Excerpt from A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Vol. 6: Second Series
Tm: grounds on which certain works of Jerome have been selected as most important, for translation in this edition, while others have been omitted, are given 1n the Prolegomena (p. Xvii - xviii).
The first draught of the translation was prepared by my coadjutors and former pupils, Mr. G. Lewis and Mr. W. G. Martley, who also added most of the notes, but I have gone minutely through every part, correcting, adding, and at times te-writing, both in the ms. And in the proof, and I have composed the Prolegomena and Indices.
I have endeavoured to make the work useful not to the theologian alone. But also to the historical student. The general reader will find interest and even entertainment in the parts of the work referred to in the Index under such headings as Pictures of Contemporary Life, Proverbs, Stories and Quotations, ' or by looking at the Letters to which special atten tion is called 1n the Prolegomena at p. Xviii. The Table of Contents also, in which a short description is given of the purport of each Letter, will help each class of readers to select the parts suitable to them. Finally, the Life of Jerome included in the Prolegomena, though closely compressed, has been furnished with copious references, 11h1ch will make it a key to the whole work. It is only to be regretted that, through the impossibility of including Jerome's work on Illustrious Men and his controversy with Rufinus in the present volume. It is necessary to send the reader for a few of the most important facts to Vol. Iii of this Series.
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On his journey he stayed in England and met Edward Pusey and other Tractarians. His inaugural address on The Principle of Protestantism, delivered in German at Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1844, and published in German with an English version by John Williamson Nevin was a pioneer work in English in the field of symbolics (that is, the authoritative ecclesiastical formulations of religious doctrines in creeds or confessions). This address and the "Mercersburg Theology" which he taught seemed too pro-Catholic to some, and he was charged with heresy. But, at the synod at York in 1845, he was unanimously acquitted.
Schaff's broad views strongly influenced the German Reformed Church, through his teaching at Mercersburg, through his championship of English in German Reformed churches and schools in America, through his hymnal (1859), through his labours as chairman of the committee which prepared a new liturgy, and by his edition (1863) of the Heidelberg Catechism. His History of the Apostolic Church (in German, 1851; in English, 1853) and his History of the Christian Church (7 vols., 1858-1890), opened a new period in American study of ecclesiastical history.
In 1854, he visited Europe, representing the American German churches at the ecclesiastical diet at Frankfort and at the Swiss pastoral conference at Basel. He lectured in Germany on America, and received the degree of D.D. from Berlin.
In consequence of the ravages of the American Civil War the theological seminary at Mercersburg was closed for a while and so in 1863 Dr. Schaff became secretary of the Sabbath Committee (which fought the “continental Sunday”) in New York City, and held the position till 1870. In 1865 he founded the first German Sunday School in Stuttgart. In 1862-1867 he lectured on church history at Andover.
Schaff was a member of the Leipzig Historical Society, the Netherland Historical Society, and other historical and literary societies in Europe and America. He was one of the founders, and honorary secretary, of the American branch of the Evangelical Alliance, and was sent to Europe in 1869, 1872, and 1873 to arrange for the general conference of the Alliance, which, after two postponements on account of the Franco-Prussian War, was held in New York in October 1873. Schaff was also, in 1871, one of the Alliance delegates to the emperor of Russia to plead for the religious liberty of his subjects in the Baltic provinces.
He became a professor at Union Theological Seminary, New York City in 1870 holding first the chair of theological encyclopedia and Christian symbolism till 1873, of Hebrew and the cognate languages till 1874, of sacred literature till 1887, and finally of church history, till his death. He also served as president of the committee that translated the American Standard Version of the Bible, though he died before it was published in 1901.
His History of the Christian Church resembled Neander's work, though less biographical, and was pictorial rather than philosophical. He also wrote biographies, catechisms and hymnals for children, manuals of religious verse, lectures and essays on Dante, etc. He translated Johann Jakob Herzog's Real-Encyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche into English.
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