ABSTRACT
W e must now retrace our steps a little to notice how in the same way that Deism in England was preceded by Puritanism, so the Enlightenment in Germany, of which we have just been tracing the course, was preceded by Pietism. Like the Enlightenment itself, Pietism represents a reaction against the stiff orthodoxy of contemporary Lutheranism, but whereas the Enlightenment was a reaction of the head, Pietism was a reaction of the heart. It appealed to emotions to which neither legalism nor intellectualism had any access. It was very like the later evangelicalism of England, for the origin of which it was, indeed, partly responsible, and like the evangelicals the pietists were looked upon with some disdain. The name was attached to them from the collegia pietatis, or societies for mutual spiritual improvement, in which the early representatives of the movement were wont to gather together. Hence it has been described as ‘German conventicle Christianity’. Theologically it was due to an overflowing of the Calvinist spirit into the sphere of Lutheranism —in which point again it is not unlike evangelicalism. Historically, its origin is international, and springs from a number of devotional writings, mostly English, that had a great vogue at the period. Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Baxter’s Saints’ Everlasting Rest, Molinos’s Spiritual Guide, Arndt’s True Christianity, Bayly’s Practice of Piety, have all been mentioned in this connexion.
