THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
terairede Geneve, ii. 191 sqq., Geneva, 1786; Lichtenberger, ESR, xi. 656.
SPANHEIM, FRIEDRICH, THE YOUNGER: Son
of Friedrich the Elder; b. in Geneva May 1, 1632; d. at Leyden May 18, 1701. He studied at Leyden (M.A., 1648), continuing his studies in theology after the death of his father, and in 1655 accepted a call to assist in reorganizing the University of Heidelberg, having previously received his doctorate at Leyden, whither he went as professor of theology in 1670, giving instruction after the next year in church history, becoming librarian in 1674, being four times rector, and in 1684 becoming professor primarius.
The results of his literary activity, which was great, were collected in his Opera (3 vols., Leyden, 1701-03). They included works in history, exegesis, and dogmatics, to which must be added a certain polemic activity against Arminians, Cartesians, Cocceians, and Jesuits. In this last respect important is his De novissimis circa res sacras in Belgio dissidiis epistola (Leyden, 1677). His theology was conservative, and he opposed the " novatores." His commentary on Job is regarded as of high value. He issued also a Brevis Introductio ad historiam utriusque Testamenti (1694), and a large number of sermons. [The list of his writings takes up two pages in the British Museum Catalogue.]
(S. D. van Veen.)
Bibliography: The funeral oration by J. Triglandius was published at Leyden, 1701, and was included in vol. ii. of Spanheim's Opera, ut sup. Sketches of his life are given in their alphabetical place in Niceron, Memoires, xxix. 11— 26 and in Chauffepie's Nouveau Dictionnaire, Amsterdam, 1750-56.
SPARROW, WILLIAM: Protestant-Episcopalian; b. at Charlestown, Mass., Mar. 12, 1801; d. at Alexandria, Va., Jan. 17, 1874. His parents returning to Ireland in 1805, he attended a boardingschool in the Vale of Avoca; returned to America, 1817; was a student at Columbia College, New York, 1819-21; professor of Latin and Greek at Miami University, 1S24-25; ordained in 1826; colaborer with Bishop Chase in founding Kenyon College; eleven years Milnor professor at Gambier; and professor of systematic divinity and Christian evidences in the Theological Seminary of Virginia, 1840-74. During the civil war (1861-64) he carried on the work of the seminary in the interior of Virginia. At its close his unique relations to both sections enabled him to exert important influence in restoring the Protestant Episcopal Church in Virginia to its former ecclesiastical relations.
Sparrow was recognized as the ablest theologian and the most original thinker of the evangelical school in the Protestant Episcopal Church. He bowed with unquestioning faith to the supremacy of Scripture, yet welcomed modern criticism as an ally; all his thinking proceeded on the conviction of the ultimate harmony of revelation and science. An earnest Evangelical and a zealous Protestant, he was usually classed as Arminian in theology; yet he abhorred the narrowness of theological systems, and led his pupils to independent thought and rational inquiry. He was an earnest Episcopalian, but put doctrine before order; hence he felt himself at one with Protestant Christendom, and re-
joiced in the Evangelical Alliance as an expression of Protestant unity. Although he sympathized with the difficulties of Bishop George David Cummins (q.v.), he deprecated his secession, and remained firm in his adherence to the church. Perhaps no man of his time in America did more to check the spread of the tractarian theology. He was an earnest antagonist of the dogma of a tactual apostolical succession, holding it to be essentially unscriptural and anti-Protestant. To his great intellectual powers he added the influence of exalted piety, a character of great modesty and humility, and a life of simplicity and self-denial. His lifelong feebleness of health unhappily prevented his entering the field of authorship; but a number of his occasional sermons and addresses were published. In collaboration with J. Johns he wrote Memoir of Rev. W Meade (Richmond, 1867); and, independently, Select Discourses (New York, 1877).
Bibliography: C. Walker, Life and Correspondence of William Sparrow, Philadelphia, 1876.