§ 167.1. =The Pietist Controversies after the Founding of the Halle University= (§ 159, 3).--Pietism, condemned by the orthodox universities of Leipzig and Wittenberg, was protected and encouraged in Halle. The crowds of students flocking to this new seminary roused the wrath of the orthodox. The Wittenberg faculty, with Deutschmann at its head, issued a manifesto in A.D. 1695, charging Spener with no less than 264 errors in doctrine. Nor were those of Leipzig silent, Carpzov going so far as to style the mild and peace-loving Spener a _procella ecclesiæ_. Other leading opponents of the pietists were Schelwig of Dantzig, Mayer of Wittenberg, and Fecht of Rostock. When Spener died in A.D. 1705 his opponents gravely discussed whether he could be thought of as in glory. Fecht of Rostock denied that it could be. Among the later champions of pure doctrine the worthiest and ablest was the learned Löscher, superintendent at Dresden, A.D. 1709-1747, who at least cannot be reproached with dead orthodoxy. His “_Vollständiger Timotheus Verinus_,” two vols., 1718, 1721, is by far the most important controversial work against pietism.[498] Francis Buddeus of Jena for a long time sought ineffectually to bring about a reconciliation between Löscher and the pietists of Halle. In A.D. 1710 Francke and Breithaupt obtained a valorous colleague in Joachim Lange; but even he was no match for Löscher in controversy. Meanwhile pietism had more and more permeated the life of the people, and occasioned in many places violent popular tumults. In several states conventicles were forbidden; in others, _e.g._ Württemberg and Denmark, they were allowed.
§ 167.2. The orthodox regarded the pietists as a new sect, with dangerous errors that threatened the pure doctrine of the Lutheran Church; while the pietists maintained that they held by pure Lutheran orthodoxy, and only set aside its barren formalism and dead externalism for biblical practical Christianity. The controversy gathered round the doctrines of the new birth, justification, sanctification, the church, and the millennium.
a. The new birth. The orthodox maintained that regeneration takes place in baptism (§ 141, 13), every baptized person is regenerate; but the new birth needs nursing, nourishment, and growth, and, where these are wanting, reawakening. The pietists identified awakening or conversion with regeneration, considered that it was effected in later life through the word of God, mediated by a corporeal and spiritual penitential struggle, and a consequent spiritual experience, and sealed by a sensible assurance of God’s favour in the believer’s blessed consciousness. This inward sealing marks the beginning, introduction into the condition of babes in Christ. They distinguished a _theologia viatorum_, _i.e._ the symbolical church doctrine, and a _theologia regenitorum_, which has to do with the soul’s inner condition after the new birth. They have consequently been charged with maintaining that a true Christian who has arrived at the stage of spiritual manhood may and must in this life become free from sin.