings so far as they could serve his purpose, and had arbitrarily al- tered and made additions to them in the interests of the Levitical hierarchy; and for J;he manner in which
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these conclusions are made to react upon the credibility ol' the I'entateucli. He nevertheless persisted in main- taiiiins^ the sacredness of the Scripture histories, even in their mythical form, and insisted tliat no miserable pragmatism should be allowed to destroy their sacred- ness. lie declared truth to be the great law of history, aiul the love of truth to be tlie historian's first qualitica- tiou; but truth was for him an ideal, poetic abstraction, which had no place either in the rationalism or the su- pranaturalism of those days. His views upon this sub- ject are given in the article Beilrd(/e zur C/iarakieristik lies I/ebraismus, in the Sfttdien which lie edited in com- mon with Creuzer and Uaub (^1807). He places himself on the side of those who believe in revealed religion, and regards Christ as the true Redeemer and the cen- tral fact in revelation.
In 1807 De ^\'ette became professor of theology at Heidelberg after having served as tutor at Jena, and having received the doctorate of philosophy. In 1811 he publisiied a commentary on the book of Psalms (edi- tions in 18"23, 1829, and 1836), in which he denied the Davidic authorship of a number of psalms previously ascribed to David; applied the references made in cer- tain psalms, by the current exegesis, to the person of Christ to less distant historical events; and assigned a later date than was usually assumed to the Psalms gen- erally. He was himself constrained to feel that his work was not conducive to devotional effects, and sub- sequently modified many of its statements, besides writ- ing a supplement on the devotional exposition of Psalms (Heidelb. 1837). He demands a strictly scientific ex- position, and emphatically denounces all "play of pious ingenuity." Christ is, in his view, not foretold as a his- torical personage in the Psalms, though many ideal de- scriptions are there furnished which may be utilized for Christoliigical purposes. In 1810 he was called to the tlien newly founded University of Berlin, where Schleiermacher became his colleague and his colaborer in the endeavor to secure a theology which might sat- isfy the demands of both faith and science, though they differed widely as respects the application of methods. Schleiermacher insisted on a strict separation of philos- opliy from theology, yet persistently made use of phi- losopliy; De Wette, on the other hand, proceeded from the theistic standpoint of Kant's criticism, and also co- incided with Jacobi in his theory of the feelings in re- ligion. In methodology he wholly followed the philos- ophy of Fries. Knowledge and faith are by him sharp- ly distinguished from each other — the former being a matter of the understanding, and being concerned with tinite things only. Infinite things are to be apprehend- ed by faith acting under the form of feeling (devotion, enthusiasm, resignation). The religious consciousness is accordingly jesthetical in character. The infinite is symbolically manifested in the finite, and tlie historical revelation must be conceived of, in consequence, as a symbol. This he held to be true of miracles also.